Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Thursday.
The World Cup is officially underwayIt took just nine minutes this afternoon for Mexico’s Julián Quiñones to score the first goal of the 2026 FIFA World Cup in front of an exuberant home crowd. Mexico went on to win 2-0. It was an electric start to the largest and longest World Cup in history, with 48 countries competing for the coveted gold trophy. (See who our model favors.) My colleagues at The Athletic called the World Cup “the biggest event on planet Earth.” Players who got their start on pitches, beaches and concrete around the globe will bring together billions of fans to cheer on their countries for 90 minutes at a time. “It’s a wonderful joining of humanity,” said my colleague Tariq Panja, who is covering his seventh World Cup. Among Americans, this year’s tournament is more exciting than usual because it is being hosted in North America for the first time since 1994. The U.S. national team, whose first game is tomorrow, also has an especially talented squad this year — though the experts say it’s not quite as strong as the European powerhouses. For more:
Trump picks a new intelligence chief after a revolt over PultePresident Trump announced today that he would nominate Jay Clayton, the current U.S. attorney in Manhattan and the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to be the next director of national intelligence. Trump had been under intense pressure to move on from his pick for acting director: Bill Pulte, a loyalist with no national security experience. Congress has held up reauthorization of one of the government’s most powerful spy tools partly to protest the selection of Pulte. The spy power is very likely to expire this weekend. In other Trump administration news:
Trump retracts his latest threats against IranThe president began today on aggressive footing, threatening to attack Iran for a third consecutive day and possibly even to invade a strategic Iranian island. Then, by midafternoon, he reversed himself, calling off the strikes. The pivot, Trump said, was based on progress in peace negotiations with Iran. He said a deal was “in pretty final shape,” and that it could be signed as soon as this weekend. However, it was unclear what had been agreed to; Iran said nothing had been finalized.
The Ukraine war has now gone on longer than World War IIt has now been 1,569 days since Russian forces invaded Ukraine, meaning the war has now outlasted World War I, long considered the epitome of a grinding conflict. Polls suggest that about half of Ukrainians believe that the two sides will still be fighting in 2027. The war has gone on for so long that the technology and strategy used to fight it has changed. At the beginning, tanks, trenches and large-scale troop assaults were common. Now, drones have forced soldiers to hide in foxholes and attack individually or in pairs. More top news
My jaw dropped in awe during the final moments of the Knicks’ stunning come-from-so-far-behind victory over the Spurs last night. They were moments away from losing, and now they are just one win away from their first title in 53 years. My colleague Jessica Testa, a Knicks fan, describes what it’s like in New York right now in her latest postcard: Jubilation is one feeling. Jubilation after total resignation is another feeling entirely. It’s all jaded New Yorkers can talk about today: When we lost hope, these boys proved us wrong. Hollywood couldn’t write an ending like this. But, oh, how Hollywood celebrated it. Mariska Hargitay sprayed hugs. Timothée Chalamet stripped backstage. Tracy Morgan cried in his car. Knicks fans flooded sweaty sidewalks and streets past midnight, setting off fireworks and popping champagne, like New Year’s Eve in June. “This is not a team with the biggest stars or the highest expectations,” Tania Ganguli, a Times reporter at the game, said. “They’re a collection of players who have been maligned and underestimated coming together to accomplish spectacular things.”
Steven Spielberg returns to sci-fiEmily Blunt, Josh O’Connor and Colman Domingo star in “Disclosure Day,” a fast-paced aliens-are-among-us action-thriller made by Steven Spielberg. The film, which arrives in theaters tomorrow, serves as something of a companion piece to “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” Spielberg’s first sci-fi blockbuster. When our critic Manohla Dargis first watched the movie, she scribbled in her notebook: “I am having so much fun.” She described it as “one of those movies that sweeps you up from the start and rarely lets you down.” Read the review.
Through blurry paintings, Richter offers a way forwardOur critic Jason Farago was impressed by a new exhibition in New York of paintings by the German artist Gerhard Richter. The show features stunning landscapes in which the details are blurred and the contours are hard to make out. To Richter, born in Dresden in 1932, the style conveyed permanent doubt after a childhood of totalitarianism. To Jason, the artworks offered a model for how to keep our grip and look seriously as A.I. models undermine the power of the image. Take a look.
Dinner table topics
Cook these sweet cream cheese pastries, a Puerto Rican classic. Read about colonial-era drinking and then visit a bar that’s as old as America. Listen to Martinu’s joyful and multifaceted symphonies. Pack a Wirecutter-approved travel towel for your next adventure. |
