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*As Harvard President Faces Pressure to Resign, Some Faculty Show Support*

Claudine Gay, Harvard’s president, faced rising pressure after her answers to questions about antisemitism. Some faculty members signed a petition supporting her.

The president of Harvard University, Claudine Gay, faced escalating pressure on Sunday to resign as prominent alumni, donors and politicians called for her ouster. But a group of faculty members rallied to support her, arguing that she was being railroaded for a moment of poorly worded remarks about antisemitism.

The body that could ultimately decide Dr. Gay’s fate, the Harvard Corporation, is scheduled to meet on Monday.

As critics of Dr. Gay doubled down, an effort was underway to save her job. As of Sunday evening, more than 500 members of the Harvard faculty had signed a petition urging “in the strongest possible terms” to “resist political pressures that are at odds with Harvard’s commitment to academic freedom.” Harvard has about 2,300 faculty members.

Dr. Gay has apologized for her remarks before a congressional committee last Tuesday, which she acknowledged were inadequate.

“I am sorry,” Dr. Gay said in an interview that the campus newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, published on Friday. “When words amplify distress and pain, I don’t know how you could feel anything but regret,” she said. Dr. Gay is the first Black woman to lead Harvard and took on the role less than six months ago.

As her position grew increasingly tenuous, the fallout from last week’s hearing deepened. Late Saturday, the president of the University of Pennsylvania, M. Elizabeth Magill, resigned. And calls from donors for the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sally Kornbluth, to step aside also grew louder.

The eruption over Dr. Gay’s remarks came after she seemed to equivocate before Congress when she was asked whether university policies forbade calling for the genocide of Jewish people.

“One down. Two to go,” said Representative Elise Stefanik, the New York Republican who led some of the most pointed questioning during the hearing, when all three presidents strained to answer how their universities would handle incidents of antisemitism. Ms. Stefanik, a graduate of Harvard, said on the social media site X that the resignation of Ms. Magill was “the bare minimum of what is required.”

Representatives for some of the most prominent Harvard Corporation members declined to comment. Dr. Gay declined to comment through a Harvard spokesman.

Within the last several days, Congressional Republicans have opened an investigation into the three institutions and major donors have threatened to rescind multimillion-dollar gifts — a rapid turn of events that has stunned academia and emboldened critics of elite universities who argue that campuses are not confronting antisemitic rhetoric in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza.

It was during the proceeding on Capitol Hill last week that Ms. Stefanik hammered the three presidents with questions that precipitated the current controversy. Ms. Stefanik said that in campus protests, students had chanted support for intifada, an Arabic word that means uprising and that many Jews hear as a call for violence against them.

“At Harvard,” Ms. Stefanik asked Dr. Gay, “does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no?”

*Israel Says Strikes Are Targeting Three Hamas Strongholds*

The Israeli military said it had taken control of the area surrounding the former headquarters of Hamas in Gaza City, and that its forces were engaged in intense battles in three areas of the Gaza Strip where it said the group still had “strongholds,” including in the south, where the United Nations has warned of an increasingly perilous humanitarian situation.

The Israeli military now controls the area in Gaza City surrounding Palestine Square, home to municipal offices and the headquarters for Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in the enclave, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said at a news conference late Sunday.

Israeli forces are now focused, he said, on fighting in three areas: Jabaliya and Shajaiye, two neighborhoods in northern Gaza, and in Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza.

Jabaliya, a densely populated area just north of Gaza City, has been struck relentlessly by Israeli forces since the first weeks of the war, including with at least two 2,000-pound bombs during one airstrike last month, according to a New York Times analysis. Israeli troops have also targeted Shajaiye, a residential area, since the start of their ground invasion in late October.

Israel has yet to find Mr. Sinwar, whom they believe is hiding in southern Gaza, and officials said last week that Israeli forces had surrounded his house in the Khan Younis region, although his location was unknown. Admiral Hagari said that capturing or killing him is still a goal of the war, which has entered its third month.

The director of Israel’s national security council, Tzahi Hanegbi, has rejected the idea that the lives of Mr. Sinwar and other top Hamas leaders could be spared if they went into exile outside Gaza — as Yasir Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, did in 1982 during a war between Israel and Lebanon.

“I believe that Sinwar isn’t a partner for a model of that kind,” Mr. Hanegbi told Israel’s Channel 12 in an interview that aired this past weekend. “But if we kill him, which is the intention, the leadership that succeeds him might understand that in order to be spared his fate it needs to leave the Gaza Strip humiliated, but at least to save its life.”

Israel has been conducting aerial and ground attacks on Gaza since Oct. 7, the day that Hamas-led attacks killed 1,200 people in Israel, according to Israeli officials. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans have fled to the southern part of the enclave, to zones that the Israeli military said would be safe.

Instead, Gazans have struggled to find cover and security as Israel has expanded the war. Already displaced, tens of thousands of people in and around Khan Younis have moved to areas near Rafah on the border with Egypt, heeding the latest warnings from Israel to evacuate.

The availability of shelter, food and medical treatment near Rafah is collapsing, stirring fears of a potential mass displacement into Egypt, United Nations officials warned on Sunday. The Gazans who have arrived in Rafah have only found more death, hunger and desperation. At least 15,000 people, and possibly thousands more, have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, according to the health authorities there.

On Saturday, Admiral Hagari said videos that had appeared on social media in recent days of men in their underwear, some kneeling, as they surrendered in northern Gaza, had not been distributed by the Israeli military. He confirmed that the images were of men who had been detained in Jabaliya and Shajaiye. After Israeli forces searched them, Admiral Hagari said, “dozens who are terrorists” were arrested, while the rest were released. He declined to elaborate.

The smoldering tensions inflamed across the Middle East by the war in Gaza are intensifying, after Israel warned that skirmishes along the Lebanese border could not continue and the Houthi militia in Yemen made good on threats to step up its attacks against shipping in the Red Sea.

The chief of staff of Israel’s military, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said on a visit to the northern border with Lebanon that continued violence by the powerful Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia risked pushing his forces to make “very clear change” in the confrontation.

*The Theological Truth We Must Press During War*

I am ordained, but I do not pastor a church. Still, I am often invited to be a guest speaker or lecturer in congregations and universities. Lately, when people ask me questions afterward, they want to know my opinion about the war between Israel and Hamas. I am happy to answer them. Members of the clergy aren’t shut off from the world, and I don’t think our words should be either — we can be a force for good.

The United States is a better nation because of the work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement. Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s resistance to apartheid helped transform South Africa.

The church has also known deep failure. Christianity’s dark history of antisemitism spanned centuries. And my family has personal experience with a different strain of evil, as I am a descendant of enslaved persons owned by Christian ministers.

And yet, history unfolds before us, giving properly humbled churches chances to begin again. We are at such a moment with the war in Gaza. So if our congregants want to know what we think about the war that began with Hamas’s terrorist attacks, what is the appropriate response? How might churches engage with a complex history that has so many competing claims?

The fraught history of the Middle East may seem to be beyond the expertise of most clergy members. The standard preparatory divinity degrees focus on things such as understanding biblical texts, articulating theology and creating programs to care for the poor. Most pastors counsel parents and struggling couples, not presidents and prime ministers.

Church work may seem like poor preparation for analyzing international politics, but it is actually what makes members of the clergy useful in this moment. We claim to answer to a higher calling than the needs of any particular nation-state. Our concerns are free to range widely, since we know that empathy need not be bound by any political borders.

A central teaching of Christianity arising from Genesis, a text it shares with its Jewish neighbors, maintains that every person, regardless of country of origin, is made in the image of God and deserving of respect. We are not alone in this belief. Other religious and secular traditions have articulated a similar idea. This provides an opportunity for cooperation. The belief in the inestimable worth of human beings can be a moral anchor in the turbulent seas of conflicting concerns.

There is no more crucial time to press this basic truth than in times of war, when the humanity of one’s opponents gets tossed to the side. Contending for the dignity of Palestinian and Israeli civilians is a theological act when the goals of victory and of the protection of the innocent struggle with each other for supremacy. Giving equal value to human beings on both sides of the conflict does not entail making moral equivalences between Israel and Hamas. It requires considering the lives of noncombatants in Israel and Gaza as equally sacred.

George Zabelka was a Catholic chaplain for the United States Air Force during World War II. While stationed on Tinian Island, he ministered to the airmen who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, giving them his blessing before the attack. He realized his tragic error when he was forced to face the loss of civilian life those bombs caused. He thought to himself, “My God, what have we done?”

Why had he supported the bombing? He explained, “I was told it was necessary — told openly by the military and told implicitly by my church’s leadership.” During a time of war, Father Zabelka felt pressured to trade in his religious principles (love for enemies and mercy toward those who suffer) and instead think of his own “side.”

During the Vietnam War, Dr. King saw the tremendous danger of sacrificing morals for pragmatics. After reflecting on the tremendous loss of innocent life in Vietnam, he said: “The casualties of principles and values are equally disastrous and injurious. Indeed, they are ultimately more harmful because they are self-perpetuating. If the casualties of principle are not healed, the physical casualties will continue to mount.”

After the horrible events of Oct. 7, over 2,000 evangelical leaders issued a statement correctly condemning the actions of Hamas. They asserted Israel’s right to self-defense and affirmed that the people of the Middle East had “dignity and personhood,” but that statement did not speak explicitly about how that personhood ought to affect the conduct of the war. I would have liked to see the group outline how the humanity of all those involved places moral limits on military actions during wartime.

*Why Biden Should Make an Immigration Deal With Republicans*

Over the last few months, the incredulous question — How can Donald Trump possibly be leading the polls; there must be some mistake — has given way to the clear reality: Something in American life would need to change for Joe Biden to be favored for re-election in November 2024.

The good news for Biden is that it’s easy to imagine developments that would help his re-election bid. Notwithstanding a fashionable liberal despair about how bad vibes are deceiving Americans about the state of the economy, there’s plenty of room for improvements — in inflation-adjusted wages, interest rates, the stock market — that could sweeten the country’s economic mood. (Just sustaining the economic trajectory of the last few months through next summer would almost certainly boost Biden’s approval ratings.)

The looming Trump trials, meanwhile, promise to refocus the country’s persuadable voters on what they dislike about the former president; that, too, has to be worth something in the swing states where Biden is currently struggling.

In both those cases, though, the president doesn’t have much control over events. No major economic package is likely to pass Congress, and whatever influence you think his White House did or didn’t exert over Trump’s indictments, Biden staffers won’t be supervising jury selection.

There is an issue that’s hurting Biden, however, where the Republican Party is (officially, at least) quite open to working with the president, provided that he’s willing to break with his own party’s interest groups: the security of the southern border, where Border Patrol apprehensions remain stubbornly high even as the president’s approval ratings on immigration sit about 30 points underwater.

There is a commonplace interpretation of the immigration debate that treats the unpopularity of an uncontrolled border primarily as an optics problem: People are happy enough to have immigrants in their own communities, but they see border disorder on their television screens and it makes them fearful about government incompetence. Sometimes this interpretation comes packaged with the suggestion that the people who worry most about immigration are rural voters who rarely see a migrant in real life, as opposed to liberal urbanites who both experience and appreciate diversity.

The last year or so of blue-city immigration anxiety has revealed the limits of this interpretation: Place enough stress on New York or Chicago, and you will get demands for immigration control in even the most liberal parts of the country.

But really, there’s never been good reason to think that immigration anxiety only manifests itself telescopically, among people whose main exposure to the trend is alarmist Fox News chyrons.

Consider a new paper from Ernesto Tiburcio and Kara Ross Camarena, respectively a Tufts University economics Ph.D and a Defense Department analyst, which uses Mexican-government ID data to track the flow of Mexican migrants into counties in the United States, and finds that exposure to immigrants increases conservatism among natives. As the migrant flow goes up, so does the vote for Republicans in House elections: “A mean inflow of migrants (0.4 percent of the county population) boosts the Republican Party vote share in midterm House elections by 3.9 percentage points.” And the inflow also shifts local policy rightward, reducing public spending and shifting money toward law enforcement as opposed to education.

This suggests that a pro-immigration liberalism inevitably faces a balancing act: High rates of immigration make native voters more conservative, so a policy that’s too radically open is a good way to elect politicians who prefer the border closed.

You can see this pattern in U.S. politics writ large. The foreign-born population in the United States climbed through the Obama presidency, to 44 million from 38 million, and as a share of the overall population it was nearing the highs of the late 19th and early 20th century — a fact that almost certainly helped Donald Trump ride anti-immigration sentiment to the Republican nomination and the presidency.

Then under Trump there was some stabilization — the foreign-born population was about the same just before Covid-19 hit as it had been in 2016 — which probably help defuse the issue for Democrats, increase American sympathy for migrants, and make Biden’s victory possible. But since 2020 the numbers are rising sharply once again, and the estimated foreign-born share of the American population now exceeds the highs of the last great age of immigration. Which, again unsurprisingly, has pushed some number of Biden voters back toward Trump.

*For Palestinians, the Future Is Being Bulldozed*

The men came alone that morning, leaving families and sheep behind, and climbed the hill to see what was left of their village. On the sun-bleached crest, they found a scene of wreckage: The windows of the makeshift clinic had been smashed, household furniture lay shattered; sections of the schoolhouse had been burned to ash. There were drifts of clothing and stray shoes spread on the ground throughout the abandoned village, small things dropped in haste when the families fled.

The Palestinians who live (or lived) in this hilltop hamlet had decamped in terror a few weeks earlier. A gang of Israeli settlers — their neighbors — had been tormenting them for weeks, they explained, beating them up and threatening murder if they didn’t leave.

Similar scenes are playing out across the West Bank these days as Israeli settlers, backed and sometimes aided by soldiers, force Arabs out of villages, farmlands and herding pastures. Human rights monitors say they are documenting an apparently coordinated campaign to bring vast swaths of land under the control of Jewish settlements (all of which are illegal under international law, and some of which are also illegal under Israeli law) while forcing Palestinians into densely populated cities and towns.

I was visiting the occupied territory that morning late last month for the first time since reporting here two decades ago. Insofar as one can still traverse the increasingly checkpoint-choked and claustrophobic West Bank, I’d been roaming around talking with Palestinians and trying to speak with settlers, who tended to rebuff conversation. Statehood has long been promised to Palestinians and is still invoked by U.S. officials in increasingly hollow platitudes. But what land remains for Palestinians, what rights do Palestinians have, what possibilities for collective betterment — indeed, what future — can Palestinians see?

It’s not a revelation to suggest that the dream of a Palestinian state, rooted in the West Bank, may turn out to be something we just talked about while a harder destiny slowly manifested. But what if the alternative to Palestinian sovereignty is not, as I’ve long supposed, a slow and messy acceptance of a single state for everybody but instead more displacement and death? I used to assume the international community, for all the fecklessness it has shown here, would stop Palestinians from falling too far, being killed in numbers that were too great, losing too much territory. Now I look at Gaza, and I look at the West Bank, and I’m not so sure.

All of that was playing in my mind as I watched the men of Khirbet Zanuta trudge up the hill to try to get home — only to be met by representatives of the various forces arrayed against them: Israeli military power, religious zealots and faceless technology.

On the hilltop, an official with Israel’s Civil Administration awaited them in boots and camouflage. The administration is the powerful bureaucratic arm of Israel’s military occupation and, given the dysfunction of Palestinian officialdom and Israeli oppression, it is the closest simulacrum of governance that many Palestinians experience.

“How did he know we were coming?” the village head, Fayez Til, told me he wondered as he walked over to the official. Mr. Til was plainly dressed and distinctly unarmed, in comparison with his visitor. He speaks Hebrew and studied nursing at Hebron University and treated patients at the village clinic before the settlers started marauding.

The uniformed visitor laid down the law in soft, even tones: If you insist on coming home, he told Mr. Til with an air of generosity, you can — so long as you accept its trashed condition. “It’s as-is,” he said, as if he were selling a house. Army drones had photographed every detail, he explained. If the residents moved so much as a stone or pulled a tarp over an unroofed house, it would be considered an illegal construction, and there could be trouble.

Mr. Til and the others were incredulous: What if it rains?, they pressed. What about the summer sun? The official held firm: You move things, you put up a tarp, you break the law. And then, having delivered this discouraging welcome, he drove off.

Mr. Til and the other men paced and muttered, absorbing the official’s message. By fleeing their homes, they had shown that it was possible to frighten them off the land; now their position appeared even more precarious. Fuad Al-Amor, who oversees a council of 24 villages in the South Hebron Hills, including this one, put it succinctly: “It’s easy to leave. It’s not easy to come back.”

Soon a beat-up Isuzu pickup crunched up the hill. Eyes darted and a ripple of attention slid through the morning air: the settlers. Like many Palestinians, the men of the village know their tormentors quite well. It’s usually the same people: their neighbors.

Three settlers hopped down from the truck — young men who, in an American college town, would pass as worse-for-wear frat boys who’d just woken up after a rough night of drinking. Sunburned and insolent, they swaggered around, smoking cigarettes and demanding information from the villagers.

“You don’t live here anymore. You left. What are you doing here?” one of the young men asked Mr. Til. “Where are you sleeping at night?”

“We didn’t leave,” Mr. Til replied quietly. His posture and tone were deferential. At least one of the settlers carried a pistol stuck in the back of his pants.

Still, the West Bank had lingered all these years in my memory as a fundamentally Palestinian expanse, interrupted and speckled with settlements. Not anymore. Visiting in late November, I had the feeling of entering a vast settlement dotted with Arab communities and refugee camps, shrinking remnants of an earlier place.

