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Israeli officials defended the attack on a former school compound, saying Hamas was using it as a base for military operations in Gaza City.An Israeli airstrike early Saturday hit a school compound in northern Gaza where displaced Palestinians were sheltering, killing dozens of people, according to Gazan officials.The Israeli military acknowledged the attack, but said Hamas and another armed Palestinian group were using the facility for military operations and attacks on Israel.The strike in Gaza City, the latest in a string of attacks on schools turned into shelters, drew strong condemnation from the European Union and the United Nations, with Josep Borrell Fontelles, the top E.U. diplomat, saying, “There’s no justification for these massacres.”The strikes have taken place alongside mounting international pressure on Israel to conclude a deal for a cease-fire and an exchange of hostages held in Gaza and Palestinian detainees, with President Biden and the leaders of Egypt and Qatar saying this week that “the time has come.”The Gaza Civil Defense emergency service said more than 90 people were killed. But that number could not be confirmed, and two doctors at a hospital in the area gave slightly lower totals. Gaza health officials do not distinguish between civilians and combatants when reporting casualties.The Israeli military did not provide a death toll. But it questioned the Gaza authorities’ statements, saying that its own assessment of the incident was at odds with the reported death toll, and that more than a dozen militants were killed in the strike.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

Officials are investigating potential causes of a plane crash that killed 62 people near São Paulo. Using videos and other clues, aviation experts have formed theories.Brazilian investigators on Saturday began analyzing the black boxes from a São Paulo-bound flight to try to understand why the passenger plane fell from 17,000 feet on Friday, in a crash that killed all 62 on board.But to aviation experts around the world who watched the videos showing the 89-foot plane spinning slowly as it plummeted before crashing almost directly on its belly, the question of what had happened was simple to answer: The plane had stalled.In other words, the plane’s wings had lost the lift needed to keep the aircraft aloft, causing it to stop flying and start falling.“You can’t get into a spin without stalling,” said John Cox, an airline pilot for 25 years who now aids plane crash investigations. “It’s A plus B equals C.”The question of why VoePass Flight 2283 might have stalled, however, remained a mystery.Did it lose significant speed? Did its nose pitch up too high? Did ice build up on its wings? Did an engine fail? Was its stall-warning system working? Were the two pilots tired or distracted?“The main thing we know is that it’s never one thing,” said Thomas Anthony, director of the aviation safety program at the University of Southern California.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

In a military career that spanned three decades, Tim Walz achieved one of the highest enlisted ranks in the Army. Some peers took issue with the timing of his retirement.In the 1980s, the U.S. military was in the middle of a transformation. The Vietnam War was over, and a force once staffed with drafted troops who had fought and died in the jungles of Southeast Asia was transitioning to ranks filled solely with volunteers.In Nebraska, Tim Walz was one of those volunteers.Mr. Walz, now Minnesota governor and the presumptive Democratic candidate for vice president, raised his hand to join the Army National Guard just two days past his 17th birthday on April 8, 1981. In a career in the military that spanned three decades, he battled floods, managed an artillery unit and achieved one of the highest enlisted ranks in the Army. He also navigated a full-time job teaching social studies alongside his part-time military occupation as an enlisted combat arms soldier, a role that trained him for war.Mr. Walz never went to war. Most of his service covered a period when America was bruised from foreign entanglements and wary of sending troops into combat overseas for long stretches. And it ended when Mr. Walz was 41, as the military ramped up for war after Sept. 11.Since being picked as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate this week, he has found himself facing allegations previously aired by Minnesota Republicans and newly amplified by JD Vance, former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate.Those criticisms center on Mr. Walz’s decision to retire from the Army in 2005, the year before his artillery battalion deployed to Iraq. He was thinking seriously about a run for Congress and spoke with other soldiers about being torn between his loyalty to his fellow troops and his desire to move on with his life. At the time, there were vague expectations that the unit might deploy, but actual orders came several months later.The unit deployed to Iraq for more than one year beginning in 2006. During that time, soldiers in the unit provided security for transportation convoys and other tasks common in a combat zone. 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

