In the wide range of articles published by The New York Times this week after the death of former President Jimmy Carter, a fragment of largely forgotten Canadian history resurfaced.

The Times’s visual story of his life, told through a variety of objects, reveals how Mr. Carter came to assist in the cleanup of a major nuclear accident near Ottawa in 1952.

[Read: Jimmy Carter’s Life, in 17 Objects]

Among the 17 objects, photographed by Tony Cenicola and described by Bill Marsh, is a yellowed certificate issued in 1953 by the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in New York State, proclaiming Mr. Carter an “atomic submariner.”

He was a naval officer at the time he received it. Mr. Carter had attended the U.S. Naval Academy from 1943 to 1946, on his way to becoming the first in his family to graduate from college, and served in the submarine fleet during World War II. Later, he was involved in the development of the nation’s first nuclear-powered submarines; the Knolls certificate was for completing his training.

But before that, Mr. Carter got a firsthand look at the immense power of nuclear energy in Canada.

On Dec. 12, 1952, a series of missteps and a mechanical failure led to the partial meltdown of the core of the NRX reactor at the Chalk River Laboratories on the Ottawa River, about 180 kilometers northwest of the capital. The incident gave Canada the dubious distinction of hosting the world’s first nuclear reactor accident.

The NRX had a capacity of 30 megawatts that day, which was powerful by the standards of its time (today the Bruce Power nuclear plant in Ontario churns out 6,400 megawatts).

On the day of the accident, the reactor was powered down for an inspection of its cooling system. In the basement, a worker mistakenly raised a few of the control rods that can reduce and, if necessary, completely shut down the chain reaction in the reactor.

That was spotted quickly, and a supervisor thought, based on some signal lights, that he had lowered the rods back in place. But the lights were wrong: Two or three of the rods were stuck and had only partly returned to safety.

When the supervisor, who was still in the basement, phoned the control room with directions for lowering the rods, he also mixed up the numbers for the buttons that needed to be pushed, compounding the problem.

The reactor’s output soared to about 100 megawatts.

That power surge lasted for only one minute and eight seconds before the reactor was brought back under control, but the damage was profound. Fuel rods had melted or blown apart. The basement was filled with one million gallons of highly radioactive water and debris. The reactor building, which had large glass windows, was dangerously radioactive.

A contingent of 150 members of the U.S. military came to Chalk River for the cleanup. Among them was Mr. Carter, who led a group of about 12 members of the Navy from the Knolls Laboratory. They were joined by 862 workers at the Chalk River site, 170 members of the Canadian Army and 20 employees of companies that had made parts of the reactor.

Morgan Brown, president of the Society for the Preservation of Canada’s Nuclear Heritage, which runs a museum near Chalk River, told me that the Americans hadn’t been there to give technical advice, as the NRX had been designed in Montreal in a joint Canadian-British project. But they provided equipment Canada lacked, like closed-circuit television, and they gained experience and training for themselves in dealing with the unprecedented situation.

“The American help was well appreciated,” said Mr. Brown, who worked for decades at NRX’s owner, Atomic Energy of Canada, studying ways to prevent reactor disasters.

A progress report made a few months after the Chalk River accident shows that Lieutenant Carter, then 28, and his group worked on a “header” that fed cooling water from the river into the reactor, Mr. Brown said.

In interviews, Mr. Carter recalled that his team had used a mock-up of the reactor to practice dismantling techniques in advance and had worked in shifts to limit exposure to radiation. A 1959 film produced by the American and Canadian governments shows those trial runs — and suggests that the standards for worker safety and radioactive waste disposal were well below current practices.

The NRX reactor kept operating until 1992. The Chalk River accident remains the worst in Canadian history.

The worst nuclear energy accident in U.S. history, the partial meltdown of a reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979, would happen during Mr. Carter’s presidency. Days after the accident, he and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, toured the plant and told residents, “If we make an error, all of us want to err on the side of extra precautions and extra safety.”

(If you haven’t read it, I recommend the sweeping and authoritative obituary of Mr. Carter by Peter Baker and Roy Reed.)

Trans Canada

Ian Austen reports on Canada for The Times and is based in Ottawa. Originally from Windsor, Ontario, he covers politics, culture and the people of Canada and has reported on the country for two decades

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When mysterious drones began appearing over oil rigs and wind farms off Norway’s coast about three years ago, officials were not certain where they came from.

But “we knew what they were doing,” Stale Ulriksen, a researcher at the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy, said in a recent interview. “Some of it was espionage, where they are charting a lot of things. Some of it, I think, was positioning in case of a war or a deep crisis.”

The drones were suspected of being launched from Russian-controlled ships in the North Sea, Mr. Ulriksen said, including some ships that were near underwater energy pipelines. Norway could not do much to stop them, he added, given that they were flying over international waters.

