Author: NY TIMES

On an afternoon this spring, Rony Elka Vardi and Leigh Batnick Plessner stood outside the Bedford Avenue storefront in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that for years was a location of their jewelry boutique, Catbird. The cramped space, now a cafe serving coffee and Argentine pastries, has little more than 200 square feet.“It’s even tiny for a coffee shop,” Ms. Vardi, 54, said.Catbird opened at that location in 2006, about two years after Ms. Vardi started the company. But over the course of a decade, it outgrew the tiny shop. In 2022, Ms. Vardi and Ms. Batnick Plessner started selling Catbird’s selection of…

For Caroline Li and Colin Wang, moving in together after dating for eight months was a matter of serendipity and urgency.Last fall, Mr. Wang, 28, was completing his final year of medical school at the University of California, Los Angeles, when he learned that the two-bedroom apartment he shared with one roommate had a mold infestation. He had to move out immediately, but had trouble finding new housing.“It was very difficult to find something that was pretty close to campus that was reasonable in price, and it was also in the middle of the school year,” said Mr. Wang, who…

The armed convoy of jeeps filled with reporters rumbled into a dusty Rafah, passing flattened houses and battered apartment buildings.As we dismounted our Humvees, a stillness gripped this swath of southern Gaza, near the border with Egypt. Slabs of concrete and twisted rebar dotted the scarred landscape. Kittens darted through the wreckage.Streets once bustling with life were now a maze of rubble. Everyone was gone.More than a million people have fled to avoid an Israeli onslaught that began two months ago. Many have been displaced repeatedly and now live in tent cities that stretch for miles, where they face an…

The UEFA Euro 2024 semi-finals lineup has been announced.France and Spain secured their place in the semi-finals yesterday, while England and the Netherlands also won today.Both quarterfinals were tense and dramatic in different ways. England once again looked tired and unimaginative against Switzerland, culminating in a brilliant individual goal from Bukayo Saka (which canceled out Blair Embolo’s opener) and some heroics in the penalty shootout Performance leads to advancement.Meanwhile, the Netherlands advanced from behind against Turkey to reach the European Championship semi-finals for the first time in 20 years and face England in Dortmund on Wednesday.Our writers break down key…

“I’ve never been called timid in my life,” Angela Rayner, a Labour lawmaker, told an audience of British voters during a televised debate last month while laying out her policy priorities.The deputy leader of the Labour Party, Ms. Rayner, 44, is set to become one of the most powerful women in British politics as her party forms a new government on Friday, ending 14 years of Conservative Party rule.A straight-talking lawmaker with a warm, direct manner and an at times brutal honesty, Ms. Rayner is considered one of Labour’s most powerful electoral assets in reaching ordinary voters.Political analysts say she…

Ukraine, which depends on American military aid for its survival, has long tried to maintain bipartisan support in the United States. That has never been easy, but it is getting harder, especially with the increased possibility that Donald J. Trump, no great friend of Ukraine, will return to the White House.Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is asked in nearly every interview what a second Trump administration would mean for Ukraine. While Mr. Zelensky chooses his words carefully, sometimes the emotional weight of the assumption behind the question — that Mr. Trump could end American military assistance, allowing Russia to succeed in…

With the election of the reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian as president, Iran may see a softening of its absolutist foreign policy and even an opportunity for a new diplomatic opening, current and former officials and experts say.Mr. Pezeshkian, a cardiologist, member of Parliament and former health minister, has little direct experience in foreign policy. But he has pledged to empower Iran’s most elite and globalist diplomats to run his foreign agenda, raising hopes of a warmer relationship with the West.Mr. Pezeshkian “represents a more pragmatic posture and less confrontational posture toward the outside and the inside,” said Dennis B. Ross,…

At first, Nigel Farage kept his cool. When protesters disrupted an election victory speech by Mr. Farage, Britain’s veteran political disrupter, anti-immigrant activist and ally of former president Donald J. Trump, he ignored them.But as the chaos persisted at the media conference on Friday, Mr. Farage began heckling back, drowning out critics by shouting “boring!” into the microphone no fewer than nine times.With Mr. Farage around, things are rarely boring, however, as Britain’s center-right Conservative Party has just discovered to its cost.Driven from power after 14 years by a Labour Party landslide, the Conservatives collapsed to their worst defeat in…

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In nearly every corner of Karachi, there are signs of the heat wave scorching the sun-baked city.Hundreds of patients suffering from heat-related illnesses pour into the hospitals every day, pushing them far past their capacity. Morgues overwhelmed by a surge in bodies are struggling to find space.Frustrated residents have begun blocking roads with stones and sticks to protest shortages of electricity and drinking water. Even the usually bustling markets and streets have emptied as people avoid leaving their homes unless they must.Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and its economic hub, is the latest place to suffer as South Asia roasts under…