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      Macron Plays Down Video of Shove From Wife: ‘It’s Nonsense’

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      The French president, Emmanuel Macron, was pushed in the face as he left a plane in Vietnam. The bigger issue, he said, was the reaction, part of a string of disinformation by “crazy people.”A video showed President Emmanuel Macron of France being pushed in the face by his wife, Brigitte, moments before they stepped off a plane in Vietnam.Associated PressThe door of a plane carrying the French president, Emmanuel Macron, had just been opened by staff in Hanoi, Vietnam, when two hands reached out and pushed Mr. Macron smack in the face.He looked stunned at first. Then he looked up at a camera filming the scene from outside on Sunday and waved.The video spread quickly. The hands belonged to the French first lady, Brigitte Macron.On Monday, Mr. Macron said that the video had captured him and his wife “bickering and rather, joking around,” something, he said, “we often do.”“I’m surprised by it, it turns into some kind of global catastrophe where people are even coming up with theories to explain it,” he said on Monday. “It’s nonsense.”Mr. Macron, whose arrival in Vietnam marked the start of a five-day state trip to Southeast Asia, said it was the latest in a string of disinformation put out by “crazy people” targeting him in recent weeks. The footage was real, he said, but the interpretations were fake.Two weeks ago, Mr. Macron traveled with the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, and the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, on a train. A video of them showed a tissue lying on a table in their cabin, and some social media accounts described it as a “bag of cocaine.”The Élysée Palace, the president’s office, put out a rare social media post at the time, stating, “When European unity becomes inconvenient, disinformation goes so far as to make a simple tissue look like drugs. This fake news is being spread by France’s enemies, both abroad and at home. We must remain vigilant against manipulation.”Mr. Macron also cited a video of his lingering handshake with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at a meeting in Tirana, Albania, as another example of disinformation.“It’s been three weeks — if you look at the international agenda of the president of the French Republic, from Kyiv to Tirana to Hanoi, there are people who have watched the videos and believe that I shared a bag of cocaine, that I had a ‘mano a mano’ with a Turkish president and that right now I’m having a fight with my wife. None of this is true,” he told reporters on Monday.“So everyone needs to calm down and focus on the real news.”Still, the video lit up conservative talk show channels across France on Monday.Ivan Rioufol, a right-wing political columnist, said the video clip implied “there may be domestic violence against men.”The incident on the plane suggested that there was an imbalance in the relationship between Mr. Macron and his wife, Mr. Rioufol told the Europe 1 television channel. Mr. Macron “cannot even command respect from his wife when there are cameras in front of him,” Mr. Rioufol said.Ségolène Le Stradic More

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      What Is Swedish Culture? An Attempt to Answer Stirs Debate.

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      Is it Abba? Saunas? Plays by Strindberg? A government initiative to define an official cultural canon has unsettled many in the arts scene.What is Swedish culture? Some obvious answers might spring to mind: Abba, the films of Ingmar Bergman, Pippi Longstocking, IKEA. It’s an almost impossibly broad question — but one that Sweden’s government is trying to answer.In 2023, the government began an initiative called the Culture Canon, with two streams: an “experts” canon and a “people’s canon.” The first involves academics, journalists, historians and other authorities who will decide on 100 works or other items of cultural importance that have played a key role in shaping Swedish culture.The second will be made up of suggestions submitted by the Swedish public to the Culture Canon website, which can be drawn from the arts or can include everyday activities like the daily “fika” coffee and cake break or ideas like “Allemansrätten,” the Swedish right to explore nature, even on private land. So far, suggestions include saunas and the plays of August Strindberg, the 1361 Battle of Visby and Björn Borg’s five straight Wimbledon victories.A government committee will present a report to the two canons in the summer.Yet even the suggestion of such a definitive list is dividing opinion in Sweden. The Culture Canon is a pet project of a party with far-right roots that supports, but is not part of the government. Many in the arts scene fear that the results will project a narrow view of Swedish culture, glorifying an imagined past and shutting out the cultural contributions of minorities.A sauna in northern Sweden.Ola Lewitschnik for The New York TimesLars Trägårdh, a historian whom the government appointed to lead the project, said in an interview that the Culture Canon would be particularly useful for helping immigrants integrate. Sweden combined a “wonderful openness to immigration with a complete lack of policies that have been able to bring all these people into Swedish society,” he said. A canon, he added, would provide new arrivals “with a map and a compass.”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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      Frank Moore, a Top Aide to Jimmy Carter, Is Dead at 89

