Author: NY TIMES

As Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken returned to the Middle East on Friday in an effort to ease escalating tensions, Israel’s defense minister floated a postwar plan for the Gaza Strip that exposed divisions in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wartime government.The proposal by the defense minister, Yoav Gallant, who is a moderate member of Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party, was widely seen as a trial balloon, but it showed the pressure Israel was facing as Washington and others press for a shift to a less intense phase of the war.Further complicating diplomatic efforts in the region, Hassan Nasrallah, the…

Wayne Rooney was shocked when he was told after just 15 games that his tenure as Birmingham City manager was coming to an end.The former England forward has given the impression that he has joined a long-term project after signing a three-and-a-half-year deal. Rooney has enjoyed open dialogue with the club’s top brass – including chief executive Gary Cook and director of football Craig Gardner – and there is no sign their confidence in him is waning.Birmingham have won just two of Rooney’s 15 games in charge, but even after New Year’s Day defeat to Leeds United he remained optimistic…

Although they attended the same high school in Rochester Hills, Mich., Julia Marie Gerard and Adam Edward Romund never crossed paths until their senior year. They were placed in the same personal finance class and became fast friends. The two began spending more time together outside of class, attempting to prepare for their A.P. calculus exam.“What was supposed to be studying at the library was not studying at all,” Mr. Romund, 23, said. “It was basically a date. We did zero studying and just talked about random stuff.”Their mutual crushes prompted Mr. Romund to ask Ms. Gerard to the prom…

Attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea by the Houthi rebels in Yemen have left oil tanker operators facing an unwelcome calculation: accept the risks of steaming through the danger zone, or lose business.The risks of conflict in the area may even be increasing, with a coalition of 12 nations led by the United States warning Wednesday that it would “hold malign actors accountable for unlawful seizures and attacks.”Despite the attacks and the risk of more, some oil companies insist that the ships they charter take this route rather than an excursion around Africa, which could require an extra…

As Covid rises again, killing about 1,500 Americans each week, medical researchers are trying to understand why so few people are taking Paxlovid, a medicine that is stunningly effective in preventing severe illness and death from the disease.A study of a million high-risk people with Covid found that only about 15 percent who were eligible for the drug took it. If instead half of the eligible patients in the United States had gotten Paxlovid during the time period of the research, 48,000 deaths could have been prevented, the authors of the study, conducted by the National Institutes of Health, concluded.It’s…

A mighty monster stomps across the skyline, scaled and unstoppable, leaving destruction in his wake. Bridges, skyscrapers, electrical towers: Nothing can withstand his might. Every step produces a shock wave, every breath a firestorm. He swats away missiles and artillery shells like so many gnats. Civilians race before him through the streets, necks craned upward in terror. Godzilla was hardly the first movie monster, but he is undeniably the king. Across almost 40 feature films, the aquatic kaiju has gone from inscrutable menace to heroic savior and back again. Even the casual movie viewer can picture the formula: rubber-suited men…

The Islamic State claimed responsibility on Thursday for the bombing attack that killed 84 people in Kerman, Iran, a day before, during a memorial procession for Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, according to a post on the extremist group’s official Telegram account.The extremist group called the attack a “dual martyrdom operation,” and described how two militants approached a ceremony at the tomb of General Suleimani and detonated explosive belts strapped to their bodies “near the grave of the hypocrite leader.”The general, a widely revered and feared Iranian military officer who was the architect of an Iranian-led and -funded alliance of Shiite…

Glynis Johns, the British actress who in a trans-Atlantic career that endured for more than 60 years won a Tony Award for her role in “A Little Night Music,” giving husky, emotion-rich voice to the show’s most memorable number, “Send In the Clowns,” and played an exuberant Edwardian suffragist in the Disney movie classic “Mary Poppins,” died on Thursday in Los Angeles. She was 100.The death, at an assisted living facility, was confirmed by her manager, Mitch Clem.Ms. Johns was 49 and on the brink of her fourth divorce when the Stephen Sondheim musical “A Little Night Music” opened at…

LOS ANGELES — Terry Bradshaw spilled a cup of coffee, but Curt Menefee didn’t flinch. As Bradshaw continued to make his point about the Cincinnati Bengals, Menifee reached for some paper towels from a tray not visible on the television to help clean up.Howie Long helped clean up and Bradshaw kept talking. Jimmie Johnson listened intently.Menifee then teased Bradshaw about needing another cup of coffee, which Johnson used as a transition to talk about the Baltimore Ravens and Seattle Seahawks.”Terry spilled the coffee on live television… now, how do you react?” Menifee said shortly afterwards, sitting in a dressing room…

In later decades, the building housed metalwork and kitchen equipment supply businesses. Don DeLillo wrote Great Jones Street into the annals of American literature in 1973, when he named his third novel after the street. The book’s narrator-protagonist, a disillusioned rock star, Bucky Wunderlick, slums it in an apartment there: “I went to the room in Great Jones Street, a small crooked room, cold as a penny, looking out on warehouses, trucks and rubble.”Mr. Warhol purchased 57 Great Jones Street in 1970 under the corporation name Factory Films Inc., according to a report by the New York City Landmarks Preservation…