Author: NY TIMES

Top NewsIsrael’s military said on Thursday that it was fighting in neighborhoods near the heart of the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, apparently expanding its campaign against Hamas in a week when Israel has faced mounting diplomatic and legal pressure over its war effort.The fighting came as the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the top court of the United Nations, said it would respond on Friday to a South African petition for the court to order an immediate halt to the ground assault in Rafah. The court has no means of enforcing its orders, but a call…

Victor Wembanyama just accomplished something no other NBA player has ever accomplished.The towering San Antonio Spurs big man became the first rookie in league history to be named to the All-Defensive First Team on Tuesday.Wembunama joins Minnesota Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert, Miami Heat big man Bam Adebayo, New Orleans Pelicans guard/forward Herb Jones and Los Angeles Lakers big man Anthony Day Weiss joins the first team.Chicago Bulls guard Alex Caruso, Orlando Magic guard Jalen Suggs, Boston Celtics guard Derrick White, Timberwolves forward Jaden McDaniels and Celtics Yankees guard Jrue Holiday was named to the second team.Gobert led the voting, receiving…

This year’s Super Bowl was many things to Kristin Juszczyk.It was a crushing loss for her husband’s team, the San Francisco 49ers. But it was also the culmination of weeks of frenzied interest in the clothes she made by hand and wore to N.F.L. games. (The Super Bowl happened to take place on her 30th birthday, too.)“This really all started as a hobby for me,” said Ms. Juszczyk, whose hobby — repurposing vintage team gear into one-off pieces — eventually made global headlines.From early January to mid-February (or the N.F.L. playoff season, roughly), her Instagram following grew by one million…

TikTok said on Thursday that it was introducing new measures to limit the spread of videos from state-affiliated media accounts, including Russian and Chinese outlets, as the company deflects criticism that it could be used as a propaganda tool in a major election year.The company in 2022 started labeling state-affiliated media accounts — like those from RT, the global Russian television network, and People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party. It said it would no longer allow videos from such accounts into users’ main feeds if they “attempt to reach communities outside their home country on current…

In 2021, David Sacks, a prominent venture capital investor and podcast host, said former President Donald J. Trump’s behavior around the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol had disqualified him from being a future political candidate.At a tech conference last week, Mr. Sacks said his view had changed.“I have bigger disagreements with Biden than with Trump,” the investor said. Mr. Sacks said he and his podcast co-hosts were working on hosting a fund-raiser for Mr. Trump, which could include an interview for their “All In” show. They also extended an invitation to President Biden, he said, but the Trump…

On Mother’s Day in the main hall of the Ridgewood Presbyterian Church in Queens, a handful of members of Gamelan Dharma Swara, an ensemble that plays traditional and contemporary Balinese music, practiced its new piece, “Pagar Ayu.” It was a joyous cacophony — a melding of metallophones, other percussive instruments and flute — though it was still in need of refinement.“You’re giving away some part of yourself to the people,” Victoria Lo Mellin, Dharma Swara’s president, directed the musicians. Lo Mellin, 38, who has been with the ensemble since 2007, tried to communicate a sense of urgency. The world premiere…

Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen warned Israel on Thursday against cutting off ties between Palestinian and Israeli banks, arguing that such a move would further destabilize the economy of the West Bank at a time when Palestinians are already facing dire economic conditions.Ms. Yellen’s comments came in the wake of Israel’s decision on Wednesday to withhold tax revenue from the Palestinian Authority in retaliation for three European countries unilaterally agreeing to recognize a Palestinian state. Ms. Yellen and other top economic officials from the Group of 7 nations are expected to discuss the matter and the humanitarian situation in Gaza…

Scanning the Dark Universe, Euclid Finds Scenes of Cosmic Light By Katrina MillerEuclid, a European Space Agency telescope launched into space last summer, finally showed off what it’s capable of with a batch of breathtaking images and early science results released Thursday.The telescope will help astronomers make sense of two of the universe’s greatest mysteries: dark matter, the invisible glue clumping galaxies together, and dark energy, the force pushing them apart.“Before trying to understand what it is, you have to understand how it behaves,” Jean-Charles Cuillandre, an astronomer at CEA Paris-Saclay, said, referring to dark matter.The mysterious substance makes light…

Shirley Conran, the industrious and proliferous British author whose 1982 novel, “Lace,” was a tale of female autonomy disguised as a bonkbuster (to use the British term for a steamy best seller) that made her a millionaire and introduced the lowly goldfish into the erotic canon, died on May 9 in London. She was 91.The cause of her death, in a hospital, was pneumonia, her son Jasper Conran said.Ms. Conran was already a household name in England when she set out to write a sex guide for schoolgirls, but ended up writing the potboiler that was “Lace.” In 1968, she…

News Corp, the Murdoch-owned empire of publications like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post, announced on Wednesday that it had agreed to a deal with OpenAI to share its content to train and service artificial intelligence chatbots.News Corp said the multiyear agreement would allow OpenAI to use current and archived news content from News Corp’s major news outlets, including brands in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia as well as MarketWatch and Barron’s. The agreement does not include content from News Corp’s other businesses, such as its digital real estate services or HarperCollins.“We believe an historic…