Elections

Hersh Goldberg-Polin loved soccer and music. He was curious, respectful and passionate about geography and travel, according to his mother. He was born in the Bay Area and moved to Israel when he was 8.Some 15 years later, he became one of the most internationally recognized hostages among the 240 who were taken by Hamas on Oct. 7. For months, his parents made pleas to bring their son and the other hostages home.But he was among the six hostages whose bodies were found in a tunnel in Gaza over the weekend. In a statement, President Biden said they were killed by Hamas.“With broken hearts, the Goldberg-Polin family is devastated to announce the death of their beloved son and brother, Hersh,” his family said in a statement. Family members declined to be interviewed for this article, asking for privacy.On Sunday, tributes to Mr. Goldberg-Polin, who was 23 and a dual citizen of the United States and Israel, poured in from many pockets of America. People who knew him expressed immense grief and recalled moments they shared. To many across the country, he had become a symbol of hope.Hersh Goldberg-Polin.The Hostages Families Forum, via 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

The outage struck on Sunday, cutting access for many DirecTV viewers to the U.S. Open tennis tournament on ABC.Disney’s channels went dark on DirecTV on Sunday, leaving millions of subscribers to the satellite TV service without access to marquee networks like ESPN and ABC and cutting off viewership to the U.S. Open tennis tournament.The dispute means that most of DirecTV’s roughly 11 million U.S. subscribers can’t watch ESPN; the ABC broadcast network, which airs the U.S. Open, was also blacked out for many customers.The outage is the latest instance of a routine dispute between a television programming company and its distributor resulting in a service disruption. Typically both sides must agree to new terms every few years, and failure to do so risks alienating customers who have grown increasingly disenchanted with having to pay for traditional TV. In the long run, these carriage disputes are unprofitable for both parties, and they are usually resolved in a few days.The contracts are usually written so they expire at periods of peak viewer interest, giving both sides an incentive to reach a deal before the channels go dark. Disney’s dispute with DirecTV was the latest example: the outage began on the eve of Labor Day, cutting off access for many customers who were settling in for the long weekend.Disney has found itself at the center of other disputes with TV distributors fed up with paying high fees for channels like ESPN when the company is spending lavishly to produce shows for Disney+ and its other streaming services. A year ago, Disney was locked in a standoff with the Charter cable system that was resolved after the two agreed to a pact that gave Charter’s customers access to Disney’s streaming services at a lower rate.The early hours of carriage disputes quickly involve lots of finger-pointing, with both sides blaming the other for making unrealistic financial demands that deprive customers of the channels they are paying for. In the streaming era, TV programmers sometimes encourage viewers to find their shows and events on a service like Hulu or Fubo that stream live sports.In a statement, Disney said it believed DirecTV was offering to pay too little for its programming.“We invest significantly to deliver the No. 1 brands in entertainment, news and sports because that’s what our viewers expect and deserve,” said the statement, from Dana Walden and Alan Bergman, co-chairmen of Disney Entertainment, and Jimmy Pitaro, the chairman of ESPN. “We urge DirecTV to do what’s in the best interest of their customers and finalize a deal that would immediately restore our programming.”Rob Thun, DirecTV’s chief content officer, said in a statement that Disney is shifting content to its streaming services, while expecting higher prices from distributors.“Disney is in the business of creating alternate realities, but this is the real world where we believe you earn your way and must answer for your own actions,” Mr. Thun said. He added: “Disney’s only magic is forcing prices to go up while simultaneously making its content disappear.” More

The Israeli military said Sunday that Hamas had killed the hostages before they were discovered by Israeli troops on Saturday.The Israeli military said on Sunday that six bodies found in a tunnel under the Gaza Strip belonged to hostages who had been killed by Hamas, setting off a wave of grief and anger in Israel and further cleaving the deep divisions among the public, and the country’s leaders, over the future course of the war.Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the military’s chief spokesman, said the bodies had been recovered a day earlier in the labyrinths under the southern city of Rafah, about one kilometer from where a seventh hostage, Farhan al-Qadi, was found alive last week.“They were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists a short time before we reached them,” Admiral Hagari said. The Israeli Ministry of Health said in a statement on Sunday that the hostages were killed by “a number of short-range shots” and that they had died about “48-72 hours before their examination.”After the recovery of six hostages that the Israeli military said had been killed by Hamas, demonstrators filled the streets of Tel Aviv demanding that the government do more to bring the remaining hostages home.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesIn an initial statement, Hamas did not directly address the accusations but said responsibility for the deaths lay with Israel, which it blamed for the lack of an agreement to stop the fighting in Gaza. Hamas later asserted in a separate statement that the hostages were killed by the Israeli military’s bullets, without providing evidence.The recovery of the hostages’ bodies put into stark relief the competing priorities of Israel’s leaders: those intent on dismantling Hamas through the pursuit and killing of its fighters and officials, and those who want to reach a truce that would bring home the dozens of captives still believed to be still alive in the enclave.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

For Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, August was a dizzying climb to the highest echelons of politics. Since being selected as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, he has been the featured guest at glitzy private fund-raisers, flown to more than a dozen states and headlined a night at the Democratic convention in Chicago, with thousands in the arena hanging on his every word.On Sunday, Mr. Walz was back in more familiar territory: the Minnesota State Fair.He chomped on a pork chop on a stick. He admired the dairy princess butter carvings. He handed out ice cream at the Dairy Goodness Bar counter and waved at the crowd, which was eager for a glimpse — or a selfie — with the governor, who, for once, got to eschew the formal suit and tie for his more comfortable T-shirt and Carhartt pants.It could have been just another one of Mr. Walz’s many state fair appearances over the years, where he has burnished his profile as an approachable Midwestern dad by wearing socks with a corn-dog pattern and riding the Slingshot, a nausea-inducing ride, with his daughter, Hope Walz.Except for the presence of the Secret Service. And the motorcade that whisked him to and from the fair. And the officers stationed on the roof of the dairy building for an aerial view of the crowd, which was clamoring to see the man who has a chance this November to complete a meteoric rise from little-known Midwestern governor to vice president.Mr. Walz, clutching a vanilla milkshake, acknowledged the obvious: Things were different this year.“A little bit more of a disruption,” he told reporters, noting that he had to cut down from his usual 12 days of appearances. “But it’s exciting — I think people are seeing that we’re getting to talk about Minnesota across the country.”Charlotte Beller, in the pink sweatshirt, happened to be in line when Mr. Walz began serving ice cream to fairgoers. She likes both strawberry and vanilla ice cream, she said, and gave the ice cream her stamp of approval.Stephen Maturen/Getty ImagesWe 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 partisan dispute over Arlington National Cemetery escalated on Sunday when the campaign of former President Donald J. Trump published statements from family members of slain U.S. troops attacking Vice President Kamala Harris after she criticized Mr. Trump for politicizing the cemetery.It was the latest effort by the Trump campaign to defend itself after a physical altercation between a Trump aide and a cemetery official that was triggered by the campaign defying a ban on political campaigning at the Arlington cemetery in Virginia during Mr. Trump’s visit last week. Most of the family members who were with Mr. Trump for that visit signed onto the statement promoted by the Trump campaign.The Army said in a statement on Thursday that an official at Arlington National Cemetery was physically pushed by a Trump campaign aide after she tried to stop the campaign from filming in a heavily restricted area of the cemetery. Trump campaign officials then insulted the cemetery worker — insisting that there was no physical altercation and that they were prepared to release footage to prove it, but the campaign has not done so.In her first public comments on the situation, Ms. Harris said in a statement on Saturday that Mr. Trump had desecrated the cemetery — considered to be among the most sacred of American institutions. Ms. Harris said that the Arlington cemetery was a solemn place that should be free of politics, describing the campaign’s filming of Section 60 — largely reserved for service members killed in recent wars overseas — as “a political stunt.”The Trump campaign then released the statement signed by family members of 7 of the 13 U.S. troops killed by a suicide bombing at Abbey Gate at the Kabul airport during the withdrawal from Afghanistan three years ago.The statement spoke of the heroism of the troops killed at Abbey Gate, and the grief that the family members have felt in the three years since their loved ones were killed. But it also sought to blame Ms. Harris for the politicization of the cemetery, asserting that it was the vice president who had “disgracefully twisted” Mr. Trump’s visit “into a political ploy,” and effusively praised Mr. Trump’s leadership, with the family members of the troops asserting that “if he were still commander in chief, our children would be alive today.”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

On This Week’s Episode:The one animal we can’t seem to live without — even when we really, really want to.This is a rerun of an episode that first aired in June 2023.Charlie Hamilton JamesNew York Times Audio is home to the “This American Life” archive. Download the app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. More

Protesters flooded the streets of Israeli cities on Sunday in mass demonstrations demanding that the government immediately accept a deal for the release of hostages held in Gaza. The furious protests, some of the largest the country has seen over months of failed negotiations, came after the Israeli military announced that six of the hostages had recently been killed in Gaza.In Tel Aviv, protest organizers put the number of people in the hundreds of thousands. Hostage families and a crowd of supporters carried six prop coffins in a march through the city. They swarmed in front of the Israeli military headquarters and clashed with the police on a major highway.In Jerusalem, the Israeli police fired skunk water, a noxious crowd control weapon, and forcefully removed a crowd of hundreds who rallied at the city’s main entrance. In smaller cities too, including Rehovot, in central Israel, people blocked traffic and chanted, “We want them back living, not in coffins!”Israelis demonstrated outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office after the military recovered the bodies of six killed hostages from a tunnel underneath Rafah, Gaza.Ronen Zvulun/ReutersThe national uproar built on months of protests and increasingly aggressive actions by the families of many hostages, who have been attempting to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to accept a deal to little avail.The frustration of the families, who have accused Mr. Netanyahu of sacrificing their loved ones for his own political gain, appeared to reach a boiling point on Sunday after the Israeli military said it had recovered the bodies of six hostages killed in Gaza. The Israeli health ministry said they had been shot at close range sometime between Thursday and Friday morning.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

Sala Wanetick and Emily Biegas make their New York Times debut.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesMONDAY PUZZLE — We have interesting ways of talking about distance in English. A destination might be described as a “stone’s throw away,” two people can stand in mere “spitting distance” from each other and unpleasant things are not to be touched with a “10-foot pole.”Another such phrase lies at the heart of today’s crossword, constructed by Sala Wanetick and Emily Biegas. To what lengths must you go in order to discover it? The answer is just around the corner.Today’s ThemeAt 65-Across, a phrase meaning [Short distance to travel] doubles as a hint to 17-, 27- and 49-Across. That’s a HOP, SKIP AND A JUMP — an impressively long entry for such a short distance. But what’s this hint business about?Let’s cover our theme set. A certain [Song character who comes “down the bunny trail”] is PETER COTTONTAIL (17A). You can describe [Someone who says the same thing again and again, metaphorically] as a BROKEN RECORD (27A). And [One having an ice time at the Olympics?] is a FIGURE SKATER (49A), which I resent myself for chuckling at.You’ve probably solved plenty of crossword puzzles in which the revealer applied to all of the themed entries. There’s a fresh twist here: Each word in the revealer describes only one themed entry, and the phrase moves consecutively through the grid. PETER COTTONTAIL can HOP, a BROKEN RECORD is said to SKIP and a FIGURE SKATER can perform a JUMP.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