Scott Cacciola and Stephen Curry had French defenders draped all over him like shrink wrap, but it hardly mattered. Fans across the world had seen this show before; only the stage was different. Playing in his first Olympics, Curry made the most of the moment, sinking a series of late 3-pointers — each more preposterous than the last — to lead the United States to a 98-87 win over France in the men’s basketball gold medal game.James Hill for The New York TimesJames Hill for The New York TimesCurry, the longtime face of the Golden State Warriors, scored 24 points as the United States won its fifth straight gold medal. He had plenty of help from fellow N.B.A. stars like Devin Booker and Kevin Durant, who scored 15 points apiece, and LeBron James, who added 14 points and collected his third gold medal — this time with flecks of gray in his beard.James Hill for The New York TimesJames Hill for The New York TimesJames Hill for The New York TimesThe United States has now won gold in men’s basketball at eight of the last nine Olympics, a stretch of dominance that dates to 1992 with the formation of the so-called Dream Team at the Barcelona Games.James Hill for The New York TimesJames Hill for The New York TimesSince then, the sport’s global growth has meant that the talent gap has closed. Yes, the Americans won all six of their games in Paris. But they were threatened in the semifinals by Serbia, a team headlined by Nikola Jokic, the three-time N.B.A. most valuable player, trailing by as many as 17 points before escaping with a victory.James Hill for The New York TimesThat left the United States with a chance for gold against France, which was led by Victor Wembanyama, 20, one of the N.B.A.’s emerging stars. At 7-foot-4, Wembanyama caused problems for a host of American defenders. He scored a game-high 26 points, but it was not quite enough — not against Curry, who made 8 of 13 3-pointers, and not against a U.S. team that was pushed but was not about to be broken.James Hill for The New York TimesJames Hill for The New York Times More

After a long career as a union organizer, he came out of retirement in 2013 to form the South Texas Human Rights Center and provide lifesaving aid.Eddie Canales, a human rights advocate who fought to save migrants trekking through the harsh terrain of South Texas, died on July 30 at his home in Corpus Christi. He was 76.The cause was pancreatic cancer, said Nancy Vera, his associate at the South Texas Human Rights Center, the nonprofit rescue organization that Mr. Canales founded in Falfurrias, Texas.For over a decade, Mr. Canales placed dozens of water stations — giant blue plastic barrels marked “Agua” filled with gallon water jugs — along the region’s routes for migrants evading a checkpoint on U.S. Route 281, about 70 miles north of the border with Mexico. The migrants, who are usually led (and sometimes abandoned) by smugglers, known as “coyotes,” leave the main road and undertake a perilous journey through featureless scrub and bush to evade the Border Patrol.Some don’t make it. Those who fail succumb to severe dehydration, hunger and exposure to the unforgiving elements in a semi-desert where temperatures can easily reach 100 degrees in the summer and drop below freezing during the winter. Mr. Canales led a campaign to recover, identify and ensure proper burials for the migrants’ remains.The mission required forcefulness and tact. The land is private and belongs to South Texas ranchers, many indifferent or hostile. Some have created armed posses dressed in military gear to hunt up the migrants and turn them over to the authorities, as shown in a trenchant 2021 documentary about Mr. Canales’s work, “Missing in Brooks County.”The migrants “go through the ranches,” Mr. Canales said in a 2015 oral history interview for the University of North Texas.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

Talya MinsbergChang W. Lee and Breaking announced itself as an Olympic sport in Paris, making a memorable debut powered by a backbeat. Time will tell if the sport — really more of an art form — will become an Olympic staple, but it didn’t lack for exposure at these Games.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesGabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesThe competition came to a conclusion on Saturday with the men’s event in which Phil Kim of Canada, above, known as Wizard, took the gold medal. Danis Civil of France, known as Dany Dann, won silver and the American Victor Montalvo, known as B-Boy Victor, took the bronze.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesChang W. Lee/The New York TimesThe first Olympic medal in breaking was awarded on Saturday night to Ami Yuasa of Japan, known as B-Girl Ami. Dominika Banevic of Lithuania, known as B-Girl Nicka, earned the silver, and Liu Qingyi of China, known as B-Girl 671, took the bronze. That diverse podium shows just how far breaking, born in the Bronx in the 1970s, has spread globally.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesWhile not everyone received positive reviews, the breakers were met with generous cheers and earnest curiosity at La Concorde in Paris. The hosts of the event, standing at the center of a stage built to look like a record, repeated a refrain every few minutes. “You are witnessing history,” they said.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesGabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesGabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesGabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesIt’s hard to say how breaking’s success at these Games will be evaluated. The event will not return to the Games in Los Angeles in 2028, but it could reappear in future Olympics. By then, a new generation will have to put its own spin on the sport. Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times More

