Elections

Amanda Winters makes her New York Times debut.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesMONDAY PUZZLE — The origin of the phrase at the heart of Amanda Winters’s crossword theme rests in myth and is often attributed to Hermes Trismegistus (also called Thoth), the Egyptian-Greek god whose Emerald Tablet is considered the founding text of alchemy. And although the puzzle describes this phrase as a “philosophical principle,” the interpretation varies widely. The maxim has been used by astrologers to describe the influence of planets on our lives; by culture writers to excuse flakiness during the holidays; and by Madonna to credit guardian angels for her survival after a dangerous fall.This puzzle is Ms. Winters’s debut in The New York Times, and it seems apt to describe her beginning as auspicious. Have a crack at the grid and see how its philosophy squares with you. And if you struggle with any clues, you can blame the absence of guardian angels or planetary interference. Mercury is in retrograde, after all.Today’s ThemeBy filling in the grid, we see a cluster of letters repeated throughout the shaded areas: A-S-S-O. We don’t have an immediate indication of how the letters are meant to be read — and for a while I was convinced that the constructor was trying to name-drop a certain British online clothing company. Ms. Winters’s revealer provides us with much-needed guidance.AS ABOVE, SO BELOW — the “philosophical principle in which Earth mirrors heaven” — is split between 39- and 41-Across. And just like that, the pattern emerges: AS appears in the top row of each shaded square, SO below that row. Should we struggle with any clues that cross these squares, we now know at least part of the answers: “Where sailors go” (15A) must be AS_ _, and the “Noise that accompanies a shock wave” (18A) is SO_ _ _ _ _ _ _. (ASEA and SONIC BOOM are the answers there.)The alignment of these pairs of letters is no cosmic coincidence. Christina Iverson, a puzzle editor at The Times, said that the stacking of theme entries was “hard to pull off,” requiring from both the constructor and the editors “a lot of time tinkering to get the best fill around it all.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The hospital waiting room was quiet on Sunday: There was no crowd of relatives, no flood of patients. Israel’s air defenses had just fended off a large-scale Iranian attack, with only one serious casualty recorded.But there was no sense that a crisis had been averted outside the pediatric intensive care unit at Soroka Medical Center in southern Israel’s city of Beersheba. Instead, tension filled the air until the doors to the ward swung open and a gasping mother stumbled out, her face contorted. Then raw emotion quickly took its place as she crumbled into a chair, crying.While Israel suffered little in the way of significant damage overnight, this one family was dealt a devastating blow. Amina al-Hasoni, 7, was clinging to life — the sole serious casualty of the Iranian barrage. And were it not for systemic inequities in Israel, her relatives said, maybe she too could have been spared.There are roughly 300,000 Arab Bedouins in the Negev desert. About a quarter of them live in villages that are not recognized by Israeli officials. Without state recognition, those communities have long suffered from a lack of planning and basic services like running water, sewers and electricity. And few have access to bomb shelters, despite repeated requests to the state.The Hasoni family lives in one such community, sharing a hilltop in the Negev village of al-Fur’ah with a plot of disconnected houses. When rocket warning sirens went off on Saturday night, Amina’s uncle Ismail said he felt stuck — there was nowhere to go.Booms overhead signaled air defenses intercepting missiles before there was a big explosion. Then he heard a woman screaming — his sister — and “I started running,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Also, the Australian authorities are searching for a motive in the deadly stabbing attack.An Israeli home where a 7-year-old girl was injured by shrapnel.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesIsrael weighs a response to IranCalm mostly prevailed in Israel yesterday after Iran fired more than 300 missiles and drones at the country overnight. Nearly all were intercepted, Israeli military officials said, and those that made an impact caused only minor damage.Here are the latest updates, and here is a summary of what we know.Iran’s expected response to Israel’s recent strike on the Iranian Embassy complex in Syria — which killed several of Iran’s top commanders — was its first direct attack on Israel after decades of shadow warfare.Iran seems to want to de-escalate. It targeted only military sites and advertised the attack in advance — which analysts described as an effort to avoid casualties. Iran has also signaled that it would not strike further unless attacked.Now, the focus is on Israel. The strikes shook its assumptions about Iran, undermining its long-held calculation that its foe would be best deterred by greater Israeli aggression. Yesterday, the Israeli war cabinet met to discuss possible responses, and the defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said that the country’s confrontation with Iran was “not over yet.”Two Israeli officials said some war cabinet members had urged a retaliatory strike, but that was called off after the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke by phone with President Biden.Details: The U.S. said it had shot down dozens of the Iran-launched drones and missiles. So did Britain and Jordan, which said it acted in self-defense. One person, a 7-year-old girl, was seriously wounded by missile fragments.