I shared this impression with Diana Buttu, a lawyer and former adviser to Palestine Liberation Organization negotiators. She replied by describing an unremarkable thing that sounded amazing to me because I never saw it: You could once drive down main roads in the West Bank, she recalled, straight into Palestinian cities. Settler bypass roads built since the 1990s — a nominal period of peace that nevertheless saw settlements expand at an unprecedented clip — routed traffic away from the places where Palestinians lived, restricted or even banned Palestinian cars and helped to choke off Palestinians’ movement.

Ms. Buttu grew up in Canada on stories of the 1948 destruction of her family’s village near Nazareth. “It wasn’t a one-time event. It was uprooting an entire community,” she said. Ms. Buttu was a ubiquitous presence during the peace talks of the early aughts but has come to regret her role in the negotiations. She no longer believes that Israel was bargaining in good faith and regards the talks as a largely theatrical process that kept everybody busy while Palestinians literally lost ground.

“It gave this very false impression that there was movement happening, and it served as a great distraction,” Ms. Buttu said. “The common diplomatic refrain was, ‘It’s OK, it will go with the negotiations.’ More settlements got built, but, ‘It’s OK, because they’ll go with negotiation.’”

Even U.S. observers sympathetic to Palestinians tend to describe the existing oppression as an unmovable reality. But this, too, is inaccurate, for things have clearly gotten worse.

Under the Oslo Accords, which were the agreements that brushed closest to making peace here, the largest chunk of territory in the West Bank, known as Area C, was to gradually transition to Palestinian jurisdiction, albeit with negotiating room for land swaps.

But that logic has since been turned entirely on its head. Israeli settlers, enthusiastically backed by key parts of the far-right Israeli government, are openly seeking to thin the Arab presence from the same land once envisioned as the raw material of a future Palestinian state. The forced displacement of Khirbet Zanuta is part of that movement, known by some hard-line settlers as “the battle for Area C.”

The legalistic contortions altering the landscape of the West Bank are various: designating land a “firing zone” needed for military training; invoking Ottoman law under which the state may seize uncultivated land. Even archaeological sites — of which there is no shortage in the Holy Land — can be used as a justification for displacing Palestinians.

And then there’s the question of permits.

*As Zelensky Heads to Washington, Russia Targets Kyiv With Missiles*

The Ukrainian leader will be appealing for more military support from the United States as an emboldened Russia steps up its attacks on his country.

As President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine heads to Washington on an urgent mission to rally flagging Western support for his nation, the Russian military on Monday targeted the Ukrainian capital with the most intense salvo of ballistic missiles in months.

Explosions boomed over the snow-covered capital, Kyiv, shortly after 4 a.m.: Missiles racing toward the city at several times the speed of sound had been shot out of the sky even before air alarms could sound and send civilians racing for shelter.

The bombardment came hours after a video circulated on Sunday of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, sipping champagne in Moscow and celebrating waning Western support for Kyiv as he declared that Ukraine had “no future.”

All eight missiles aimed at Kyiv, a city of 3.3 million people, were shot down, and 18 Russian attack drones aimed at targets in southern Ukraine were also defeated, the Ukrainian military said. City officials said that at least four people were injured by falling debris in Kyiv.

The attack came just over two weeks after Russian forces targeted Kyiv with 75 drones — the largest number aimed at the capital since Russia launched its full scale invasion nearly two years ago — and less than four days after the Russian Air Force conducted the first major wave of strikes on Kyiv using its heavy bomber fleet in nearly three months.

“This was probably the start of a more concerted campaign by Russia aimed at degrading Ukraine’s energy infrastructure,” Britain’s defense intelligence agency said on social media just hours before Monday’s pre-dawn assault, referring to the recent attacks.

The ability of Ukrainian air defense crews, using a variety of systems provided by Western partners, to shoot down nearly all incoming missiles and drones over the past week, is a vivid reminder of the vital role Kyiv’s allies play in protecting millions from Russian assaults.

But with a White House request for additional military support for Ukraine stalled in Congress, further American assistance is now in doubt.

The European Union will seek to approve some $50 billion in aid for Ukraine in coming days, but Hungary has threatened to veto that effort, adding to a feeling of uncertainty that is pervasive across Ukraine.

Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, gave voice to that sentiment in an interview with the BBC over the weekend.

“We really need the help,” she said. “In simple words, we cannot get tired of this situation, because if we do, we die.” She added: “It hurts us greatly to see the signs that the passionate willingness to help may fade.”

Mr. Putin, who in the video that circulated Sunday declared that he intends to maintain his grip on power for the foreseeable future, also said he believes Ukraine will only grow weaker as Russia grows stronger.

“When you don’t have your own foundations, you don’t have your own ideology, you don’t have your own industry, you don’t have your own money,” he said at an awards ceremony on Friday at the Kremlin, holding a glass of champagne in his hand. “You don’t have anything that’s your own. Then you don’t have a future, but we have a future.”

Mr. Putin launched his war in February 2022 on the false premise that Ukrainian statehood was a fiction, and he has twisted history in an attempt to justify the destruction of a neighboring state that threatens his imperial ambitions.

The spokeswoman for Russia’s foreign ministry, Maria Zakharova, told the Agence France-Presse news agency in a report published over the weekend that the Kremlin had not changed its maximalist goals: the complete political capitulation of Kyiv and the surrender of vast swaths of Ukrainian land to Russia.

The Russian military controls parts of four Ukrainian regions — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. However, Moscow has illegally annexed the entirety of those regions last year and declared them to be part of Russia.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research group, said in its latest analysis that it believed that “Russia’s aims far transcend keeping the territory Russian forces have already seized.”

Fierce fighting continues to rage across the front line as Ukraine increasingly moves into a defensive posture and as Moscow masses troops for another winter offensive.

“The operational situation in the east remains difficult,” Oleksandr Syrsky, the commander of Ukraine’s eastern forces, said on Sunday. “The enemy does not stop conducting offensive operations along the entire front.”

Ukraine’s military said there were nearly 100 clashes with Russian forces over the past 24 hours. Some of the most intense battles were taking place around the embattled city of Avdiivka in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.

While the situation on the battlefield remains deadlocked — with Russia finding it as difficult to advance through heavily fortified lines this winter as Ukrainian forces did last summer — Ukraine’s diplomatic efforts appear to be intensifying.

Mr. Zelensky’s office said he would travel from Argentina, where he attended the weekend inauguration of the country’s newly elected president, Javier Milei, to Washington for meetings on Tuesday to discuss “joint projects for the production of weapons and air defense systems, as well as coordination of the two countries’ efforts next year.”

His office said he “will focus on ensuring the unity of the United States, Europe and the world around supporting Ukraine in its defense against Russian terror and in strengthening the international order based on rules and respect for the sovereignty of each nation.”

Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said that President Biden would meet with Mr. Zelensky as a demonstration of America’s “unshakable commitment” to Ukraine.

“As Russia ramps up its missile and drone strikes against Ukraine, the leaders will discuss Ukraine’s urgent needs and the vital importance of the United States’ continued support at this critical moment,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said.

But that commitment has been cast into doubt as Republicans continue to block a $110.5 billion emergency spending bill that includes an additional $61 billion in aid for Ukraine, insisting it be tied to measures related to U.S. border security.

Mr. Zelensky will also meet with Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, the congressman’s spokesman said in a statement.

While Ukrainians are hopeful that the United States will not abandon them, the resistance of a growing and influential faction of Republicans comes at what was already a difficult moment in a war that shows no signs of easing.

Ukrainian air defense teams managed to shoot down the missiles aimed at Kyiv before dawn on Monday. But Ukrainians know this is just the start of a long, hard winter.

*ATENTAMENTE*
*MAESTRO FEDERICO LA MONT*

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*Israeli Forces Enter Southern Gaza’s Largest City as Fears Grow for Civilians*

Israeli troops are fighting in “the heart” of southern Gaza’s largest city, a military commander announced on Tuesday, describing some of the heaviest combat of the two-month war amid growing concerns that there is almost nowhere left for civilians to flee.

After days of warning civilians to leave the city, Khan Younis, Israeli forces stepped up their attacks overnight. Intense bombing was heard early Tuesday from inside Nasser Hospital, the city’s largest, where many Palestinians who have sought shelter were sleeping in hallways.

In the days since the collapse of a seven-day truce, as Israeli forces have turned their focus to southern Gaza to root out what they say are Hamas fighters holed up there, Biden administration officials have said they had warned Israel to work harder to avoid harming Gazan civilians than it did in the war’s early weeks, and that Israel’s military appeared to be heeding that advice.

But more than 300 people were killed in Gaza each day between Saturday and Monday, according to figures released by Gazan health officials, a daily toll that resembled those from the earlier weeks of the war. The U.N. humanitarian office said that the period from Sunday to Monday afternoon “saw some of the heaviest shelling in Gaza so far.”

Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza, was densely populated before the war, and it has become more crowded as people have fled the north to escape Israel’s bombardment and ground invasion.

Even before Israeli forces said on Tuesday that they were fighting in “the heart” of the city, conditions there were grim, with little access to running water or sanitation. People sleep in the open, and aid workers have largely stopped distributing water and flour because of the intensity of the fighting and Israeli bombardments, U.N. officials have said.

*Accounts of Sexual Violence by Hamas Are Aired Amid Criticism of U.N.*

A meeting at the U.N., organized in part by Sheryl Sandberg, accused the body of ignoring the rape and mutilation of women in the Oct. 7 assault on Israel, and heard gruesome details from witnesses.

The body of one woman had “nails and different objects in her female organs.” In another house, a person’s genitals were so mutilated that “we couldn’t identify if it was a man or a woman.”

Simcha Greinman, a volunteer who helped collect the remains of victims of the Hamas-led Oct. 7 assault on Israel, took long pauses as he spoke those words on Monday at an event at the United Nations.

“Horrific things I saw with my own eyes,” he said, “and I felt with my own hands.”

Shari Mendes, a member of an Israeli military reserve unit tasked with preparing the bodies of fallen female soldiers for burial, said her team saw several who were killed on Oct. 7 “who were shot in the crotch, intimate parts, vagina, or were shot in the breast.” Others had mutilated faces, or multiple gunshots to their heads.

Since the Oct. 7 attack, during which more than 1,200 people were killed and some 240 people were kidnapped, Israeli officials have accused the terrorists of also committing widespread sexual violence — rape and sexual mutilation — particularly against women.

Yet those atrocities have received little scrutiny from human rights groups, or the news media, amid the larger war between Israel and Hamas — and until a few days ago, they had not been specifically mentioned or condemned by UN Women, the United Nations’ women’s rights agency, which has regularly spoken out about the plight of Palestinian women and girls.

Israelis and many Jews around the world say they feel abandoned by an international social justice community — women’s groups, human rights groups, liberal celebrities, among others — whose causes they have supported in crises around the world.

On Monday, some 800 people, including women’s activists and diplomats representing about 40 countries, crowded into a chamber at U.N. headquarters in New York for a presentation laying out the evidence of large-scale sexual violence, with testimony from witnesses like Ms. Mendes and Mr. Greinman.

“Silence is complicity,” Sheryl Sandberg, the former Meta executive, told those assembled. She, along with Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, was among the event’s primary organizers. “On Oct. 7, Hamas brutally murdered 1,200 souls and in some cases, they first raped their victims,” Ms. Sandberg added. “We know this from eyewitnesses, we know this from combat paramedics, we would know this from some victims if more had been allowed to live.”

Hamas has denied that its fighters committed sex crimes, which it said would violate Islamic principles.

But ample evidence has been collected, like the bodies of women found partially or fully naked, women with their pelvic bones broken, the accounts of medical examiners and first responders, videos taken by Hamas fighters themselves, and even a few firsthand witnesses like a woman, in a video made public last month by police officials, who said she had watched Hamas terrorists take turns raping a young woman they had captured at a music festival, mutilate her and then shoot her in the head.

Meni Binyamin, the head of the International Crime Investigations Unit of the Israeli police, said in an interview that it had documented “violent rape incidents, the most extreme sexual abuses we have seen,” on Oct. 7, against women and some men. “I am talking about dozens.”

*Reports Say Pope Francis Is Evicting U.S. Cardinal From His Vatican Home*

Word of the action against Cardinal Raymond Burke came after the prelate’s increasingly pointed critiques of the reform-minded pope.

Almost as soon as Pope Francis became the head of the Roman Catholic church in 2013, Raymond Burke, an American cardinal, emerged as his leading critic from within the church, becoming a de facto antipope for frustrated traditionalists who believed Francis was diluting doctrine.

Francis frequently demoted and stripped the American cleric of influence, but this month, the pope apparently finally had enough, according to one high-ranking Vatican official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Francis told a meeting of high-ranking Vatican officials that he intended to throw the cardinal out of his Vatican-subsidized apartment and deprive him of his salary as a retired cardinal.

The news of the possible eviction was first reported by the conservative Italian newspaper La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, which is close to Cardinal Burke and recently sponsored a conference featuring the prelate criticizing a major meeting of bishops convened by Francis. The newspaper’s report comes only weeks after Francis removed another vocal conservative critic, Joseph Strickland, the bishop of Tyler, Texas, after a Vatican investigation into the governance of his diocese.

“If this is accurate, it is an atrocity that must be opposed,” Bishop Strickland said in a post on the social media platform X on Monday. “If it is false information it needs to be corrected immediately.”

The Vatican did not correct it. Asked about the report on Tuesday, the Vatican’s spokesman, Matteo Bruni, declined to confirm or deny it, telling reporters that “I don’t have anything particular to say about that.”

He said questions regarding the report should be put to Cardinal Burke. An email to Cardinal Burke’s secretary was not returned.

Francis told the heads of Vatican offices last week about his decision to punish Cardinal Burke because he was a source of “disunity” in the church, according to The Associated Press, which based its report on an unnamed official who attended the meeting. Another official told The A.P. that Francis later explained that he removed Cardinal Burke’s privileges because he was using them in his campaign against the church.

Corriere della Sera, Italy’s leading daily newspaper, also confirmed the report about the possible eviction with an anonymous prelate, who told the paper that the pope intended to take “measures of an economic nature and canonical penalties” against Cardinal Burke.

*What We Know About Sexual Violence During the Oct. 7 Attacks on Israel*

Israel has accused Hamas of committing abuses against large numbers of women. Hamas denies the allegations.

From the first days after the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, Israel has accused Hamas terrorists of committing widespread sexual violence.

The Israeli authorities say they are investigating reports of sexual assault and have compiled considerable evidence — from witnesses, emergency medical workers and crime scene photographs — that they took place.

But they say it has been extremely difficult to collect the evidence because most of the victims are dead.

Many activists say that too little credence has been given to what they believe was a pattern of widespread rape during the attacks by Hamas.

The activists have complained that some news outlets questioned the veracity of the allegations and that international organizations like the United Nations were too slow to speak up about the issue.

Jewish women’s groups have organized a conference to take place at the United Nations on Monday to focus attention on the issue.

Hamas officials have denied the reports of sexual violence and said that any atrocities were committed by other armed groups that poured into Israel after Hamas fighters breached the barrier fence surrounding Gaza. But extensive witness testimony and documentary evidence of killings, including videos posted by Hamas fighters themselves, support the allegations.

This is what we know.

Israel Accuses Hamas of Mass Rape
Meni Binyamin, the head of the International Crime Investigations Unit of the Israeli police, has said that “dozens” of women and some men were raped by Hamas militants on Oct. 7.

“We are investigating sexual crimes against both women and men perpetrated by Hamas terrorists,” Mr. Binyamin said in an interview with The New York Times. “There were violent rape incidents, the most extreme sexual abuses we have seen, of both women and men. I am talking about dozens.”

“This is an ongoing investigation,” Mr. Binyamin added. “I cannot get into details.”

Mr. Binyamin said a team of investigators had gathered “tens of thousands” of testimonies from survivors and witnesses of the attack, as well as from soldiers and emergency medical workers. He said intelligence officers were combing through banks of video imagery and photographs of the Hamas incursion. They have not shared any information about interviewing victims of rape.

Autopsies, forensic evidence and confessions from captured Hamas fighters also corroborate that sexual crimes were committed, he said.

The Israeli authorities have released little information about specific crimes and victims but in mid-November, police officials shared a video of an Israeli woman who said she had watched Hamas terrorists gang raping a young woman whom they captured during a music festival in the Negev desert. The witness, whom the police did not identify, said she had been hiding during the festival and had seen Hamas terrorists taking turns raping a young woman, mutilating her and then shooting her in the head.

Her testimony was consistent with other witness accounts from the music festival.

Top Israeli politicians, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have accused Hamas of using rape as part of a broader campaign of atrocities.

“We’ve had hundreds massacred, families wiped out in their beds in their homes, women brutally raped and murdered,” Mr. Netanyahu said in early October.

Activists Seek Broader Condemnation
Women’s rights activists have expressed dismay about what they see as a lack of credence given to claims that sexual assault was widespread on Oct. 7. So far, no survivors of rape or assault have spoken publicly about their experiences.

“We have come so far in believing survivors of rape and assault in so many situations,” wrote Sheryl Sandberg, the former Meta executive and a leading voice on women in the workplace, in an opinion piece for CNN. “Yet this time, many are ignoring the stories that these bodies tell us about how these women spent the last moments of their lives.”

“Not loudly condemning the rapes of October 7 — or any rapes — is a massive step backward for the women — and men — of the world,” Ms. Sandberg said.