In recent weeks, reports of drone swarms over the United States’ East Coast have brought fears of hybrid warfare to widespread attention. Only 100 out of 5,000 drone sightings there required further examination, U.S. officials said, and so far none are believed to have been foreign surveillance drones. But it is a different story for the drones spotted in late November and early December over military bases in England and Germany where American forces are stationed.

Military analysts have concluded those drones may have been on a state-sponsored surveillance mission, according to one U.S. official familiar with the incidents, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an open investigation. British and German defense officials declined to discuss details of the sightings.

Experts said the drones’ presence was indicative of a so-called hybrid or “gray zone” attack against the West, where a range of tactics — military, cyber, economic and even psychological — are used to covertly attack or destabilize an enemy.

As Russia, Iran and other hostile states become increasingly brazen in their hybrid attacks on Western countries — such as the hacking of sensitive computer systems and alleged assassination plots — defense officials face a thorny challenge. How to deter such acts without touching off a broader and potentially deadly conflict? And how to assign blame against the attacker when the strikes are designed to evade culpability?

‘It’s not random; it’s part of military operations.’

Hybrid attacks are not new, but they have escalated in recent years.

One of the most visible and potentially deadly incidents came in July, when a series of packages exploded in Europe. Postmarked from Lithuania, the parcels contained electric massage machines with a highly flammable magnesium-based substance inside. Two exploded in DHL cargo facilities in Britain and Germany, and the third in a Polish courier firm.

Western officials and Polish investigators said they believed the packages were a test run by Russia’s military intelligence agency to plant explosives on cargo planes bound for the United States and Canada.

“We are telling our allies that it’s not random; it’s part of military operations,” Kestutis Budrys, Lithuania’s foreign minister, said of the explosions. “We need to neutralize and stop it at the source, and the source is Russia’s military intelligence.” Russia denies being behind acts of sabotage.

Other examples of hybrid tactics include cyberattacks on Albania in the past several years, which an investigation by Microsoft concluded were sponsored by Iran, and Russia’s unsuccessful attempt to sway presidential elections using disinformation in Moldova in October and November, according to Moldovan and European officials. European countries are also investigating whether a number of ships intentionally cut underwater cables in recent months in an attempted attack.

While China, Iran and North Korea have shown a growing appetite for hybrid attacks, officials said that Russia in particular has deployed them as covert sabotage against NATO allies since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

“Russia has stepped it up across the board, and as a result, it is reaching levels that are of growing concern,” James Appathurai, a NATO deputy assistant secretary general who oversees hybrid warfare strategy, said in an interview. “They are willing to accept more risk to us, to the safety of our citizens’ lives.”

Britain, Germany, the United States and Baltic and Nordic countries close to Russia’s border are among the Western countries most targeted by hybrid threats, in part because of their prominent support for Ukraine, officials said. Last year, according to Western officials, American and NATO intelligence agencies uncovered a Russian plot to kill the chief executive of a German weapons giant, Rheinmetall, which has built millions of dollars’ worth of arms and ammunition for Ukraine.

The drones spotted in Britain in November — three days after President Biden said Ukraine could launch U.S.-made deep strike missiles into Russia — were larger and more durable to challenging weather than a hobbyist would be expected to own, and were mostly spotted after nightfall. That is partly why military analysts concluded that a hostile state was responsible, the U.S. official said.

Then, in early December, around the time the drone sightings in Britain began to taper off, drones appeared above Ramstein Air Base in Germany, one of the largest American military posts in Europe. Some were also reportedly spotted near facilities owned by Rheinmetall.

Investigators are considering whether the flights in both countries were “out of a Kremlin playbook,” the U.S. official said.

Russia has repeatedly denied launching hybrid attacks against NATO, in many cases ridiculing the accusations, even though NATO officials say Moscow has set up a special directorate focused on carrying them out.

Russian officials also say they are the ones being targeted. “What is going on in Ukraine is that some people call it hybrid war,” Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said in an interview with Tucker Carlson in early December. “I would call it hybrid war as well.”

How to fight a shadow war.

NATO has begun to create a new strategy to confront hybrid attacks to replace a 2015 policy that it says is now out of date. The new approach, Mr. Appathurai said, will provide a base line picture of recent hybrid attacks to help the alliance measure whether risk levels are escalating.

“That will be important for allies to determine just how serious an incident is, and what their response might be,” he said.

The European Union is also stepping up its efforts, imposing sanctions in mid-December for the first time against people specifically accused of engaging in pro-Russian hybrid threats. It also recently tasked four senior commissioners with countering hybrid threats.