The markings on a pillar in southern Turkey are more than decorations on the stone, a researcher at the University of Edinburgh says. They may memorialize a time when comet fragments struck Earth.A researcher at the University of Edinburgh has discovered what he believes is the earliest calendar of its kind at Gobekli Tepe, an archaeological excavation site in what is now southern Turkey that used to be an ancient complex of temple-like enclosures.The researcher, Martin Sweatman, a scientist at the University of Edinburgh, said in research published last month that V-shaped markings on the lunisolar calendar, which combines the movements of the moon and sun, recorded a major astronomical event that had a huge impact on Earth — making the ancient pillar part of an ancient version of a memorial.Dr. Sweatman said that the intricate carvings at Gobekli Tepe tell the story and document the date when fragments of a comet — which came from a meteor stream — hit Earth roughly 13,000 years ago. The comet strike, which the latest research has placed in the year 10,850 B.C., has long been a source of disagreement among academics and researchers.This is not the first time that Dr. Sweatman has been able to connect the impact of the comet to the site in Turkey, he said. In 2017, he linked the two in an academic paper in which he contended that the carvings at Gobekli Tepe were memorialized in the pillars, and that the site was used as a place to observe space.At the time, a group of excavators at Gobekli Tepe challenged those findings. Jens Notroff, an archaeologist who wrote the post on the excavators’ website, was not immediately convinced about the new findings and questioned whether the markings had a deeper meaning. He said on the social media platform X that there was an “an obsession with the idea that there *must* be a secret, a hidden code which needs to and can be decoded — while it’s really just about past humans living their lives.”Dr. Sweatman said the recent discovery that one of the pillars also depicts a lunisolar calendar — and thus marks the day of the impact — lined up with his prior research. “We can be very confident indeed that it’s a date,” 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

After several days of fighting in southwestern Russia, both sides are claiming successes. The battles are still being waged.Russia is pushing back against Ukraine’s largest assault into Russian territory since the start of the war, sending troop reinforcements, establishing strict security measures in border areas and conducting airstrikes, including a strike on Ukrainian troops with a thermobaric missile that causes a blast wave and suffocates those in its path, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.But even as Russia has halted the quick advances made by Ukrainian troops with a surprise cross-border attack five days ago into the southwestern region of Kursk, Ukrainian forces seem to be holding ground. They claimed on Saturday to have captured a small village in the neighboring Belgorod region, and analysts say their forces control most of the Kursk town of Sudzha, about six miles from the border.Pasi Paroinen, an analyst from the Black Bird Group, a Finland-based organization that analyzes satellite imagery and social media content from the battlefield, said in an interview that evidence suggested that Moscow had been able to stall the major advances in Russian territory late in the week.“We’re now entering the phase where the easy gains have been made,” he said of Ukraine’s initial advance. “This phase, for the first three days, saw the most rapid movement,” he added. “And yesterday, I think, we started to see the effects of the Russian response.”What all of this means for Ukraine is not yet clear. In the third year of a war that has seemed largely frozen along a 600-mile front line in eastern and southern Ukraine, the decision by Ukrainian troops to cross the border into Russia apparently surprised not just Russia, but also the United States, other Western partners and analysts who spend their days following the war’s troop movements.Some have speculated that Ukraine hopes to draw Russian troops away from the front lines in Ukraine, giving battle-weary Ukrainian troops a needed rest, although analysts say that has not happened. More