Author: NY TIMES

President Biden said on Monday that Israel should not proceed with a major ground offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah without a “credible plan” to protect more than one million people who are sheltering there.Mr. Biden spoke after meeting at the White House with King Abdullah II of Jordan, a key figure in the push for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. It was the first face-to-face conversation between the two leaders since the Israel-Hamas war started.“Many people there have been displaced — displaced multiple times, fleeing the violence to the north, and now they’re packed into Rafah,…

Over the last few weeks, Batsheva Hay has stopped women outside a dance studio, on the subway and inside a grocery store. She has slid into strangers’ DMs.You’re beautiful, she has told them in her warmest, most this-is-not-a-scam voice. Would you consider modeling?Ms. Hay is a New York fashion designer, and this is how she has been casting her New York Fashion Week runway show. Street casting is nothing new — it is how fresh faces in fashion are often found, plucked from real life rather than from modeling agencies.What is unusual is that Ms. Hay has only been approaching…

When the Standard, an off-campus student housing complex, opened in the fall in Bloomington, Ind., welcoming its first batch of residents, it had a decidedly resort vibe. Along with the requisite pool and fitness centers, it enticed students with two pickleball courts, a dog park and a motion sports simulator. The complex even used a roommate-matching app.The arms race over amenities in student housing is nothing new, but what is striking about the Standard is its size: 1,000 beds, about twice the size of a typical dorm. In fact, the Standard could house 3 percent of Indiana University’s 34,000-plus undergraduates.Off-campus…

If you are the type of person who bides your time waiting for any conversation to pivot to music, who scrabbles through the dollar-record bins of junk shops or mudlarks around the streaming playlists of your favorite musicians hunting for rarities, you might be a Golden Ear. You almost certainly love music, but odds are, you are listening to it alone. The Golden Ears are devoted to listening to music together.Most weeks we gather in Tivoli, our little hamlet on the Hudson, to share songs. It began about 15 years ago, after a few music-minded friends moved up from the…

For more than three years, Myanmar’s biggest cities have remained under the unyielding grip of the military junta. But the streets of places like Yangon were uncharacteristically quiet Monday evening as a sense of fear pervaded the country.Residents had a new reason to avoid contact with soldiers on patrol: Over the weekend, the regime said that it was invoking a decades-old law to start drafting young men and women into the army, setting off widespread alarm across the country.The regime’s forces have been depleted in recent months as they battle a growing insurgency by pro-democracy rebels and armed ethnic groups.…

The young women and men moved from booth to booth, asking questions about the political hopefuls’ track records and visions for the country. A few steps away, first-time voters practiced casting their ballots in pretend voting booths. And onstage, talk show guests discussed how to make an informed choice in backing a candidate.This gathering of more than a thousand people one recent Sunday in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, was a prelude to a celebration that is widely known here as “Pesta Demokrasi,” or Democracy Party.Otherwise known as Election Day, it’s when tens of millions of people across this vast…

At the annual Oscar nominees luncheon, there is always a top dog that even a ballroom full of A-listers will clamor to meet. Last year, that honor went to the “Top Gun: Maverick” producer Tom Cruise, a star so huge that the other nominees began to orbit him, biding time until they could dart in to kiss the ring.The luncheon held Monday afternoon at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif., initially seemed to lack that supernova presence, even though there were plenty of famous names including Robert Downey Jr., Emma Stone and Martin Scorsese. Still, they’ve all grown too…

A married pair of researchers have “set the record straight” on the ancient history of smooching. Source link

Sandra Mwayera wailed as her older brother slouched next to her in the back seat of a car — he had died from cholera as he waited for treatment among dozens of others outside a hospital in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare.“My brother! My brother! Why have you abandoned me?” she pleaded. “Come back, please. Come back!”In neighboring Zambia, inside the 60,000-seat National Heroes Stadium in the capital, Lusaka, rows of gray cots lined rooms at a makeshift treatment center where 24-year-old Memory Musonda had died. Her family said they were not informed until four days later — the government buried her,…

Creative CanvasA signet ring, unlike a pinkie ring, traditionally has a flat surface, either smooth or engraved. For those looking to create their own family crest, Rebus, a jeweler in the Hatton Garden district of London, has stacks of books with family crests and insignia from centuries past that can be engraved in 18-karat gold or silver rings (starting at $380 for sterling silver). The jewelry house, which has a team of on-site engravers, creates monograms and symbols and will help clients to design their own motifs.For the New York jeweler Kim Dunham, each bespoke signet ring begins with an…