New UNESCO World Heritage Sites Around the World Have Been Announced — See Where They Are

When my husband and I decided to retire, we devised a plan. We wanted to rent out our home in California and visit the UNESCO World Heritage city of Guanajuato.

The tonka bean, a wizened-looking South American seed, is beloved for its complex almond-vanilla scent, often appearing as an ingredient in perfumes. Outside the United States, it has also long been utilized by chefs, but studies have indicated that coumarin, a chemical compound in the plant, can cause liver damage in animals, and the Food and Drug Administration banned the bean in commercial foods in 1954. Now, with reports that the minuscule amounts used to impart big flavor are harmless (and the F.D.A. seemingly not particularly interested in enforcing the ban in recent years), tonka is showing up on dessert menus here. Thea Gould, 30, the pastry chef at the daytime luncheonette La Cantine and evening wine bar Sunsets in Bushwick, Brooklyn, was introduced to tonka after the restaurant’s owner received a jar from France, where it’s a widely used ingredient. Gould says the bean is an ideal stand-in for nuts — a common allergen — and infuses it into panna cotta, whipped cream and Pavlova. Ana Castro, 35, the chef and owner of the New Orleans seafood restaurant Acamaya, discovered tonka as a young line cook at Betony, the now-closed Midtown Manhattan restaurant. Entranced by the ingredient’s grassy, stone fruit-like notes, she’s used it to flavor a custardy corn nicuatole, steeped it into roasted candy squash purée and grated it fresh over a lush tres leches cake. And at the Musket Room in New York’s NoLIta, the pastry chef Camari Mick, 30, balances tonka’s richness with acidic citrus like satsuma and bergamot. Over the past year, she’s incorporated it into a silky lemon bavarois and a candy cap mushroom pot de crème and whipped it into ganache for a poached pear belle Hélène. “Some people ask our staff, ‘Isn’t tonka illegal?’” she says. Their answer: Our pastry chef’s got a guy. —

You don’t hear about Central Florida very often, and when you do, chances are it has something to do with Walt Disney World. But just over an hour north of the famed resort complex is the mid-sized city of Ocala, a destination bursting with superlatives, including “America’s largest spring” and “horse capital of the world.”

While most American cities aren’t considered easy to navigate by foot, a recent study by travel insurance experts AllClear ranked one popular Southern city as the most walkable in the country. AllClear examined topographical information for more than 240 cities around the world, taking into account average elevation and range, and assigned each city a score — and ultimately, it was New Orleans that was named the most walkable city in the U.S. and the fourth most walkable city globally.

Europe dominates in a new ranking of the world’s most beautiful cities, filling nine of the top 10 spots.

The Paris Summer Olympic Games are coming to an end this weekend, but there are still plenty of disciplines to go, including a new sport at the Games this year: breaking.

Singapore has been recrowned as the country with the world’s most powerful passport in 2024.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation voted to pass a bill that, if it receives a majority vote in the Senate, would prohibit hotel and vacation rental companies from advertising unfair and deceptive pricing — aka booking "junk fees."

Little can prepare anyone for what's in store when they land in Dubai.

Little is released to the public about how, why and where federal air marshals operate. As they transit through airports and board flights, they resemble passengers just like us — napping occasionally, watching rom-coms and eating bland airplane food. But air marshals are working undercover, with concealed guns and the power to make arrests. Because of their top-secret security clearance, the number of flights they work, the looming threats behind assignments, the alarming behaviors they are monitoring and even the size of the Federal Air Marshal Service are shrouded in mystery.

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A week into their honeymoon in 2022, Katie Flynn and Mistry Bhavik faced a major healthcare: Flynn had caught a severe amoeba infection while traveling in the Philippines. The monthlong vacation they had been dreaming about had to be cut short.