Many people in Israel and elsewhere have complained that it took too long for organizations like the United Nations to issue condemnations, a delay that they took to imply that the initial reports of sex crimes had not been believed.

U.N. Women, the United Nations organization dedicated to gender equality and female empowerment, issued a statement last week calling for all accounts of gender-based violence that occurred on Oct. 7 to be investigated and prosecuted.

“We are alarmed by the numerous accounts of gender-based atrocities and sexual violence during those attacks,” the organization said.

The statement came a day after the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, acknowledged “numerous accounts of sexual violence during the abhorrent acts of terror by Hamas on 7 October that must be vigorously investigated and prosecuted” in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, posted on X on Nov. 29, “In every other massacre in which such heinous sexual crimes were committed,” U.N. Women had “issued an immediate and harsh condemnation.”

“But when Israeli women are the victims,” he added, the organization “casts doubt on the allegations.”

*Nigeria’s President Calls for Inquiry After Military Strike Kills at Least 85 Civilians*

Many of the victims were women and children gathered for a religious celebration. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu described the attack as a “bombing mishap.”

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of Nigeria on Tuesday called for an investigation into a drone attack by his country’s military that killed scores of civilians on Sunday, the latest in a series of accidental bombings that have hit local populations.

The strike occurred on Sunday evening in a village in the northern state of Kaduna, where armed groups have been rampant. Many of the victims were gathered for a Muslim celebration, according to the local authorities.

As of Tuesday, at least 85 people had been pronounced dead, including children, women and older people, Nigeria’s main emergency body, the National Emergency Management Agency, said in a statement.

At least 66 others were injured, and the search for more bodies was continuing, it said. Although there have been other accidental bombings in the past decade, Amnesty International said that this one was by far the deadliest and that the death toll was closer to 120 people.

Mr. Tinubu called for “a thorough and full-fledged investigation” into what he called a “bombing mishap,” describing the events as “very unfortunate, disturbing and painful,” according to a statement released by the Nigerian presidency.

On Tuesday, Nigeria’s chief of army staff, Lt. Gen. Taoreed Lagbaja, visited Tudun Biri, the village hit by the strike, and admitted the army’s responsibility. He said that aerial patrols had “observed a group of people and wrongly analyzed and misinterpreted their pattern of activities to be similar to that of the bandits.”

Since he was sworn in as president in May, Mr. Tinubu has made tackling insecurity a high priority. Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, with 220 million people, has been tormented by Islamist groups in the east and countless armed gangs carrying out widespread killings and abductions in its northern and western states.

At least 700 civilians were killed from July to September, according to SBM Intelligence, a Nigerian risk consultancy. Kidnappings of priests, teachers, schoolchildren and commuters have plagued the country for years.

Nigeria’s security forces have struggled to contain the violence. Its military is the largest in West Africa and has been a major recipient of American security assistance, but it has also been accused of widespread human rights abuses, including forced abortions and indiscriminate killings.

“Despite reports of civilian casualties from Nigerian Armed Forces airstrikes and other concerns, the flow of U.S. weapons into Nigeria has not slowed,” researchers at Brown University and the Center for International Policy, a Washington-based nonprofit group, wrote in a report published last year.

Isa Sanusi, the country director of Amnesty International in Nigeria, said the strike on Sunday had killed at least 120 civilians, according to his organization’s own tally.

“The Nigerian military is used to not being held to account and getting away with these atrocities,” Mr. Sanusi said in a telephone interview. “That is making them less diligent and more reckless.”

Before the strike on Sunday, at least 90 civilians had been killed in aerial strikes carried out by the Nigerian Air Force in the past five years, according to a Reuters analysis of a tally by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a U.S.-based crisis monitoring organization.

The tally did not include civilian deaths in the three northeastern states where most of the extremist violence has taken place.

*Can Boris Johnson Keep His Cool at U.K.’s Covid Inquiry?*

Britain’s former prime minister will face tough questions when he testifies this week before an official inquiry into the pandemic.

Boris Johnson, the ousted prime minister who led Britain through the pandemic, will testify before an official inquiry on Wednesday, giving his first detailed public account of how he grappled with a rampaging virus that divided his government, laid the seeds for his political downfall and nearly killed him.

Mr. Johnson, who left Parliament earlier this year after he was found to have deliberately misled lawmakers over a series of boozy parties that broke lockdown rules, will face hard questions: Should he have moved faster in imposing a lockdown in March 2020? Did he take the coronavirus seriously enough? Did he even understand basic data about its spread?

He can point to some genuine victories: Britain’s rollout of a vaccine in early 2021 was one of the fastest of any major country. His decision to reopen the British economy later that year — widely criticized in advance amid a spike in Covid cases — was vindicated, as other countries followed suit.

But all told, Mr. Johnson’s performance was unsteady, erratic and even irresponsible at times, according to several former cabinet ministers and aides who have testified in the inquiry since public hearings began in June. Some said his chaotic leadership style may even have contributed to driving up the Covid death toll in the United Kingdom that now stands at 230,193.

“We had a prime minister who didn’t know what to do, and was consumed by Brexit,” said Devi Sridhar, professor of global public health at the University of Edinburgh. “To me, the lesson is: Try to elect leaders who are competent.”

Mr. Johnson is the latest political figure to be scrutinized by the Covid-19 inquiry, an independent, public examination of Britain’s response to the pandemic, led by a former judge, Heather Hallett, that is expected to continue until 2026.

One of the most charismatic communicators in British politics, Mr. Johnson is famous for his clever phrasemaking, humorous asides and sunny optimism. But none of those traits are likely to help him during two days of forensic interrogation, while his mastery of the details — never a strong suit — and his response to potentially hostile questioning could be critical.

“Can he maintain a serious, contrite and vaguely reflective demeanor, or does he get rattled and annoyed?” asked Jill Rutter, a former senior British civil servant and senior research fellow at U.K. in a Changing Europe, a research institute in London. “Does he degenerate into making jokes?”

Mr. Johnson has had time to prepare for the hearing, and his allies have leaked details of his prepared testimony to British newspapers. He may have learned lessons from his appearance in March before a Parliamentary committee, which investigated whether he lied to lawmakers over the lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street. After a strong start, he became irritable and defensive, failing to impress the committee, whose scathing report led to his quitting Parliament.

This time, Mr. Johnson will face some people whose relatives died in the pandemic (he himself was treated in an intensive care unit in April 2020 during a serious bout of Covid-19).

“For someone who likes to play the jokey entertainer, to be the center of attention and to bluster around, I think this is probably about the least ideal setting you could imagine,” Ms. Rutter said.

Though Mr. Johnson is the inquiry’s marquee witness so far, by a long shot, the hearings have produced no shortage of drama, not least because of the release of a trove of text messages between government officials, which has given its lawyers plenty of grist for awkward questions.

Dominic Cummings, Mr. Johnson’s former chief adviser, apologized at the inquiry for WhatsApp messages in which he described senior officials with a string of profanities, often scatological in nature. His disparagement of a female colleague prompted accusations that he had encouraged an atmosphere of misogyny in Downing Street, which Mr. Cummings denied. He insisted he had been “much ruder about men.”

Certainly, Mr. Cummings laid some serious charges on Mr. Johnson’s doorstep, including that he was AWOL during the first days of the pandemic because he was working on a book on Shakespeare that he owed his publisher (Mr. Johnson denies that).

He said that the prime minister played down the severity of the virus, predicting it would “be like swine flu,” and that his views changed direction like a defective shopping cart.

And the government’s chief scientist, Patrick Vallance, wrote in his diary that Mr. Johnson was swayed by the view of some in his Conservative Party that Covid was “just nature’s way of dealing with old people.”

Mr. Cummings’s credibility as a witness was not helped by the fact that he had traveled in violation of lockdown rules and then fell out badly with Mr. Johnson, who fired him. Yet his testimony that the government’s first instinct was to pursue a policy of “herd immunity” — allowing the virus to spread unchecked through the population so people could build up natural immunity — was powerful.

Other witnesses have portrayed Downing Street as an undisciplined workplace led by an idiosyncratic prime minister who struggled to make, and stick to, decisions. According to one senior aide, Mr. Johnson at one point suggested he should be injected with the virus on live television to demonstrate that it did not pose a threat.

For all the attention the inquiry has captured, some experts say the focus on personalities and infighting so far has generated more heat than light. They question whether it will help Britain learn the right lessons to respond more effectively to the next pandemic, or whether it will remain an exercise in blame-shifting and buck-passing.

In part, that is a function of timing. While the pandemic is no longer the country’s No. 1 political issue, the hearings are occurring less than a year before a likely general election. Unlike in the United States, where in 2020 Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Democrat, defeated the Republican incumbent, Donald J. Trump, in part because of his handling of Covid, in Britain, the Conservative Party remains in power.

This means that some of the ministers who are still scheduled to face questioning, most notably Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, will have to face voters and are therefore less inclined to acknowledge any fault.

“Everyone is quite defensive about why it wasn’t their fault,” Professor Sridhar said. “But this wasn’t an individual failure. It was a system failure.”

Mr. Sunak, who was chancellor of the Exchequer at the time of the pandemic, is expected to testify soon. He might be helped by Mr. Johnson’s appearing first. But the stakes are high because Mr. Sunak’s grip over the Tory Party is weak as it badly trails the opposition Labour Party in opinion polls.

One of Mr. Sunak’s policies will almost certainly come under question: the Eat Out to Help Out program, an August 2020 initiative that lured Britons back into restaurants by subsidizing their meals. The policy may have exposed more people to infection, contributing to a second wave that winter. The inquiry was told that England’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, referred to it in his diary as “Eat out to help out the virus.”

“You will get the spectacle of a serving prime minister being subjected to questioning,” Ms. Rutter said. “It’s obviously something he would much rather not have.”

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*Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First*

In the spring of 1989, the Chinese Communist Party used tanks and troops to crush a pro-democracy protest in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Most of the West, across traditional partisan lines, was aghast at the crackdown that killed at least hundreds of student activists. But one prominent American was impressed.

“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it,” Donald J. Trump said in an interview with Playboy magazine the year after the massacre. “Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.”

It was a throwaway line in a wide-ranging interview, delivered to a journalist profiling a 43-year-old celebrity businessman who was not then a player in national politics or world affairs. But in light of what Mr. Trump has gone on to become, his exaltation of the ruthless crushing of democratic protesters is steeped in foreshadowing.

Mr. Trump’s violent and authoritarian rhetoric on the 2024 campaign trail has attracted growing alarm and comparisons to historical fascist dictators and contemporary populist strongmen. In recent weeks, he has dehumanized his adversaries as “vermin” who must be “rooted out,” declared that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” encouraged the shooting of shoplifters and suggested that the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, deserved to be executed for treason.

As he runs for president again facing four criminal prosecutions, Mr. Trump may seem more angry, desperate and dangerous to American-style democracy than in his first term. But the throughline that emerges is far more long-running: He has glorified political violence and spoken admiringly of autocrats for decades.

As a presidential candidate in July 2016, he praised the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as having been “so good” at killing terrorists. Months after being inaugurated, he told the strongman leader of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, that his brutal campaign of thousands of extrajudicial killings in the name of fighting drugs was “an unbelievable job.” And throughout his four years in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump blew through boundaries and violated democratic norms.

What would be different in a second Trump administration is not so much his character as his surroundings. Forces that somewhat contained his autocratic tendencies in his first term — staff members who saw their job as sometimes restraining him, a few congressional Republicans episodically willing to criticize or oppose him, a partisan balance on the Supreme Court that occasionally ruled against him — would all be weaker.

As a result, Mr. Trump’s and his advisers’ more extreme policy plans and ideas for a second term would have a greater prospect of becoming reality.

A Radical Agenda
To be sure, some of what Mr. Trump and his allies are planning is in line with what any standard-issue Republican president would most likely do. For example, Mr. Trump would very likely roll back many of President Biden’s policies to curb carbon emissions and hasten the transition to electric cars. Such a reversal of various rules and policies would significantly weaken environmental protections, but much of the changes reflect routine and longstanding conservative skepticism of environmental regulations.

Other parts of Mr. Trump’s agenda, however, are aberrational. No U.S. president before him had toyed with withdrawing from NATO, the United States’ military alliance with Western democracies. He has said he would fundamentally re-evaluate “NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission” in a second term.

He has said he would order the military to attack drug cartels in Mexico, which would violate international law unless its government consented. It most likely would not.

*Why Haley Is Rising Among the Rivals to Trump*

She has gained with educated and relatively moderate Republicans and independents, but that is also a big liability in today’s G.O.P.

If you dozed off while following the Republican primary, I wouldn’t blame you. But it might be worth perking up for a moment.

Over the last few months, Nikki Haley has gained enough in the polls that she might be on the verge of surpassing Ron DeSantis as Donald J. Trump’s principal rival in the race.

With Ms. Haley still a full 50 percentage points behind Mr. Trump in national polls, her ascent doesn’t exactly endanger his path to the nomination. If anything, she is a classic factional candidate — someone who’s built a resilient base of support by catering to the wishes of a minority of the party. So if you were reading this only on the off chance that Mr. Trump might be in jeopardy, you can doze off again.

But even if it’s still hard to imagine a Haley win, her rise may nonetheless make this race more interesting, especially in the early states, which will begin to vote in six weeks. Ms. Haley is now neck-and-neck with Mr. DeSantis in Iowa, a state he is counting on to reverse a yearlong downward spiral in the polls. She’s well ahead of Mr. DeSantis in New Hampshire and South Carolina, two states where a moderate South Carolinian like her ought to fare relatively well.

Ms. Haley finds herself in an intriguing position. Even without any additional gains over the next 40 days, a result in line with today’s Iowa polling could be enough for her to claim a moral victory heading into New Hampshire and potentially even clear the field of her major rivals. Mr. DeSantis would be hard pressed to continue in the race if he finished 27 points behind Mr. Trump, as the polls show today. And Chris Christie would face pressure to withdraw from the race or risk enabling Mr. Trump, just as he did at this same time and place in 2016. If the stars align, it’s not inconceivable that Ms. Haley could become highly competitive in New Hampshire, where today she and Mr. Christie already combine for around 30 percent of the vote.

The idea that Ms. Haley might win New Hampshire might seem far-fetched but, historically, much crazier things have happened. Late surges in Iowa and New Hampshire are so common that they’re closer to being the norm than the exception. Of course, there’s still a chance that such a surge could belong to Mr. DeSantis, who has earned important Iowa endorsements from the prominent evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats and Gov. Kim Reynolds. It’s also possible that nothing really changes in the next 40 days. But there’s no reason to be terribly surprised if Ms. Haley simply keeps gaining. She’ll have the resources to compete, especially having recently earned the support of the political network founded by the Koch brothers.

For a precedent, John McCain is probably the best analogy. By the numbers, George W. Bush is a strong comparison to Mr. Trump. Both held 60 percent or more of the Republican vote nationwide and started with a seemingly comfortable lead of around 45-15 in New Hampshire. At first, Mr. McCain did not seem to be Mr. Bush’s strongest challenger. But in the end, he won New Hampshire, 49-30, cleared the field, and ultimately won seven states.

Winning seven states would be very impressive for Ms. Haley, just as it was for Mr. McCain. It would also represent a fairly marked shift from today’s currently uncompetitive Republican race. (Mr. Trump would probably win all 50 states if we had a national primary today.) But to state the obvious: Winning seven states would leave her much further from winning the nomination than it probably sounds. And while caveats about Mr. Trump’s legal challenges are worth flagging here, it’s probably something pretty close to the best case for Ms. Haley.

That’s because she has gained traction only by catering to the needs of a party wing, especially one that’s dissatisfied with the party’s front-runner — in other words, an archetypal factional candidate.

These types of candidates are a common feature of contested primaries, as even the most formidable front-runners struggle to appeal to every element of a diverse party. George W. Bush, for instance, was one of the strongest primary candidates on record, but as a Southern evangelical conservative he was always an imperfect fit for Northern moderates, leaving a natural opening in 2000 for a candidate who appealed to that faction: Mr. McCain.

If you look back, you can probably think of a factional candidate in almost every presidential primary cycle. Bernie Sanders, John Kasich, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, Howard Dean, Pat Buchanan and Jesse Jackson are only the beginning of a very long list of candidates who gained a foothold by offering an often-but-not-always disgruntled faction exactly what it wanted.

*Over 60 Journalists Have Been Killed in the Israel-Gaza War. My Friend Was One.
By Lama Al-Arian*

I was sitting in my apartment in Beirut on the evening of Oct. 13 when I read that journalists had been struck by a missile attack in southern Lebanon. My close friend, Issam Abdallah, was working in the area as a cameraman for Reuters to cover the border clashes between Israel and Hezbollah after the war in Gaza began just days earlier. I called him immediately. It was a ritual we had developed over the years: Whether we were on the front lines in Ukraine or Syria, each of us knew to expect a call from the other anytime a disaster struck.

Issam didn’t answer. I couldn’t remember the last time he let one of my calls go to voice mail. Within minutes, cellphone footage of the attack appeared online. In one video, a journalist for Agence France-Presse lies in a pool of blood, screaming that she can’t feel her legs. I listened over and over, desperately trying to find Issam’s voice in the chaos.

Then my doorbell rang. Two of my friends broke the news that Issam had been killed. They shared more footage of the grisly aftermath of the attack. A wave of nausea washed over me as I watched rescue workers wrap Issam and his severed leg in a white sheet, his body charred, barely recognizable.

