Elections

Even as vote counting was still underway across France on Sunday night, one thing was clear: The left-wing coalition called the New Popular Front did much better than expected and helped deny the far right a victory.Projections show the coalition coming out in front and gaining dozens of seats — a feat for an alliance that was forged only last month with the goal of keeping the far-right National Rally from power. The alliance includes four left-wing parties: Communists, Socialists, Greens and the far-left party, France Unbowed. While many in France cheered what appeared to be a loss for the far right, others were fearful of what the far left might bring.Last week, after the first vote in a two-round election, the coalition withdrew more than 130 of its candidates from three-way races in which the far right had a chance of winning — and pushed their supporters to vote strategically against far-right candidates.The strategy appeared to have worked.Despite the apparent win for the left, the polls showed that no party or alliance got an absolute majority that would make it the likely choice to form a government. Still, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, founder of France Unbowed, a pugnacious and divisive figure, quickly declared that his party was not willing to negotiate to form a coalition government. Instead, he demanded that the left-wing alliance be given the reins to govern so it could implement its “entire program.”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

Daniel Bodily and Andrea Carla Michaels conspire to fool us.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesMONDAY PUZZLE — Crossword constructors often bemoan the unique challenge of crafting a Monday puzzle for The New York Times. (It’s surprisingly hard to make an easy grid.) Andrea Carla Michaels is something of a Monday maven, having constructed over 60 such puzzles. Combine her prowess with that of Daniel Bodily, who brings consistent whimsy to his themes — his most recent one for The Times consisted of literal interpretations of the M.C. Hammer song lyric “You can’t touch this” — and you’ve got a winning recipe for a crossword.Wyna Liu, a puzzle editor for The Times, said that today’s grid stood out to editors precisely because of its cohesion. “We love the way this puzzle comes together,” Ms. Liu said. She complimented its “vibrant assortment of theme answers” and described the discovery of its theme as a “delightful surprise.” This is the first collaboration between Mr. Bodily and Ms. Michaels, but I hope there’s more to come.Today’s ThemeThe constructors have given us all a wonderful, ahem, grift. They wanted us to fall for their cleverly written clues, and we did: hooks, lines and thinkers.OK, I’ve gotten that out of my system. Let’s take a look at our revealer clue: At 60-Across, a phrase that means [“Boy, is that loud!”] doubles as a hint to the ends of 17-, 25-, 38- and 49-Across. A [Decorator’s suggestion] (17A) might be to incorporate a COLOR SCHEME. And a popular [Gathering for superhero fans] (25A) is a COMIC-CON. What do the “ends” of these two clues, SCHEME and -CON, have in common? Each can be described using the mystery phrase at 60A: WHAT A RACKET!Two more synonyms for a RACKET can be found in a [Kickflip or heelflip] (38A), a.k.a. a SKATEBOARD TRICK, and the most common [Hazard near a hive] (49A) is a BEE STING.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 Paris landmark has completed its restoration after the blades fell off this spring — and just in time for the Summer Olympic Games to begin.The moulin is back. The rouge never left.The Moulin Rouge, the famed Paris cabaret, has restored its iconic windmill after its blades broke and fell to the ground in April. The construction was finished weeks before the Paris Olympics are set to begin — and before the flame passes by on its relay route through Paris on July 15.“We wanted to be ready for this special moment,” said Jean-Victor Clerico, the managing director, whose family has run the cabaret since 1955, adding, “The Moulin Rouge without the blades? It’s not the same.”The cabaret, whose name means “red windmill” in French, has stayed open through the repairs. But it had stood functionally topless since April, when parts of the lettering also fell. No one was injured; a spokeswoman blamed a mechanical problem.Sympathy poured in from around the world, Mr. Clerico said. Fans sent in letters of support, he said. Some even wrote poems. For two months, the Moulin Rouge raced to remount the aluminum blades, pushing a metalwork company to work quickly to meet their deadline.Finally, right on schedule, the cabaret celebrated its full return to glory on Friday evening with a street show. As the bright neon lights on the windmill flicked back on, a crowd of about 1,500 people burst into cheers, Mr. Clerico said.Dancers performed the cancan — an emblem of the city, and of the cabaret culture epitomized by the Moulin Rouge — in blue, white and red costumes. They yipped and kicked, rustling their ruffles and shaking their skirts. Mr. Clerico said that the outdoor show was only the second time that the cabaret put on a cancan on the street. (The first was on its 130th anniversary in 2019.)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

