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      World Bank Warns of Record Debt Costs for Developing Countries

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      The World Bank warned in a new report that poor countries will be stuck in economic “purgatory” without debt relief.Soaring inflation saddled developing countries with a record $1.4 trillion in debt servicing costs last year, the World Bank said in a report published on Tuesday, detailing the precarious state faced by the world’s most vulnerable economies since the pandemic.As central banks around the world raised interest rates to slow rising prices, poor countries with already high debt burdens saw the interest payments on the money that they owed to creditors balloon. While principal balances held steady at around $951 billion, interest payments jumped by a third, to $406 billion. That has left more countries facing fiscal crises and struggling to avoid default.“These facts imply a metastasizing solvency crisis that continues to be misdiagnosed as a liquidity problem in many of the poorest countries,” Indermit Gill, the World Bank’s chief economist, wrote in the report. “It is easy to kick the can down the road, to provide these countries just enough financing to help them meet their immediate repayment obligations. But that simply extends their purgatory.”More than a dozen sovereign nations defaulted on their debt in the last three years, and more than 30 of the world’s poorest countries have experienced “debt distress,” according to the United Nations. In 2023, Belarus, Ghana, Lebanon, Sri Lanka and Zambia were all in default, according to Fitch Ratings.Global financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have been working with international lenders to help developing countries restructure their debt, but the process has been slow and painstaking. China, the world’s largest creditor, has been particularly reluctant to alter the terms of its loans as it grapples with its own economic challenges.The Biden administration has been critical of China’s lending practices. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen described them as “opaque” in an interview with The New York Times in October in which she called for accelerating debt relief. She also raised the idea of helping nations find new sources of borrowing by creating coordinated aid packages for “high-ambition countries” that want to invest in clean energy projects.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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      Rihanna Steals the Fashion Awards

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      And a dozen other looks that made news at Britain’s Met Gala of style.She wasn’t even nominated, and Rihanna still stole the show Monday night at the Fashion Awards in London.Arriving last, as has become her wont at events like the Met Gala and the Alaïa show, and there as a plus-one to support her partner, ASAP Rocky, who received the Cultural Innovator award, the artist and Fenty mogul made her entrance in a turquoise wrap coat and faux fur hat from Christian Lacroix’s fall 2002 couture collection. With that she wore a black corset, black leather opera gloves and sheer black tights. The effect was kind of haute Flintstone meets the Folies Bergère.As for ASAP Rocky, he wore Bottega Veneta — a navy chore coat, matching pants and a red leather tie — and called the honor “surreal.” That was also an accurate description of the Royal Albert Hall, where the awards were held and where a crimson disco ball cast a new light on a familiar scene. But it was Rihanna’s enormous hat, jauntily tilted and visible from every vantage point, that summed up the point of the night: The business of fashion may be serious, but wearing it should be fun.Her look was as laudable as the actual winners, who included Alex Consani as model of the year, the first trans woman to receive the recognition; Grace Wales Bonner as British men’s wear designer of the year; Simone Rocha as British women’s wear designer; and Jonathan Anderson of Loewe and JW Anderson as designer of the year for the second year in a row.That choice wasn’t a big surprise, especially given Mr. Anderson’s moonlighting this year as the costume designer on the Luca Guadagnino films “Queer” and “Challengers” and the multiple wild rumors surrounding his future job prospects, but some of the other outfits were. Here’s what else caught our eye.More Method DressingNicola Coughlan of “Bridgerton” wore a Gaurav Gupta gown.Gareth Cattermole/Getty ImagesAnd Simone Ashley wore Prada.Scott A Garfitt/Invision, via Associated PressWe 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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      Israeli Officials Welcome Trump’s Demand to Free Hostages Before Inauguration

