Author: NY TIMES

Israelis gathered across the country on Monday for the first national day of mourning since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks, with protesters disrupting several ceremonies as they demanded that government ministers do more to secure the release of hostages.Israel’s Memorial Day is normally one of the most somber on the country’s calendar, a date when Israelis put aside their differences to grieve fellow citizens killed in war or terrorist attacks. But the protests on Monday underscored how feelings of wartime unity have given way to deep disputes over the war in the Gaza Strip, the fate of hostages taken on…

Ultimately, Mbappe bid farewell to the Parc des Princes, echoing his time at PSG.Another goal, another trophy, one step closer to another record – the first player in the history of French football to win the top flight Golden Boot for six consecutive seasons. Before kick-off, the club’s fans prepared a ceremony in the Auteuil Stand to mark his legacy – featuring his trademark arms-crossed celebration. There was also a banner that read: “Child from the Paris suburbs, you became a Paris Saint-Germain legend.” But the game was not a complete celebration of his seven years in Paris. Yes, there…

The branding of the W.N.B.A. as the hottest league in any game continues apace, as does the growing convergence of fashion and sports.The latest step in the relationship: a Skims ad campaign released just ahead of the start of the women’s basketball season and featuring the rookie Cameron Brink, the newly retired three-time W.N.B.A. champion-turned-president of Adidas basketball Candace Parker and the All-Stars and Olympians Kelsey Plum of the Las Vegas Aces and Skylar Diggins-Smith of the Seattle Storm and DiJonai Carrington of the Connecticut Sun.The campaign depicts the players in various skin-tone undies — bikini and high-waist briefs, boy…

Nick Wilson has closely followed news on the war in Gaza since October. But Mr. Wilson, a Cornell student, is picky when it comes to his media diet: As a pro-Palestinian activist, he doesn’t trust major American outlets’ reporting on Israel’s campaign in Gaza.Instead, he turns to publications less familiar to some American audiences, like the Arab news network Al Jazeera.“Al Jazeera is the site that I go to to get an account of events that I think will be reliable,” he said.Many student protesters said in recent interviews that they were seeking on-the-ground coverage of the war in Gaza,…

The men’s engagement with the ads did not surprise some small business owners interviewed by The Times. Morgan Koontz, a founder of Bella & Omi, a children’s clothing business in West Virginia that promotes itself on social media, said the company received “inappropriate, almost pedophile-type, perverted comments” from men when they started advertising on Facebook in 2021.“It made our models uncomfortable, and it made us uncomfortable,” she said.When the company expanded to Instagram, she and her fellow owner, Erica Barrios, decided to avoid the problem by targeting only women, even though fathers and grandfathers are among their regular customers.Lindsey Rowse,…

Half a century ago, one of the hottest questions in science was whether humans could teach animals to talk. Scientists tried using sign language to converse with apes and trained parrots to deploy growing English vocabularies.The work quickly attracted media attention — and controversy. The research lacked rigor, critics argued, and what seemed like animal communication could simply have been wishful thinking, with researchers unconsciously cuing their animals to respond in certain ways.In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the research fell out of favor. “The whole field completely disintegrated,” said Irene Pepperberg, a comparative cognition researcher at Boston University,…

The run-up to this Saturday’s Eurovision Song Contest final in Malmo, Sweden, was unusually tense and anguished, with months of protests over Israel’s involvement in the competition, a contestant suspended just hours before the show began and confrontations between the police and pro-Palestinian demonstrators outside the arena on the night.But when the final began, the uproar swiftly disappeared. Instead of protests and outrage, there was the usual high-camp spectacle, featuring singers emoting about lost loves, near-naked dancers and, at one point, a performer climbing out of a giant egg.At the end of the four-hour show, Nemo, representing Switzerland, won with…

President Biden’s national security adviser said on Monday that while the United States was committed to Israel’s defense, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government had still failed to provide the White House with a plan for moving nearly a million Gazans safely out of Rafah before any invasion of the city.In a lengthy presentation to reporters, the adviser, Jake Sullivan, also said Israel had yet to “connect their military operations” to a political plan for the future governance of the Palestinian territory.Mr. Sullivan, who has been at the center of the administration’s response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel…

To President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, appointing a new defense minister provides a new building block toward fighting a long war.That was evident in Moscow on Monday when Andrei R. Belousov, the economist who was Mr. Putin’s surprise pick to lead Russia’s sprawling defense ministry, made his first public appearance in his new role and spoke about bureaucracy rather than the battlefield.The pick reflects an acknowledgment that the military production that is supplying Russia’s war, and heating its economy, must be carefully managed to sustain a war of attrition with Ukraine. In addition to Mr. Belousov’s appointment, Mr. Putin…

Today, 43 years later, Darryl Strawberry is still named for his 1981 season with the Class-A Lynchburg Mets.”I call it,” Strawberry said by phone last week, “a bad season.”At the time, “bad season” was the most challenging season in Strawberry’s life. It was his first losing season on the baseball diamond. That was the first season he heard racist slurs coming from the stands. This season he came close to quitting baseball and hanging up his jersey for good.So when the Strawberries’ No. 18 jersey is retired on June 1 at Citi Field, it’s fitting that among his distinguished guests…