The next day, I traveled to Khiam, his hometown in southern Lebanon, with hundreds of other mourners, to attend his funeral. Issam was buried in the shade of the ancient olive and pomegranate trees he loved. His family decorated his grave with flowers and his broken cameras and lenses that were destroyed in the strike.

The last time I had been there with Issam, we drank Arabic coffee on the rooftop and flipped over our cups when we were done, pretending to read each other’s fortunes in the residue. He joked that I would become the first female Arab dictator. I said that he’d be the first journalist I’d imprison. We shared our dreams: I wanted to learn jujitsu, read the classics and retire on the Mediterranean. He wanted to take more road trips on his motorbike, adopt more cats and make independent films.

As a journalist, I’m used to reporting the nightmares others live through. I’ve seen mass graves filled with women and children. I’ve walked through entire cities reduced to rubble. I’ve heard the screams of people who have lost everything and everyone they loved in an instant. I used to think that the enormity of the horrors I’ve seen others endure would allow me to bear my own with some perspective when it was my turn.

But it hasn’t. To live through a nightmare and to witness others living through theirs are two very different things. There are limits to the human capacity to feel others’ pain.

*A Mother Can Finally Breathe After the Pandemic*

When Yaneth Flores first moved to Albany, in upstate New York, in 2008, she needed some time to get used to the sleepiness of a small city. She had been working at a fish market near Boston, where she lived after fleeing violence and a bleak economy in El Salvador. She met her husband in Albany and eventually settled into life there.

But ever since the start of the pandemic, she has not been not herself. She and her husband lost five relatives during the height of Covid, and they struggled with grief as the virus spread across the area.

Ms. Flores managed child care duties from home for their young daughter, who was born premature and developed asthma. But the activities that would normally offer a respite, like going to her 11-year-old son’s music recitals, started to feel like burden upon burden.

“Everything that was supposed to be joyful became stressful,” she said. “I couldn’t see it any other way. I couldn’t think, ‘How nice it will be to see my son play violin today.’”

It didn’t occur to Ms. Flores that she could seek mental health care. Her instinct was to repress the grief and the strain of caregiving. In El Salvador, she said, issues around mental health are not taken seriously. In her experience, people tended to stigmatize those who discussed treatment or seeing a therapist as being crazy. “It wasn’t in our culture,” she said.

Still, she wanted to change the way she was feeling, to find relief from the dread of routine tasks. She talked to her husband about finding a therapist.

It wasn’t until this year that a social media post from the Hispanic Federation, a beneficiary of The New York Times Communities Fund, about a mental health workshop it funded called “Una Mente Sana es el Mayor Tesoro a Encontrar” (“A Healthy Mind Is the Greatest Treasure to Find”) gave Ms. Flores the push she needed to seek help. She attended support groups and lessons on how to deal with stress and live a healthy lifestyle.

The workshop helped her better identify symptoms of stress, understand feelings of depression or loneliness and know when to ask for help. “It was a huge change,” she said.

Ms. Flores said she has learned to take five minutes or so whenever she needs to let go of anxieties. “Sometimes we’re drowning and we don’t realize it,” she said. “Being able to breathe, to take charge, to take time for yourself — it’s the best thing that’s happened to me.”

Ms. Flores has embedded herself in the local Latino community. She now works at Capital District Latinos, which is a member organization of the Hispanic Federation, and has found a new appreciation for her surroundings, especially as a mother. “There’s a lot that I identify with now being here,” she said. “There’s mountains. We relish the fall, the wintertime, the summertime.”

When the cold subsides and the warm weather returns, they go camping and take in the scenery on bike rides — the most energizing time of the year for the family. Having confronted her mental health challenges, Ms. Flores said, she now finds it possible to revel in those activities once again.

*Is South Korea Disappearing?*

For some time now, South Korea has been a striking case study in the depopulation problem that hangs over the developed world. Almost all rich countries have seen their birthrates settle below replacement level, but usually that means somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.5 children per woman. For instance, in 2021 the United States stood at 1.7, France at 1.8, Italy at 1.3 and Canada at 1.4.

But South Korea is distinctive in that it slipped into below-replacement territory in the 1980s but lately has been falling even more — dropping below one child per woman in 2018 to 0.8 after the pandemic and now, in provisional data for the second and third quarters of 2023, to just 0.7 births per woman.

It’s worth unpacking what that means. A country that sustained a birthrate at that level would have, for every 200 people in one generation, 70 people in the next one, a depopulation exceeding what the Black Death delivered to Europe in the 14th century. Run the experiment through a second generational turnover, and your original 200-person population falls below 25. Run it again, and you’re nearing the kind of population crash caused by the fictional superflu in Stephen King’s “The Stand.”

By the standards of newspaper columnists, I am a low-birthrate alarmist, but in some ways I consider myself an optimist. Just as the overpopulation panic of the 1960s and 1970s mistakenly assumed that trends would simply continue upward without adaptation, I suspect a deep pessimism about the downward trajectory of birthrates — the kind that imagines a 22nd-century America dominated by the Amish, say — underrates human adaptability, the extent to which populations that flourish amid population decline will model a higher-fertility future and attract converts over time.

In that spirit of optimism, I don’t actually think the South Korean birthrate will stay this low for decades, or that its population will drop from today’s roughly 51 million to the single-digit millions that my thought experiment suggests.

But I do believe the estimates that project a plunge to fewer than 35 million people by the late 2060s — and that decline alone may be enough to thrust Korean society into crisis.

There will be a choice between accepting steep economic decline as the age pyramid rapidly inverts and trying to welcome immigrants on a scale far beyond the numbers that are already destabilizing Western Europe. There will be inevitable abandonment of the elderly, vast ghost towns and ruined high rises and emigration by young people who see no future as custodians of a retirement community. And at some point there will quite possibly be an invasion from North Korea (current fertility rate: 1.8), if its southern neighbor struggles to keep a capable army in the field.

For the rest of the world, meanwhile, the South Korean example demonstrates that the birth dearth can get much worse much faster than the general trend in rich countries so far.

This is not to say that it will, since there are a number of patterns that set South Korea apart. For instance, one oft-cited driver of the Korean birth dearth is a uniquely brutal culture of academic competition, piling “cram schools” on top of normal education, driving parental anxiety and student misery, and making family life potentially hellish in ways that discourage people from even making the attempt.

Another is the distinctive interaction between the country’s cultural conservatism and social and economic modernization. For a long time the sexual revolution in South Korea was partly blunted by traditional social mores — the nation has very low rates of out-of-wedlock births, for instance. But eventually this produced intertwining rebellions, a feminist revolt against conservative social expectations and a male anti-feminist reaction, driving a stark polarization between the sexes that’s reshaped the country’s politics even as it’s knocked the marriage rate to record lows.

It also doesn’t help that South Korea’s conservatism is historically more Confucian and familial than religious in the Western sense; my sense is that strong religious belief is a better spur to family formation than traditionalist custom. Or that the country has long been out on the bleeding edge of internet gaming culture, drawing young men especially deeper into virtual existence and further from the opposite sex.

But now that I’ve written these descriptions, they read not as simple contrasts with American culture so much as exaggerations of the trends we’re experiencing as well.

We too have an exhausting meritocracy. We too have a growing ideological division between men and women in Generation Z. We too are secularizing and forging a cultural conservatism that’s anti-liberal but not necessarily pious, a spiritual but not religious right. We too are struggling to master the temptations and pathologies of virtual existence.

So the current trend in South Korea is more than just a grim surprise. It’s a warning about what’s possible for us.

*Best Theater of 2023*

Many of the plays and musicals that resonated this year deftly married elements of drama and comedy.

Year of the Dramedy
If 2023 was a tragedy in the world, on New York stages it was a dramedy year, highlighted not only by serious plays with great jokes, but also by flat-out comedies with dark underpinnings. And though not all 10 shows (and various bonuses) on my mostly chronological list below fit that mongrel category, even the gravest of them seem to have gotten the memo that theater should not be a bore or a drag. It should thrill you into thought or, as the case may be, solace.

‘Love’ by Alexander Zeldin
On the cold February night I saw “Love,” New York City was teeming with people in need of warm places to be. That was also the case inside the Park Avenue Armory, which had been reconfigured to represent a temporary facility for people without homes. Its residents included an unemployed man in his 50s, his barely-holding-on mother, a pregnant woman, two refugees — and us. Seated adjacent to the facility’s dingy common room, we became, in the playwright’s own staging, fellow residents. But if the others eyed us like we might steal a precious sandwich, we could blithely leave when the play was over. Or not so blithely: Even heading home, with my heart retuned to tiny heartbreaks instead of huge ones, I had to wonder why it was easier to engage the subject of homelessness inside the Armory than on Park Avenue. (Read our review of “Love” and our interview with Zeldin.)

‘A Doll’s House’ by Henrik Ibsen
A chair and a door — and a riveting star — were all it took to make a nearly 150-year-old drama set in Norway come fully alive in New York City today. True, the chair rotated mysteriously for 20 minutes before the dialogue began. Nor did it hurt that the star sitting on it, like an angry bird in a giant cuckoo clock, was Jessica Chastain. And yes, the famous door through which her Nora walked out of her marriage and into a new life was a staging marvel in Jamie Lloyd’s surgically precise Broadway production. But finer than all that was the chilling fact that Ibsen’s text, as adapted by Amy Herzog, sounded as if it had been written yesterday — and could still be transpiring in real life tomorrow. (Read our review of “A Doll’s House” and our interview with Chastain.)

‘How to Defend Yourself’ by Liliana Padilla
After a classmate is raped by fraternity bros, two sorority sisters organize a self-defense club. And though they aren’t great teachers, a great deal is learned by the other young women (and two would-be male allies) who attend intermittently over the course of several weeks. The New York Theater Workshop audience, too, learned a great deal, as the questions bedeviling so many relationships — the complexity of consent and the meaning of control — played out before us in this perfectly timed hot-button play. But what gave the production its poetic gravitas was a gasp-inducing coda, gorgeously staged by the playwright along with Rachel Chavkin and Steph Paul, in which the culture of sexual violence was traced to a source you could never again regard as innocent. (Read our review of “How to Defend Yourself.”)

‘Primary Trust’ by Eboni Booth
It’s sometimes true that an actor is great in a not-great play. But it seemed to me that William Jackson Harper, giving one of the year’s best performances, both dignified and deep, achieved it because of — not despite — the material, quiet and apparently whimsical though it was. In this Roundabout Theater Company production, directed by Knud Adams, he played a lonely clerk in a ragged suburb whose best friend turns out to be imaginary but whose sadness is all too real. Twee as that sounds, the glory of both the writing and acting was in letting us experience the character’s sadness and, even more, the hard work behind his efforts to stay afloat in a painful world. (Read our review of “Primary Trust” and our interview with Harper.)

As in many reunion dramas, the 20-years-later get-together of some Catholic school classmates in this compelling, sometimes terrifying new play included an uninvited guest. Well, really two, if you count the supernatural one: a psychopomp, or collector of souls of the recently dead. The struggle for maturity that’s the stuff of such stories, though hilariously enacted in Eric Ting’s staging for the Signature Theater, became something existential in this bigger, chillier “Big Chill,” as “the age of poor choices seeking their consequences” pointed toward the ultimate graduation. (Read our review of “The Comeuppance.”)

‘Just for Us’ by Alex Edelman
“A Jew walks into a Nazi bar” might have been the start of a standup routine for the comedian Alex Edelman. Instead, the story of his infiltrating a white supremacist meeting in Queens became an urgent one-man Broadway show, one of the most thoughtful (and troubling) explorations of antisemitism in a year that offered too much relevant material. Despite its three-jokes-per-minute, rabbi-on-Ritalin aesthetic — the show was directed by Adam Brace, with Alex Timbers as creative consultant — it eventually revealed itself as a consideration of the central Jewish value of empathy. Is it unconditional? Do even the hateful deserve it? Do we? (Read our review of “Just for Us” and our interview with Edelman.)

‘Infinite Life’ by Annie Baker
One of the characters is reading George Eliot, another a self-help book, another a mystery. But the real mystery is how a story about women reading, sleeping, chatting and dealing with pain became one of the most compelling plays of the year, in James Macdonald’s production for Atlantic Theater Company. Of course, unlikely setups for powerful drama are an Annie Baker trademark, but in considering the uses of suffering (if any) and of desire (if any) she took her technique to what must surely be its logical and triumphant limit — until next time. (Read our review of “Infinite Life” and our conversation with the cast.)

‘Purlie Victorious’ by Ossie Davis

Ossie Davis’s 1961 comedy is about two thefts: one petty and one — the theft of the freedom of generations of Black Americans — definitely not. Welding the hilarious farce of the first to a sense of fierce outrage over the second was a risk Davis pulled off beautifully, as this season’s nigh-perfect revival, unaccountably its first on Broadway, demonstrated. Directed by Kenny Leon, it also gave its stars great, rangy roles to chew: Leslie Odom Jr. as the wolfish Purlie, a preacher who becomes, in essence, a prosecutor; and Kara Young, usually seen in dramas, as a daffy yokel finding the sweet spot where Lucille Ball meets Moms Mabley. (Read our review of “Purlie Victorious” and our interview with Odom and Young.)

‘Jaja’s African Hair Braiding’ by Jocelyn Bioh
On a blistering day in the summer of 2019, at a salon in Harlem, five women style the braids, cornrows, twists and bobs of seven customers. Their workplace cross talk and byplay are both hilarious, making this Manhattan Theater Club production, directed by Whitney White, a kind of “Cheers” for today and a comic highlight of the season. But as in Jocelyn Bioh’s earlier plays, which cleverly weave African concerns into familiar American forms, this one built its welcome laughs on the back of a serious subject: the great opportunities and grave perils of immigration. (Read our review of “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” and our look at the wigs used in the production.)

‘Stereophonic’ by David Adjmi
Five musicians not unlike the members of Fleetwood Mac circa 1976 come together with two engineers to make what will turn out to be an epochal album. In the process, they unmake themselves. And though “Stereophonic,” in Daniel Aukin’s thrilling production for Playwrights Horizons, delivers enormous pleasure from that soap opera setup — and the spot-on songs by Will Butler — it’s a much deeper work than other behind-the-scenes, making-of dramedies. Under cover of jokes and the expert polyphony of the overlapping dialogue, David Adjmi leads us to a story about the disaster of maleness, and thus of mating, behind the pop-rock revolution of the period. Spoiler alert: The revolution is ongoing. (Read our review of “Stereophonic” and our interview with Adjmi.)

Sondheim forever
Most of Stephen Sondheim’s musicals were marginal financial successes or outright flops in their original productions. But in this second post-Sondheim year, it’s been hit after hit. First, in the spring, came Thomas Kail’s ravishingly sung, deeply emotional and strangely hilarious Broadway revival of “Sweeney Todd,” starring Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford. (Aaron Tveit and Sutton Foster take over in February.) This was no “Teeny Todd” but the huge, real thing. Then, in the fall, came the gleaming Broadway transfer of “Merrily We Roll Along” from New York Theater Workshop. After what seemed like zillions of attempts by many hands to fix that 1981 show, the director Maria Friedman figured it out, locating its long-lost core in Jonathan Groff’s mesmerizing, furious performance. (He’d make a great Sweeney.) Finally, and least expectedly, “Here We Are,” Sondheim’s final effort, left incomplete at his death in November 2021, showed up at the Shed with a clever book by David Ives and an impossibly chic production directed by Joe Mantello. Its wit, its openness to everything and its ageless invention (one song rhymes “Lamborghinis” with “vodkatinis”) made “Here We Are” a worthy send-off to Sondheim — and, like “Sweeney” and “Merrily,” a tough ticket despite jaw-dropping prices. It’s almost as if we don’t want him gone. (Read our reviews of “Sweeney Todd,” “Merrily We Roll Along” and “Here We Are.”)

Also noted
Shows you don’t love may yet feature indelible performances. Among them this year, for me, were Dianne Wiest as Meryl Kowalski, larcenous scene stealer and would-be star, in “Scene Partners”; Miriam Silverman as Mavis, a hipster in her own mind, in “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window”; Jordan Donica as Lancelot, a lion ripping huge bites of dramatic flesh (and song) with his teeth, in “Camelot”; and Jodie Comer as Tessa Ensler, a ferocious barrister victimized by the law, in “Prima Facie.” … There are also shows you love so much you can hardly imagine them recast — until they brilliantly are. Case in point this year was Ruthie Ann Miles as a crafty, heartbroken Margaret in the Encores! production of “The Light in the Piazza.” … A successful recasting of another type was David Korins’s transformation of the Broadway Theater into a Studio 54-era disco for “Here Lies Love,” which gave audiences a literally moving experience. Moving in more emotional terms was the score’s final song, “God Draws Straight,” which transformed the show into something with heart after 90 minutes of irony. … The book of the Barry Manilow-Bruce Sussman musical “Harmony,” about a German singing group undone by antisemitism in the 1930s, felt discordant. But the vocal arrangements, by Manilow and John O’Neill, were sublime. … And though there’s not much competition for the best flying transportation on Broadway, if there were, the winner, totally retiring memories of the “Miss Saigon” helicopter and the title character of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” would be the DeLorean DMC in “Back to the Future.” It was a special effect that, for once, was special, in an otherwise Chevy Nova kind of show.