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump has threatened to take unspecified action unless the hostages held in Gaza are released before he takes office in January.Senior Israeli officials have welcomed President-elect Donald J. Trump’s demand that hostages taken in the Hamas-led attack on Israel be released from Gaza before his inauguration in January, and his threat that there will be “hell to pay” in the Middle East if they are not.Mr. Trump’s social media post on Monday did not elaborate on what action would be taken if the hostages are not released by Jan. 20, when he will be sworn in. Still, some Israeli officials appeared to be reassured by Mr. Trump’s remarks, which suggested the onus was more on the militants holding the hostages than on Israel to free the captives.“Thank you and bless you Mr. President-elect,” President Isaac Herzog of Israel said in a post on social media. “We all pray for the moment we see our sisters and brothers back home!”Mr. Herzog’s position is largely ceremonial. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, seen as the main Israeli decision maker in the war against Hamas in Gaza, has not publicly commented on Mr. Trump’s remarks, nor have leaders of the Israeli military.Mr. Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Monday that “there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity,” if the hostages aren’t released before his inauguration.“Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America,” he said. “RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!”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 10 Best Books of 2024

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      Here they are — the 10 Best Books of 2024.At the Book Review, we spend all year getting ready for this moment. We begin debating our annual best-of list in the spring, going to the mat for what we love. By fall, we’re preparing for rhetorical slugfests.Ultimately, we aim to pick the books that made lasting impressions: the stories that imprinted on our hearts and psyches, the examining of lives that deepened what we thought we already knew.We break down three of these picks in a handy video. For even more great books, take a spin through all 100 Notable Books of 2024, or even this list, which features every book we’ve anointed the best since 2000.FictionAll FoursBy Miranda JulyJuly’s second novel, which follows a married mother and artist who derails a solo cross-country road trip by checking into a motel close to home and starting an affair with a younger rental-car worker, was the year’s literary conversation piece, dubbed “the talk of every group text — at least every group text composed of women over 40” and “the first great perimenopause novel” in just two of many articles that wrestled with its themes. Sexually frank and laced with the novelist’s loopy humor, the book ends up posing that most universal question: What would you risk to change your life? Read our review.Local bookstores | Barnes and Noble | Amazon | AppleWe 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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      Syria Fighting Worsens Already Dire Conditions in Idlib and Aleppo

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      Years of war and a powerful earthquake had led to crushing poverty, displacement and breakdowns in services. But over the last several days, the region’s misery deepened.Hospitals have been ripped apart by airstrikes. Nearly 50,000 people have fled their homes, and tens of thousands lack running water. Civilians are being laid out in body bags on hospital floors after shells struck their neighborhoods.Scenes from the bloodiest days of Syria’s civil war, which had lain largely dormant for several years, are now repeating themselves in the country’s northwest as pro-government forces try to beat back a surprise rebel offensive, according to aid workers, a war monitor and the United Nations, who warned of a rapidly worsening humanitarian situation.Conditions were already dire for civilians in the area: Years of war and a powerful February 2023 earthquake had led to crushing poverty, displacement and breakdowns in services. But over the last several days, the region’s misery deepened as Russian and Syrian fighter jets have repeatedly struck Idlib and Aleppo in northwestern Syria and rebels fought to capture more territory.The United Nations said more than 50 airstrikes had hit Idlib Province in northwestern Syria on Sunday and Monday. Four health facilities, four schools and two camps housing people displaced from earlier phases of the conflict suffered damage, it said.Stéphane Dujarric, a U.N. spokesman, said in a briefing Monday night that a strike on a water station had also cut off access for at least 40,000 people. And the Norwegian Refugee Council, which provides aid in the region, said its humanitarian workers were reporting that bakeries and shops had shut down in Aleppo, leading to food shortages.Damage at a camp for displaced people north of Idlib on Monday. The United Nations said two such camps suffered damage in recent days.Ghaith Alsayed/Associated PressWe 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 Says He Will Block Nippon Steel’s Acquisition of U.S. Steel

