Briefing

This summer, for the first time in my life, I was the — recipient? beneficiary? some (not me!) would say victim — of a surprise birthday party. It was a delight through and through, but the thing I keep marveling at is how genuinely surprising it all was, from the …

Canada expelled Indian diplomats Canada accused the Indian government yesterday of homicide and extortion intended to silence critics of India living in Canada. Canada also expelled Sanjay Kumar Verma, India’s top diplomat, and five others, saying they were part of a vast criminal network. India reciprocated, expelling six Canadian diplomats, …

By Alan Burdick and Katrina Miller We are journalists on The Times’s Science desk. Technology observers have grown increasingly vocal in recent years about the threat that artificial intelligence poses to the human variety. A.I. models can write and talk like us, draw and paint like us, crush us at …

The Modern Love column debuted 20 years ago this month — on Halloween, scarily enough — with a story by a lifelong bachelor, Steve Friedman, who was trying to feel OK about being dumped. He wrote: “She dumped me. What’s important are not the details but the pronoun placement, ‘she’ …

Will governments slash greenhouse gases enough to prevent the most dangerous impacts of global warming? Scientists say the next few years will provide the answer. The United States has pumped the most carbon dioxide into the atmosphere of any country since the Industrial Revolution, and that makes the next president’s …