More stories

  • in

    Memorial Day Storms Cause Delays for Holiday Travelers

    Thunderstorms in the south and central United States caused flight delays during Memorial Day weekend, the beginning of the summer travel season.Hundreds of thousands of people traveling in parts of the Southeast and central United States faced delays and uncertainty on Monday because of severe thunderstorms that caused damaging winds and heavy rains during the busy Memorial Day weekend.There were more than 5,000 delayed flights to, from and within the United States on Monday, according to FlightAware, a company that tracks flight information. The airports most affected were in Texas and Colorado.Dallas Fort Worth International Airport had warned that it was expecting a busy period of travel, estimating that about 1.4 million passengers would pass through the airport from May 22 through May 27. More than 1,000 flights to and from the airport were delayed on Monday.Another 600 flights were delayed in Houston, flying to and from George Bush Intercontinental Airport.Denver International Airport, where nearly 1,000 flights were delayed on Sunday, said it expected 443,000 passengers to travel through the airport during the holiday weekend. On Monday, nearly 1,000 flights were delayed to and from the airport.The Denver airport said in a statement that it had received a report that a flight was struck by lightning on its descent on Sunday. The flight arrived safely and no injuries were reported, the airport said. Southwest Airlines operated the flight, which departed from Tampa, and said the plane had been taken out of service for inspection. The storms on Monday could result in large hail, damaging winds and flash floods in parts of the Southern Plains and Lower Mississippi River Valley, forecasters said.The potential for tornadoes loomed in some areas, and tornado warnings were issued on Monday in parts of Texas, Alabama and Mississippi. In parts of east-central New Mexico and western Oklahoma, there was a slight risk of hail and strong winds.In Texas and Mississippi, more than 29,000 customers in each state were without power on Monday night, according to PowerOutage.us. In Louisiana, more than 14,000 customers were without power.More storm activity was expected on Tuesday.For the five days that started on May 22 and will end on Tuesday, AAA forecast that a record 45.1 million people in the United States would travel at least 50 miles from home. AAA said it expected 3.61 million people to travel by plane and 39.4 million people to travel by car. More

  • in

    Trump Praises Military Service and Personal Achievements in Arlington Memorial Day Speech

    In a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, President Trump highlighted the sacrifices of soldiers and their families but also his own achievements. President Trump memorialized the nation’s fallen soldiers in a speech at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, recognizing the families of servicemen and servicewomen who died fighting for their country hours after airing grievances and attacking his political opponents on social media.In remarks commemorating Memorial Day, Mr. Trump thanked those who had fought in some of the nation’s defining battles, and cited specific stories of sacrifice by soldiers and their families.“We certainly know what we owe to them,” Mr. Trump said. “Their valor gave us the freest, greatest and most noble republic ever to exist on the face of the earth — a republic that I am fixing after a long and hard four years.”He also used the occasion, traditionally a solemn day of tributes, to indirectly criticize his predecessor, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., for his border policies while valorizing his own return to office. “We’re doing so very well right now, considering the circumstances,” Mr. Trump said. “And we’ll do record-setting better with time. We will do better than we’ve ever done as a nation, better than ever before. I promise you that.”Mr. Trump delivered the speech after taking part in the presidential tradition of laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns to honor America’s war dead. He was joined by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance, both of whom served in the military. 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

    Republican Vote Against E.V. Mandate Felt Like an Attack on California, Democrats Say

    For decades, California has been able to adopt its own emissions regulations, effectively setting the bar for carmakers nationally. And for just as long, Republicans have resented the state’s outsize influence.There is little question that California leaders already see fossil fuels as a relic of the past.At the Southern California headquarters of the state’s powerful clean-air regulator, the centerpiece art installation depicts in limestone a petrified gas station. Fuel nozzles lie on the ground in decay, evoking an imagined extinction of gas pumps.For more than half a century, the federal government has allowed California to set its own stringent pollution limits, a practice that has resulted in more efficient vehicles and the nation’s most aggressive push toward electric cars. Many Democratic-led states have adopted California’s standards, prompting automakers to move their national fleets in the same direction.With that unusual power, however, has come resentment from Republican states where the fossil fuel industry still undergirds their present and future. When Republicans in Congress last week revoked the state’s authority to set three of its mandates on electric vehicles and trucks, they saw it not just as a policy reversal but also as a statement that liberal California should be put in its place.“We’ve created a superstate system where California has more rights than other states,” Representative Morgan Griffith, who represents rural southwestern Virginia, said in an interview. “My constituents think most folks in California are out of touch with reality. You see this stuff coming out of California and say, ‘What?’”Federal law typically pre-empts state law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. But in 1967, the federal government allowed smoggy California to receive waivers from the Environmental Protection Agency to enact its own clean-air standards that were tougher than federal limits, because the state historically had some of the most polluted air in the nation. Federal law also allows other states to adopt California’s standards as their own under certain circumstances.Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said last week that the state would fight in court to preserve its autonomy in setting emissions rules.Rich Pedroncelli/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