LONG ISLAND COMPROMISE, by Taffy Brodesser-AknerWhat does it mean to come by one’s life honestly? This is the question at the heart of Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s generation-spanning sophomore novel, “Long Island Compromise,” which tells the story of a wealthy, dysfunctional suburban Jewish family.Given the unavoidable success of her debut, “Fleishman Is in Trouble,” I will spare curious readers the suspense and answer a more cynical question: Is this book as good? It’s better. Sprawling yet nimble, this is her Big American Reform Jewish Novel. In an assimilatory turn, it’s less reminiscent of Roth (Philip or Henry) than of Franzen (Jonathan), whom Brodesser-Akner profiled in her role as staff writer for The New York Times Magazine.A fictionalized account of a true story, “Long Island Compromise” begins in 1980, when the prominent businessman Carl Fletcher is ambushed in his driveway, taken to unknown parts and tortured by unknown parties. Bubble burst, the house is suddenly teeming with F.B.I. agents as Carl’s frantic wife, Ruth, finds herself taking her younger son, Bernard, on an elaborate ransom drop, a day that will scar both him and his older brother, Nathan, for life.Not to mention Carl himself, who, upon his release, is advised by his mother to compartmentalize his trauma (“Listen to me, boychick. This happened to your body. This did not happen to you. Don’t let it in”). No dice. Carl spends the next several hundred pages on an ineffective cocktail of antidepressants, alternating between jags of hysteria and vegetation, a glass ornament of a father to Nathan, Bernard and Jenny, who has the questionable luck of being born just after the family tragedy. Ruth, who was so sure she’d escaped the paranoia hurricane of her scrappy childhood, finds herself back in its eye. “It started right now, the real division of her life,” Brodesser-Akner writes: “before the kidnapping and after it.”The novel is loosely divided into three sections, told from the third-person perspectives of the three children, now in their late 30s and early 40s, laying out the cornucopia of ways in which they are screwed up by latent generational trauma, their father’s repression and the affluence that insulates them. “They spent their money like third-generation American children do: quickly, and without thinking too hard about it.”Bernard, or Beamer, has become a handsome, BDSM-loving, shiksa-marrying, drug-addled screenwriter who cannot think of a single plot without a kidnapping at its core and is constantly pretending to take phone calls, sometimes for the sake of avoidance, sometimes for the illusion of importance. (Each character has a conversational tic; I’m partial to the way Ruth mumbles some iteration of “Leonard Bernstein over here” or “Julius Rosenberg over here” whenever she’s displeased with her seditious spawn.) Then there’s Nathan, a neurotic and servile land-use lawyer who has put all his eggs in a friend’s S.E.C.-violating basket and is married to a moral Orthodox woman who just wants to redo the kitchen. Finally, Jenny is a drifting intellectual snob who eschews attachment to friends, men, money or careers until the day she becomes aware of the concept of union organizing.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

Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, said Sunday that President Biden’s first television interview since his disastrous debate performance fell short of alleviating deep concerns about his age and mental acuity, and that the president has more work to do to convince voters he is fit to run for and win re-election.“Voters do have questions,” Mr. Murphy said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”He added: “Personally, I love Joe Biden, and I don’t know that the interview on Friday night did enough to answer those questions. This week is going to be absolutely critical. I think the president needs to do more.”Mr. Murphy said he would urge Mr. Biden to “do a town hall, do a press conference — show the country he is still the old Joe Biden.”He avoided directly answering whether Mr. Biden should step aside, saying, “I know there are a lot of voters out there that need to be convinced that Thursday’s night’s debate performance was a bad night.”The carefully calibrated comments from Mr. Murphy were some of the first public alarm bells from the ranks of Senate Democrats, who have stayed mostly silent since the debate over a week ago, but who are increasingly concerned about Mr. Biden’s ability to serve as the party’s nominee. It came as Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, was set to convene top House Democrats later Sunday to discuss Mr. Biden’s candidacy, and at a time when a handful from within his ranks have already publicly called on the president to step aside.Mr. Murphy’s comments reflected where many Senate Democrats are landing as they head back to Washington for a critical week: They want to give Mr. Biden a little more room to prove himself, or exit the race on his own terms, before making any explicit call for him to do so. But they are also aware that there may be no way, at this point, to prove to voters that he is not too old for the task of defeating former President Donald J. Trump.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 this monsoon season, so far there have been more than 60 weather-related fatalities. With roads cut off and more rain expected, the toll could rise.Landslides and floods set off by torrential rains have killed at least 15 people in Nepal in the last 24 hours, officials in the small Himalayan nation said on Sunday, expressing fear that with further heavy rains expected, that number could rise.Eighteen people were also injured in the flooding over the past 24 hours, and two are missing, said Dan Bahadur Karki, a police spokesman. Dozens of people were evacuated to safety, including some pulled from the rubble of their damaged homes.Officials said the landslides had hampered vehicle traffic in most parts of a country where the terrain already makes travel difficult. Highways were damaged, as were the serpentine roads that connect cities with mountain villages. Military and police forces were deployed to help clear the roads.Koshi, Gandaki and Bagmati Provinces, in the east and center of the country, were among the hardest hit. Weather experts predict that heavy rainfall could affect the remaining provinces as the rain heads west.Nepal, which is among the places most vulnerable to climate change, routinely faces landslides and floods. Last year’s monsoon affected nearly 6,000 households, damaging homes and flooding fields. Since the beginning of the current monsoon season in June, at least 62 people have lost their lives, according to the country’s home ministry. Most of the deaths were because of flooding, but lightning was also a factor.Political instability and widespread corruption have complicated a disaster response already short on resources.The coalition government in Kathmandu is in disarray again, with a new alliance seeking to topple the current prime minister, Pushpa Kamal Dahal. If he is ousted, the country will get its second government since the parliamentary elections held in November 2022. More

A day of nationwide anti-government protests comes amid signs of progress toward a truce and hostage deal with Hamas, as well as continued fighting.Israelis on Sunday marked nine months since the devastating Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7 and the start of the ensuing war in Gaza with a nationwide day of anti-government protests at a time that many here view as a pivotal juncture in the conflict.Primarily calling for a cease-fire deal with Hamas that would see hostages return from captivity and for new elections in Israel, protesters brought morning traffic to a standstill at several major intersections in cities and on highways across the country. By lunchtime, much of central Tel Aviv was blocked in one of the biggest protests in months.Some progress has been made in recent days for a resumption of negotiations toward a tentative deal after weeks of an impasse, even as the fighting continues in Gaza, where an Israeli strike hit in the area of a U.N. school on Saturday, and across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.But many Israelis, among them the families of some of the hostages, fear that the cease-fire efforts could be torpedoed not only by Hamas, but also by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel who, they say, might prioritize the survival of his government over a deal that could topple it.The leaders of two ultranationalist parties who are key elements of Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition have threatened to bring the government down if the prime minister agrees to a deal before Hamas is fully destroyed — a goal that many officials and experts consider unattainable.The far-right parties in the governing coalition “don’t want a deal,” Shikma Bressler, a protest leader, said in a social media post early Sunday, adding, “They need Armageddon.”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 development of Elon Musk’s facility in South Texas did not play out as local officials were originally told it would.When Elon Musk first eyed South Texas for a new base of space operations, he promised that SpaceX would have a small, eco-friendly footprint and that the surrounding area would be “left untouched.”A decade later, the reality is far different. An investigation by The New York Times shows how SpaceX’s ferocious growth in the area has dramatically changed the fragile landscape and has threatened the habitat that the U.S. government is charged with protecting there.More repercussions are likely coming, in South Texas and in other places where SpaceX is expanding. Mr. Musk has said he hopes to one day launch his Starships — the largest rocket ever manufactured — a thousand times a year.Executives from SpaceX declined repeated requests to comment. But Gary Henry, who until this year served as a SpaceX adviser on Pentagon launch programs, said the company was aware of concerns about SpaceX’s environmental impact and was committed to addressing them.Here are four takeaways from our investigation:Musk used preserved lands as a buffer for SpaceX operationsRocket launch sites in the U.S., such as Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and Kennedy Space Center in Florida, typically are enormous, secure facilities with tens of thousands of acres within their confines.Mr. Musk didn’t intend to buy up anything like that amount of land when he was looking at the area near Brownsville, Texas. Instead, he wanted to buy a tiny piece of property in the middle of public lands — what the team involved referred to as a “doughnut hole.” He figured the surrounding state parks and federal wildlife preserves would serve as natural buffers.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