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      Israeli Strikes in Central and Northern Gaza Kill More Than 30 People

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      As Israel’s military wages a renewed offensive in the northern part of the enclave, Al Bureij and Nuseirat in central Gaza came under attack.Israeli airstrikes pummeled two areas in central Gaza and a town in the north of the enclave on Sunday morning, killing more than 30 people and wounding several others, according to local rescue and emergency services.In central Gaza, a strike on a home in Nuseirat killed four people, the Palestinian Civil Defense said in a statement. Strikes in nearby Al Bureij killed 13 people, according to Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the Civil Defense, an emergency rescue group. He said that several others were wounded and that rescuers were still searching for people under the rubble.The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strikes in central Gaza, which came as it is waging a renewed offensive in the northern part of the enclave. In an effort to stamp out what the military has called a Hamas resurgence, Israeli troops, tanks and armed drones have bombarded northern Gaza almost daily.On Sunday, the town of Beit Lahia again came under attack. Mr. Basal said that an Israeli strike on a house there killed 15 people, and that another strike hit a residential building where dozens of people were sheltering. Information on casualties from the strike on the residential building was not immediately available because rescue teams were unable to reach the area, he added.When asked about Beit Lahia, the Israeli military said that it had carried out several strikes on “terrorist targets” in the town overnight and that there had been continuous efforts to evacuate the civilian population from northern Gaza, where its forces have been operating for over a month.Gaza’s Civil Defense said it was forced to cease rescue operations in the north late last month because of attacks by the Israeli military on its members and destruction of its equipment.Gabby Sobelman More

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      Blast Hits Central Beirut for First Time in Weeks

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      The attack came as Israel’s military has been pounding an area just outside the Lebanese capital with some of the heaviest waves of bombardment in months.An Israeli airstrike hit the Lebanese capital on Sunday, a rare attack inside the city that comes as Israel’s military has been pounding areas outside it where Hezbollah holds sway.Israel’s intensified push on the battlefield appears aimed at pressuring the Lebanese government and Hezbollah to accede to terms for a cease-fire for Lebanon worked out between Israeli and American officials, in what Israeli analysts describe as a strategy of “negotiations under fire.”Lebanon’s Health Ministry said one person was killed in the strike on the capital, Beirut — the first to hit the city in weeks. The infrequent attacks inside the capital have tended to target individuals belonging to Hezbollah, and the attack on Sunday appeared to be no exception.Mohammed Afif, the head of Hezbollah’s media office was “coincidentally present” when the building was struck, according to Lebanon’s state-run news agency.As the de facto spokesman of Hezbollah, Mr. Afif was one of the group’s few remaining figures with a public profile. His role had gained newfound prominence in recent weeks after Israel killed Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in September along with much of the group’s top command and leadership.The strike in Beirut on Sunday destroyed a seven-story building in the neighborhood of Ras al-Naba, Lebanon’s state-run news agency reported. It said that search teams were working to rescue a number of people trapped under the rubble.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

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      On ‘S.N.L.,’ a Peaceful Transition to Trump’s Cabinet of Curiosities

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      Sarah Sherman plays Matt Gaetz as well as the widow of P’Nut, the conservative darling of the rodent world, while Charli XCX and pals serenade a mom-to-be.An amicable White House transition meeting between President Biden and President-elect Donald J. Trump provided the template for the opening sketch of this weekend’s “Saturday Night Live,” and it also gave “S.N.L.” another opportunity to rearrange its musical chairs of who’s playing whom in the Trump administration, with new roles for Sarah Sherman (as Matt Gaetz) and Alec Baldwin (as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.).Dana Carvey, the “S.N.L.” alum who has lately been impersonating Biden on the show, returned to play the part, promising a “respectful conversation” with Trump, played by James Austin Johnson.“Yeah, get a load of me,” Johnson said. “Instead of being rude and crazy like usual, I’m doing quiet and serene. Which, in many ways, is a lot scarier.”After shooing away the reporters who were covering their meeting, Johnson said forlornly to Carvey that he was not looking forward to returning to the White House. “So many of the carpets are stinky and sticky at the same time,” he explained. “Sort of like being at a Regal Cinemas. Now I have to live here for the next four years. Possibly longer.”Carvey responded that he had many wonderful memories of his time there: “Dr. Jill hosting foreign leaders,” he said. “My dog attacking every single one. I brought my party together so much they teamed up and kicked me out. Wait a minute — maybe I hate it here, too.”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

