Author: NY TIMES

Israeli forces shot at a United Nations convoy of armored vehicles in central Gaza on Thursday evening as it was returning from delivering aid in the northern part of the territory, U.N. officials said.No one in the convoy was injured, the officials said, but the episode highlighted the severe challenges facing humanitarian efforts to help Palestinians struggling to survive amid Israel’s nearly 12-week bombardment of the enclave.“Israeli soldiers fired at an aid convoy as it returned from northern Gaza along a route designated by the Israeli Army,” Thomas White, the Gaza director for UNRWA, the U.N. relief agency for Palestinian…

Russia targeted Ukrainian cities with more than 150 missiles and drones on Friday morning, in what Ukrainian officials said was one of the largest air assaults of the war. At least 30 people were killed, and more than 160 were wounded, according to the Ukrainian government, and critical infrastructure was damaged.“This is the biggest attack since the counting began,” Yurii Ihnat, a Ukrainian Air Force spokesman, said in a brief telephone interview, adding that the military did not track air assaults in the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion, which began in February 2022.For several hours on Friday, missiles, drones…

On July 18, 2021, the day Patrick Alan Pennel was supposed to meet Margaret Ann Kretzmer for a first date, he canceled to spend time with someone else he was getting to know. When Ms. Kretzmer offered to meet him the following day instead, he said OK but brought the other girl along.Mr. Pennel, 40, wasn’t being a cad, he just didn’t have much choice: He had recently moved to Santa Monica, Calif., by himself and, to stave off Covid loneliness, was adopting a dog. Emma, the shepherd mix he brought home the day of the postponed date, was too…

Kara and Joe Youssef sold their two apartments, withdrew their life savings, gave up most of their belongings and, in late October, set out for Istanbul for the trip of a lifetime: a three-year cruise around the world, scheduled to depart Nov. 1.But in late November, after months of behind-the-scenes chaos, the Youssefs were stuck in Istanbul, with the cruise company canceling the trip. It did not have a ship that could handle the journey.The Turkish company, Miray Cruises, had announced the cruise, called Life at Sea, in March. It claimed it would be the longest cruise ever — 382…

For generations, Western space missions have largely occurred out in the open. We knew where they were going, why they were going there and what they planned to do. But the world is on the verge of a new era in which private interests override such openness, with big money potentially on the line.Sometime in the coming year, a spacecraft from AstroForge, an American asteroid-mining firm, may be launched on a mission to a rocky object near Earth’s orbit. If successful, it will be the first wholly commercial deep-space mission beyond the moon. AstroForge, however, is keeping its target asteroid…

As the holiday season winds down and Covid-19 cases start to pick up, a variant called JN.1 has now become the most common strain of the virus spreading across the United States.JN.1, which emerged from the variant BA.2.86 and was first detected in the United States in September, accounted for 44 percent of Covid cases nationwide by mid-December, up from about 7 percent in late November, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To some extent, this jump is to be expected. “Variants take some time to get going,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease…

For a spell this summer, it appeared as if Nashville was headed toward another season of polarization.In May, the superstar Jason Aldean released “Try That in a Small Town,” a middling single from his 11th studio album that likely would have fizzled were it not for an incendiary music video, which arrived two months later, filled with scenes of urban unrest and culture-war dog whistles. It became a talking-head flashpoint, a symbol of what’s widely presumed to be a not-so-latent conservatism in country music.Then, into that white-hot climate landed “Rich Men North of Richmond,” a bracing, out-of-nowhere statement of anti-government,…

Judih Weinstein Haggai, a 70-year-old who was believed to have been taken hostage by Hamas, was actually killed during the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, her family and Kibbutz Nir Oz said in statements on Thursday.Ms. Haggai’s husband, Gadi Haggai, had also been listed as a hostage but the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum announced last week that he, too, was killed in the attacks.The forum said the couple were shot while on their morning walk through the fields of the kibbutz, and that Ms. Haggai had managed to inform friends that they had been injured, her husband critically…

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said Israeli forces struck near a hospital it operates in southern Gaza on Thursday, killing several people, a day after another deadly Israeli attack in front of the same medical facility.On Wednesday, the health ministry in the enclave said nearly two dozen people had been killed after Israeli forces struck the entrance of the facility, Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis. The Israeli military has announced an expanded offensive in Khan Younis, the biggest city in southern Gaza.Most of those killed on Wednesday were displaced people who were seeking shelter in and around the hospital, said…

As they awaited the arrival of their third child in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Kerri and Neil Beggs encountered a problem familiar to families everywhere: They needed more space, but didn’t have the budget for the kind of house they wanted.“What we found was that we were in a certain price bracket, and it was quite a large leap in price for the size of house we wanted,” said Ms. Beggs, 44, a health care professional. She and Mr. Beggs, 47, who runs a plumbing supply company, had been renting a narrow, four-story townhouse that sometimes felt like more of a…