Unforgettable Experiences
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Power ballad No. 1
“Independently Owned” is the “Shucked” showstopper that helped Alex Newell snag a Tony Award, but my favorite number in the show is the wronged-man solo, “Somebody Will,” which revealed the adorably doofy Andrew Durand as a full-throated, tears-in-your-beer balladeer. The musical’s composers, Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, are already reliable country music hit makers; Nashville should give this one a spin, too. SCOTT HELLER

Power ballad No. 2
Jennifer Simard + high diva attitude + zombified dancers + a killer arrangement of “Toxic” = reason alone to have seen “Once Upon a One More Time” during its too-brief Broadway run. All praise to the show’s marketing team (and YouTube) for allowing us to watch it many more times. SCOTT HELLER

Exit Nora, into the world
Nora Helmer walking out on her controlling husband and their little ones was shocking behavior — and jolting drama — in 1879, when Henrik Ibsen’s classic was new. Her famous door slam doesn’t carry the same charge now. Yet the director Jamie Lloyd found an equally jaw-dropping exit for Jessica Chastain’s Nora in his austerely chic Broadway revival of “A Doll’s House.” At the Hudson Theater, Soutra Gilmour’s set hid a surprise in plain sight. During the climactic moment, a giant load-in door in the upstage wall slowly rose like a curtain onto West 45th Street, which pulsated with color and life. Then Nora stepped through the opening, into the world, no slam required. LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES

A collective flinch at ‘Jaja’s’

Whether exchanging knowing looks or exploiting one another’s weaknesses, the stylists and salon-goers in Jocelyn Bioh’s “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” shared the sort of synergy inherent to a single living organism. The most vivid example: when a trifling husband (played by Michael Oloyede) asked God to strike him down in an obvious lie to his wife (Nana Mensah). Like a startled squid in water, the women recoiled in unison expecting the lord to do as he was told. It was darkly comedic proof of a fierce, collective instinct. NAVEEN KUMAR

Little Man, high-flying kicks
How vicariously cathartic to watch a boy nicknamed Little Man beat down bullies in “Poor Yella Rednecks,” at Manhattan Theater Club. But what really made the brawl memorable is that Little Man is portrayed by a puppet (mostly handled by Jon Norman Schneider), allowing for the kind of gravity-defying flying kicks and slow-motion strikes that gives the show a hilariously cartoonish vibe. But it somehow also imbues Little Man with humanity. Credit the playwright, Qui Nguyen, who also designed the fight choreography. ELISABETH VINCENTELLI

Apocalyptic clownery
Some of this year’s best clowning took place in the scorched, postapocalyptic world of Samuel Beckett’s bleakly funny “Endgame,” in a first-rate staging by the Irish Repertory Theater. Its cramped, brick-laden set featured a troupe of four splendidly paired-off character actors whose commitment to the absurdity underlined the play’s futility: Bill Irwin and his wildly swinging limbs were the perfect foil to John Douglas Thompson’s straight man, whose petty commands bellowed through the narrow space with a tyrannical boom; and, popping out of trash cans to reminisce on better times, Joe Grifasi and Patrice Johnson Chevannes brought a sweet, humble nostalgia to the tragic folly. JUAN A. RAMÍREZ

An unforced revelation
Anne E. Thompson’s understated performance as Dani, a rookie cop patrolling the boonies, crept up slowly like a colt finding her hind legs. In one of several hairpin turns in Rebecca Gilman’s “Swing State” at the Minetta Lane Theater, a conversation that began as a distress call from Ryan, Dani’s former high school classmate (Bubba Weiler), softened into a sweet flirtation before she elicited a confession as easily as picking a flower. (I was not the only one who gasped.) Often the most unassuming character onstage is the one to watch. NAVEEN KUMAR

An actress is going to act
In “The Seagull/Woodstock, NY,” Thomas Bradshaw’s Chekhov adaptation, Parker Posey’s portrayal of Irene deftly toed the line between satire, affection and melancholia. But what I remember most is the laugh, which Posey’s Irene used as a weapon to defuse someone’s plastic-surgery joke, deploying it with performative archness — as if Irene watched herself laugh. Yet it still felt natural. ELISABETH VINCENTELLI

Fool’s errand
A seemingly innocuous remark — “Maybe I’ll take the dog for a walk” — grows into a terrifying incantation near the end of “The Best We Could (a family tragedy),” Emily Feldman’s stealth gut punch of a play, for Manhattan Theater Club. From the start we learn of the bond between Frank Wood, as an unemployed scientist and unhappy family man, and his late, loyal canine companion. A cross-country journey with his daughter (Aya Cash) to adopt a replacement certainly has its bumps. But only in the final minutes do we realize, under Daniel Aukin’s sure-handed direction and in Wood’s tremulous performance, where this road trip has been going. SCOTT HELLER

A self-defense dream ballet
Every element in New York Theater Workshop’s production of “How to Defend Yourself,” Liliana Padilla’s exploration of the fuzziness of consent, came together in its final sequence: a sort of dream ballet rewinding from a college kegger to a pool party to a young child’s playground birthday. The stunningly lit scene seemed to play in slow motion, peeling back years of learned social behaviors to evoke the both terrifying and exciting possibilities of tenderness, sex, danger, and passion. JUAN A. RAMÍREZ

Midnight snack, Take 1

It sounds slightly deranged to credit Anton Chekhov with having written one of the best scenes of sexual and romantic tension in the canon, but he did: in “Uncle Vanya,” whose Sonya and Astrov have a middle-of-the-night tête-à-tête over cheese in the dining room, exchanging confidences, igniting hopes. Her hopes, mainly, because she’s the hardworking young farmer with the yearslong crush on him, and he’s the heavy-drinking doctor who doesn’t think of her that way. But in Jack Serio’s staging in a Manhattan loft, Marin Ireland’s Sonya and Will Brill’s Astrov touched off the audience’s hopes, too, even if we knew they’d come to nothing. Heads bent close in the candlelight, speaking sotto voce, they made an almost rom-com pair. LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES

Midnight snack, Take 2
In Simon Stephens’s “Vanya,” a funny, sexy tragicomedy that ran in London’s West End this fall, Andrew Scott performed all the parts. He gave a beautifully calibrated, split-focus tension to the yearning chat between Sonia and the tree-planting doctor she adores, whom Stephens has renamed Michael. On the one hand, Scott as the nervous Sonia, for whom the conversation is a treasured memory in the making; on the other, Scott as the sozzled Michael, careless enough to call her “my love,” in Scott’s irresistible Irish lilt. “You have the gentlest voice,” Sonia tells him. And sure, hers is very similar. Still, it’s true. LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES

Pinch-hitter no more
I can’t say I knew the name Joy Woods back in April, so when she was announced as a last minute-replacement on the roster of singers for the annual Miscast benefit concert, I felt a little let down. Not any more! Her quiet-storm medley of “I Could Have Danced All Night” and “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” from “My Fair Lady” (arranged by Will Van Dyke) was the evening’s revelation, keeping her fully in step with a starry lineup that included Ben Platt, LaChanze and Josh Groban. Now her name seems to be on everyone’s lips, with roles in “Little Shop of Horrors,” “I Can Get It for You Wholesale” and, next spring, “The Notebook” on Broadway. SCOTT HELLER

Expert scene chewing
Two actors really went to town in their utter rejection of verisimilitude this year, single-handedly spicing up their respective Broadway shows. In “The Cottage,” Alex Moffat delivered a gonzo Expressionist-by-way-of-Plastic Man performance in which merely lighting up a cigarette became a full-fledged event. In “Back to the Future: The Musical,” Hugh Coles was a standout as George McFly, taking what Crispin Glover did in the original movie and amping it up into an arch marvel of manic stylization. In “Put Your Mind to It,” he paradoxically suggested George’s stiff demeanor with loose limbs that defied the laws of biomechanics. ELISABETH VINCENTELLI

Purring Rodgers & Hart renditions
Elizabeth Stanley, so skilled at bringing out a pop song’s emotional core, exposed the giddy carnal drive behind “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” in a gala presentation of “Pal Joey” at New York City Center. In full bedroom afterglow, her devil-may-care performance peppered scatting and swinging jazz vocals through the song’s racier lyrics. (The ones thanking god she can be oversexed again.) Also voluptuous was Aisha Jackson’s aching “My Funny Valentine,” made into a torch anthem through Daryl Waters’s despairing orchestrations. Jackson richly moaned through love’s irresistible betrayal, revealing an erotic trembling in the Rodgers & Hart classic. JUAN A. RAMÍREZ

The jukebox hits a wicked note
“Once Upon a One More Time,” a fairy-tale mash-up powered by the hits of Britney Spears and skin-deep feminism, delivered the form’s most profane needle drop. Cinderella (Briga Heelan) was slumped over the hearth, with her haughty stepsisters (Amy Hillner Larsen and Tess Soltau) glowering down at her, when rapid-fire beats blared through the Marquis Theater. “You want a hot body? You want a Bugatti?” Their command was obvious: “You better work, bitch.” NAVEEN KUMAR

#Poder&Dinero
✍️ Victor Sanchez Baños
*El infierno “fosfo fosfo” de Dante*
👉Samuelito se burló de Nuevo León
👉No ha avisado al Congreso que regresa
👉Mentir, la herramienta de políticos
👉MC, dejó de ser útil a los morenistas
👉Bertha Alcalde será la nueva Ministra

*Difícil es templar en el poder a los que por ambición simularon ser honrados.*
Salustio (83 AC-35 AC) Caius Sallustius Crispus. Historiador latino.

*ATENTAMENTE*
*MAESTRO FEDERICO LA MONT*

Sent from my iPod

Iñaki Sagasti

Editor, El Diario de Tlaxcala

*Premio Internacional Periodismo Y Periodismo Migrante*📃 

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*Israel Resumes Strikes on Gaza After Truce Expires*

A weeklong cease-fire in the Gaza Strip collapsed on Friday morning, with both Israel and Hamas blaming the other for the breakdown of the fragile truce that had allowed for the exchange of scores of hostages and prisoners, and had briefly raised hopes for a more lasting halt to the fighting.

Hostilities resumed almost immediately: Shortly before the truce expired at 7 a.m. local time (midnight Eastern), Israel said it had intercepted a projectile fired from Gaza. Moments after the deadline passed, Israel announced that it was restarting military operations, and Israeli airstrikes soon thundered again across the battered coastal strip.

International mediators said talks were continuing in the hopes of quickly reviving the truce, although Israeli officials expressed determination to carry on with their campaign to eradicate Hamas, the armed group that controls most of Gaza.

“With the return to fighting, we emphasize: The government of Israel is committed to achieving the war aims — freeing our hostages, eliminating Hamas and ensuring that Gaza will never again pose a threat to the residents of Israel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in a statement released by his office.

Hamas said in a statement that it had offered to release more hostages, including older people, but that Israel had made “a prior decision to resume the criminal aggression.” Israel, for its part, said that Hamas had failed to release as many hostages from Gaza as it had promised. Hamas released eight hostages on Thursday, two fewer than expected. A total of 105 hostages were freed during the weeklong cease-fire, including two dozen foreign nationals.

Two Israeli officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the talks broke down because the two sides had reached an impasse over the next possible round of hostage and prisoner swaps, with Hamas demanding that Israel release more prisoners in exchange for the remaining hostages, who include Israeli soldiers.

The foreign ministry of Qatar, which has led the cease-fire talks, said in a statement that negotiations were continuing even amid the fighting. The resumption of airstrikes “complicates mediation efforts and exacerbates the humanitarian catastrophe in the strip,” the ministry said.

Under the truce that went into effect last Friday, more than 100 Israeli and dual-national hostages — mostly Israelis abducted in the Hamas-led attacks — were freed from Gaza in exchange for Israel’s release of 240 Palestinian prisoners and detainees held in Israeli jails. On both sides, the trade focused on women and children. Officials from both Israel and Hamas said the armed group had few hostages remaining in those categories.

Early Friday, shortly before the truce was set to end, Israel’s military said on the social media site X that it had intercepted a projectile fired from Gaza. Automated rocket alert systems reported that air-raid sirens had sounded in several areas of southern Israel, indicating rockets or shells had been fired from the territory.

Then, just after the 7 a.m. deadline passed, both the Israeli military and Gaza’s Interior Ministry reported that Israel was carrying out strikes across Gaza. Air-raid sirens sounded in several parts of southern Israel, indicating that Hamas or allied armed groups in Gaza had fired toward Israel.

Gaza health officials swiftly began reporting casualties. By midmorning, at least 32 people had been killed in Gaza since the resumption of fighting, according to Ashraf al-Qidra, the spokesman for the Gazan health ministry.

The halt in fighting since last Friday had given Gaza’s 2.2 million people a brief reprieve from withering Israeli strikes. Since Oct. 7, when Hamas led terrorist attacks on Israel that the Israeli government says killed about 1,200 people and resulted in about 240 hostages being taken, Israel has waged a devastating military campaign that Gazan health authorities say has killed more than 13,000 people.

Most of Gaza’s people have been displaced and are experiencing acute shortages of food, water, medicine and fuel amid widespread destruction. The weeklong pause allowed more aid to reach the battered enclave than the trickle that had made it in before the truce. Nonetheless, the United Nations’ humanitarian affairs office said that the aid was still “completely inadequate.”

“I deeply regret that military operations have started again in Gaza,” the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, said in a statement on Friday. “The return to hostilities only shows how important it is to have a true humanitarian cease-fire,” he added.

*Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan More Than a Year Ago*

A blueprint reviewed by The Times laid out the attack in detail. Israeli officials dismissed it as aspirational and ignored specific warnings.

Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.

The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.

The translated document, which was reviewed by The New York Times, did not set a date for the attack, but described a methodical assault designed to overwhelm the fortifications around the Gaza Strip, take over Israeli cities and storm key military bases, including a division headquarters.

Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision. The document called for a barrage of rockets at the outset of the attack, drones to knock out the security cameras and automated machine guns along the border, and gunmen to pour into Israel en masse in paragliders, on motorcycles and on foot — all of which happened on Oct. 7.

The plan also included details about the location and size of Israeli military forces, communication hubs and other sensitive information, raising questions about how Hamas gathered its intelligence and whether there were leaks inside the Israeli security establishment.

The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.

Last year, shortly after the document was obtained, officials in the Israeli military’s Gaza division, which is responsible for defending the border with Gaza, said that Hamas’s intentions were unclear.

“It is not yet possible to determine whether the plan has been fully accepted and how it will be manifested,” read a military assessment reviewed by The Times.

Then, in July, just three months before the attacks, a veteran analyst with Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence agency, warned that Hamas had conducted an intense, daylong training exercise that appeared similar to what was outlined in the blueprint.

But a colonel in the Gaza division brushed off her concerns, according to encrypted emails viewed by The Times.

“I utterly refute that the scenario is imaginary,” the analyst wrote in the email exchanges. The Hamas training exercise, she said, fully matched “the content of Jericho Wall.”

*Reports Say Pope Francis Is Evicting U.S. Cardinal From His Vatican Home*

Word of the action against Cardinal Raymond Burke came after the prelate’s increasingly pointed critiques of the reform-minded pope.

Almost as soon as Pope Francis became the head of the Roman Catholic church in 2013, Raymond Burke, an American cardinal, emerged as his leading critic from within the church, becoming a de facto antipope for frustrated traditionalists who believed Francis was diluting doctrine.

Francis frequently demoted and stripped the American cleric of influence, but this month, the pope apparently finally had enough, according to one high-ranking Vatican official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Francis told a meeting of high-ranking Vatican officials that he intended to throw the cardinal out of his Vatican-subsidized apartment and deprive him of his salary as a retired cardinal.

The news of the possible eviction was first reported by the conservative Italian newspaper La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, which is close to Cardinal Burke and recently sponsored a conference featuring the prelate criticizing a major meeting of bishops convened by Francis. The newspaper’s report comes only weeks after Francis removed another vocal conservative critic, Joseph Strickland, the bishop of Tyler, Texas, after a Vatican investigation into the governance of his diocese.

“If this is accurate, it is an atrocity that must be opposed,” Bishop Strickland said in a post on the social media platform X on Monday. “If it is false information it needs to be corrected immediately.”

The Vatican did not correct it. Asked about the report on Tuesday, the Vatican’s spokesman, Matteo Bruni, declined to confirm or deny it, telling reporters that “I don’t have anything particular to say about that.”

He said questions regarding the report should be put to Cardinal Burke. An email to Cardinal Burke’s secretary was not returned.

Francis told the heads of Vatican offices last week about his decision to punish Cardinal Burke because he was a source of “disunity” in the church, according to The Associated Press, which based its report on an unnamed official who attended the meeting. Another official told The A.P. that Francis later explained that he removed Cardinal Burke’s privileges because he was using them in his campaign against the church.

Corriere della Sera, Italy’s leading daily newspaper, also confirmed the report about the possible eviction with an anonymous prelate, who told the paper that the pope intended to take “measures of an economic nature and canonical penalties” against Cardinal Burke.

Some conservatives have attributed Francis’ disciplinary activity to the new head of the church’s office on church doctrine, the Argentine Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández. But supporters of Francis assert that he had exercised prodigious patience with criticism over the last decade, in the interest of opening up healthy debates, but that it wore thin as the critiques became ideologically tinged and, they say, seemed intent on dividing a church headed in a direction traditionalists did not support.

Cardinal Burke has seen himself as a loyal defender of the church’s doctrinal law and papal traditions against what he has called the “confusion, error and division” caused by Francis.