Officials and experts agree a wide range of measures are needed to deter and protect against hybrid attacks, including more “naming and shaming” of adversaries and imposing legal penalties; improving intelligence and technical systems to monitor threats; and military exercises and other displays of force to demonstrate that even covert aggressions will not go unpunished.

But that will require unity among NATO members, especially when attacks cross international borders. And because hybrid warfare is by its nature designed to evade clear attribution of responsibility, officials have hesitated to launch powerful responses without having indisputable evidence of an adversary’s identity.

That has emboldened Russia and China to push the limits, according to officials, diplomats and experts.

“As long as NATO and European member states disagree on how to respond more assertively to the Kremlin’s hybrid warfare, Europe will remain vulnerable,” Charlie Edwards, a former British intelligence and security strategist, wrote in November. “Failing to act will mean the Kremlin retains the strategic advantage.”

Syria’s main international airport in Damascus will reopen next week, the new government said on Saturday, as it tries to re-establish a sense of normalcy after the uprising that toppled President Bashar al-Assad.

The announcement came amid tensions along the border between Syria and Lebanon, where four Lebanese solders were wounded in clashes on Friday night. The Lebanese military said that Syrian militants had fired at Lebanese soldiers along the border.

Ahmad al-Shara, Syria’s new de facto leader, faces the challenge of imposing order on a country that has been devastated by 14 years of civil war that split it into multiple warring regions and spurred a proliferation of armed groups.

Mr. al-Shara, who leads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist group that spearheaded the surprise attack that toppled Mr. al-Assad, has worked to project a moderate image, meeting with Western dignitaries and trying to assure both Syrians and foreign governments that the country is on a stable path.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati of Lebanon spoke with Mr. al-Shara to discuss the border violence, according to the Lebanese leader’s office. During the call, Mr. al-Shara pledged that “the Syrian authorities are doing everything necessary to restore calm on the border and prevent the matter from recurring,” Mr. Mikati’s office said in a statement.

The authorities in countries bordering Syria had feared that Mr. Assad’s ouster would lead to chaos that could spill over.

In eastern Syria, Turkish-backed fighters are continuing to fight Kurdish forces, which have carved out an autonomous region. At the same time, there have been scattered clashes between the new regime and holdouts still loyal to Mr. al-Assad.

On Saturday, forces affiliated with the new Syrian government were searching for “remnants of the Assadist militias” near the central city of Homs, the SANA state media agency reported, after arresting two former officials overnight.

In an attempt to head off potential attacks from Syrian territory, Israeli forces have bombarded military sites across the country and sent their troops into a once-demilitarized buffer zone between the two sides. Jordan also partly closed its ground crossing with Syria.

Mr. al-Shara and his allies have sought to dissolve the remaining militant groups under the aegis of a single armed force. This past week, they formally appointed a new acting defense minister to oversee the transition.

Here are other developments in the region:

• Gaza fighting: The Israeli military said its soldiers were pressing on with a three-month ground operation in northern Gaza, where Gazan health officials say Israeli forces are surrounding the Indonesian Hospital, one of the last in the area. The Israeli military says it has no intention of immediately evacuating the roughly 20 patients and medical workers in the compound. Israel has repeatedly raided hospitals since the start of the war in Gaza, saying that Hamas uses them as military bases. Hamas has denied the accusation.

Four days into the year and it’s all possibility right now. You have an idea of how things will go — what you’re looking forward to, what’s going to be challenging — but you’re working off archival material. Memory and experience, educated guesses. “2025 is going to be very difficult for me,” a friend said matter-of-factly the other night, before ticking off all the things she had to do this year: taking her business to a new stage, considering a move. To me, these things sounded exciting, interesting — the fascinating content of someone else’s life.

We’re all sitting here with the same year’s worth of days in front of us now, the same calendar. What activities and events will we fill it with? How will we greet the material of our days? What meaning will we give to it?

I recently saw Christian Marclay’s installation “The Clock” at MoMA. It’s a 24-hour montage of thousands of clips from movies and shows, each featuring a clock, a watch, a line of dialogue or other timepiece. The film is synchronized with the actual time, so every scene depicts the moment at which you’re watching it, making “The Clock” a functioning timepiece in itself. You’re watching a movie, but you’re also watching a clock, for hours on end.

The museum stayed open for 24 hours on Dec. 21 for a special solstice showing of “The Clock,” from 7 p.m. Saturday to 7 p.m. Sunday. On my way there Saturday night, I noticed myself rushing: It was 8 p.m., I was late! But then I stopped. It didn’t really matter when I arrived. People would be coming and going throughout the screening all night and into the following day. Here was an invitation to reconsider how I thought about time. “The Clock,” like real time, isn’t a performance with a beginning and end. It’s happening whether you’re there or not. You show up or you don’t. You pay attention or you don’t. You can’t do it wrong.