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The musical, which stars Nicole Scherzinger, won seven awards at Britain’s version of the Tonys. And Sarah Snook won best actress for “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”A reimagining of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard,” starring Nicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond, the long forgotten silent movie star who descends into madness, was the big winner at this year’s Olivier Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.The musical, which will open at the St. James Theater on Broadway this fall, was honored Sunday during a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London with seven awards, including best musical revival, best actress in a musical for Scherzinger, best actor in a musical for Tom Francis, as the screenwriter who falls for Desmond’s charms, and best director for Jamie Lloyd.The number of awards was hardly a surprise. After the musical opened last fall, critics praised Lloyd’s stark production, especially highlighting its contemporary twists that included using cameras to zoom in on characters’ faces, then beam their emotions onto a screen at the back of the stage.Matt Wolf, writing in The New York Times, said that Lloyd’s production belonged firmly “to the here and now.” With this show, the director “takes an established musical by the scruff of the neck and sends it careering into the modern day,” Wolf added.Sarah Hemming, in The Financial Times, was among the critics to praise Scherzinger’s magnetic performance. “She’s not afraid to look scary or ridiculous,” Hemming said, “but there’s also a strung-out vulnerability about her. And when she sings, she pins you to your seat with the harrowing intensity of her delivery.”“Sunset Boulevard” beat several other acclaimed productions to the best musical revival award, including “Guys & Dolls” at the Bridge Theater and “Hadestown” at the Lyric Theater.Sarah Snook in “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” a solo version for which she won best actress at the Olivier Awards. Snook plays 26 roles in the show.Marc BrennerA host of musicals and plays shared the night’s other major prizes. “Operation Mincemeat,” a word-of-mouth hit about a bizarre World War II counterintelligence plot that is running at the Fortune Theater, won best new musical. While “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” a prequel to the Netflix show, now at the Phoenix Theater, was chosen as best new entertainment or comedy play.The best new play award went to James Graham’s “Dear England,” about the English national soccer team, which transferred to the West End from the National Theater.In the hotly contested acting categories, Sarah Snook (“Succession”) was named best actress for “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” a solo show running through May 11 at the Theater Royal Haymarket. Snook plays all 26 roles, often interacting with recorded projections of her characters.Before Sunday’s ceremony, some critics had expected the best actor award to go to Andrew Scott for a similarly dazzling solo performance: a one-man “Vanya” at the Duke of York’s Theater. In the end, the prize went to Mark Gatiss for his role as the revered actor and director John Gielgud in “The Motive and the Cue,” a play by Jack Thorne that dramatizes the fraught backstage relationship between Gielgud and Richard Burton as they worked on a Broadway show. Like “Dear England,” that play ran at the National Theater before transferring to the West End. More

Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire said on Sunday that former President Donald J. Trump “absolutely contributed” to an insurrection and that Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election were “absolutely terrible” — but that nothing, not even felony convictions, would stop him from voting for Mr. Trump because the economy, border security and “culture change” were more important.The interview, on ABC News’s “This Week,” showcased Mr. Sununu’s transformation from Trump critic — while supporting Nikki Haley in the Republican primary, he said Mr. Trump was “worried about jail time” and “not a real Republican” — to loyal foot soldier.It is a transformation that has repeated itself time and again within the Republican Party, and one that Mr. Sununu previewed in January, when he was campaigning for Ms. Haley but said he would support Mr. Trump if he won the nomination.“No one should be surprised by my support,” he said on Sunday. “I think the real discussion is, you know, Americans moving away from Biden. That’s how bad Biden has become as president. There’s just no doubt about it, right? You can’t ignore inflation. You can’t ignore the border and say that these issues in the courthouse are going to be the one thing that brings Biden back into office.”The interviewer, George Stephanopoulos, pressed Mr. Sununu on why he was supporting a man who he said had “contributed to the insurrection” on Jan. 6.Mr. Sununu affirmed that he still believed that. But he said it shouldn’t surprise anyone that a Republican governor would support a Republican nominee, and suggested that Mr. Stephanopoulos was out of touch with public opinion if he thought concerns about democracy or felony convictions would sway voters.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Speaker Mike Johnson said on Sunday after Iran’s overnight attack on Israel that the House would vote in the coming days on aid for Israel, and he suggested that aid for Ukraine could be included in the legislation.