  • in

    Building a Home From 100 Miles of Cord

    Chiharu Shiota, a Berlin-based artist, has conjured a multitude of immigrant stories in “Home Less Home,” her largest museum show in the U.S.The artist Chiharu Shiota has drawn a simple shape in thin air and at monumental scale — a rectangle with a pitched roof, instantly recognizable as the universal symbol of home.This ethereal installation is made of polyester cord — some 21,000 lengths of it, streaming down 23 feet from the ceiling of the ICA Watershed, a massive exhibition space at an active shipyard in East Boston.A rectangular forest of blood-red cords hangs nearly to the floor of this former factory space. Inside, the cords shift to lengths of black that form a dark silhouette of a house.Visible within this mirage-like structure are antique furnishings — a four-poster bed, rocking chair, dinette set, sewing table and chair — with a spectacular flock of paper, some 6,000 sheets, fluttering above the domestic tableau. Shiota’s new commission, titled “Home Less Home,” opened Thursday under the banner of the inaugural citywide Boston Public Art Triennial and will remain on view through Sept. 1.This ethereal installation is made of polyester cord — some 21,000 lengths of it.“The house shape looks like a shadow because home does not exist,” Shiota said in a recent interview at the Watershed, as she reached among the cords to affix the final pieces of paper with a stapler. “Home is like something in your heart, inside,” added the soft-spoken artist, 53, who grew up in Osaka and has lived and worked in Berlin since 1997.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

    Trump’s Comments on Gaza Reflect Israel’s Growing Isolation

    For months, Israel’s strongest allies had been reluctant to join a wave of global censure against the war. Now, even the Trump administration appears to be growing impatient.Through more than 18 months of war in Gaza, Israel has faced intense criticism from foreign leaders and aid groups but has rarely experienced sustained public censure, let alone concrete repercussions, from its close allies.Until now.In recent weeks, partners such as the United States, Britain and France have become more willing to place Israel under overt pressure, culminating in President Trump’s call on Sunday for the war to wind down.“Israel, we’ve been talking to them, and we want to see if we can stop that whole situation as quickly as possible,” Mr. Trump told reporters in New Jersey shortly before boarding Air Force One.Those comments contrast with the public position Mr. Trump held entering office in January, when he blamed Hamas rather than Israel for the war’s continuation. He was also careful to present a united front with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.Mr. Trump’s latest intervention came hours before the German government, normally a steadfast supporter of Israel, expressed unusually strong criticism of Israel’s expanded attacks in Gaza. “What the Israeli Army is doing in the Gaza Strip right now — I honestly don’t understand what the goal is in causing such suffering to the civilian population,” said Friedrich Merz, Germany’s new chancellor, during an interview broadcast on television on Monday.The German shift came days after a similarly worded intervention from the right-wing Italian government, another ally of Israel that has previously avoided such strong condemnation of Israel. “Netanyahu must halt the raids on Gaza,” said Antonio Tajani, the Italian foreign minister, in an interview posted on his ministry website. “We need an immediate cease-fire and the release of hostages by Hamas, which must leave Gaza.”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

    Macron Plays Down Video of Shove From Wife: ‘It’s Nonsense’

