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      Merkel Memoir Recalls What It Was Like Dealing With Trump and Putin

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      The new book by former Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany also aims to justify decisions she made that are still affecting her country and the rest of Europe.Shortly after Donald J. Trump’s 2017 inauguration, Angela Merkel, who was then Germany’s chancellor, visited Washington. As the world looked on, the two leaders sat in front of an unlit fireplace, awkwardly and silently waiting for the photographers to do their work.After hearing the photographers demand “handshake, handshake,” an urging that Mr. Trump ignored, Ms. Merkel tried herself, she relates in a new memoir. “They want to have a handshake,” she said in a hushed tone audible to the press corps just feet away.“As soon as I said that, I shook my head mentally at myself,” Ms. Merkel wrote, according to excerpts from the memoir released this week in Die Zeit, the German weekly. “How could I forget that Trump knew exactly what effect he wanted to achieve?” she added.Long-anticipated in Germany, the book, “Freedom: Memoirs 1954-2021,” promises the inside story of the taciturn woman many saw as the defender of a global liberal order. When the world was shocked by Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, the first election of Mr. Trump and Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Ms. Merkel exuded a kind of patient, cerebral calm that was widely seen as the bastion of an old, more predictable world order.Since she stepped down in 2021, things have changed drastically. Russia invaded Ukraine, prompting Germany to wean itself off cheap Russian gas. Absorbing both the lack of cheap energy and a reduction of the Chinese export market, the German economy has stagnated. The country’s bridges, roads and railways, long neglected, are falling apart. And Ms. Merkel’s welcoming migration policy has led to a surge in the far right.All of which has led to widespread unhappiness and a rethinking of Ms. Merkel’s legacy.Ms. Merkel’s book, which is also being published in an English translation and hits bookstores on Tuesday, is expected to be more than just a fascinating first-person view from the seat of a great European power. It is also a justification for decisions she made that helped lead Germany and the rest of Europe to a perilous place.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Russia Supplies Antiaircraft Missiles to North Korea, the South Says

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      Pyongyang has long coveted an advanced air-defense system to guard against missiles and war planes from the United States and South Korea.Russia has supplied North Korea with antiaircraft missiles in return for the deployment of its troops ​to fight in Russia’s war against Ukraine, South Korea’s national security adviser said on Friday.​In recent weeks, North Korea has sent an estimated 1​1,000 troops, some of whom have joined Russian forces in their fight to retake territories occupied by Ukraine in Russia’s Kursk region, according to South Korean and United States officials. It has also sent close to 20,000 shipping containers of weapons to Russia since the summer of 2023, including artillery guns and shells, short-range ballistic missiles and multiple-rocket launchers, South Korean officials have said.In return, North Korea has been widely expected to seek Russian help in modernizing its conventional armed forces and advancing its nuclear​ weapons program and missiles. One of the ​biggest weaknesses of the North Korean military ​has been its poor​, outdated air defense system, while the United States and its allies in South Korea and Japan run fleets of high-tech war planes, ​including F-35 stealth fighter jets.“We understand that Russia has provided related equipment and anti-air missiles to shore up the poor air defense for Pyongyang,” the North Korean capital, ​South Korea’s national security adviser​, Shin Won-shik, ​said in an interview with SBS-TV on Friday.The cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow came as Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, continued to stoke confrontational rhetoric against the United States and South Korea. In a speech at a military exhibition on Thursday that was reported by state media, Mr. Kim warned that the Korean Peninsula has never faced such risks of nuclear war as now, blaming the tensions on Washington’s “aggressive and hostile” policy.Mr. Shin said Russia was also supplying other military technology to North Korea, including help to improve North Korea’s satellite-launch programs.​ After two failed attempts, North Korea placed its first spy satellite into or​bit last November​, triggering speculation that Russia was behind the success. But in May, a North Korean rocket carrying another military reconnaissance satellite into orbit exploded midair shortly after takeoff.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Fin Whale Carcass Washes Ashore in Anchorage, Alaska

