Author: NY TIMES

What the Israeli military is calling a “limited operation” in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, has already had devastating consequences over the past two days for medical workers and patients across the enclave, doctors and humanitarian aid groups say.The Israeli military’s orders telling roughly 110,000 people to leave eastern Rafah on Monday spread fear throughout Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital, which is within the area where Israel said it would act with “extreme force,” Dr. Marwan al-Hams, the hospital’s director, said in a phone interview on Tuesday.Fearing a raid by Israeli forces, like those that have been carried out at…

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A life-changing event that takes two minutes to complete: Every move, every decision, even every inaction matters. But it’s not just the actions, decisions and indecisions in those two minutes that matter; It was a lifetime of divisive decision-making choices that combined to create life and, on a sweltering Saturday night, history.Telling the story of Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan’s historic run down the railroad tracks that enshrined the record books requires more than rewinding around Churchill Downs. These include deciding not to give up during a dinner date more than thirty years ago and searching for…

The Man With DimplesI was 41, single and no longer looking. Rushing back to work from lunch, I was climbing the Metro stairs when a briefcase brushed against my leg. A tall man in a Barbour jacket excused himself — a rarity in Paris — and smiled, revealing his dimples. We entered the same Metro car, and five stops later, both exited. “Madame, if you do not stop following me, I will call the police,” he said, as we waited to cross the street. His dimples reappeared, and soon after, I was no longer single. — Rebecca Gaghen VeronLoving a…

A report on workplace culture at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation released on Tuesday revealed a broad, yearslong pattern of sexual harassment, discrimination and abuse of mostly women and members of minority groups by senior officials. The findings are likely to lead to another potentially bruising round of questions for the agency’s chair, Martin Gruenberg, who is scheduled to testify in Congress later this month.The report said the bad behavior at F.D.I.C., which has the authority to monitor the health and stability of all U.S. banks but more closely oversees smaller institutions, affected “far too many employees” and went on…

Wayve, a London maker of artificial intelligence systems for autonomous vehicles, said on Tuesday that it had raised $1 billion, an eye-popping sum for a European start-up and an illustration of investor optimism about A.I.’s ability to reshape industries.SoftBank, the Japanese conglomerate that backed Uber and other tech companies, was the lead investor, along with Microsoft and Nvidia. Previous investors in Wayve include Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief A.I. scientist.Wayve, which had previously raised about $300 million, did not disclose its valuation after the investment.Wayve was co-founded in 2017 by Alex Kendall, a Cambridge University doctorate student focused on computer vision…

One reason the Met Gala after-parties are nearly as famous as the Met Gala itself has to do with an incident that took place 10 years ago at the Standard Hotel in the West Village of Manhattan.On that night, Beyoncé was a star of the red carpet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, along with her husband, Jay-Z, and her sister Solange Knowles. Afterward, in an elevator car headed to the Boom Boom Room, the club on the top floor of the Standard, Solange attacked her brother-in-law while Beyoncé stood watching and a bodyguard tried to restore order. The security-cam…

U.N. officials said Tuesday that Israeli troops had now “choked off” both the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings, the two main routes for aid entering Gaza, and the officials warned that the humanitarian crisis in the enclave would worsen.Egypt’s foreign ministry on Tuesday said that Israel’s seizure of the Rafah crossing was a “dangerous escalation” that threatened the lives of Palestinians sheltering in the city.Josep Borrell Fontelles, the European Union’s top diplomat, also condemned the Israeli assault.“The land offensive against Rafah has started again, despite all the requests of the international community, the U.S., European Union member states, everybody asking…

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, who believes that a personal touch is the key to diplomacy, lured President Xi Jinping of China to a 7,000-foot pass in the Pyrenees on Tuesday, expecting to show off the sweeping views that had stamped his childhood, but instead finding dense fog and wild snow flurries.It was a long, slippery road up the mountain, under torrential rain, but that didn’t stop crowds of Chinese admirers with red flags and pennants from gathering in almost every village along the way, miraculously transposed to a remote area of southwestern France and seemingly uniform in their enthusiasm.Undeterred,…

The Caitlin Clark era began a tumultuous period.In front of a sold-out crowd in Dallas, Clark played her first WNBA game, and despite it being a preseason game, Clark was as impactful as she has been the past four years at Iowa State (in part because Probably all the familiar Big Ten opponents on the court)). Although the Indiana Fever lost to the Dallas Wings 79-76, Wings guard Arike Ogunbowale hit a go-ahead 3-pointer with 3 seconds left, and Clark made 5 of his shots. three-pointers and scored a team-high 21 points.”I thought we played hard. The atmosphere in women’s…

At the Met Gala on Monday, a throng of photographers fought to capture Zendaya and Kim Kardashian parading couture gowns down the red (technically, mouthwash-green) carpet.Not pictured: dollar signs. A lot of them.This year’s event raised about $26 million for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, according to a spokeswoman. That’s a $4 million increase over last year’s total, and more than double what the event raised a decade ago, in 2014.The total pummels the philanthropic events thrown to support many of the city’s other cultural institutions. The most recent fall gala for the New York City Ballet raised…