Author: NY TIMES

JERUSALEM — As the war in the Gaza Strip ended its third month on Sunday, with top diplomats touring the region to try to stop the conflict from spreading, Israel said it had broken up Hamas’s command structure in northern Gaza and signaled that it would not change its objective of dismantling the group’s capabilities across the ravaged territory.“The war must not be stopped until we achieve all of its goals — eliminating Hamas, returning all of our hostages and ensuring that Gaza will never again constitute a threat to Israel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the start of…

Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, held meetings on Sunday with leaders in Jordan and Qatar as part of a weeklong eastern Mediterranean and Middle East tour aimed at reducing the risk that the war in Gaza could spread in the region.Mr. Blinken met separately in Amman with King Abdullah II and Ayman Safadi, Jordan’s foreign minister. He thanked the king for Jordan’s role in sending humanitarian aid to Gaza, and the two agreed to keep coordinating on aid, according to a statement by a State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller.The U.S. has been pressing Israel for months to…

The ReckoningIf Ms. Bodnar is cagey about specifics, it’s because she has faced controversy. There’s the plaintiff who sued Thrive in 2018, alleging that the company was not donating to charities in the way that it claimed. (The lawsuit resulted in a “stipulated” dismissal; Ms. Bodnar signed a non-disparagement agreement that precludes her from talking about it.) There are the trolls who harassed her on social media when Forbes added her, in 2019, to its “richest women” list.“It was actually quite scary when that list came out,” said Ms. Bodnar, who splits her time between Seattle and Los Angeles, where…

A harrowing flight over the weekend is again forcing Boeing to confront concerns over its planes, particularly the 737 Max, already one of the most scrutinized jets in history.No one was seriously injured in the episode on an Alaska Airlines flight Friday night in which a portion of a 737 Max 9 fuselage blew out in midair, exposing passengers to howling wind. The plane landed safely, but the event, on a flight from Portland, Ore., to Ontario, Calif., has spooked travelers and prompted immediate safety inspections on similar planes.Federal authorities focused attention on a mid-cabin door plug, which is used…

This time of year, everyone asks what you like least about your life, but they phrase it as, “What’s your New Year’s resolution?”My biggest regret of 2023 was my relationship to my smartphone, or my “tech appendage” as I’ve named it in my iPhone settings. My Apple Screen Time reports regularly clocked in at more than five hours a day.That’s only an hour more than the average American, but I still found it staggering to think that I spent the equivalent of January, February and half of March looking at that tiny screen (April too, if we only count waking…

Monique Louvigny, an event coordinator in the San Francisco Bay Area, economizes where she can. She drives a 10-year-old Prius, brings a thermos of coffee to work instead of patronizing a place with baristas, and takes advantage of a drive-through food pantry once a month.Laid off at 57, “I kind of reinvented myself,” she said. She rebuilt her career as a freelancer, overseeing receptions and conventions for many companies and institutions, including the local de Young and Legion of Honor art museums.But her income fell to less than $30,000 last year. “It’s erratic,” she said. “In January, I have 12…

This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.When Cordell Jackson’s long and mostly obscure musical career intersected briefly with American pop culture in the early 1990s (coinciding with her appearance in a popular beer commercial, in which she showed the guitarist Brian Setzer a few tricks), it was almost as if she had stepped out of a dream: grandma, resplendent in a shiny ball gown and bouffant, peering through her old-lady glasses while ferociously rocking out on a cherry red electric guitar, amp cranked up…

As Hollywood heads into the heart of its awards season — a three-month orgy of frothy self-celebration and pop culture glamour — celebrities and their handlers find themselves with a serious decision to make: what, if anything, to say about the Israel-Hamas war.Movie stars have become increasingly willing, even determined, to use award shows like the Golden Globes, scheduled for Sunday on CBS, to bring attention to progressive causes and concerns. In recent years, winners like Meryl Streep, Russell Crowe and Michelle Williams have incorporated topics like sexual harassment, the global refugee crisis, abortion rights, Trumpism, climate change, Black Lives…

Ukrainian officials said on Saturday that Russian missile strikes on a city and a village close to the eastern frontline had killed at least 11 people, including five children, and injured 10.Vadym Filashkin, the governor of the Ukrainian-controlled areas of the Donetsk region, said the Russian military hit the area with a barrage of missiles on Saturday evening, smashing private houses and trapping residents under the rubble. The Russian government did not immediately comment on the reports.“The enemy is cynically targeting civilians, trying to bring as much grief to our land as possible,” he wrote in a post on social…

Where will a former NFL coach with a Super Bowl title spend his New Year’s holiday? Wrexham, of course.Paul McCord and his family traveled from Florida to North Wales to watch the League Two match against Barrow after becoming passionate fans of the club through the documentary Welcome to Wrexham.That meant leaving Tampa’s sunshine and daytime temperatures of 22 degrees Celsius (71.6 degrees Fahrenheit) for 9 degrees Celsius heat, but Paul, his wife Mindy, a successful women’s lacrosse coach, and 9-year-old son LJ were delighted Extremely.”It means a lot to come to Wrexham and celebrate the New Year,” said Paul,…