In the days before a major assembly of the world’s bishops and laypeople who had gathered to discuss some of the most sensitive topics in the church, Cardinal Burke and other traditionalist prelates made public an exchange of letters with Francis. In the letters, they aired grave doubts about the legitimacy of the meeting and urged Francis to slam the door shut on proposals that they believe would erode the doctrine of the church, including the blessing of same-sex unions.

*A Neurologist’s Tips to Protect Your Memory*

A new book by a renowned brain expert says there are a few simple things we can do to prevent memory decline as we age.

As we age, our memory declines. This is an ingrained assumption for many of us; however, according to neuroscientist Dr. Richard Restak, a neurologist and clinical professor at George Washington Hospital University School of Medicine and Health, decline is not inevitable.

The author of more than 20 books on the mind, Dr. Restak has decades’ worth of experience in guiding patients with memory problems. “The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind,” Dr. Restak’s latest book, includes tools such as mental exercises, sleep habits and diet that can help boost memory.

Yet Dr. Restak ventures beyond this familiar territory, considering every facet of memory — how memory is connected to creative thinking, technology’s impact on memory, how memory shapes identity. “The point of the book is to overcome the everyday problems of memory,” Dr. Restak said.

Especially working memory, which falls between immediate recall and long-term memory, and is tied to intelligence, concentration and achievement. According to Dr. Restak, this is the most critical type of memory, and exercises to strengthen it should be practiced daily. But bolstering all memory skills, he added, is key to warding off later memory issues.

Memory decline is not inevitable with aging, Dr. Restak argues in the book. Instead, he points to 10 “sins,” or “stumbling blocks that can lead to lost or distorted memories.” Seven were first described by the psychologist and memory specialist Daniel Lawrence Schacter — “sins of omission,” such as absent-mindedness, and “sins of commission,” such as distorted memories. To those Dr. Restak added three of his own: technological distortion, technological distraction and depression.

Ultimately, “we are what we can remember,” he said. Here are some of Dr. Restak’s tips for developing and maintaining a healthy memory.

Pay more attention.
Some memory lapses are actually attention problems, not memory problems. For instance, if you’ve forgotten the name of someone you met at a cocktail party, it could be because you were talking with several people at the time and you didn’t properly pay attention when you heard it.

“Inattention is the biggest cause for memory difficulties, ” Dr. Restak said. “It means you didn’t properly encode the memory.”

*5 Exercises to Keep an Aging Body Strong and Fit*

Declines in muscle and bone strength start earlier than you might think. Build a smart workout habit now.

When we’re young, exercise can enable us to run a race after an all-nighter or snowboard on a diet of Doritos. But as we age, fitness has a much more far-reaching impact, boosting our energy levels, preventing injuries and keeping us mentally sharp.

Aging causes muscles to lose mass, bone density to thin and joints to stiffen — affecting our balance, coordination and strength. At the same time, hormonal shifts and persistent low-level inflammation can set the stage for chronic diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

And the changes start earlier than you might think. Muscles begin to shrink in our 30s and continue their downward spiral in midlife, with up to 25 percent of their peak mass gone by the time we’re 60.

But there’s hope: Exercise can stall muscle loss, cognitive decline and fatigue. “It’s never too late to start exercising, and it’s never too early,” Chhanda Dutta, a gerontologist at the National Institute on Aging, said.

You can’t just start dead-lifting 150 pounds at the gym, though. Start slow, experiment and gradually amp up the intensity.

Experts suggest trying exercises that target one or more of four categories of fitness, all of which deteriorate with age: flexibility, balance, endurance and strength. Preserving function across these domains can stave off injury and disability, keeping you active and independent longer.

There is no magic-bullet, full-body exercise to forestall aging, said Dr. Brian Feeley, the chief of sports medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Here are five movements, targeting different areas of the body, to try.

During exercise, “injuries happen when you’re fatigued, and your muscles can’t react as quickly,” Dr. Feeley said. Squats help prevent this fatigue by strengthening the large muscles in your lower body while moving multiple joints at once, which improves overall endurance as well as balance and coordination.

Dr. Feeley suggests doing three sets of 10 to 15 squats four times a week. To further challenge your balance, do them with one foot or both feet on a pillow. Or to focus on strength, squat while holding free weights — close to your chest to start or extended in front of you to work your core more.

If you loathe squats, but still want to strengthen the same muscle groups, try climbing stairs, which is adaptable to different fitness levels, said Dr. Maria Fiatarone Singh, a geriatrician at the University of Sydney. Start by walking up and down the stairs, and graduate to sprinting or wearing ankle weights.

For added difficulty, hop up the stairs on one foot or two feet — holding onto the handrail if necessary for safety. “Hopping is a power movement for your hip and knee extensors,” similar to the power training of box-jumping exercises, Dr. Fiatarone Singh said. If you are pressed for time, turn it into a high-intensity exercise, with four four-minute bouts of high-intensity effort, resting three minutes between bouts, four times a week.

As a cross-country skiing enthusiast, Dr. Michael Schaefer, a rehabilitation physician at University Hospitals in Cleveland, loves Nordic walking — an exercise using ergonomic poles that uses the same movements. No snow required.

“Nordic walking is unparalleled as an aerobic exercise because you’re not just using the major muscle groups of your legs and hips, but your core, shoulders and arms too,” Dr. Schaefer said. The regimen lowers blood pressure and improves the body’s use of oxygen. And when you traverse hills or uneven ground, you’re strengthening your ankles and challenging your vestibular system — a sensory system housed in the inner ear that enhances balance and coordination.

“Start with 15 to 20 minutes three times a week and work up to one hour,” Dr. Schaefer advised.

The basic movement — walking, using poles to propel your movement — can take some getting used to, but online videos or your local Nordic walking group can get you started. The key is to swing your arms as if they’re clock pendulums, keeping the elbows relatively straight and planting your pole behind you and pushing off as your opposing leg strides forward.

Gillian Stewart, the program director for Nordic Walking UK, recommended buying Nordic walking poles, since they’re angled to the position they take during the exercise. In a pinch, Dr. Schaefer said, “regular walking poles would work,” but not ski poles.

If Katy Bowman, a kinesiologist, had her way, everyone’s New Year’s resolution would include a trip across the monkey bars. “It’s such a primal movement, and uses all these parts of our upper body” that otherwise don’t get used very often, said Ms. Bowman, the author of “Rethink Your Position.”

Hanging from a horizontal bar enhances grip strength and shoulder mobility, strengthens the core and stretches the upper body — from the chest to the spine to the forearms.

As with any exercise, it’s best to progress slowly — start by hanging on a bar with your feet supported on a box or chair so that muscles unused to carrying a load can become accustomed to bearing some tension. From there, proceed to an active hang, in which your shoulder blades are retracted and pulled down (as if you’re about to start a pull-up), your core and arms are engaged, and your hands are about shoulder-width apart.

Add a slight swing front to back or right to left to work the core and spine even more. Or mix up your grip — hands facing away from or toward you, or one of each — to emphasize different muscles. An underhand grip, for example, loads the biceps more than an overhand grip, which works the lats.

And you don’t need fancy equipment to hang. Ms. Bowman suggested creating a hanging station in your home with a “$20 doorway chin-up bar that doesn’t take up much of a footprint.” Since she’s installed one, she said, she’s noticed a “radical” increase in her upper body and grip strength — which is linked to a decrease in all-cause and cardiovascular mortality. A little goes a long way too: Begin with 20-second hangs, twice a day, working up to a full minute.

“Frequent, shorter hangs distributed throughout the day are your best bet for making progress,” Ms. Bowman said. Once you feel comfortable with one-minute hangs she recommended eight to 10 of them, with an hour’s rest in between. These breaks also give the skin on your hands some time to adapt.

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Sent from my iPod circle if you didn’t didn’t didn’t didn’t use is Amiga hooters Amiga

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*Gold Bars and Tokyo Apartments: How Money Is Flowing Out of China.*

Chinese families are sending money overseas, a sign of worry about the country’s economic and political future. But a cheaper currency is also helping exports.

Affluent Chinese have moved hundreds of billions of dollars out of the country this year, seizing on the end of Covid precautions that had almost completely sealed China’s borders for nearly three years.

They are using their savings to buy overseas apartments, stocks and insurance policies. Able to fly again to Tokyo, London and New York, Chinese travelers have bought apartments in Japan and poured money into accounts in the United States or Europe that pay higher interest than in China, where rates are low and falling.

The outbound shift of money in part indicates unease inside China about the sputtering recovery after the pandemic as well as deeper problems, like an alarming slowdown in real estate, the main storehouse of wealth for families. For some people, it is also a reaction to fears about the direction of the economy under China’s leader, Xi Jinping, who has cracked down on business and strengthened the government’s hand in many aspects of society.

In some cases, Chinese are improvising to get around China’s strict government controls on transferring money overseas. They have bought gold bars small enough to be scattered unobtrusively through carry-on luggage, as well as large stacks of foreign currency.

Real estate is an option, too. Chinese have emerged as the main buyers of Tokyo apartments costing $3 million or more, and they often pay with suitcases of cash, said Zhao Jie, the chief executive of Shenjumiaosuan, an online real estate listing service in Tokyo. “It’s really hard work to count this kind of cash.”

Before the pandemic, he said, Chinese buyers typically bought Tokyo studio apartments for $330,000 or less to rent out. Now they are buying much larger units and obtaining investment visas to relocate their families.

All told, an estimated $50 billion a month has been taken out of China this year, mainly by Chinese households and private-sector companies.

Experts said the pace of money leaving China probably did not pose an imminent risk to the country’s $17 trillion economy, in large part because exports of many of the country’s key manufactured goods are strong, returning a steady stream of cash.

A broader move by families to send their savings elsewhere could be cause for alarm. Large-scale money outflows have set off financial crises in recent decades in Latin America, Southeast Asia and even China itself, in late 2015 and early 2016.

So far, the Chinese government is indicating that it believes it has the situation under control. Money sluicing out of China has weakened the currency, the renminbi, against the dollar and other currencies. And that weakness of the renminbi has helped sustain China’s exports, which support tens of millions of Chinese jobs.

*Israel-Hamas War As Truce Appears to Hold, Israeli Leaders Face a Tough Choice*

The decision by Israel and Hamas to extend their brief truce in Gaza has created short-term benefits for both sides but amplified uncertainty about how, when and whether Israel will continue its invasion of Gaza.

The agreement, announced by Qatar, to prolong the cease-fire from four days to six has raised expectations that both sides will agree to more short extensions. And if the cease-fire does grow longer, there will be greater external pressure on Israel to make it permanent, and greater internal pressure to end it.

The decision by Israel and Hamas to extend their brief truce in Gaza has created short-term benefits for both sides but amplified uncertainty about how, when and whether Israel will continue its invasion of Gaza.

The agreement, announced by Qatar, to prolong the cease-fire from four days to six has raised expectations that both sides will agree to more short extensions. And if the cease-fire does grow longer, there will be greater external pressure on Israel to make it permanent, and greater internal pressure to end it.

Each side accused the other on Tuesday of violating the truce, the first time either has made such an allegation since the agreement went into effect last Friday. The Israeli military said that explosive devices were detonated near its troops in two places in northern Gaza, and that militants in one area fired on them. Hamas said its fighters had engaged in a “field clash” provoked by Israel, without offering additional details.

But neither side signaled that it was pulling out of the agreement.

For now, small extensions serve both Hamas and Israel.

Hamas can prolong its control of most of Gaza after being routed in northern parts of the territory since Israel invaded more than a month ago. A longer pause would give Hamas more time to regroup and reposition its forces, and more aid could be delivered from Egypt to Gaza’s 2.2 million residents, most of whom have been displaced by the fighting and face profound food and fuel shortages.

Israel gets to welcome back more of the roughly 240 hostages who were captured by Hamas and its allies at the start of the war on Oct. 7. For every extra day of the cease-fire, the two sides have agreed to exchange roughly 10 Israelis for 30 Palestinians jailed by Israel. The return of the missing Israelis, many of them women and children, has provided a huge boost for the Israeli public, much of which follows every exchange closely.

But the longer that dynamic lasts, the greater Israel’s conundrum.

Each daily prisoner release boosts Hamas’s popularity in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where many of the freed Palestinians have returned, and where Hamas and other armed groups are waging a low-level insurgency.

A long pause slows the momentum of Israel’s invasion, endangering its stated goal of removing Hamas from power. Already, Biden administration officials say they have pushed Israel to fight more surgically once it returns to its invasion, as international pressure builds on Israel to stop its attacks entirely.

Most of all, some Israelis fear that a prolonged extension would give Hamas too much influence over the Israeli psyche, said Anshel Pfeffer, a political commentator for Haaretz, a left-leaning Israeli newspaper.

The capture of so many hostages, including a 9-month-old baby, traumatized many Israelis.

The complicated hostage release process, fraught by delays and disagreements between Hamas and Israel, has heightened that torment.

“Israel faces a real dilemma,” said Mr. Pfeffer. “With each hostage release, Hamas holds the whip hand over Israeli emotions. Ultimately, Israel will have to decide between freeing more hostages — or preventing Hamas from dictating the mood of the country.”

Some analysts say domestic pressures will probably prompt Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to revive the invasion sooner rather than later. A delayed resumption of the attack would put Mr. Netanyahu on a collision course with far-right government ministers who grudgingly supported the cease-fire because they were assured that the invasion would continue after only a short truce.

*Fearful, Humiliated and Desperate: Gazans Heading South Face Horrors*

Tens of thousands of Gazans are making the most difficult of choices, leaving their homes behind to survive.

They walked for hours, raising their hands when they encountered Israeli troops with guns trained on them to display their I.D. cards — or wave white rags. All around them was the sound of gunfire and the incessant buzzing of drones. Bodies littered rubble-filled streets.

For the tens of thousands of Gazans who have fled the northern part of the enclave where the heaviest fighting has been taking place, evacuating to the south has been a perilous journey, according to at least 10 Gazans that The New York Times spoke to on the ground and by phone. Even though a tenuous cease-fire in place since Friday has brought temporary relief from the bombardment, they face an uncertain future — and the threat the strikes will return, leaving them displaced yet again.

The Israeli military launched a deadly bombing campaign of the Gaza Strip after an attack on Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7 in which, Israeli officials say, 1,200 people were killed and 240 taken hostage. In the seven weeks since, Israel has pounded the tiny coastal enclave with the aim of destroying Hamas’s military capabilities. So far, more than 13,000 Palestinians have been killed as of Nov. 21, according to the Gazan health authorities.

For weeks, Israel has been urging Gazans living in northern towns to flee along Salah al-Din Street, the strip’s main north-south highway.

Those lucky enough or with means fled early, but some Gazans who spoke to the Times said they could not leave earlier because they do not have relatives or anyone they know in the south, cannot leave older family members behind or don’t have the resources. Instead, many sheltered in increasingly dangerous and desperate conditions at schools or hospitals in the north. But at some point, they made the difficult decision to leave.

Even that decision was fraught. In the weeks leading up to the cease-fire, Israel has also bombed the southern part of the Gaza Strip, and some Gazans feel uprooting themselves further with no guarantee of shelter in the south is not worth it.

The United Nations says 1.7 million of the 2.3 million residents in the Hamas-controlled enclave have been displaced.

The Gazans who spoke to The Times said they felt shame, loss of dignity and anger at finding themselves struggling for their lives in the latest war between Israel and Hamas. The journey — which takes Gazans hours depending on where in the north they are leaving from — is usually done on foot or on a donkey cart.

Aya Habboub, 23, remained in northern Gaza earlier this month, heavily pregnant with her third child. She gave birth in a hospital under intense bombardment but was forced to evacuate when the baby, whom she named Tia, was just four days old.

Barely able to walk, Ms. Habboub tried to rest by the side of the road, but her husband urged her to keep going. Israeli soldiers, she said, stopped her mother-in-law and ordered the woman to stand for half an hour and raise her hands.

“Then they were firing,” Ms. Habboub said, “and we started running.” Ms. Habboub was speaking in a hospital in Deir al-Balah, a city in central Gaza, where many are sheltering. In her lap, Tia, cocooned in a white cloth, was sleeping peacefully.

“I dropped my baby,” she said. “I was crying and screaming.”

Several Gazans whom The Times spoke to described similar scenes of soldiers firing in the general vicinity of those fleeing. It was not possible to verify independently such claims.

The Israel Defense Forces did not comment on the specific allegations. In a statement responding to questions about them, the military said it had taken “significant precautions to mitigate civilian harm.” It added that it had issued warnings of airstrikes ahead of time, when it can do so, and told civilians when to make use of “safe corridors” to evacuate.

It reiterated its assertion that Hamas has embedded itself within “civilian infrastructure” and uses civilians as human shields. “The I.D.F. is determined to end these attacks, and as such we will strike Hamas wherever necessary,” it said.

*Analyzing Bernie Sanders’s Vision for Mideast Peace*

To the Editor:

Re “Palestinians Must Have Hope for a Brighter Future,” by Bernie Sanders (Opinion guest essay, Nov. 23):

Senator Sanders states what has been obvious for decades to all who support two states living in peace, prosperity and dignity: The violence must end. The question is, how?

Each act of brutality radicalizes the other side. In this long struggle, extremists on both sides scuttle every hope for compromise and ensure the endless cycle of murder and retaliation.

The U.S. can pressure Israel by curtailing or attaching conditions to aid. Who or what can pressure Hamas and its allies? What, specifically, can disempower the Islamic radicals, defang the Israeli settlers and offer a path toward a commitment to peaceful coexistence on both sides?