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      Crowds in Anchorage have braved freezing temperatures and slippery ice to see the hulking carcass of a rare fin whale, which washed ashore a few miles from downtown.Sue Heverling wrapped herself in a winter coat, clutched a pair of hiking poles and set out across a frozen mud flat near Anchorage, braving five-degree temperatures and treacherous ice to see the Alaskan city’s newest, and largest, spectacle.She took her first tentative steps on the ice, slipped and fell, then got up and pushed on. As she drew closer, what had appeared modest from a distance now loomed before her.“That is big,” Ms. Heverling, 62, recalled saying to herself.The object of her fascination was the carcass of a 47-foot-long fin whale, which has drawn crowds in Anchorage for days.The young female member of the second largest mammal species had probably washed ashore on the high tide on Saturday, according to Barbara Mahoney, a biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who examined the carcass.Fin whales, considered endangered, regularly swim in the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Strait. Every so often, minke whales, gray whales and humpbacks wash ashore in Alaska. But it’s unusual for a fin whale to be found on a beach so close to Alaska’s biggest city, Ms. Mahoney said.So people are captivated. A nearby public trail, the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail, is usually busy with joggers, bikers and cross-country skiers. This week, hundreds of pairs of eyes turned toward the mud flat and the dark-gray mound the size of a school bus. Residents have posted pictures of the mountain of flesh on social media, where it has inevitably spawned memes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Next Online Speech Cop + Doctors vs. ChatGPT + Hard Fork Crimes Division

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      Listen to and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTube | iHeartRadioKevin Roose and Rachel Cohn and Dan PowellMarion LozanoDiane Wong and This week, President-elect Donald Trump picked Brendan Carr to be the next chairman of the F.C.C. We talk with The Verge’s editor in chief, Nilay Patel, about what this could mean for the future of the internet, and for free speech at large. Then, a new study found that ChatGPT defeated doctors at diagnosing some diseases. One of the study’s authors, Dr. Adam Rodman, joins us to discuss the future of medicine. And finally, court is back in session. It’s time for the Hard Fork Crimes Division.Guests:Nilay Patel, co-founder of The Verge and host of the podcasts Decoder and The VergecastAdam Rodman, internal medicine physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and one of the co-authors of a recent study testing the effectiveness of ChatGPT to diagnose illnesses.Additional Reading:Trump Picks Brendan Carr to Lead F.C.C.A.I. Chatbots Defeated Doctors at Diagnosing IllnessGary Wang, a Top FTX Executive, Is Given No Prison TimePhoto Illustration by The New York Times; Photo: Pool photo by Brandon BellOne more thing: We want to learn more about you, our listeners. Please fill out our quick survey: nytimes.com/hardforksurvey.Credits“Hard Fork” is hosted by More

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      Pam Bondi Is Trump’s New Choice as Attorney General. Here’s What to Know About Her.

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump quickly swept aside Thursday’s bad headlines about Matt Gaetz by speedily substituting Pam Bondi, a fellow Florida Republican with a starkly different profile — but a similar reputation for fealty — to be his attorney general.Ms. Bondi, 59, is a lobbyist and Trump loyalist who served as Florida’s attorney general from 2011 to 2019. She has charted a more conventional and less clamorous course than Mr. Gaetz, with little of the ugly personal or political baggage that led some Republicans to oppose Mr. Gaetz’s nomination.She was a local prosecutor.Ms. Bondi, the daughter of the mayor of a small Tampa-area municipality, began working as an assistant state attorney in Hillsborough County in the 1990s. During 18 years as a prosecutor, she tried cases “ranging from domestic violence to capital murder,” according to the bio page at her lobbying firm.She supervised a handful of high-profile cases, most notably one involving the former New York Mets pitcher Dwight Gooden, who served a one-year prison sentence for violating probation in a drug case in 2006.She was elected Florida’s first female attorney general in 2010.Ms. Bondi — a Democrat until 2000 — emerged from a crowded Republican primary to win the attorney general’s race after garnering the support of Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and failed 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, and by touting her tough stance on crime during appearances on Fox News.During her eight-year tenure, she tried unsuccessfully to overturn and weaken the Affordable Care Act, opposed expanding legal protections for the L.G.B.T.Q. community and cultivated a national reputation by supporting anti-human-trafficking efforts.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Blood Quilt’ Review: An Elaborate Tapestry