Sitting in the audience as three, four, five hours elapsed and somehow my attention never wavered, I considered this proposition again. Maybe you could do it wrong. Should I be paying attention to the plot of each clip, the characters and dialogue, or should I be paying attention to the timepieces? 11:22, 11:23, did I miss the clock on the screen showing 11:24 because I was trying to figure out what movie that last scene was from? (I’d discover afterward there was an entire wiki devoted to “The Clock” with each clip’s provenance identified — 11:24 includes scenes from “Shanghai Knights,” “Malice in Wonderland” and “Se7en.”) Can you do time wrong, by paying either too much attention to its passing, or not enough?

“The Clock” forces you to meditate on time, the way we compulsively turn the consecutive scenes of our lives into a narrative, project a cause and effect onto everything that happens, assume everything has meaning and decide if that meaning is positive or negative. We’re the artists and architects of our own lives, surveying the day or year ahead and trying to figure out what story we’re going to tell. Is this going to be a good year? Is it going to be hard? Who decides?

I stayed at “The Clock” until I started to doze off and dream some time Sunday morning. Marclay supports falling asleep during the film: “That’s what you’re supposed to do — let go and absorb it and feel like you’re part of this thing,” he told my colleague Marc Tracy. If I had remembered that, I might have stayed longer. Instead I stumbled out during the wee hours of the first day of winter into Midtown Manhattan.

That was two weeks ago. In the time since, the sun has risen and set 13 times, one year ended and another began. I’ve been trying to pay attention to time, but not too closely, to notice that it’s passing without getting too attached. This year is spread out before us, lots penciled in but nothing for certain. It could be difficult, as my friend predicted for herself. And, in the words of a Morning reader who wrote in to offer their best advice — the question mark to me is what makes this good advice, as if the idea of things not being terrible is a revelation — “It could be great?”

For more

THE WEEK IN CULTURE

Film and TV

CULTURE CALENDAR

🏆 Golden Globes (Sunday): The Globes, once a charming, boozy cousin to the more austere Oscars, are on life support after a series of ethical, financial and diversity scandals. The show has a new owner (the Hollywood Foreign Press Association no longer exists), a more diverse voter pool and a new network. But will those changes — and a slate of A-list nominees — be enough to attract viewers? The ceremony is tomorrow night on CBS and Paramount+.

RECIPE OF THE WEEK

Split Pea Soup

All of a sudden the holidays are over, and the lively sparkle of December has been replaced by January’s cozy, quiet days. That means it’s time to pull out your biggest pot and simmer up a batch of Ali Slagle’s split pea soup. Her hearty, fragrant recipe is filled with three different alliums (leeks, onion and garlic) as well as carrots and thyme, all of which bolster the thick broth, adding sweetness and depth. Many split pea soups call for ham or bacon, and you can use either one in Ali’s flexible version, or leave the meat out altogether and sprinkle in some smoked paprika. Either way, be sure to add a squeeze of lemon at the end to brighten everything up.

REAL ESTATE

The Hunt: In Harlem, two friends joined forces to buy a rowhouse. Which one did they choose? Play our game.

What you get for $1.3 million: A Queen Anne house in Denver; a top-floor unit in a 1916 condominium building in Chicago; or a ranch-style 2020 house in Austin, Texas.

A precious import: Saffron is hard to harvest. But in the U.S., more small farmers and home gardeners are cultivating the spice for profit, or simply pleasure.

Platonic romances and A.I. clones: Experts share their predictions for the future of dating.

Not just leggings: Some women’s active wear is becoming looser and more comfortable.

Want some Scotch?: Luxury brands are using liquor and sweet treats to keep customers engaged.

ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER

How to (easily) clean your fridge

There’s a good chance your refrigerator has been packed, Tetris-style, with leaky leftovers since November. To clean up the mess, follow this advice: Mentally divide your fridge into small sections you can tackle in five-minute chunks — leaving the door open any longer isn’t ideal. Then, set a timer and clean each section, piece by piece, giving your fridge at least 20 minutes to return to temperature in between. You can knock it all out in a day if you want, but for me, the real appeal of this approach is that it turns a daunting task into something easily doable over a few days. — Rachel Wharton

New York Rangers vs. Washington Capitals, N.H.L.: As we approach the halfway point in the N.H.L. season, the Capitals are the team to watch. They’re at the top of the standings in the Eastern Conference and have the No. 1 spot in The Athletic’s latest power rankings. And Alex Ovechkin, in his 20th season in Washington, has a shot at passing Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goals record. Today at 12 p.m. Eastern on ABC.

NOW TIME TO PLAY