Those who claim that Hamas’s war is somehow justified by Israeli actions (heinous as they may be) ignore its stated goal of eradicating Israel and killing Jews. Ultimately, this is a regional problem that requires a regional solution.

Senator Sanders and other peace-loving Americans must call on those Arab states that support Palestinian extremists to end their support and work toward genuine transformation.

I support Senator Sanders’s vision, but he doesn’t propose a concrete path forward, without which nothing will change.

Ellen W. Kaplan
Raleigh, N.C.

To the Editor:

While Senator Bernie Sanders offers what he believes to be constructive steps for Israel-Palestinian rapprochement, his prescription places nearly all of the obligations upon Israel. Of the 1,517 words in the senator’s essay, only these 13 words — “new Palestinian leadership will be required as part of a wider political process” — are demanded of the Palestinians. Not enough, in my opinion.

Here are just a handful of steps the Palestinians could take to demonstrate seriousness and good faith: Once and for all recognize Israel’s right to exist as an independent and sovereign Jewish state; hold free and fair Palestinian elections to put into place the new leadership Senator Sanders calls for; demand, without equivocation, Hamas’s permanent removal from Gaza and reject its political ideology committed to Israel’s destruction; cease providing financial compensation to the families of individuals who commit acts of terror against Israelis; remove antisemitic and historically inaccurate propaganda contained in textbooks used in Palestinian schools; reject the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (B.D.S.) movement targeted against Israel; and, finally, demonstrate a willingness to accept the peace proposals offered by Israel in previous rounds of failed negotiations, proposals that were continually rejected by the Palestinians under Yasir Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas.

Senator Sanders has articulated what Israel must do to advance peace in his view, but in order to balance the peace equation there is clearly much that the Palestinians can and must do to end the perpetual cycle of violence.

Mark S. Freedman
Parkland, Fla.
The writer is the North American board chair of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, based in Jerusalem.

To the Editor:

Senator Bernie Sanders’s essay was well balanced, educational and pragmatic.

I wish the senator would have completed his comparison of deaths to date in the Gaza war. While the equivalent of 1,200 Israeli deaths on a per capita basis in the United States would be a shocking 40,000 lives, Senator Sanders didn’t say what the equivalent of 12,000 Palestinian deaths would be.

Perhaps he did the math and didn’t want to write down the unimaginable figure of almost two million.

I hope for a resolution of this war so there are no more needless civilian deaths on either side.

Harry Irwin
Cambridge, Mass.

*Rosalynn Carter to Be Honored by Presidents and Fellow First Ladies*

Former President Jimmy Carter will emerge from hospice care to join a cast of political heavyweights paying tribute on Tuesday to Mrs. Carter, who died at 96 last week at her home in Plains, Ga.

Former President Jimmy Carter will emerge from hospice care to join some of his successors and every living presidential spouse on Tuesday to honor Rosalynn Carter, his wife and partner of more than three-quarters of a century and the nation’s first lady from 1977 to 1981, the Carter Center said.

Mr. Carter, who turned 99 last month and has rarely been seen in public since entering hospice care in February, made the 140-mile journey from the couple’s home in Plains, Ga., to Atlanta for a tribute at Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church at Emory University. President Biden, former President Bill Clinton and all five living first ladies will attend as well.

Mrs. Carter, who was suffering from dementia, died at 96 last week at the family’s modest ranch-style house in Plains just a few months after she and her husband had celebrated their 77th wedding anniversary, making them the longest-enduring presidential couple in American history. Frail but alert and smiling, the two made their last public appearance together in September when they were driven around the Plains Peanut Festival.

Born at her family’s house in Plains, the tiny town where she would live most of her life, Eleanor Rosalynn Smith as a young girl might have been surprised at the star-studded turnout expected to salute her at the end. Her father drove a school bus, owned an auto repair shop and ran a farm, while her mother sold milk from their one cow, worked in the school lunchroom and later joined the post office.

Rosalynn Carter, as she became known after marrying her childhood friend’s older brother, never forgot her humble roots, even as she made her way to the White House, traveled the world representing her country, pushed to improve mental health services and transformed the role of first lady. After Mr. Carter lost re-election, the two returned to the small house they had built in 1961 and focused on philanthropic activities for most of the last four decades.

In addition to Mr. Biden and Mr. Clinton, the attendees at Tuesday’s service will include Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff; Jill Biden, the current first lady; former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; three other former first ladies, Laura Bush, Michelle Obama and Melania Trump; Gov. Brian Kemp and Georgia’s first lady, Marty Kemp; and Mayor Andre Dickens of Atlanta.

None of the high-profile attendees are scheduled to speak. The ceremony will reflect Mrs. Carter’s taste for simple elegance over modern glitz. Her grandchildren will serve as honorary pallbearers, with remarks or readings from her son James Earl Carter III, known as Chip; her daughter, Amy Carter; one of her grandsons; and three of her great-grandchildren.

The Rev. Mark Westmoreland, the pastor of Glenn Memorial, and Tony Lowden, the personal pastor of Mr. and Mrs. Carter, will address the service, and tributes will be delivered by Kathryn Cade, a longtime aide and friend; Judy Woodruff, the former anchor of “PBS NewsHour”; and Jason Carter, her grandson and chairman of the Carter Center board.

Musical selections will be offered by members of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, David Osborne, Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood.

Mrs. Carter will then be taken back to Plains, where on Wednesday after a funeral service at Maranatha Baptist Church, she will be buried at the Carter Home and Garden, part of the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park. Mr. Carter plans to be laid to rest next to her when the time comes.

*A Neurologist’s Tips to Protect Your Memory*

A new book by a renowned brain expert says there are a few simple things we can do to prevent memory decline as we age.

As we age, our memory declines. This is an ingrained assumption for many of us; however, according to neuroscientist Dr. Richard Restak, a neurologist and clinical professor at George Washington Hospital University School of Medicine and Health, decline is not inevitable.

The author of more than 20 books on the mind, Dr. Restak has decades’ worth of experience in guiding patients with memory problems. “The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind,” Dr. Restak’s latest book, includes tools such as mental exercises, sleep habits and diet that can help boost memory.

Yet Dr. Restak ventures beyond this familiar territory, considering every facet of memory — how memory is connected to creative thinking, technology’s impact on memory, how memory shapes identity. “The point of the book is to overcome the everyday problems of memory,” Dr. Restak said.

Especially working memory, which falls between immediate recall and long-term memory, and is tied to intelligence, concentration and achievement. According to Dr. Restak, this is the most critical type of memory, and exercises to strengthen it should be practiced daily. But bolstering all memory skills, he added, is key to warding off later memory issues.

Memory decline is not inevitable with aging, Dr. Restak argues in the book. Instead, he points to 10 “sins,” or “stumbling blocks that can lead to lost or distorted memories.” Seven were first described by the psychologist and memory specialist Daniel Lawrence Schacter — “sins of omission,” such as absent-mindedness, and “sins of commission,” such as distorted memories. To those Dr. Restak added three of his own: technological distortion, technological distraction and depression.

Ultimately, “we are what we can remember,” he said. Here are some of Dr. Restak’s tips for developing and maintaining a healthy memory.

Pay more attention.
Some memory lapses are actually attention problems, not memory problems. For instance, if you’ve forgotten the name of someone you met at a cocktail party, it could be because you were talking with several people at the time and you didn’t properly pay attention when you heard it.

“Inattention is the biggest cause for memory difficulties, ” Dr. Restak said. “It means you didn’t properly encode the memory.”

One way to pay attention when you learn new information, like a name, is to visualize the word. Having a picture associated with the word, Restak said, can improve recall. For instance, he recently had to memorize the name of a doctor, Dr. King, (an easy example, he acknowledged). So he pictured a male doctor “in a white coat with a crown on his head and a scepter instead of a stethoscope in his hand.”

Find regular everyday memory challenges.
There are many memory exercises that you can integrate into everyday life. Dr. Restak suggested composing a grocery list and memorizing it. When you get to the store, don’t automatically pull out your list (or your phone) — instead, pick up everything according to your memory.

“Try to see the items in your mind,” he said, and only consult the list at the end, if necessary. If you’re not going to the store, try memorizing a recipe. He added that frequent cooking is actually a great way to improve working memory.

Once in a while, get in the car without turning on your GPS, and try to navigate through the streets from memory. A small 2020 study suggested that people who used GPS more frequently over time showed a steeper cognitive decline in spatial memory three years later.

En Central de Inteligencia Política (CIP) realizamos semanalmente el estudio ARMA de los aspirantes a la Jefatura de Gobierno de la CDMX. En esta ocasión, el análisis abarca el periodo del 20 al 27 de noviembre de 2023.

*Aspirantes con mayor cobertura:*
1. Santiago Taboada (105 mdp)
2. Clara Brugada (75 mdp)
3. Salomón Chertorivski (21 mdp)

*Aspirantes con mayor cobertura positiva:*
1. Clara Brugada (48 mdp)
2. Salomón Chertorivski (0 mdp)
3. Santiago Taboada (-26 mdp)

ARMA aspirantes de la CDMX

Col. Candelero 27 11 23

Riesgo de más
inseguridad por las
campañas electorales

x.- Fechas de las jornadas proselitistas “para que estés a las vivas”.
x.- Equipo de Claudia.

Abraham Mohamed Z.

La agitación y acelere con violencia que ya se registra en ciertos Estados de la República, se detonó por las pre campañas políticas que ya empezaron en éste mes de Noviembre y esto presagia, sin ser agorero de lo peor, que conforme avance el tiempo hacia las mega elecciones del 2024 la situación empeorará por los intereses de todo tipo que están en juego, y en las que la narco delincuencia, se infiere, que también participa porque evidentemente es una fuerza real de poder. 
Para mediatizar éste gran riesgo de violencia atroz, esperemos que el gobierno del presidente López Obrador desarrolle una estrategia que garantice seguridad para las actividades de proselitismo que realicen en sus campañas formales los y las más de 20 mil candidat@s que aspiran a tener poder gubernamental, y ell@s a su vez, deben moderarse en las descalificaciones o críticas que se hagan pues, de no hacerlo, éstas próximas elecciones pueden pasar a la historia como la más violenta de la historia contemporánea.
Te voy a dar a conocer las fechas de pre campañas y campañas para que como ciudadano “estés a las vivas” en este singular y riesgoso proceso electoral donde hasta al presidente de la República “ya le mientan la madre” 
Este 20 de noviembre se iniciaron las pre campañas por la Presidencia de México, sin embargo, no será el único cargo en disputa en las elecciones del 2 de Junio del 2024, pues también se renovarán ocho gubernaturas, la Jefatura de Gobierno de la Ciudad de México, el Congreso Federal (Senadores y Diputados), así como cerca de 20,000 cargos de elección popular.
Como te adelanté, cada Entidad tendrá su ajetreo según el calendario aprobado por el INE 
Aquí están fechas y lugares de las pre campañas y campañas formales y, además, los cargos públicos que serán disputados: 
CIUDAD DE MÉXICO
En la Capital de la República, además de la Jefatura de Gobierno, se elegirán también los 16 nuevos Alcaldes, 204 Concejales; 34 Diputados de Mayoría Relativa y 32 más de Representación Proporcional
La pre campaña para la Jefatura de Gobierno empezó el 5 de Noviembre y termina el 3 de Enero próximo. La campaña formal empieza en 1 de Marzo y acaba el 29 de Mayo.
La pre campaña para Diputaciones y Alcaldías empezó este 25 de Noviembre y finaliza el 3 de Enero. La campaña formal para Diputaciones y Alcaldías será del 31 de Marzo al 29 de Mayo de 2024.
CHIAPAS
Se renovará la Gubernatura, 123 Presidencias Municipales, 875 Regidurías, 123 Sindicaturas y 24 Diputaciones de Mayoría Relativa y 16 Diputaciones de Representación Proporcional, 
La pre campaña para la Gubernatura será del 22 de Enero al 10 de Febrero y la campaña formal empezará el 31 de Marzo para terminar el 29 de mayo.
La pre campaña para las Diputaciones y Ayuntamientos será del 1 al 10 de febrero y la campaña formal del 30 de abril al 29 de mayo.
GUANAJUATO
Se renovarán la Gubernatura, 46 Presidencias Municipales, 418 Regidurías, 52 Sindicaturas y 22 Diputaciones de Mayoría Relativa y 14 Diputaciones de Representación Proporcional.
La pre campaña para Gobernador empezó este 25 de Noviembre y termina el 21 de Enero. La campaña formal inicia el 2 de Marzo y cierra el 29 de Mayo.
Pre campaña para Ayuntamientos del 13 de Diciembre al 21 de Enero y la campaña formal del 31 de Marzo al 29 de Mayo.
Pre campaña para Diputaciones del 23 de Diciembre al 21 de Enero y campaña del 15 de Abril al 29 de Mayo.
JALISCO
Los jaliscienses votarán por Gobernador, 125 Presidencias Municipales 1,231 Regidurías, 125 Sindicaturas y 20 Diputaciones de Mayoría Relativa y además 18 Diputaciones de Representación Proporcional, 
Pre campaña para Gubernatura empezó el 5 de Noviembre y termina el 3 de Enero. La campaña formal iniciará el 1 de Marzo y acabará el 29 de Mayo.
Pre campaña para Diputaciones y Ayuntamientos inició este 25 de Noviembre y se termina el 3 de Enero. La campaña formal será del 31 de Marzo al 29 de Mayo.
MORELOS
Se elegirán Gobernador, 33 Presidencias Municipales, 153 Regidurías, 33 Sindicaturas y 12 Diputaciones de Mayoría Relativa y también 8 Diputaciones de Representación Proporcional. 
La pre campaña para la Gubernatura inició el pasado 25 de Noviembre y termina el 3 de Enero. La campaña formal iniciará el 31 de Marzo y terminará el 29 de mayo.
Mientras la pre campaña para Diputaciones y Ayuntamientos morelenses iniciará el 5 de Diciembre para terminar el 3 de Enero para reanudar el proselitismo en campaña formal del 15 de Abril al 29 de Mayo.
PUEBLA
Puebla también renovará la Gubernatura, 217 Presidencias Municipales, 1,818 Regidurías, 217 Sindicaturas y 26 Diputaciones de Mayoría Relativa y además 15 Diputaciones de Representación Proporcional.
La pre campaña para la Gubernatura será del 25 de Diciembre al 3 de Enero y la campaña del 31 de Marzo al 29 de Mayo.
Te informo que las pre campañas y campañas formales para Diputaciones y Ayuntamientos se harán en la misma fecha que para la gubernatura. 
TABASCO
Además de la Gubernatura, aquí se renovarán 17 Presidencias Municipales, 51 Regidurías, 17 Sindicaturas de Mayoría Relativa, 21 Diputaciones de Mayoría Relativa y 14 Diputaciones de Representación Proporcional.
La pre campaña para Gubernatura empezó el 15 de Noviembre y terminará el 3 de Enero. Y del 16 de marzo al 29 de mayo será el tiempo de campaña formal.
Aquí también la pre campaña y campaña para Diputaciones y Ayuntamientos se hará en las mismas fechas que las fijadas para la Gubernatura.
VERACRUZ
Los veracruzanos renovarán la Gubernatura, 30 Diputaciones de Mayoría Relativa y 20 Diputaciones de Representación Proporcional.
La pre campaña para Gubernatura será del 2 de Enero al 10 de Febrero y la campaña formal del 31 de Marzo al 29 de Mayo.
Pre campaña para Diputaciones del 22 de Enero al 10 de Febrero y campaña del 30 de Abril al 29 de Mayo.
YUCATÁN
Los yucatecos también elegirán Gobernador, 106 Presidencias Municipales, 587 Regidurías, 106 Sindicaturas y 21 Diputaciones de Mayoría Relativa y además 14 Diputaciones de Representación Proporcional, 
La pre campaña para la Gubernatura inició el 5 de Noviembre 2023 y termina el 3 de Enero y la campaña será del 1 de Marzo al 29 de Mayo.
Las pre campañas para Diputaciones y Ayuntamientos son del 25 de Noviembre al 3 de Enero y las campañas formales empezarán el 31 de marzo para terminar el 29 de Mayo.

ADENDUM:

Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo presentó su equipo de colaboradores encabezado por el dirigente de MORENA:

Mario Delgado, Coordinador de Pre Campaña. 
Adán Augusto López, Coordinador Político.
Ricardo Monreal, Coordinador de Enlace Territorial.
Tatiana Clouthier, Coordinadora de Voceros.
Jesús Valdés Peña, Coordinador de Enlace con Organizaciones Internacionales y mexicanos en el exterior.
Gerardo Fernández Noroña, Coordinador de Enlace con Organizaciones Sociales y Civiles y vocero de la precampaña.
Citlalli Hernández, Coordinadora de Alianzas para Coaliciones y Candidaturas Unicas.
Renata Turrent, Coordinadora de Enlace con Sectores Académicos.
Regina Orozco, Coordinadora de Enlace con la Comunidad Cultural.
Estela Damián, Coordinadora de Giras.