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      Katori Hall’s new play about sisters gathering after their mother’s death features standout performances but an overabundance of themes.Quilting is about more than just fabric and stitches; it’s about blood, love, memory and trauma. That’s the premise at the center of Katori Hall’s “The Blood Quilt” at Lincoln Center, about four sisters gathering to complete a quilt three weeks after their mother’s death. The play itself a beautiful patchwork of themes and ideas that feel packed to the seams.It’s the first weekend of May, which means it’s time for the Jernigan sisters to convene at their family home at Kwemera, an island off the coast of Georgia where the Jernigan clan have lived for generations. But Kwemera isn’t what it used to be, and more change is imminent; there are plans for a bridge that will connect the mainland to the island, which means locals are being bought out by developers. Still, Clementine (Crystal Dickinson, with perfect gravitas), the eldest sister, remains staunchly a Kwemera woman, having lived her whole life there, where she nursed their mother in the last years of her illness.Clementine is the fierce guardian of family traditions, including the annual quilting ritual, so Gio (a riotous Adrienne C. Moore), the heavy drinking second oldest, has reported for duty, as has Cassan (Susan Kelechi Watson, perfectly demure), who has brought her teenage daughter Zambia (Mirirai) for her first quilting circle. And there’s an unexpected guest — Amber (Lauren E. Banks), the youngest, who’s a successful entertainment lawyer in California and has been absent for the last few years.Quilting is a days long project, with each sister assigned her own separate duties. But the quilt isn’t the only reason for this reunion: there’s the matter of their inheritance, if any, and the financial loose ends remaining after their mother’s death. The money issues stir up the women, but it’s their contrary, complicated and self-contradictory ways of grieving, along with their long-held grudges against one another, that truly unleashes the storm of drama inside the home.The world of “The Blood Quilt,” which opened Thursday, is inviting: Hall’s characters are fully formed and clearly motivated, the family’s history is rich and Kwemera feels alive, in part thanks to the eclectic homespun set design by Adam Rigg. Quilts are draped everywhere in this tiny cabin, which is so close to the water that the front of the stage drops off into a grassy basin.Hall, who won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play “The Hot Wing King,” uses the same level of artistry and meticulousness in crafting a metaphor that the sisters do in crafting their quilts. Their roles and quilting preferences mirror their places within the family. Zambia, caught in the messy adolescent process of defining her identity, takes the role of stitching the centerpiece — an apt, if heavy-handed, representation of a younger generation taking the baton in a family tradition. And the quilts themselves embody memories and even a bit of magic. A Jernigan story about a family matriarch who gave a quilt square away to each of her children sold off to slavery isn’t just emotionally resonant; it proves that these quilts are literal scraps of history.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      NYT Crossword Column for Nov. 22, 2024

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      Sarah Sinclair and Rafael Musa invite solvers to a tug of war.Jump to: Tricky CluesFRIDAY PUZZLE — Everybody’s crossword solving abilities are different, of course, as are their areas of expertise. I tend to find puzzles easier when they contain a lot of pop culture, history and literature. Others may rely on their knowledge of science or linguistics. These differences are what make the comments on this column so interesting. We have so much to learn from one another if we remain kind to new solvers and they are open to new information.There’s no real need for a consensus on whether a puzzle is good or bad, easy or hard — and likewise, no one needs to make others feel as if they “should have” known an answer — because the only contest is between each solver and the constructor.I like to refer to that contest as a tug of war. The puzzles are designed so that the solver always wins, but first the constructor tugs on the grid by making it hard to find a place of entry. Next, the solver tugs back by finding an entry point and dropping in a few more answers. This back and forth repeats itself until the solver is completely stuck, which is when the puzzle needs to be put aside for a while. With a rested brain, the barrier that had held the solver up falls, and more entries are written.That is how I solved today’s puzzle by Sarah Sinclair and Rafael Musa. There was a lot of tugging and resting, but the struggle was worth it for many of the fun, lively entries I uncovered as I moved along. I think you’ll enjoy this one.Tricky Clues12A. Note the capital D in [Bunch of Daisies], which turns the flower name into a proper noun. The Daisies are the youngest TROOP of Girl Scouts. They are usually in kindergarten or first grade.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Bondi Worked as Lobbyist in Recent Years, With Clients Including Amazon, G.M., Uber and Qatar

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to be attorney general, Pam Bondi, is a lobbyist for a powerhouse Republican firm, for which she represented major corporations and foreign governments with interests before the U.S. government.Ms. Bondi joined the lobbying firm of the Republican fund-raiser Brian Ballard after finishing her second term as Florida attorney general in January 2019.Among the clients for which she was registered to lobby were major companies, including Amazon, General Motors and Uber, as well as the Qatari government and various financial firms.Those registrations are no longer active, but Ms. Bondi is currently registered as a lobbyist for law enforcement-related clients, including an association representing some of the country’s largest sheriff’s offices and another group representing sheriffs in Florida, as well as the Florida sheriffs’ self-insurance program.A person familiar with the firm confirmed that Ms. Bondi was still affiliated with it and those clients as of Thursday.The firm’s website indicates that she is the chairwoman of its corporate regulatory compliance practice, focusing on helping Fortune 500 companies implement policies to fight human trafficking, opioid abuse and data breaches.Another veteran of Mr. Ballard’s firm, Susie Wiles, was tapped by Mr. Trump to be the White House chief of staff. Ms. Wiles will be the first woman to hold that job. Mr. Ballard helped to bring in more than $50 million for committees supporting Mr. Trump’s campaign. More