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      After serving as chief of staff when Carter was governor of Georgia, he followed him to Washington, where both men encountered a hostile political establishment.Frank Moore, who as President Jimmy Carter’s congressional liaison toiled with mixed results to sell the agenda of a self-professed outsider to veterans of Washington, died on Thursday at his home in St. Simons Island, Ga. He was 89.His son Brian confirmed the death.Mr. Carter was known for having a “Georgia Mafia” around him during his presidency. Mr. Moore was a leading member of that group, and the two men remained close until Mr. Carter’s death. According to the Georgia newspaper The Gainesville Times, Mr. Moore was the last living person to have worked for Mr. Carter for the entirety of his political career: as an aide from his days as a Georgia state senator all the way through his presidency.In Washington, the two men had what might have seemed like an ideal chance for legislative achievements. For all four years of the Carter administration, the Democrats controlled every branch of government, and from January 1977 to January 1979 they had supermajorities in the House and the Senate.Yet it was a less ideologically homogenous era for the party. The Democratic caucus in the Senate, for example, encompassed liberals like Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, staunch anti-Communists like Henry Jackson of Washington and conservative segregationists like John C. Stennis of Mississippi.These separate factions and their wily tacticians were relatively unfamiliar to Mr. Carter and Mr. Moore, who had first met far away from the nation’s capital — on a local planning panel in Georgia in the mid-1960s.In the 1970s, after Mr. Carter had been elected governor, he made Mr. Moore his chief of staff. During Mr. Carter’s presidential run, Mr. Moore, a soft-voiced 40-year-old who held the title of national finance chairman, was one of a few of Mr. Carter’s Georgia allies to set up his campaign office in Washington.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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      La protesta de la CNTE paralizó el AICM en Ciudad de México

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      El bloqueo reflejó cómo la presidenta de México, Claudia Sheinbaum, está sufriendo la presión de algunos sindicatos y movimientos sociales, mientras una economía débil limita su capacidad para mejorar las condiciones laborales.Una protesta organizada por un poderoso sindicato de maestros mexicanos interrumpió brevemente los vuelos en el principal aeropuerto internacional de la capital el viernes por la tarde. La manifestación en demanda de mejoras salariales provocó escenas de caos y retrasó el viaje de miles de pasajeros, mientras las fuerzas de seguridad se agolpaban en las terminales del aeropuerto en un intento de imponer el orden.La paralización en Ciudad de México comenzó hacia las 2:00 p. m., hora local, y duró unos 20 minutos, mientras cientos de sindicalistas marchaban hacia las entradas del aeropuerto. La protesta también colapsó el tráfico en las calles aledañas al aeropuerto, el cual se encuentra en una zona densamente poblada de la ciudad, y se vio a agentes de policía escoltando a viajeros varados hasta el aeropuerto en camionetas. También agentes antidisturbios fueron vistos dentro del aeropuerto.Aunque la interrupción fue breve, algunos vuelos internacionales que salían de Ciudad de México fueron cancelados o retrasados durante horas el viernes. En el aeropuerto, también conocido como Aeropuerto Internacional Benito Juárez, operan 21 aerolíneas, según su sitio web. El viernes, aerolíneas como Aeroméxico ofrecieron a sus clientes la posibilidad de reprogramar sus vuelos sin costo o pagando solo una pequeña diferencia de precio.La manifestación refleja cómo la presidenta de izquierda de México, Claudia Sheinbaum, está sufriendo la presión de algunos sindicatos y movimientos sociales, mientras una economía endeble y un enorme déficit presupuestario limitan su capacidad para aumentar los salarios y mejorar las condiciones de trabajo de muchos empleados públicos.“No hemos recibido esa atención ni ese respeto en la solución de las demandas, ni siquiera en las más mínimas, de parte del Ejecutivo federal”, dijo Eva Hinojosa Tera, dirigente sindical del estado de Michoacán, en una entrevista radiofónica el viernes.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 Threatens 50% Tariff on E.U. and 25% Tariff on Apple

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      The president threatened both Apple and the European Union with higher tariffs on social media Friday morning, saying that trade talks with the Europeans had stalled.President Trump threatened to revive his global trade wars Friday morning, saying he would apply a steep tariff to European exports starting in just over a week and warning Apple that iPhones manufactured outside of the United States would face a 25 percent tariff.The president wrote on Truth Social Friday morning that discussions with the European Union “are going nowhere” and that he is recommending a 50 percent tariff on European imports as of June 1.“The European Union, which was formed for the primary purpose of taking advantage of the United States on TRADE, has been very difficult to deal with,” Mr. Trump wrote. He claimed the bloc’s trade barriers, taxes, corporate penalties and other policies had contributed to a trade imbalance with the United States that was “totally unacceptable.”In an earlier social media post, the president also targeted Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, who visited Mr. Trump at the White House last week. The president wrote that iPhones sold in the United States should be “manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else.”If they are not, Mr. Trump said the smartphones would face a 25 percent tariff.The posts appeared to rattle financial markets, with stock futures pointed sharply lower in premarket trading. In Europe, carmakers’ shares were the worst hit. Shares in Stellantis and Mercedes-Benz fell about 4.5 percent, and shares in Volkswagen and Porsche were down more than 3 percent. Estimates by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German economic research institute, showed that the tariffs would lead to a 20 percent drop in exports from the European Union to the United States in the short term, as well as a more than 6 percent increase in prices in the United States.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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      Bangladesh’s Leader Threatens to Resign Over Election Pressure

