The Conservative Party’s victory in December’s general election opened the way for Britain to finally make good on its plans to leave the European Union. Brexit day is slated for Jan. 31. That doesn’t mean everything will change overnight: There will be a standstill period, as Britain and the European Union work out the final…
The only thing that’s consistent in Argentina is change: Political about-faces happen regularly, and the economy is often in flux. In October, Argentines voted out the right-wing party that had been in power for four years, replacing it with the leftist Frente de Todos, in an election that reflected dissatisfaction with inflation and other economic…
The Peruvian authorities deported five tourists and arrested a sixth accused of damaging a temple at Machu Picchu, the famous Incan ruins in the Andes, the National Police said. The tourists were caught just before 6 a.m. on Sunday by staff members who work at the archaeological park, the Ministry of Culture said in a…
As the story goes, one fateful night in the late 1960s, Jimi Hendrix, best known for changing the music world with his guitar playing, set free two ring-necked parakeets on Carnaby Street and that’s why thousands of the nonnative birds haunt London’s parks to this day. “Absolute rubbish,” Christian Lloyd, a musicologist at Queens University,…
The wait for my rental car at Montreal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport last February was slow, but the talk was breakaway fast. I joined the line with a National Hockey League scout for the New Jersey Devils on his way to a tournament to look at promising teenage skaters. “Skating is a way of life…
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together. “I could have sworn I was in Tunisia, but wait: It’s snowing and those are church bells and — oh, right. I’m in Russia now.” These conversations were regularly occurring in my head by the…
The numbers that usually glow with exchange rates on Travelex boards in airports worldwide have gone dark, after the London-based currency exchange company was forced to go offline after it discovered a ransomware attack on Dec. 31. The disruption has also affected banks like Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC, which have been unable…
Most people in the Northern Hemisphere call the three-month period between January and March “winter.” But in the cruise world, it’s “wave season,” a time of year when sales sweep the cruise lines as they try to encourage early bookings on sailings throughout the year and beyond. “Wave season is the Black Friday or Cyber…
52 Places to Go in 2020 is here. Read the full list now. “Where would you go if you could go anywhere?” That was the question I posed to the members of The Times Travel desk back at the beginning of September, at our kickoff lunch for the 2020 edition of our annual 52 Places…
At 7:30 in the morning on a recent Saturday, 14 people gathered on the 10th floor of Disney’s Riviera Resort in Orlando, Fla., at the Topolino’s Terrace restaurant. The resort would open in two days, and this group had been among the first to experience it — a treat for many, but especially for this…