Author: NY TIMES

Seeking to harness the outrage over an Israeli strike on Sunday that set fire to an encampment and killed at least 45 displaced Palestinians, including children, many diplomats at the United Nations Security Council are backing a new resolution this week that would demand an immediate cease-fire and a halt to Israel’s military operations in the city of Rafah.But they will have to overcome the objections of the United States, which has veto power on the Council and has signaled it will not support the resolution in its current form.Algeria, the only Arab representative in the current makeup of the…

A Hong Kong court will begin issuing verdicts on Thursday in the city’s largest national security trial, as the authorities use sweeping powers imposed by Beijing to quash political dissent in the Chinese territory.The 47 pro-democracy activists and opposition leaders in the trial — including Benny Tai, a former law professor, and Joshua Wong, a protest leader and founder of a student group — face prison sentences, in some cases for perhaps as long as life. Their offense: holding a primary election to improve their chances in citywide polls.Most of the defendants have spent at least the last three years…

For the first time in many years, a teacher was correcting my handwriting.“Go more slowly,” Laura Edralin, a calligraphy teacher in London, told me, as she walked around a table of beginners on a recent Wednesday night, explaining how to achieve even, flowing strokes.As a breaking news reporter for The New York Times, I am not used to being told to slow down, nor am I accustomed to writing by hand. But both those new to the medium and seasoned calligraphers say the deliberate, steady nature of the practice is a huge part of its appeal — one that is…

Nearly two months after losing an epic corporate battle to get on the board of the Walt Disney Company, Nelson Peltz is no longer an investor in the entertainment company.Mr. Peltz, the billionaire head of the hedge fund Trian Fund Management, controlled about $3.5 billion in Disney stock, a vast majority of it owned by Ike Perlmutter, a former chairman of Marvel Entertainment. Mr. Peltz has now sold his portion of those shares, a person familiar with the investment said, requesting anonymity to discuss confidential matters.A spokesman for Disney did not immediately return a request for comment.By selling his shares,…

Dear listeners,The day after Memorial Day — or any day that directly follows a beginning-of-the-week holiday — is one of those Tuesdays that feels like a Monday. A certain temporal fog lingers and will continue to confuse you all week: “Wait, what day is it again?” Well, today it is Tuesday. And I am here to offer you a sonic cure for that fog, something to ground you in the present: a playlist of Tuesday songs.Friday, Saturday and Sunday are all perennial muses of popular music; even the dreaded Monday (Monday) has its memorable anthems. Tuesday, though, tends to get…

The Israeli military said on Wednesday night that it had taken “tactical control” over the Philadelphi Corridor — a sensitive strip of Gaza along its border with Egypt — in a move that could further tax Israel’s already strained ties with Cairo.Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, said the zone was “Hamas’s oxygen tube” and had been used by the Palestinian armed group for “smuggling munitions into Gazan territory on a regular basis.” He said that Hamas had also built tunnels near the Egyptian border, calculating that Israel would not dare strike so close to Egyptian territory.Israeli officials…

In a warehouse off Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway in an industrial area outside Dallas, the future of American military ammunition production is coming online.Here, in the Pentagon’s first new major arms plant built since Russia invaded Ukraine, Turkish workers in orange hard hats are busy unpacking wood crates stenciled with the name Repkon, a defense company based in Istanbul, and assembling computer-controlled robots and lathes.The factory will soon turn out about 30,000 steel shells every month for the 155-millimeter howitzers that have become crucial to Kyiv’s war effort.Ukraine fired between 4,000 and 7,000 such shells daily for several months in…

Baseball’s most controversial umpire called it a career. Angel Hernandez, who has been criticized by many in the industry for decades, is retiring.MLB first approached Hernandez about the possibility of retiring earlier this season, according to baseball sources. The criticism grew louder, and Hernandez was willing to move on. He has not played a game since the two sides reached a financial agreement on May 9.”He was not forced to leave,” Hernandez’s attorney Kevin Murphy told Competitor Via SMS. He is expected to leave his post immediately.In 1991, Hernandez made his MLB debut. From his large and inconsistent strike zone,…

Many weeks before tomato seedlings can be safely transplanted outside — or almost any freshly seed-sown vegetables dare break the surface of the slowly warming soil — harvest is underway in John Forti’s Maine garden.When you grow a range of perennial edibles, you have what Mr. Forti calls “the shoulder seasons” covered, and then some, with no replanting year to year required.“They tell great stories of resilience,” he said of the perennial crops. “I think it’s partly why our ancestors grew them, because they’re there when your annual vegetables aren’t.”As March turns to April, his reaping begins, with the lemony…

In May 2022, Jason Cooper, a commercial paleontologist, went for a walk around his property near the aptly named Colorado town of Dinosaur with a friend and found a bit of femur protruding from some rock.That femur led to a stegosaurus fossil, among the largest and most complete ever found, which has subsequently been nicknamed “Apex.” In July the Sotheby’s auction house will sell Apex at auction at an estimated value of $4 million to $6 million, making the skeleton the latest flashpoint in a long-running debate about the private fossil trade.Dinosaur fossils have fetched escalating prices at auction houses…