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Today — 14 December 2025Main stream

U.S.-U.K. Trade Deal Hits Stumbling Block

14 December 2025 at 01:48
The U.S. government has paused a tech-focused trade pledge with Britain over broader disagreements about Britain’s digital regulations and food safety rules.

© Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Trump and Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain in September, after signing an agreement that pledged to extend research collaborations and deepen partnerships in the tech industry.

MAHA Moms Are Angry at the E.P.A. Lee Zeldin Is Trying to Win Them Back.

14 December 2025 at 01:14
A split is emerging within Trump’s base as health activists accuse Mr. Zeldin of leading the agency to prioritize chemical industry interests over public health.

© Niki Chan Wylie for The New York Times

Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, appeared with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Salt Lake City earlier this year. Recently, Mr. Zeldin has gone on a charm offensive.

Ivan Urgant Was Russia’s Late-Night King Until Putin’s War in Ukraine

13 December 2025 at 18:04
Ivan Urgant was an unstoppable Russian megastar. Then he expressed opposition to President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

© Getty Images

The Russian entertainer Ivan Urgant, right, hosting “Evening Urgant,” which went dark in 2022, after he made an antiwar post on social media.

A Measles Outbreak Brings With It Echoes of the Pandemic

In South Carolina, parents struggle to deal with infections that have brought quarantines and remote learning. Health care workers are bracing for an increase in cases.

© Annie Rice/Associated Press

Health officials in South Carolina are working to inform families that the vaccine for measles is safe and effective.
Yesterday — 13 December 2025Main stream

Russia Bombs Ukraine Port of Odesa Amid Peace Talks

13 December 2025 at 21:34
Much of Ukraine’s largest Black Sea port was without power, heat and water on Saturday after strikes from Russia, which has shown little appetite for a deal to end the war.

© Nina Liashonok/Reuters

Firefighters at the site of a Russian strike in Odesa, Ukraine, on Saturday.

Biden Has Raised Little of What He Needs to Build a Presidential Library

His library foundation has told the I.R.S. that by the end of 2027 it expects to bring in just $11.3 million — not nearly enough for a traditional presidential library.

© Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times

Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has only just begun to raise money for a presidential library, starting with an event for potential donors on Monday in Washington.

A Measles Outbreak Brings With It Echoes of the Pandemic

In South Carolina, parents struggle to deal with infections that have brought quarantines and remote learning. Health care workers are bracing for an increase in cases.

© Annie Rice/Associated Press

Health officials in South Carolina are working to inform families that the vaccine for measles is safe and effective.

Explainer: WindowServer

By: hoakley
13 December 2025 at 16:00

macOS apps manage the contents of their own windows, drawing and refreshing them as needed. To assemble all those into what you see on the display requires the services of the master compositor, WindowServer. From the moment the login window appears during startup, WindowServer is hard at work, and remains so until you shut your Mac down. Without WindowServer there could be no GUI.

Open Activity Monitor, and you’ll see WindowServer close to the top of the lists of CPU, Memory and Energy users, and when it’s getting into trouble that’s always a good place to check what’s going on. You may also notice that it’s one of a pair of processes including distnoted with their own user, _windowserver. They’re part of a group of interconnected services that handle window management, compositing of windows into the display image, and event-routing for apps, with distnoted responsible for system message notification. In the log, WindowServer is often associated with the com.apple.SkyLight subsystem.

Compositing

You can get a good idea of what WindowServer does using screenshots. Using Command-Shift-4, then pressing the Space Bar and selecting a window, you’ll get a shot of an individual window, as shown in the examples below.

WindowServer then positions them according to their current locations on the whole display, and produces a layered composite, as you’ll see in a screenshot taken with Command-Shift-3.

That composite is then sent through the graphics driver to graphics output hardware.

With its central position in managing windows and compositing them, WindowServer is also responsible for handling Spaces (introduced in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard), window tabs, multiple displays, and behaviours that stream or extract parts or all of a display image, such as taking screenshots. Because WindowServer knows which app’s windows are where, and which are at the front, it also routes events to each app. For example, when you click on a window it’s WindowServer that determines which app owns it, and passes the event to that app to handle.

Increasing demands

This has become more involved since the introduction of Catalyst apps from macOS 10.14 to 11, and more so since Apple silicon Macs have brought the ability to run iOS and iPadOS apps. iOS uses a series of -board services in its GUI, including SpringBoard as the Home Screen manager instead of the Finder, FrontBoard to manage the app’s scenes, and FuseBoard its menus, which are now run in macOS as well. RunningBoard, which manages the resources available to apps and processes, has been incorporated into macOS for some years.

The introduction of Stage Manager in macOS Ventura in 2022 has also been stretching WindowServer, and can substantially increase its demands on CPU and memory.

Troubleshooting

You can reduce WindowServer’s workload by closing tabs and windows, turning Stage Manager off, reducing the number of Spaces, and quitting non-essential apps. Even when window or tab contents aren’t visible, they still have to be managed.

If WindowServer stops working, for instance when it crashes, not only does everything on the display(s) freeze, but routing of input events such as clicks or taps also stops. Although in the past macOS has sometimes been able to log the current user out and restart WindowServer, fatal WindowServer problems are now most likely to result in a kernel panic or a complete freeze. If your Mac freezes rather than restarts, a forced shutdown may be your only way forward. Recurrent WindowServer crashes suggest a problem with the graphics driver or graphics hardware, and should always be reported to Apple via Feedback.

