Author: NY TIMES

The United States has not ruled out withholding more military support to Israel’s campaign against Hamas if Israel undertakes a major attack on Rafah, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Sunday.“If Israel launches this major military operation into Rafah, then there are certain systems that we are not going to be supporting and supplying for that operation,” Mr. Blinken told CBS’s “Face the Nation.” He did not elaborate.Last week, the White House imposed a delay on the delivery of 3,500 bombs out of concern over the potential harm to civilians in Rafah, where many Gazans have sought shelter…

SAN DIEGO — Kyle Higashioka spent seven seasons behind the plate for Aroldis Chapman, Gerrit Cole and other pitchers. These pitchers possess rare arms and unusual speed, but in his first season with the Padres, the veteran catcher found himself marveling at how unusual pitchers really feel.Robert Suarez is a soft-spoken, hard-throwing closer from San Diego who exudes high-octane energy like no other pitcher in the majors. His combined fastball usage rate increased nearly 30 percentage points from last season. He started as a four-seamer and averaged 98.5 mph more than 80 percent of the time. He mixed in the…

The tennis balls had been stashed away safely by the time 2,500 dogs and their obedient human entourages overtook the U.S.T.A. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens this weekend for the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.The event began on Saturday with agility, obedience and diving competitions before transitioning on Monday into the contests that are more familiar to the audience at home: best in breed, best in group and best in show.The human-to-dog ratio at the tennis center might be 2 to 1, but the power balance favors the dogs. There were pugs being wheeled around in strollers,…

Ms. French Gates’s departure is the latest step in the evolution of the Gates Foundation, the world’s largest private foundation. From public health and development to agriculture and education, the foundation is a highly influential player, giving away billions of dollars annually.Its future direction was thrown into doubt momentarily after Mr. and Ms. French Gates announced their plans to divorce in May 2021, after 27 years of marriage. At the time, the foundation said that she would continue working with Mr. Gates as a co-chair, and if either of them decided that they couldn’t work together, Ms. French Gates would…

As Apple and Google transform their voice assistants into chatbots, OpenAI is transforming its chatbot into a voice assistant.On Monday, the San Francisco artificial intelligence start-up unveiled a new version of its ChatGPT chatbot that can receive and respond to voice commands, images and videos.The company said the new app — based on an A.I. system called GPT-4o — juggles audio, images and video significantly faster than previous version of the technology. The app will be available starting on Monday, free of charge, for both smartphones and desktop computers.“We are looking at the future of the interaction between ourselves and…

The four adult children were in agreement.Their father, William Curry, a retired electrical engineer and business executive, was sinking deeper into dementia. They had found a memory care facility about a mile from their parents’ house in Chelmsford, Mass., where they thought Mr. Curry would do better.But their mother, Melissa, who was 83 when her family began urging her to make this change in 2016, remained determined to continue caring for her 81-year-old husband at home, despite the increasing toll on her own health. When her children raised the issue of a move, “she wouldn’t discuss it,” said her daughter,…

During concerts, Carlos Niño may set up a bass drum and a floor tom, but his percussion is far from conventional. Uninterested in maintaining a steady beat, he creates shimmering atmospheres and earthen textures with the many bells, shells, rain sticks or rattles he totes in a big black roller bag. He surrounds himself with cymbals and gongs. He shakes desiccated palm fronds. Wind chimes are involved.A fixture in the Los Angeles music world for nearly 30 years, Niño has become a key practitioner of what he calls “spiritual, improvisational, space collage music.” (The genre it’s probably most related to…

With Israel’s most sacrosanct day of remembrance as a backdrop, peace activists in Israel broadcast their annual Joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day Ceremony on Sunday night, with parallel events in London, New York and Los Angeles.The ceremony, organized by Combatants for Peace and the Parents Circle — Families Forum, two peace-building organizations, is unusual in that it tries to recognize not only Israeli grief, but also the toll of Palestinian suffering over the decades. This year’s event was especially poignant given that it was the first since the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and comes amid the devastation…

Ukraine’s military is confronting a “critical” situation in the country’s northeast, facing troop shortages as it tries to repel a Russian offensive that has been advancing for several days, a top Ukrainian general said on Monday.Russian troops surged across the border last week to open a new line of attack near Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city after Kyiv, capturing at least nine settlements and villages and forcing thousands of civilians to flee.“The situation is on the edge,” Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said in a video call from a bunker in Kharkiv. “Every hour this situation…

Welcome to the Monday Tennis Briefing, Competitor will explain the story behind what happened in court last week. This week sees the first week of the coveted Rome Masters 1000, and the stories on the field are matched by the drama off it. Novak Djokovic was knocked out by a water bottle and Rafael Nadal took the next step in his comeback, with the spectacle replaced by some bizarre officiating.Is everyone hurt now?If you’d like to follow our great tennis coverage, click here.Is all this harm a signal or noise?At lunchtime on a Friday, Rome and Piazza d’Italia briefly felt…