“House Republicans and the Republican Party understand the necessity of standing with Israel,” Mr. Johnson said on Fox News, noting that he had previously advanced two aid bills to help the U.S. ally. “We’re going to try again this week, and the details of that package are being put together. Right now, we’re looking at the options and all these supplemental issues.”U.S. funding for both Israel and Ukraine has languished in Congress; Mr. Johnson initially refused to take up a $95 billion aid package for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan passed by the Senate, and the Senate refused to take up a House Republican proposal that conditioned aid to Israel on domestic spending cuts.In recent weeks, Mr. Johnson has repeatedly vowed to ensure that the House moves to assist Ukraine. He has been searching for a way to structure a foreign aid package that could secure a critical mass of support amid stiff Republican resistance to sending aid to Kyiv and mounting opposition among Democrats to unfettered military aid for Israel.But the attacks from Iran have ratcheted up the pressure on Mr. Johnson to bring some kind of package to the floor this week, potentially forcing him to make a decision he has been agonizing over for weeks.He left it unclear on Sunday whether the legislation he said the House would advance this week would also include aid for Ukraine.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Alex Garland’s movie, starring Kirsten Dunst, surpassed “Godzilla x Kong,” with an estimated $25.7 million in North American ticket sales on its first weekend.Hollywood executives — not all, but most — have insisted for years that uncomfortable, thought-provoking, original movies can no longer attract big audiences at the box office.Moviegoers continue to bust that myth.Alex Garland’s dystopian “Civil War,” set in a near-immediate future when the United States is at war with itself, sold an estimated $25.7 million in tickets at North American theaters, enough to make the film a strong No. 1, surpassing the monsters sequel “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.” Ticket sales for “Civil War” exceeded the prerelease expectations of some box office analysts by roughly 30 percent. IMAX screenings provided nearly 50 percent of the “Civil War” gross.More than 70 percent of the total audience was male, according to exit-polling services. PostTrak, one of those firms, said that people with “liberal” or “moderate” political views attended most heavily.“Civil War,” starring Kirsten Dunst as a journalist on a military embed, became the latest example of ticket buyers breaking with Hollywood’s conventional wisdom about what types of films are likely to pop at the box office. Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” a three-hour period drama about a physicist, took in $968 million, wildly surpassing studio expectations. “Poor Things” collected $117 million, a solid total for a surreal art film.Garland (“Ex Machina”) wrote and directed “Civil War,” which gave A24, the specialty film company, its first No. 1 opening. (A24 was founded in New York in 2012.) The movie also cost more to make than any A24 movie to date: at least $50 million, not including tens of millions of dollars in marketing.The R-rated film benefited from a savvy release date — a time when Americans, sharply divided, are paying attention to the coming presidential election but are not yet completely worn out by it — and a marketing campaign that positioned the story as more of an action thriller than a gritty exploration of the frightening but not unthinkable.“Dystopian thrillers are generally set in futuristic worlds that look very different from contemporary life,” David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box office numbers, said in an email. “They use a lot of special effects and science fiction to tell their stories. ‘Civil War’ is doing the opposite: It looks like right now.”That storytelling choice, he added, “is bending the genre into something contemporary and relatable. The story is not directly partisan, but it’s provoking partisan feelings. It’s a fine balance to strike. Audiences are emotionally engaged, and that’s impressive.” More

Israel had grown used to targeting Iranian officials without head-on retaliation from Iran, an assumption overturned by Iran’s attacks on Saturday.Iran’s unprecedented strikes on Israel this weekend have shaken Israel’s assumptions about its foe, undermining its long-held calculation that Iran would be best deterred by greater Israeli aggression.For years, Israeli officials have argued, both in public and in private, that the harder Iran is hit, the warier it will be about fighting back. Iran’s barrage of more than 300 drones and missiles on Saturday — the first direct attack by Iran on Israel — has overturned that logic.The attack was a response to Israel’s strike earlier this month in Syria that killed seven Iranian military officials there. Analysts said it showed that leaders in Tehran are no longer content with battling Israel through their various proxies, like Hezbollah in Lebanon or the Houthis in Yemen, but instead are prepared to take on Israel directly.“I think we miscalculated,” said Sima Shine, a former head of research for the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency. “The accumulated experience of Israel is that Iran doesn’t have good means to retaliate,” Ms. Shine added. “There was a strong feeling that they don’t want to be involved in the war.”Instead, Iran has created “a completely new paradigm,” Ms. Shine said.Iran’s response ultimately caused little damage in Israel, in large part because Iran had telegraphed its intentions well in advance, giving Israel and its allies several days to prepare a strong defense. Iran also released a statement, even before the attack was over, that it had no further plans to strike Israel.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More