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Monday night that he would block a Japanese company’s proposed acquisition of U.S. Steel upon taking office, declaring that he would not allow the iconic American business to be owned by a foreign firm.The assertion reiterated sentiments Mr. Trump expressed on the campaign trail this year, but it was his first time weighing in on the transaction since winning the presidential election last month. Some analysts had expected that there could be a way forward for the deal after the political pressure subsided, but Mr. Trump’s remarks suggested that there would be little chance for it to close.“I am totally against the once great and powerful U.S. Steel being bought by a foreign company, in this case Nippon Steel of Japan,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “As President, I will block this deal from happening. Buyer Beware!!!”President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris had also indicated this year that they opposed Nippon’s $15 billion bid for U.S. Steel, and the White House had appeared poised to block the transaction in September ahead of the election. Amid concerns that the review process was being politicized, the Biden administration agreed to grant a request by Nippon to resubmit its filing with the agency running the review, which is the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or CFIUS (pronounced SIFF-ee-yuhs).That decision gave the two steel makers an additional three months to convince the U.S. government that the transaction did not pose a threat to national security, amid concerns from both Democrats and Republicans. That period was about to expire next week, forcing the Biden administration to grant the companies another extension or to make a decision about the fate of the deal.Mr. Trump said on Monday that his economic plan would ensure that U.S. Steel remained strong on its own without the promised investments from Nippon Steel.“Through a series of Tax Incentives and Tariffs, we will make U.S. Steel Strong and Great Again, and it will happen FAST!” Mr. Trump said. More

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      U.S. Sending $725 Million in Arms to Ukraine, Including More Land Mines

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      The package, the largest since April, comes amid deep concerns in Ukraine that the Trump administration may cut off aid. The president-elect has vowed to end the war quickly, but has not said how.The Pentagon will send Ukraine an additional $725 million in military assistance from its stockpiles, including anti-personnel land mines, drones, portable antiaircraft missiles and anti-tank missiles.In a statement, the Pentagon said on Monday that the shipment was part of a surge in security aid as Ukraine battles a renewed Russian offensive.The new support comes amid deep concerns in Ukraine that the incoming Trump administration might cut off military aid to the country. President-elect Donald J. Trump has vowed to end the war quickly, though he has not said how. But Vice President-elect JD Vance has outlined a plan that would allow Russia to keep the Ukrainian territory it has seized.The new tranche will be the single largest that the United States has sent to Ukraine since a $1 billion shipment was announced April 24, just days after the House approved new aid to the country after a monthslong hold.The arms are provided under what is called presidential “drawdown” authority, which allows the administration to transfer Pentagon stocks to Ukraine instead of waiting the months or years it can take for defense contractors to manufacture weapons under new contracts.There had been 15 such drawdowns totaling $4.6 billion of arms, ammunition, vehicles and other supplies since the $1 billion package was announced.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 Answers for Dec. 3, 2024

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      Henry Lin-David makes his New York Times Crossword debut.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — If Henry Lin-David’s Times debut is any indication of his puzzling prowess, I predict that he’ll enjoy a long career in crossword construction. I mean “career” in the figurative sense, of course — I have yet to meet a constructor whose puzzles pay the bills in toto.The grid is a treat to solve, but its theme is what I found utterly spectacular. I’m always delighted by the clever themes in early-week crosswords — it’s the rare one that makes me feel clever for having solved it, too. Did you experience a similar postpuzzle glow? Let me know your impressions in the comments.Today’s ThemeThe foods at 17-, 25-, 48- and 56-Across make for a strange smorgasbord, but there’s more than meets the eye (or stomach). MOOSE TRACKS ice cream, MAPO TOFU, MINI TWIX and something called a MEAT TORNADO — a [Fictional burrito on “Parks and Recreation” that “literally killed a guy last year”] — all share initials in common.Phonetically, these initials, M and T, represent [What many junk foods contain]: EMPTY (M.T.) CALORIES (34A).Tricky Clues20A. To have [Bathed, old-style] is to have LAVED. Now we just take showers.27A. Speaking of fancy words from the Middle Ages, this word for [Speaker’s platform] sounds like something from the Knights of the Round Table: DAIS (pronounced DAY-iss). Coincidentally, it may once have described a round table — DAIS is derived from the Latin word “discus.”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