Author: NY TIMES

George Clooney contacted a top White House official last month to complain after President Biden criticized the International Criminal Court’s decision to seek a warrant against top Israeli officials over the war in Gaza, a case the actor’s wife had worked on, according to two people familiar with the situation.His wife, Amal Clooney, a prominent human rights lawyer, served on an advisory panel that helped conduct the court’s investigation, which resulted in warrant requests for Israel’s prime minister and defense minister and three senior Hamas leaders, accusing them of illegal conduct that has led to thousands of civilian deaths.Mr. Clooney…

Pope Francis repeated an anti-gay slur during a meeting with priests in Rome on Tuesday, Italian news outlets reported, the same offensive term he was accused of using two weeks ago. The Vatican, in summarizing the gathering, said only that the pontiff had cautioned about admitting gay men into Roman Catholic seminaries.The Vatican did not address the reports by two of the most prominent news agencies in Italy, ANSA and Adnkronos, that he had again used the word “frociaggine,” an offensive Italian slang term referring to gay men. The reports cited anonymous sources they said had been present at the…

While just about every other document is accessible online, a lost passport is one of the last analog emergencies that can derail an international trip.Here’s a guide to replacing a lost passport according to how fast you need it, how much money you have to spare and where you live. (The process for last-minute renewals of expired passports, by the way, is fairly similar.)If you’ve got at least three weeksYou’ll be OK. On the State Department website, at travel.state.gov/passports, first report your passport lost and then follow the process for a replacement. On the website, you’ll find a list of…

The Biden administration on Tuesday proposed removing medical debt from the credit reports of more than 15 million Americans, making it easier for them to qualify for car, home and small-business loans.The proposed rule, which will go through a public comment period, would not take effect immediately. It would forbid health care providers to share medical debt with loan providers and prohibit those providers from factoring in medical information when it came to granting loans.Vice President Kamala Harris said the move would improve “the financial health and well-being of millions of Americans.”“One of the most significant consequences of carrying medical…

Norman Carol, a former violin prodigy who was first chair and concertmaster for the acclaimed Philadelphia Orchestra for nearly three decades, accompanying it on a history-making trip to China under Mao Zedong in 1973, died on April 28. He was 95.His death, at an assisted living center in Bala Cynwyd, a community on Philadelphia’s Main Line, was announced in a statement posted on social media by the orchestra. It was not widely reported outside the classical music world at the time.As concertmaster, tuning the orchestra and overseeing the string section, Mr. Carol served under the celebrated conductors Eugene Ormandy, Riccardo…

A day after the United Nations Security Council endorsed a U.S.-backed cease-fire proposal for the Gaza Strip, the focus shifted on Tuesday to the willingness of Israel and Hamas, under growing international pressure to end the war, to make a deal.Each side made positive but vague statements about the cease-fire plan and blamed the other for prolonging a war that has devastated Gaza. But neither said it would formally embrace the proposal, which was outlined last month in a speech by President Biden and was the basis of the 14-0 vote in the Security Council on Monday.Secretary of State Antony…

President Biden has approved the deployment of another Patriot missile system to Ukraine, senior administration and military officials said, as the country struggles to fend off Russian attacks on its cities, infrastructure and electrical grid.Mr. Biden’s decision came last week, the officials said, after a series of high-level meetings and an internal debate over how to meet Ukraine’s pressing needs for bolstered air defenses without jeopardizing U.S. combat readiness.The new Patriot system — the second that the United States has sent to Ukraine — will come from Poland, where it has been protecting a rotational force of American troops who…

“They can read us so well and that, in part, comes from the poodle side, which is really sensitive and intelligent,” said Ms. Gearhart, whose business, the Doodle Pro, is based in Denver. The golden side is “just friendliness,” she added.She said she thought these goldendoodle personality traits might make it easier for their owners to anthropomorphize (or attribute human traits to) them, even more so than owners of other breeds do. When we notice aspects of dogs that remind us of ourselves, she said, “I think that helps us have compassion for them.” Many commenters on TikTok say it’s…

Ms. Goldsmith Romero declined to comment for this article.Republicans and Democrats both want a new leader for the bank regulator as soon as possible. Managers there were routinely sexually harassing junior employees and working to silence anyone who complained, according to reports last fall by The Wall Street Journal. The fact that Ms. Goldsmith Romero is a woman and a member of the L.G.B.T.Q. community — she is bisexual — is also seen as a plus, the people said, because she may be better able to build trust and restore morale among embittered junior employees.And there’s another advantage to her…

Elon Musk withdrew his lawsuit on Tuesday against OpenAI, the maker of the online chatbot ChatGPT, a day before a state judge in San Francisco was set to consider whether it should be dismissed.The suit, filed in February, had accused the artificial intelligence start-up and two of its founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, of breaching OpenAI’s founding contract by prioritizing commercial interests over the public good.A multibillion-dollar partnership that OpenAI signed with Microsoft, Mr. Musk’s suit claimed, represented an abandonment of the company’s pledge to carefully develop A.I. and make the technology publicly available.Mr. Musk had argued that the…