Author: NY TIMES

One official said that negotiators did not believe that Hamas or Israel were leaving the negotiations permanently. And a senior Egyptian official told state-owned television that mediation efforts were still underway to bridge the differences between Israel and Hamas.Hamas is seeking an end to the war and the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops, while Israel is offering a temporary cease-fire. Mr. Netanyahu has said that Israel will not stop fighting until Hamas is eliminated and all the hostages are freed.Israel’s incursion into Rafah this week has displaced about 80,000 people there, most of whom are now sheltering in the southern…

The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. This week’s issue is written by Julia Bergin, a reporter based in the Northern Territory.Driving through Central Australia can be a battle with dust, floods, fires, collapsed roads and network failures. And when the cargo is food, even a minor setback can have serious repercussions.The remote Indigenous community of Lajamanu was set up in the Northern Territory by the Australian government in 1949. Dozens of people, already displaced from their traditional homes, were moved there from another community about 350 miles away because of overcrowding and water shortages.Today, Lajamanu…

Megan Jericha Lerchenmuller was more than a little annoyed after first meeting Glenn Kyle Williams Josey in May 2018 at the construction site of the Glasshouse, an event space on 12th Avenue off the West Side Highway in New York.“This is Megan, she just joined our team,” Mr. Josey, 46, the project architect, recalled a partner of the Glasshouse saying before a meeting got underway in a makeshift office space.Mr. Josey then blurted out: “Oh, you’re here to take meeting notes,” under the impression the partner would bring someone along for the task.Ms. Lerchenmuller simply glared at him. She had…

Shareholders of Norfolk Southern, the beleaguered freight railroad, on Thursday voted down an attempt by an activist investment firm to remove the company’s chief executive and take control of its board.But the activist, Ancora, a Cleveland firm, managed to secure a foothold at the company, after shareholders voted to place three of its directors onto Norfolk Southern’s 13-member board. Ancora had hoped to take control of the company’s leadership with an aim to cut costs and increase Norfolk Southern’s profits and stock price.The result is a partial victory for Norfolk Southern’s executives, who had to defend themselves against criticisms of…

When an administrator says “I’m sorry” at a shelter for asylum seekers in “Aisha,” the phrase has seldom sounded so galling. An exemplar of the upending power people can wield in bureaucracies, the administrator repeatedly makes things difficult for Aisha, a young Nigerian woman petitioning for permanent residence in Ireland.The “Black Panther” star Letitia Wright descends from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to give a quietly fierce performance as Aisha, an asylum seeker in the writer-director Frank Berry’s drama. The reasons for her request unfold during visits with her legal counsel, in video talks with her mother in Lagos and at…

The main United Nations agency that aids Palestinians, known as UNRWA, said on Thursday that it had temporarily closed its headquarters in East Jerusalem for the safety of its staff after parts of the compound were set on fire following weeks of attacks.“This evening, Israeli residents set fire twice to the perimeter of the UNRWA Headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem,” said the leader of the agency, Philippe Lazzarini, on social media. The fire caused extensive damage to the outdoor areas of the compound, Mr. Lazzarini said, but that no workers from UNRWA or other U.N. agencies suffered injuries. He added…

Ukrainian drones struck two oil depots and a refinery across Russia in a 24-hour period, including one deep in Russian territory, officials on both sides said Thursday, as Kyiv presses a campaign aimed at hampering the country’s military operations and putting strain on its most important industry.Radiy Khabirov, the head of Russia’s Bashkiria region, near Kazakhstan, said a drone hit the Neftekhim Salavat oil refinery, one of the country’s largest, around midday on Thursday, sending plumes of smoke into the sky. The facility is more than 700 miles from the Ukrainian border, in a sign that Ukraine is increasingly capable…

Rober Lawrence had seen Shawna Rodrigues around Phoenix High School in Phoenix, Ore., for a couple of years, but hadn’t approached her until his junior year in May 1991, when she was at her locker talking with a friend. The night before, Mr. Lawrence said, he had a dream about Ms. Rodrigues and wanted to tell her about it. Unbeknown to Mr. Lawrence, now 49, Ms. Rodrigues, 47, had long thought he was a “hot jock.”“When he and I met eyes, there was definitely lightning for me,” Ms. Rodrigues said. “I just never would have imagined that he had the…

The Senate on Thursday passed legislation to reauthorize federal aviation programs for the next five years and put in place new safety measures and consumer protections for passengers, at a moment of intense uncertainty and disruption in the air travel system.The bill, which still must win final approval in the House before becoming law, would provide more than $105 billion to the Federal Aviation Administration and another $738 million to the National Transportation Safety Board for airport modernization, technology programs and safety. It would also bolster the hiring and training of air traffic controllers, codify airlines’ refund obligations to passengers,…

How often do exes get back together at destination weddings? Based on Hollywood rom-coms, one might assume it’s an epidemic. The last few years alone have seen rancorous pairs reconcile on the tropical beaches of Bali (“Ticket to Paradise”), the tropical coastline of Sydney, Australia (“Anyone But You”) and in the tropical jungles of the Philippines (“Shotgun Wedding”). What a surprise to see the trend reappear in Netflix’s “Mother of the Bride,” set in Phuket, Thailand, at a tropical resort.These movies, as critics have pointed out, are themselves rehashing an older Hollywood trope: the comedy of remarriage, in which a…