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      Slaying Dragons for 20 Years

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      World of Warcraft was first released two decades ago. You might not have played World of Warcraft, but you probably know of it. The game, which turns 20 this year, inspired an Emmy-winning “South Park” episode and a (not-so-great) movie. Its fans include celebrities like Henry Cavill and Mila Kunis.WoW, as the game is known, was social media before social media. As a teenager, I would log on as my undead mage character mostly to hang out with my friends. What we did together was certainly different than how people use today’s social media; I do not typically hunt giant dragons on Facebook or Instagram. But it was a chance to socialize with the people I had met in the game. It was also, as a 16-year-old, the only space I felt safe being openly gay.The game was truly huge. When it was released 20 years ago, so many people tried to play that the servers struggled for weeks to handle the demand. At its peak, WoW had more than 12 million monthly subscribers worldwide, making it one of the biggest games of its time. More than 100 million people have played it at one point or another.Perhaps most impressively, the game is still going. It got a new expansion, called The War Within, this year. Imagine everything that has changed in the world since 2004, when phones were still dumb and the biggest movie of the year was “Shrek 2.” WoW has endured all of that.My colleagues wrote about World of Warcraft’s 20th anniversary in this lovely story that published today. We’ve included excerpts from their reporting below. I recommend reading the whole piece, which has many more interesting stories that we couldn’t fit in the newsletter.A welcoming space for womenA World of Warcraft fan in costume in 2014.Jae C. Hong/Associated PressWe 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

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      Donald Trump Is Already Starting to Fail

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      That was quick.Donald Trump is planting the seeds of his own political demise. The corrupt, incompetent and extremist men and women he’s appointing to many of the most critical posts in his cabinet are direct threats to the well-being of the country, but they’re also political threats to Trump and to his populist allies.To understand why, it’s important to remember a cardinal reality about Trump’s political career. He has now won two general elections when he was the only alternative to an unsatisfactory status quo, and he lost the one when he was the unsatisfactory status quo. If he can’t govern well, his populist partisan realignment will come apart before it can truly begin.One of the most maddening aspects of the 2024 election is the extent to which so many voters viewed Trump as a mostly normal political candidate. MAGA Republicans see Trump as a singular figure, but an immense number of voters thought the talk about Trump was overheated, in both directions.If you’re like most Americans and don’t follow the news closely, it’s easy to see why you would see Trump in more conventional terms. A Politico analysis of the Trump campaign’s ads showed that “the single most-aired ad from his campaign since the start of October is all about inflation, Medicare and Social Security — arguing that” Kamala Harris “will make seniors already struggling with high prices ‘pay more Social Security taxes,’ while unauthorized’ immigrants receive benefits.”That is a normal, conventional political message. Trump’s ads attacking Harris’s past support for taxpayer-funded transition surgery for people in prison and immigration detention were also an appeal to the mainstream, an effort to label Harris as extreme.One of the challenging realities of American politics is that while vast numbers of Americans participate in presidential elections, only small minorities of voters actually stay engaged. And the priorities of the two groups are not the same, far from it.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

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      Jared Polis Wants to Win Back the Hippies