Summary

  • WindowServer works between app window management and display drivers to composite windows and on-screen items, producing the image to be displayed.
  • With distnoted it also routes events to apps, and manages system message notification.
  • Demands on its services are increased with Spaces and Stage Manager, and it works with the different expectations of Catalyst and iOS/iPadOS apps running in macOS.
  • When it fails, displays freeze and input responses cease. If those don’t precipitate a kernel panic and restart, a forced shutdown may be the only solution.
  • Report recurrent problems to Apple in Feedback.

Dozens Killed as a Hospital Is Bombed in Myanmar’s Brutal Civil War

13 December 2025 at 10:29
Jets from the Myanmar military dropped two bombs on the facility in Mrauk-U, in what rebels and witnesses called a deliberate attack on civilians.

© Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Mourners at a cemetery in Mrauk-U, Myanmar, on Thursday, grieving over the bodies of victims of a hospital bombing.

In Trump’s Justice Dept., Failing in Court Might Be Better Than Bucking the Boss

13 December 2025 at 22:46
This week demonstrated an emerging reality for President Trump: Commanding the Justice Department is not the same as controlling the justice system.

© Vincent Alban/The New York Times

The White House was served a legal rebuke this week when federal grand jurors in Alexandria, Va., rejected the Justice Department’s push to indict Letitia James, the New York attorney general, on mortgage-related charges for the second time in a week.

Risk-Based Screening Works as Well as Yearly Checks After 40 in Finding Breast Cancers

13 December 2025 at 10:06
A study of more than 45,000 women found that screening women according to their level of risk was as effective in detecting tumors as the one-size-fits-most screening currently recommended.

© Marcelo Del Pozo/Reuters

A breast cancer awareness event in Seville, Spain, in October.

For Republicans, Trump’s Hands-Off Approach to Health Care Is a Problem

13 December 2025 at 07:23
The prospect of soaring health care costs could exacerbate Americans’ feelings about affordability, an issue that President Trump has tried to downplay. But Democrats plan to keep the issue front and center.

© Kenny Holston/The New York Times

President Trump said Thursday night that he may soon start negotiating with Democrats to lower health care costs.

Amid Fractures on the Right, Tucker Carlson Continues His Attacks

13 December 2025 at 07:00
On Theo Von’s show this week, Mr. Carlson lashed out at a major supporter of the president, the F.B.I. and “unimpressive, dumb, totally noncreative people” leading the nation.

© Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Tucker Carlson did not mention President Trump by name in his attacks on Theo Von’s podcast, but his broadsides were the latest evidence of a deepening divide in Republican politics.

Canadians Rush to Buy Stockpiles of Boycotted U.S. Liquor

13 December 2025 at 05:58
Four Canadian provinces are selling off the American liquor they pulled from shelves in protest over President Trump’s tariffs. Some bourbon drinkers are thrilled.

© Arlyn McAdorey/Reuters

American alcohol products were removed from store shelves in much of Canada when U.S. tariffs against the country went into effect in March.

Amid Fractures on the Right, Tucker Carlson Continues His Attacks

13 December 2025 at 06:22
On Theo Von’s show this week, Mr. Carlson lashed out at a major supporter of the president, the F.B.I. and “unimpressive, dumb, totally noncreative people” leading the nation.

© Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Tucker Carlson did not mention President Trump by name in his attacks on Theo Von’s podcast, but his broadsides were the latest evidence of a deepening divide in Republican politics.

For 2 Hours, a Soccer Match Offers Palestinians a Rarity: Joy

The national soccer team made it to the knockout stages of the Arab Cup for the first time, uniting fans from Gaza to the West Bank to Cairo to Arab cities in Israel.

© Saher Alghorra for The New York Times

Record Flooding Swamps Western Washington

Gov. Bob Ferguson and other state officials cautioned that more rainfall was expected after rivers hit record flood levels across the region, while residents worried about the long-term future.

© Grant Hindsley for The New York Times

Floodwaters overtook Skykomish River Park and some nearby apartments in Monroe, Wash., on Thursday night.
Before yesterdayMain stream

Russia Sues Holder of Frozen Assets Europe Wants for Ukraine Loan

12 December 2025 at 22:01
The lawsuit was a warning to European officials who are racing to agree to a plan to use Russian government assets in Europe to lend money to Ukraine.

© Geert Vanden Wijngaert/Associated Press

The headquarters of the Euroclear depository in Brussels. Russia’s Central Bank said it had filed a lawsuit in Moscow against the depository.

How Power Cuts Are Affecting Ukrainians

Russia has been targeting energy infrastructure in Ukraine, leaving multiple cities without electricity. Kim Barker, who’s been covering the war, gives us a glimpse into the daily life of Ukrainians living with power cuts.

How Ukraine Has Responded to Trump’s Peace Plan and Russia’s Demands for Territory

A Ukrainian peace plan, sent this week to Washington, pushes back against President Trump’s proposal that Ukraine give up more land for peace, although Russia is unlikely to accept it.

© Pool photo by Maxwells

President Volodymyr Zelensky said the Ukrainian peace proposal now being discussed consisted of three documents, one of which lays out plans for rebuilding the country.

Troops Involved in Boat Strikes Face a ‘Moral Injury’ Risk, Experts Say

13 December 2025 at 04:48
Troops who play a part in deadly missions that they see as wrong or unjustified may suffer deep psychological harm as a result, research has shown.

© Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times

Each deadly strike involves numerous military personnel who may be at risk of psychological harm.
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