The New York Times 2024-07-18 08:09:57


How the Israeli Hostage Rescue Led to One of Gaza’s Deadliest Days


Israeli Airstrikes Kill Over 20, Gazans Say, and Hit Another U.N. Building

Israeli Airstrikes Kill Over 20, Gazans Say, and Hit Another U.N. Building

The Israeli military said it was targeting militants operating in a U.N. school being used as a shelter in Nuseirat. A second strike caused fatalities in Al-Mawasi, the Gazan Health Ministry said.

Aaron BoxermanMatthew Mpoke BiggJulian Barnes and

Two Israeli strikes killed more than 20 people in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, including at a United Nations school turned shelter, according to local health officials, the latest in a string of recent bombardments that have hit U.N. buildings in the enclave.

Paramedics found at least five bodies and eight injured people at the former school in central Gaza, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, an emergency medical service. The building, in Nuseirat, was being used to shelter people displaced by the Israeli-Hamas war.

The Israeli military said it had been targeting militants operating inside the building. Hamas, it said, “systematically violates international law, exploiting civilian structures and the population as human shields.”

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Ukraine’s Devastated Energy Grid Battles a New Foe: A Sizzling Heat Wave

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For months, Ukraine’s electricity grid has faced repeated Russian missile and drone attacks that have knocked out power plants and gutted substations. Now, it is contending with another, more unexpected threat: a sizzling heat wave.

Most of the country is experiencing unusually hot summer weather, with temperatures reaching 104 degrees Fahrenheit, or 40 degrees Celsius. It has strained an already hobbled grid, as residents turn on air-conditioners and food businesses use more electricity to cool products. Ukrenergo, the country’s national electricity operator, said Monday that current consumption largely exceeds Ukraine’s generating capacity.

To prevent a collapse of the grid, the authorities have imposed widespread rolling blackouts across the country. In Kyiv, the capital, most buildings are now without power for at least 10 hours a day, including during long periods in the daytime.

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Promise of a Changed U.K. Comes Wrapped in Royal Tradition

At last, a “King’s Speech” that the king himself might have written, at least in its bridge-building, planet-saving passages.

On Wednesday, King Charles III formally opened Britain’s Parliament, presenting the priorities of Britain’s new Labour government, a center-left legislative agenda that chimes with some of his own cherished projects, from curbing climate change to cultivating close ties with the European Union.

It was a stark contrast to last year, when Charles presented the agenda of the Conservative government, which included plans to expand oil and gas drilling in the North Sea. Critics said that was at odds with Britain’s “net zero” emissions goals; the Labour government has promised to end new oil and gas exploration.

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‘Memory Saved Us’: How France Blocked the Far Right

Until the last ballot box came in from a nearby suburb, Fabrice Barusseau bit his nails: Would he or his far-right opponent be sitting in the French Parliament in Paris?

It didn’t look good. This sun-dappled district of white stone and vineyards in France’s southwest, the historical home of centrist voters, seemed to be swinging sharply right like the rest of the country. In the first round of France’s legislative elections, on June 30, the candidate for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally received over 40 percent of the votes cast. Mr. Barusseau, 54, a socialist candidate, got barely more than 28 percent.

In the second-round voting, just a week later on July 7, even toward evening, “it was extremely tense,” said Mayor Françoise Mesnard of Saint-Jean-d’Angély. “The carrots seemed to be cooked.”

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‘Sinners’ and ‘Russian Talibans’: A Holy War Roils a Once Placid Village

The village was a placid place until the local priest, disoriented by the war in Ukraine, succumbed to Satan, according to the retired teacher in northern Moldova. Before that, people got on well and attended Sunday services at the same Russian Orthodox Church.

Now, said Tamara Gheorghies, the teacher, “they don’t even say hello to each other.” The reason, at least in her telling, is simple: a decision by the village priest to sever his allegiance to Patriarch Kirill in Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Moscow Patriarch has for decades commanded the loyalty of Orthodox Christians across the former Soviet Union. But in March, the village priest joined a rival ecclesiastical hierarchy based in neighboring Romania, a member of the European Union.

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Why the Pentagon Is Warning That ISIS Attacks Could Double This Year

Attacks claimed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria this year are on the rise and on track to double last year’s count, the Pentagon said on Tuesday, indicating a resurgence of the terrorist group a decade after it wrought destruction and death across the region.

The group, also known as ISIS, took responsibility for 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria in the first half of this year, according to a report by the military’s Central Command, despite continued operations targeting the organization’s operatives by a U.S.-led coalition and partner forces in both countries. In all of last year, ISIS claimed 121 attacks in Iraq and Syria, a defense official said.

The group, a Sunni Muslim organization that traces its roots to Al Qaeda, exploited the power vacuum that emerged after Syria’s civil war broke out to conquer large areas. Notorious for kidnappings, sexual enslavement and public executions, ISIS took its largest prize when it seized Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, before being beaten back in 2014.

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Renaming an Airport After Silvio Berlusconi Divides a Region in Italy

Millions of travelers pass through Italian airports every year, but most probably don’t know that Rome’s airport is named for Leonardo da Vinci, Pisa’s is named for Galileo Galilei, and Palermo’s is named for Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, two prosecutors who were murdered in 1992 as payback for their anti-Mafia crusades.

But the decision this month to name Milan’s main international airport after Silvio Berlusconi, the media mogul and former Italian prime minister who died last year at age 86, did not go unnoticed.

The renaming of Milan Malpensa Airport as International Airport Milan Malpensa — Silvio Berlusconi has unleashed a maelstrom of protests from left-leaning lawmakers, a barrage of memes and an online petition to block the designation, which as of Wednesday had more than 160,000 signatures.

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