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      It’s such a bother when politicians have to go and complicate your clean narrative about why they’re succeeding.Last week, I spoke to Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado. Polis’s state was, if not a bright spot for Democrats, a less-dark one. In New York, Democrats lost 11 points off their 2020 margin; in New Jersey, 10 points; in Massachusetts, nine and a half points; in California, nine points (though votes are still being counted); in Illinois, seven points. In Colorado, the difference was two and a half points. What is Polis, who won re-election in 2022 by a 19-point margin, doing right?One answer — and this, to be honest, was the answer I’d gone looking for — is focusing relentlessly on the cost of living. “You can’t just do one policy and expect, somehow, people will know it,” Polis told me. “But they generally understand the drumbeat of 30, 40 things you’re doing, each of which reduces costs in a different way. And so that’s been our strategy: to flood the zone with this work to reduce costs.”Polis points with pride to his successful efforts to expand pre-K and kindergarten and get a public insurance option onto the Colorado health exchanges — but also to his rejection of proposals to add benefits that would drive up costs. He’s happy to brag about reducing the tax rate for both businesses and individuals, walking me through every decimal-point reduction he achieved, and the many bills he’s signed to make it easier to build homes.“When you say something a lot, it means you generally believe it,” Polis said. “So here’s a line I often use: We want the best solutions from the left and the right to save people money.”But during our conversation, and in the days after, another answer emerged — and for Democrats this one is a little more challenging. Polis is a dissenter from the trends that swept through Democratic governance during the pandemic. He was unusual among Democratic governors for the emphasis he put on both personal responsibility and personal liberty. Colorado opened early, sparking a tourism boom, and Polis tried to rely more on information than compulsion.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

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      NYT Connections Answers for Nov. 18, 2024

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      Scroll down for hints and conversation about the puzzle for Monday, Nov. 18, 2024.Good morning, dear connectors. Welcome to today’s Connections forum, where you can give and receive puzzle — and emotional — support.Be warned: This article includes hints and comments that may contain spoilers for today’s puzzle. Solve Connections first, or scroll at your own risk.Connections is released at midnight in your time zone. In order to accommodate all time zones, there will be two Connections Companions live every day, dated based on Eastern Standard Time.If you find yourself on the wrong companion, check the number of your puzzle, and go to this page to find the corresponding companion.Post your solve grid in the comments and see how your score compares with the editor’s rating, and one another’s.Today’s difficultyThe difficulty of each puzzle is determined by averaging the ratings provided by a panel of testers who are paid to solve each puzzle in advance to help us catch bugs, inconsistencies and other issues. A higher rating means the puzzle is more difficult.Today’s difficulty is 2.3 out of 5.Need a hint?In Connections, each category has a different difficulty level. Yellow is the simplest, and purple is the most difficult. Click or tap each level to reveal one of the words in that category. 🟨 StraightforwardHAIRSPRAY🟩 ⬇️RENT🟦 ⬇️DALMATIAN🟪 TrickyFIDDLERFurther ReadingWant to give us feedback? Email us: crosswordeditors@nytimes.comTrying to go back to Connections?Want to learn more about how the game is made?Leave any thoughts you have in the comments! Please follow community guidelines:Be kind. Comments are moderated for civility.Having a technical issue? Use the Help button in the Settings menu of the Games app.Want to talk about Wordle or Spelling Bee? Check out Wordle Review and the Spelling Bee Forum.See our Tips and Tricks for more useful information on Connections.Join us here to solve Crosswords, The Mini, and other games by The New York Times. More

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      The Sunday Read: ‘How Cheerleading Became So Acrobatic, Dangerous and Popular’

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      Krish Seenivasan and Catherine Anderson and Listen and follow ‘The Daily’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube | iHeartRadioNationwide, just over a million children, mostly girls, participate in cheer each year (some estimates are even higher), more than the number who play softball or lacrosse. And almost every part of that world is dominated by a single company: Varsity Spirit.It’s hard to cheer at the youth, high school or collegiate level without putting money in the company’s pocket. Varsity operates summer camps where children learn to do stunts and perform; it hosts events where they compete; it sells pompoms they shake and uniforms they wear on the sidelines of high school and college football games.Varsity’s market power has made the cheer world a paranoid place. In the reporting for this article, dozens of people spoke about the company in conspiratorial tones better suited to a spy thriller.There are a lot of ways to listen to ‘The Daily.’ Here’s how.We want to hear from you. Tune in, and tell us what you think. Email us at thedaily@nytimes.com. Follow Michael Barbaro on X: @mikiebarb. And if you’re interested in advertising with The Daily, write to us at thedaily-ads@nytimes.com.Additional production for The Sunday Read was contributed by Isabella Anderson, Anna Diamond, Sarah Diamond, Elena Hecht, Emma Kehlbeck, Tanya Pérez, Frannie Carr Toth and Krish Seenivasan. More