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      Muhammad Yunus has struggled to navigate between the army, career politicians and the protest movement that overthrew the country’s authoritarian leader last year.When an idealistic movement led by students toppled the increasingly autocratic government of Sheikh Hasina last August, millions of Bangladeshis celebrated the imminent revival of democracy.Almost nine months on, an appointed interim government is frustrating everyone who wanted to vote in new leaders right away. Now its celebrated leader, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, is threatening to quit if he is not allowed to get on with his job and prepare the country for elections at a slower pace.Mr. Yunus, an internationally respected technocrat, was seen as Bangladesh’s best chance to pull things together until fair elections could be held. He was appointed to lead an interim government while there was still blood in the streets.But his aides say he feels thwarted by an emerging alliance between the country’s largest remaining political party and the army, which have criticized his policies and say he is being too slow to plan elections.On Thursday, Mr. Yunus threatened to resign if he did not get political and military backing to carry on unfettered.Mr. Yunus went as far as drafting a speech announcing his resignation, according to a senior official in his government. Other advisers managed to persuade him that his resignation would further destabilize Bangladesh. The official said by phone that his boss was especially unhappy with statements recently made by the army chief calling for elections this year, and felt worn down by criticism from political opponents.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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      Warning Sirens Were Silent Ahead of Deadly Tornado in St. Louis, City Says

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      Mayor Cara Spencer placed the city’s emergency manager on administrative leave pending an investigation into the failure to warn residents.Just before a tornado descended on St. Louis with a roar — killing five people and injuring dozens during its sweep through the city on Friday — there was a silence where there should not have been.There was no wailing warning from the city. No high-pitched alarm. Nothing to warn the city’s residents and send them scrambling to their basements or bathtubs. Only wind.The city’s sirens to warn people of a tornado threat were never activated by the City Emergency Management Agency, and a backup to activate the mechanism that is operated by the Fire Department was broken.Mayor Cara Spencer has placed the city’s emergency manager, Sarah Russell, on paid administrative leave while an investigation is conducted into a series of failures, Ms. Spencer’s office said in a statement issued on Tuesday. The mayor’s office also said that it had changed the protocol for activating the warning system as a result of what had happened.The city’s emergency management agency “exists, in large part, to alert the public to dangers caused by severe weather, and the office failed to do that in the most horrific and deadly storm our city has seen in my lifetime,” Ms. Spencer said in her statement.Ms. Russell could not immediately be reached for comment on Wednesday.City officials confirmed that one of five people killed in Friday’s storm was outside when the tornado ripped through St. Louis. About 40 people were injured in the storm, but city officials did not know how many of them were outdoors when they were hurt.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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      My Father Was a Nazi Hunter. Then He Died in the Lockerbie Bombing.

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      On an early summer day in 1986 in a federal building in Newark, my father, Michael Bernstein, sat across a conference table from an elderly man named Stefan Leili. Then a young prosecutor at the Department of Justice, my father spent the previous day and a half deposing Leili, who emigrated to the United States from Germany three decades earlier. While applying for an entry visa, the U.S. government claimed, Leili concealed his service in the Totenkopfverbände — the infamous Death’s Head units of the SS, which ran the Nazi concentration and extermination camps. In 1981, the Supreme Court ruled that such an omission was sufficient grounds for denaturalization and deportation. If my father could prove that Leili lied, the United States could strip him of his citizenship and kick him out of the country.Listen to this article, read by Robert PetkoffIn an earlier interview, Leili repeatedly denied guarding prisoners at Mauthausen, one of a cluster of work camps in Austria, notorious for a stone quarry where slave laborers spent 11-hour days hauling slabs of granite up a steep rock staircase. But my father and a colleague sensed that this time around, the weight of hundreds of detailed queries might finally be causing Leili to buckle. Leili had begun to concede, bit by grudging bit, that he was more involved than he first said. My father had been waiting for such a moment, because he had a piece of evidence he was holding back. Now he decided that it was finally time to use it.Leili sat next to his college-age granddaughter and a German interpreter. Earlier in the deposition, the young woman said her grandfather was a sweet man, who couldn’t possibly have done anything wrong. Indeed, it would have been hard to look at this unremarkable 77-year-old — bald, with a sagging paunch — and perceive a villain.Certainly, the story Leili first told my father was far from villainous. Born in a small town in 1909 in Austria-Hungary, present-day Romania, Leili was an ethnic German peasant, who like millions of others had been tossed from place to place by the forces convulsing Europe. In 1944, Leili said, the Red Army was advancing toward his village. He had to choose whether to join the Hungarian Army or, like many ethnic Germans from his region, the SS. The Schutzstaffel promised better pay and German citizenship, plus money for his family if he was killed. And besides, if he hadn’t gone along with what the SS wanted, Leili said, he would “have been put against the wall and shot.”Leili told my father he spent much of his time in the SS pretending to be ill so he wouldn’t have to serve. Then he guarded some prisoners working in a Daimler munitions factory. These were soldiers, not civilians. They had friendly relations, he told my father. They worked short days. They were well fed, even “plump.”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