    The French president, Emmanuel Macron, was pushed in the face as he left a plane in Vietnam. The bigger issue, he said, was the reaction, part of a string of disinformation by “crazy people.”A video showed President Emmanuel Macron of France being pushed in the face by his wife, Brigitte, moments before they stepped off a plane in Vietnam.Associated PressThe door of a plane carrying the French president, Emmanuel Macron, had just been opened by staff in Hanoi, Vietnam, when two hands reached out and pushed Mr. Macron smack in the face.He looked stunned at first. Then he looked up at a camera filming the scene from outside on Sunday and waved.The video spread quickly. The hands belonged to the French first lady, Brigitte Macron.On Monday, Mr. Macron said that the video had captured him and his wife “bickering and rather, joking around,” something, he said, “we often do.”“I’m surprised by it, it turns into some kind of global catastrophe where people are even coming up with theories to explain it,” he said on Monday. “It’s nonsense.”Mr. Macron, whose arrival in Vietnam marked the start of a five-day state trip to Southeast Asia, said it was the latest in a string of disinformation put out by “crazy people” targeting him in recent weeks. The footage was real, he said, but the interpretations were fake.Two weeks ago, Mr. Macron traveled with the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, and the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, on a train. A video of them showed a tissue lying on a table in their cabin, and some social media accounts described it as a “bag of cocaine.”The Élysée Palace, the president’s office, put out a rare social media post at the time, stating, “When European unity becomes inconvenient, disinformation goes so far as to make a simple tissue look like drugs. This fake news is being spread by France’s enemies, both abroad and at home. We must remain vigilant against manipulation.”Mr. Macron also cited a video of his lingering handshake with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at a meeting in Tirana, Albania, as another example of disinformation.“It’s been three weeks — if you look at the international agenda of the president of the French Republic, from Kyiv to Tirana to Hanoi, there are people who have watched the videos and believe that I shared a bag of cocaine, that I had a ‘mano a mano’ with a Turkish president and that right now I’m having a fight with my wife. None of this is true,” he told reporters on Monday.“So everyone needs to calm down and focus on the real news.”Still, the video lit up conservative talk show channels across France on Monday.Ivan Rioufol, a right-wing political columnist, said the video clip implied “there may be domestic violence against men.”The incident on the plane suggested that there was an imbalance in the relationship between Mr. Macron and his wife, Mr. Rioufol told the Europe 1 television channel. Mr. Macron “cannot even command respect from his wife when there are cameras in front of him,” Mr. Rioufol said.Ségolène Le Stradic More

  • in

    Europe Secured a Tariff Delay From Trump, but Can It Now Make a Deal?

    Officials from the European Union and the United States will start a new negotiating push on Monday, after President Trump delayed until July 9 the 50 percent tariffs he imposed on the bloc.When President Trump this weekend delayed 50 percent tariffs on the European Union by more than a month, officials on both sides of the Atlantic billed the move as an opportunity to kickstart discussions and reach a trade deal.“Talks will begin rapidly,” Mr. Trump said on Truth Social on Sunday night, after speaking by phone with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission.And Paula Pinho, a spokeswoman for the European Commission, said at a news conference on Monday that the discussion between the two leaders offered “a new impetus for the negotiations.”But the path toward de-escalation remains fraught. The United States and the European Union still have different priorities, ones that could remain an obstacle to a rapid agreement. And it is not clear that either the demands or offers on the table have changed.The goal is for the two sides to reach some solution before July 9, when the 50 percent levies are now set to take effect — delayed from the June 1 date Mr. Trump had set when he first announced them last week.Discussions are poised to resume immediately. Maros Sefcovic, the E.U.’s trade commissioner, was set to have a phone call Monday afternoon with Howard Lutnick, the U.S. commerce secretary.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

    How a Booker Prize-Winning Work From India Redefined Translation

    An extraordinary author-translator collaboration produced a book, “Heart Lamp,” that was lauded for enriching the English language.Banu Mushtaq’s book “Heart Lamp” last week became the first story collection to win the International Booker Prize. It was also the first work translated from Kannada, a southern Indian language, to receive the award.But “Heart Lamp” is unusual for another reason. It is not a translation of an existing book. Instead, Ms. Mushtaq’s translator, Deepa Bhasthi, selected the stories that make up “Heart Lamp” from among Ms. Mushtaq’s oeuvre of more than 60 stories written over three decades and first published in Kannada-language journals.The collaboration that won the two women the world’s most prestigious award for fiction translated into English represents an extraordinary empowerment of Ms. Bhasthi in the author-translator relationship.It also shows the evolution of literary translation in India as a growing number of works in the country’s many languages are being translated into English. That has brought Indian voices to new readers and enriched the English language.“I myself have broken all kinds of stereotypes, and now my book has also broken all stereotypes,” Ms. Mushtaq said in a phone interview.Ms. Mushtaq, 77, is an author, lawyer and activist whose life epitomizes the fight of a woman from a minority community against social injustice and patriarchy. The stories in “Heart Lamp” are feminist stories, based on the everyday lives of ordinary women, many of them Muslim.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