Author: NY TIMES

The proposal for a hostage-prisoner exchange and cease-fire that Hamas said on Monday that it could accept has minor wording changes from the one that Israel and the United States had presented to the group recently, according to two officials familiar with the revised proposal.The officials said that the changes were made by Arab mediators in consultation with William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, and that the new version keeps a key phrase, the eventual enactment of a “sustainable calm,” wording that all sides had said earlier they could accept.The two officials said the response from Hamas was a serious…

Over the course of a few hours, the news from the Middle East came into the White House Situation Room fast and furious.Israel orders 100,000 civilians out of Rafah in prelude to invasion.Hamas “accepts” cease-fire deal, potentially precluding invasion.Israel conducts strikes against Rafah, possibly opening invasion.The war-is-on-off-on-again developments on Monday left White House officials scrambling to track what was happening and what it all meant. At the end of the day, they came to believe, each of the moves signaled less than originally met the eye, but reflected efforts to gain leverage at the negotiating table with a clear resolution…

May 6, 2024, 6:43 p.m. ETMay 6, 2024, 6:43 p.m. ETDressing for the MetWhen Dan Levy made his initial foray onto the Met’s red carpet in 2021, he also wore Loewe.Credit…Amir Hamja/The New York Times“Do I smell like bacon?” Dan Levy asked, extending an arm for a sniff. This was in a fitting suite at the Carlyle hotel.Outside, fans clustered in the rain for a sighting of one of the many celebrities billeted at the hotel for the Met Gala. Inside, the lobby and the elevators were jammed with boldface types like Jonathan Bailey, who, like Mr. Levy, is being…

Television news may have never been this unsettled six months before a presidential election.ABC News is in the throes of change, after its president announced on Sunday night that she was leaving. The parent company of CBS is in the midst of a sale process, which could leave the news staff with a new owner. NBC is just weeks removed from an on-air revolt in which prominent anchors questioned leadership. CNN employees are still settling in with a new chief executive, who is promising a different direction.Much of the challenge for television news divisions is, at its core, how to…

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At 7 p.m. on May 7, 1824, Ludwig van Beethoven, then 53, strode onto the stage of the magnificent Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna to help conduct the world premiere of his Ninth Symphony, the last he would ever complete.That performance, whose 200th anniversary is on Tuesday, was unforgettable in many ways. But it was marked by an incident at the start of the second movement that revealed to the audience of about 1,800 people how deaf the revered composer had become.Ted Albrecht, a professor emeritus of musicology at Kent State University in Ohio and author of a recent book…

In its second week of release, Taylor Swift’s latest blockbuster album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” holds at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart, nearly doubling the rest of the Top 5 combined.One week after tallying the largest opening week since Adele in 2015 — selling the equivalent of 2.6 million albums in the United States — “The Tortured Poets Department” sold another 439,000 album units, down 83 percent, according to Billboard, but still the highest second-week total since Adele’s “25” almost a decade ago. Last month, Beyoncé’s latest album, “Cowboy Carter,” opened with 407,000 sales in its debut, then…

But Israeli leaders have also vowed to conduct a major military operation in Rafah against Hamas’s forces they believe to be fortified there. Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly said Israel will invade Rafah with or without a cease-fire deal.Hamas wants Israel to withdraw all its forces, but Israel says it must maintain control of security in Gaza.Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza after previous conflicts with Hamas in 2014 and 2009, but this time, Israeli leaders say it’s not so simpleDuring the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, Palestinian gunmen overwhelmed communities and military bases near Gaza, killing an estimated 1,200 people,…

A spate of attacks on German officials and politicians has brought fresh worries over political violence and a breakdown of civility ahead of several critical elections this year, including in three states where the far-right Alternative for Germany party could make significant gains.In the latest attack, on Friday evening, four people assaulted a prominent Social Democratic politician who was hanging campaign posters in Dresden, leaving him with a broken cheekbone and eye socket that required emergency surgery.The official, Matthias Ecke, is running for re-election to the European Parliament.That evening a Green Party campaigner, whose name has not been released, was…

Two European energy giants, TotalEnergies of France and Shell of Britain, are considering moving their stock listings to New York, as pressure mounts for them to improve their valuations, which lag their American counterparts.Shifting their listings to the United States would be a blow to European exchanges, where they are among the largest listed companies.In the past, it would have been almost unthinkable for TotalEnergies, one of France’s most prominent companies, to consider moving its primary share listing from Paris. But the company’s chief executive, Patrick Pouyanné, discussed considering such a shift to analysts recently.“There was a discussion with the…