Author: NY TIMES

Dozens of Israeli strikes pounded the Gaza Strip over the weekend as Israeli and Hamas officials continued indirect cease-fire talks through mediators in Qatar.Israel’s military said on Sunday that it had hit more than 100 targets across the enclave over the weekend, including sites from which militants had fired at least four projectiles toward Israeli territory on Friday and Saturday. It said that the strikes had killed Hamas militants and that the military had taken measures to mitigate the risk of harming civilians. The claims could not be independently verified.The Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Sunday that…

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy has gone to to visit President-elect Donald J. Trump at his Florida golf club for an informal meeting held on Saturday.The trip, to Mar-a-Lago, comes just a few days before Ms. Meloni is set to welcome President Biden in Rome for an official visit to Italy and the Vatican on Jan. 9 to 12.On Saturday, she appeared in the grand ballroom. Mr. Trump, according to pool reports, said he was having dinner with Ms. Meloni, whom he called “a fantastic woman,” adding, “She’s really taken Europe by storm, and everyone else.”They, along with some…

At the end of the second set of the World Darts Championship, one of the world’s biggest indoor sports, Luke Littler calmly walked off the stage, gave his family a wry, knowing smile and rubbed his hands together. It was as if he had foresight of the beating he was about to receive.The man, no, the boy who was watched by 3,000 people at London’s Alexandra Palace, and millions more watching at home, in pubs across the UK and around the world, not only distinguished himself with cool ease , or do it with flamboyant style but with disdainful relish.The…

When Jeju Air’s status as South Korea’s biggest low-cost carrier seemed under threat from the merger of the country’s two biggest airlines last year, the company’s chief executive assured employees that it would “actively respond,” possibly by acquiring smaller rivals.Now, a week after a crash that killed 179 people on Dec. 29, Jeju Air’s future is clouded by even deeper questions.South Korean officials on Thursday raided the company’s offices and imposed a travel ban on Kim E-bae, the chief executive, as part of the investigation into the country’s worst air disaster in almost three decades. Passengers are canceling bookings, adding…

The Treasury Department imposed sanctions on a Beijing-based cybersecurity company on Friday, blaming it for helping Chinese hackers infiltrate U.S. communications systems and conduct surveillance across four continents.In an announcement, the department said the company, Integrity Technology Group, had supported a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group known as Flax Typhoon in a campaign to break into foreign networks between the summer of 2022 and 2023, saying it found the group had “routinely sent and received information from Integrity Tech infrastructure.”The action came after the Treasury Department revealed in a letter to lawmakers this week that a Chinese intelligence agency had breached…

The day was sweltering. The 61-year-old woman urged her donkey into a trot. She loved riding around the ring on the beautiful white beast — at a walk, then a trot, then a canter. Suddenly she noticed a tingling in her hands and feet spreading toward her torso. She recognized the sensation but willed herself to ignore it. It didn’t work. Her strength seemed to melt away, and before she could say or do anything, she felt herself slumping forward. As the world turned gray, the donkey stopped. Her arms, and then her body, slid down the animal’s sweaty neck…

What do these pieces mean to you?These are very emotional to me. I’m struggling to explain what it means to be trans, and then to be welcomed home. It’s just a welcoming. I feel warm, I feel welcomed by the women in my family. I transitioned after my mother passed. Neither one of my grandmothers, they had a different idea of maybe what I was or something, but they knew me, they knew Harper Steele, and I got to spend a lot of time around with ‘em. And I’m just happy to connect with my sister, especially. I love my…

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube3. Johnny London: “Drivin’ Slow”Two years after the studio opened, Phillips launched his own label, Sun Records, out of the same building. Though Sun would come to be best known for distributing rock and rockabilly singles, its first release was this casually cool jazz number by the 16-year-old alto saxophone player Johnny London.▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube4. Elvis Presley: “That’s All Right”An 18-year-old Elvis Presley first showed up at Sun Studio on July 18, 1953, to record two demos; legend has it that he wanted to give his mother a…

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…

The Catholic priest stood at the altar in the hilltop church for the mass baptism, dunking dozens of heads in water and tracing a cross with his finger on each forehead.Then he rejoiced at Christianity’s recovery of souls in a land where the vast majority of people are Muslim — as the men, women and children standing before him had been.The ceremony was one of many in recent months in Kosovo, a formerly Serbian territory inhabited largely by ethnic Albanians that declared itself an independent state in 2008. In a census last spring, 93 percent of the population professed itself…