Author: NY TIMES

The main United Nations aid agency that serves Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and elsewhere in the region has “reached a breaking point,” its leader has warned, as donors have pulled funding from the agency and Israel imposed further restrictions on its operations and called for its closure. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, the chief lifeline for Gaza’s besieged population of 2.2 million people through the Israel-Hamas war, has lost $450 million in donor funding, including from the United States, since Israeli allegations that 12 of the agency’s employees were involved in the Hamas-led Oct.…

Claude Montana, the audacious and haunted French designer whose exquisite tailoring defined the big-shouldered power look of the 1980s — an erotic and androgenous tough chic that brought him fame and accolades until he was felled by drugs and tragedy in the ’90s — died on Friday in France. He was 76.The Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode confirmed the death but not specify a cause or say where he died.“His clothes were fierce, with a power that was both militaristic and highly eroticized,” said Valerie Steele, director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology.…

Dani Alves, who until recently was one of global football’s golden boys, was sentenced to four and a half years in prison this morning in Spain for sexual assault.A dynamic and technically proficient right-back, he was an integral part of Barcelona’s side that set new standards in the European competition between 2008 and 2016. He made 126 appearances for Brazil during a 22-year career, winning 43 titles – an astonishing achievement that makes him the second most decorated footballer in history. Only his former team-mate at Camp Nou, Lionel Messi, has more trophies.This success, combined with a relentlessly optimistic public…

Then, Ms. Liu had to leave. She was running late to dinner with a friend. They said their goodbyes, and that they wanted to see each other again.Binge more Vows columns here and read all our wedding, relationship and divorce coverage here.Three days later, Mr. Choi attended an event at the New-York Historical Society, near her Upper West Side apartment. He texted her that he was in her neighborhood, so she told him to stop by her place. (Ms. Liu’s mother was staying at her apartment at the time. She can’t speak English, and he can’t speak Mandarin, so they…

Index fund investing has swept the world. In December, for the first time, U.S. investors entrusted more money to index funds than actively managed funds, in which a manager picks stocks or bonds for you.There’s a good reason for the index funds’ popularity. For most people, owning a little piece of the entire market, which you can do at low cost with an index fund, has been more profitable than buying and selling securities, either on their own or through a manager.But the relentless growth of index funds has come at a cost. One significant problem is that the most…

Cryoport, a major embryo shipping company, said on Friday that it was “pausing” its business in Alabama as it evaluated the state’s Supreme Court decision that declared frozen embryos created through in vitro fertilization to be children.“Until the company has further clarity on the decision and what it means for Cryoport, clinics and intended parents, it is pausing all activity in Alabama until further notice,” read an email received by an Alabama fertility clinic and shared with The New York Times.The email said that Cryoport would “not be able to assist” with a scheduled shipment, and instead would offer a…

The song SZA introduced in a commercial during the Grammy Awards, “Saturn,” has now been separated from its credit-card plug and released to streaming services in multiple versions; one, the sped-up version, brings out its clear pop structure. But the real-time version is better. The song is about a longing for the better place that her karma has earned: “Stuck in this paradigm/Don’t believe in paradise,” she sings. Arpeggios glimmer around her; a boom-bap beat brings an undertow. Her vocal lines argue with the beat as she joins generations of Afrofuturists like Sun Ra, looking beyond Earth and insisting, “There’s…

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s framework released Friday for a postwar order in Gaza appeared to keep his government on a collision course with the United States and much of the rest of the world over the enclave’s future. Here are some of the major points of friction between what the Israeli leader has proposed and what other governments have said they want after the war in Gaza is over:Palestinian statehoodThe Biden administration and Arab states have called for both Gaza and the occupied West Bank to become part of a future Palestinian state alongside Israel, arguing that decades of Israeli-Palestinian…

Gabriel Attal, 34, is a new kind of French prime minister, more inclined to Diet Coke than a good Burgundy, at home with social media and revelations about his personal life, a natural communicator who reels off one-liners like “France rhymes with power” to assert his “authority,” a favorite word.Since taking office in early January, the boyish-looking Mr. Attal has waded into the countryside, far from his familiar haunts in the chic quarters of Paris, muddied his dress shoes, propped his notes on a choreographed bale of hay, and calmed protesting farmers through adroit negotiation leavened by multiple concessions.He has…

Victoria Sass, an interior designer in Minneapolis, had long dreamed of owning an R.V. so she and her family could hit the open road with their living quarters attached.“I grew up in Santa Cruz, California, with a Volkswagen van,” said Ms. Sass, 40, who had fond memories of traveling with her family in their mobile vacation home. She wanted her husband, Torben Rytt, and their three children, Duncan, 3, Irene, 8, and Walter, 13, to enjoy the same experience.Mr. Rytt, who grew up outside Copenhagen, had other ideas: He wanted a sailboat.“I’m from a boating family,” said Mr. Rytt, 45,…