Los comentarios son de que “van con todo” para continuar con la 4T del jefazo López Obrador, convencidos de que van ganar sin problemas en el 2024 la Presidencia de la República, la Jefatura de Gobierno de la CDMX, la mayoría de las Gubernaturas, los escaños y curules del Senado y Cámara de Diputados, Congresos locales, Alcaldías, etc….etc…etc.
Y yo digo: Esperemos por el bien de todos, que la jornada electoral se desarrolle con tranquilidad y termine sin problemas graves como se percibe que pudiera llegar a ocurrir. ¡Ojalá así sea!
mohacan@prodigy.net.mx

El reto de Pepe Yunes https://indicepolitico.com/el-reto-de-pepe-yunes/ @epistolitas en @IndicePolitico

A Xóchitl no sólo le faltan partidos y seguidores que la vean y la traten como verdadera líder, sino sed y hambre de liderar, de ensillar y domar a quienes la quieren montar. Cargarlos de tareas, no cargarlos a ellos.

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*My Brother’s Thanksgiving Lament*

Thanksgiving began as a time of prayer. We could use some prayers right now, in a country inflamed with hate and prejudice and generational mistrust. Americans are at each other’s throats, living in different realities, fraught by two brutal, calamitous wars. So, as this annus horribilis lurches to a close, with the hope that we can understand each other better, or at least eat pie together, here is the annual holiday column from a man I frequently disagree with, but always love, my conservative brother, Kevin.

Less than a year before the country chooses a president, President Biden’s poll numbers are almost catastrophic. The overwhelming majority of voters say he is too old, and Donald Trump is beating him in five of six battleground states, according to one recent survey.

While majorities of the country find both Trump and Biden unacceptable, Trump remains the Republican front-runner, bolstered by what his supporters see as overeager Democratic prosecutions. This scenario holds great peril for Republicans because Trump is the weakest candidate against Biden. He already lost to him in 2020 and the reflexive hatred he generates, especially among women, could boost Democratic turnout as only Trump could manage.

Biden’s three years have been a disaster. An exorbitant round of unnecessary Covid spending sent inflation through the roof, leading to a destructive rise in interest rates and further squeezing consumers.

We should fear that John Kerry and Antony Blinken are projecting weakness, leading to an unimaginable alliance of China, Russia and Iran that threatens our future. Our botched and tragic withdrawal from Afghanistan set Putin’s invasion of Ukraine into motion.

The disgraceful show of support by college students for Hamas exposed the underlying antisemitism being taught and tolerated in our “best” universities. There should be no moral confusion here. This is a battle between good and evil, and encouraging the side that just massacred 1,200 people and is holding scores more hostages is a pretty clear example of what happens when you get your news from TikTok. It is incomprehensible to see Osama bin Laden lauded online as if he were a great writer, much less a visionary, a mere two decades after his orchestration of the worst terrorist attack in American history.

Biden’s posture toward Iran, the leading sponsor of terror in the world, is inexplicable. He tried to restart the Iran nuclear deal, thankfully to no avail. He even handed over $6 billion to release five hostages, money to which Iran was denied access only after Hamas’s attack.

Biden’s border policies unwittingly created a national security crisis, with asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants pouring over our Southern border; since Biden took office, border patrol estimates approximately 6.5 million encounters. Many of them remain in the United States, unvetted. The tidal wave of migrants has flooded many major cities.

The 2024 election may well decide the future of our republic. Biden is too old, both cognitively and physically, to serve out another term. It is unthinkable that we could have Kamala Harris as an accidental president. His policies have weakened us at home and abroad and invited our enemies to test our resolve. He is in the midst of a House impeachment inquiry, setting the stage for two impeached presidents to run against each other.

Trump’s nomination would distract from framing the conversation on Biden and his job performance. He would have to mount a vigorous presidential campaign while defending himself in four separate criminal cases. The Democrats show no signs of letting up on making the campaign about him and the evil MAGA Republicans. Not to mention that some voters might object to casting a ballot for a convicted felon if any of the cases bear fruit.

Trump has already announced that his second term would essentially be a revenge tour, settling old scores and fighting the deep state. Under less heavy hands, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. could use a deep cleaning, after their disgraceful conduct in the Russia collusion hoax and their handling of the multiple sins of Hunter Biden.

I am conflicted. Trump’s behavior since the 2020 election has been reprehensible, and I fear it will grow worse. I am not sure he could beat Biden and I would find it difficult, if not impossible, to vote for anyone convicted of a felony.

*Israel-Hamas War First Hostages Are Released; Truce Holds as More Aid Enters Gaza*

Twenty-five hostages, including 12 Thai citizens and 13 other women and children, had been freed, Egypt said. At the start of a four-day cease-fire, no fighting was reported since the morning and dozens of trucks carrying aid, including fuel, entered Gaza.

Here’s the latest on the cease-fire.
Twenty-five hostages held in Gaza, including 12 Thai nationals and 13 other women and children, were released from captivity on Friday, the Egyptian government said, the first people to be freed under a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas that took effect hours earlier.

The hostages were transferred to Egypt as part of a prisoner exchange that was set to see 39 Palestinian prisoners and detainees released from Israeli custody on the first day of a four-day truce, which could be the longest pause in fighting in the seven-week war between Israel and Hamas.

All the released hostages were expected to be swiftly moved to Israel to receive urgent medical care.

The cease-fire that took effect Friday morning has already enabled the delivery of more aid supplies to Gaza, where roughly two-thirds of its 2.2 million people have been displaced by the war. By the afternoon, dozens of trucks carrying humanitarian aid had entered Gaza from Egypt, a spokesman for the border crossing, Wael Abu Omar, said by phone.

Israel said that eight aid trucks contained fuel and cooking gas, a small but significant amount for a territory that has all but run out of fuel.

Here’s what to know:

The cease-fire deal, brokered by Qatar in weeks of talks, calls for Hamas to return 50 of the women and children taken hostage during its Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, and for Israel to release 150 imprisoned Palestinian women and teenagers. The exchange would occur in phases across the four days of the cease-fire. Read more about the deal.

The freed Thai hostages were agricultural workers living in southern Israel, and were among scores of foreign nationals who were abducted alongside Israelis on Oct. 7.

In Israel, family members of hostages were hopeful they would soon see their loved ones. Among the roughly 240 people abducted to Gaza is a girl who turned 4 on Friday, whose parents were slain in the Hamas attacks.

Palestinian and Israeli officials said that 39 Palestinians jailed in Israel, including 24 women and 15 teenage males, would be freed on Friday. Among those expected to be released were two women whose families in the West Bank were eagerly awaiting their return.

Israel and Hamas have signaled that they will resume fighting after the truce, but officials from both sides said they would abide by the cease-fire. Hamas’s top political official said his group was committed to the truce “as long as the enemy also commits to its implementation.”

*Black Friday Isn’t What It Used to Be*

Big discounts, many of them online only, start appearing well before Thanksgiving and will run long after. Some people still go to the mall, though.

Black Friday was once a hallmark celebration of American consumerism. Lately, it has lost some of its thunder.

It’s true that shoppers looking for big discounts can still line up early at Macy’s or Best Buy on the day after Thanksgiving, in hopes of snagging a bargain. But for many, the bargain has already been had.

Check your inbox: Those emails offering the “Best Prices of the Year” have been coming in for days or weeks as retailers try to beat one another to your wallet.

“When you think about Black Friday, the competitive landscape has really shifted to Black Friday deals prior to Black Friday,” Jeffrey Gennette, chief executive of Macy’s, told investors on a recent call as he explained why the company was spreading out its promotions. “We’re in the midst of that along with our competitors.”

That’s not to say that Black Friday has lost all meaning. The days when scores of customers camped out at big-box retailers or trampled one another in the rush to get cheap televisions may be gone, but Black Friday is still shorthand for the shopping frenzy that grips Americans this time each year.

“It’s still a cultural event, but it’s not what it was some years ago,” said Craig Johnson, founder of the retail consultancy Customer Growth Partners. “It’s nothing like it used to be.”

Here is what you need to know about Black Friday shopping.

How did Black Friday come to be?
The term “Black Friday” was coined around the 1960s by Philadelphia police officers. On the day after Thanksgiving and before the annual Army-Navy football game on Saturday, tourists would storm retailers in the city and the crowds would overwhelm law enforcement.

Retailers embraced the interest but the original meaning was lost on many people — who came to understand being in the “black” as a reference to profits at retailers (compared with red, which signifies losses).

Over the decades, thanks to retail promotions, it became a fixture on the national calendar, — eventually defined by long lines, unruly crowds and occasional casualties. As stores sought to compete for shoppers, they extended their hours — first to the crack of dawn on Friday, then to midnight, then to the night of Thanksgiving.

That trend, facing a backlash from retail workers, began to reverse a few years ago. Many retailers now make a point of staying closed on Thanksgiving.

In the past 20 or so years, Black Friday sales have also spread internationally, said Dale Rogers, a business professor at Arizona State University. “It started off as a little American thing,” he said. “Now it’s really global.”

Sales now start long before Friday.
Retailers slowly introduced sales earlier, and now deals can be found as early as October, said Mr. Johnson, the retail consultant.

“If you’re a retailer, you don’t want to capture demand by dropping your prices so low that you don’t make money,” he said. “The way most people capture demand is by targeting early demand.”

Consumers have spent 5 percent more online in the first 20 days of November than they did in the same period last year, according to Adobe Analytics.

Many retailers say that spending on the other end of the holiday shopping calendar, in the days approaching Christmas, is more important as people rush to nab last-minute gifts.

Barnes & Noble, for example, sells more than 20 million books in December alone, with the seven days before Christmas accounting for 20 times the sales of an average week. In 2022, Christmas Eve and the Saturday before Christmas were the busiest days for dollar stores, according to Placer.ai, a market research company.

Mr. Johnson said his firm predicted that Black Friday would be the third-busiest day for retailers this year, behind Dec. 23 and Dec. 16, the last two Saturdays before Christmas.

What are retailers saying about holiday shopping?
Companies have spent much of the past year celebrating a surprisingly resilient consumer who has continued to spend despite inflation and rising interest rates.

But there are signs that that’s starting to change. Last quarter, many executives told analysts that shoppers had started pulling back.

The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates rapidly starting in March 2022 in an effort to slow down the economy and curb inflation. Though the rate at which prices are rising has eased significantly, the overall increase in prices is starting to weigh on consumers, limiting the amount of discretionary income at their disposal.

“Consumers are feeling the weight of multiple economic pressures, and discretionary retail has borne the brunt of this weight for many quarters now,” Christina Hennington, chief growth officer of Target, told analysts on a recent earnings call.

That doesn’t necessarily mean consumers won’t turn out, but they are more likely to take advantage of promotions and less likely to make big purchases like furniture or certain electronics, analysts expect.

Corie Barry, chief executive of Best Buy, told analysts on an earnings call Tuesday that the company was “preparing for a customer who is very deal focused” and was expecting sales to concentrate on days like Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the days just before Christmas.

The National Retail Federation, an industry trade group, forecasts that holiday sales will increase 3 to 4 percent from last year, which is in line with prepandemic levels but not as high as the past two years. Holiday sales rose 5.3 percent in 2022 and 12.7 percent in 2021.

*Once a Homeless Addict, a Mayor Takes On Housing and Drug Crises*

Dan Carter was on the streets for 17 years. His experience informs his policy agenda as mayor of Oshawa, Ontario, a city of 175,000 struggling with overdoses and affordability.

There are politicians — almost all of them — who try to put the best possible shine on their professional résumés and past lives. Then there is Dan Carter.

“For 17 years, I was an absolutely horrible individual,” said Mr. Carter, the mayor of Oshawa, Ontario. “Horrible individual. I lied, cheated, stole.”

Homeless and addicted to drugs from his teenage years until he was 31, and essentially illiterate because of severe dyslexia, he was fired from more jobs than he could remember, Mr. Carter said, adding, “I really had no skills, no abilities, no education, no nothing.”

But it was perhaps this atypical background that appealed to voters in Oshawa, a city of 175,000 on Lake Ontario’s shoreline, who first elected him mayor in 2018. Or at least his story positioned him as someone who could bring his personal experience to bear on the city’s most pressing problems.

Written with colored markers on a whiteboard in the meeting room next to Mr. Carter’s office in city hall are the issues facing Oshawa: the number of overdoses (398 last year); the number of homeless people (currently about 350); the costs to the city for the overdoses (over half a million Canadian dollars, or about $365,000, last year). Next to this list is a flow chart of his plans to change things.

“It’s going to be expensive, it’s going to be labor intensive, but that’s what it’s going to take,” said Mr. Carter, 63, during a stroll around city hall. He gestured toward a nearby park where several homeless people congregate in the cold: “Or,” he said, “we can just keep doing this.”

Born in New Brunswick, Mr. Carter was adopted by a family in Agincourt, Ontario, a farming village that rapidly became a suburb — part of Toronto’s Scarborough neighborhood.

Growing up, Mr. Carter had trouble connecting with his stern adoptive father, their one bond a current affairs radio program. After each show, he and his father debated politics.

His dyslexia, unrecognized in his school years, made learning nearly impossible. But a bright spot was his relationship with his three older siblings, especially Michael, a Toronto police officer whose death at 28 in a motorcycle accident deeply shook the 13-year-old Mr. Carter.

*How Viral Infections Cause Long-Term Health Problems*

In a few patients, the immune system becomes misdirected, attacking the body instead of the virus.

Every day, Davida Wynn sets herself one task: Take a bath. Or wash the dishes. Or make an elaborate meal. By the end of the chore, she is exhausted and has to sit or lie down, sometimes falling asleep wherever she happens to be.

“Anything beyond that is truly excruciating,” Ms. Wynn, 42, said.

Her heart races even during small tasks, and she often gets dizzy. At least once a month, she falls at her home outside Atlanta. Once she badly bruised her face, and another time she banged up her knee.

Ms. Wynn was infected with the coronavirus in May 2020, when she was a nurse in a hospital Covid unit, and became so ill she was put into a medically induced coma for six weeks. Ever since, her bloodwork has indicated that she is experiencing extreme inflammation, a hallmark of autoimmune disease.

Infection with the coronavirus is known to leave behind a long legacy of health problems, many of which are characterized as long Covid. But mounting evidence suggests that independent of that syndrome, the coronavirus also befuddles the immune system into targeting the body, causing autoimmune disorders in some people.

This outcome is more likely in those who, like Ms. Wynn, were severely ill with Covid, multiple studies suggest.

Covid is not unique in this aspect. Scientists have long known that infection can set the body down the path of autoimmune disease. The classic example is Epstein-Barr virus.

About one in 10 people who have mononucleosis, which is caused by the virus, go on to develop myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome. A landmark study last year even linked the virus to multiple sclerosis.

Many other pathogens can also seed autoimmunity — but only in an unlucky few people.

“We are all infected with a multitude of viruses, and in the majority of cases, we don’t get any autoimmunity,” said Dr. Alberto Ascherio, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who led the multiple sclerosis study.

Infections with bacteria such as chlamydia and salmonella can inflame the joints, skin and eyes — a condition called reactive arthritis. Enteroviruses can mislead the body into attacking its own pancreatic cells, leading to Type 1 diabetes.

Like Epstein-Barr virus, dengue and H.I.V. are thought to cause autoimmunity in some people. Still, Covid seems to foment a long-term reaction that is distinct, said Dr. Timothy Henrich, a virologist at the University of California, San Francisco.

“There’s something specific about SARS-CoV-2 that seems to set it apart, in terms of the severity and duration,” he said, referring to the coronavirus.

*W.H.O. Says China Has Shared Data Indicating No Novel Pathogen*

The W.H.O. had requested detailed information about a reported surge in respiratory illnesses in children in China. Chinese data suggested the surge was caused by known bacteria and viruses.

The World Health Organization said that China had shared data about a recent surge in respiratory illnesses in children, one day after the agency said it was seeking information about the possibility of undiagnosed pneumonia cases there.

The Chinese data indicated “no detection of any unusual or novel pathogens,” according to a W.H.O. statement on Thursday. The data, which included laboratory results from infected children, indicated that the rise in cases was a result of known viruses and bacteria, such as influenza and mycoplasma pneumoniae, a bacterium that causes usually mild illness.

Hospital admissions of children had increased since May, as had outpatient visits, but hospitals were able to handle the increase, China told the global health agency.

The W.H.O. requested information after Chinese news reports, and social media posts, indicated a notable surge in sick children in recent weeks. Parents reported long lines, sometimes of eight hours or more, at children’s hospitals. China’s National Health Commission acknowledged the reports of overcrowding.

Some of those reports also caught the attention this week of members of ProMED, a disease tracking site run by the International Society for Infectious Diseases that health officials monitor for early warnings of potential emerging diseases.

China’s transparency in reporting outbreaks has been the subject of intense global scrutiny, after it covered up early cases of both the SARS virus in 2003 and the virus that led to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. The W.H.O. early this year rebuked Chinese officials for withholding data that the agency said could shed light on the coronavirus’s origins.

The W.H.O. issued its formal request for data one day after a ProMED member shared a news report from Taiwan about an uptick in sick children in Beijing and Liaoning, a northeastern Chinese province. Chinese officials had already publicly acknowledged an increase in respiratory diseases among children, but the W.H.O. said it was unclear at the time whether that increase was caused by known pathogens.

“A key purpose was to identify whether there have been ‘clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia’ in Beijing and Liaoning, as referred to in media reports,” the W.H.O. statement said.

The W.H.O. said the increased infections in China were earlier in the season than historically expected but “not unexpected,” given that this was the first winter since China had lifted the stringent coronavirus restrictions it imposed in 2020. Other countries experienced similar leaps in other illnesses after lifting their Covid controls.

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*MAESTRO FEDERICO LA MONT*

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*My Brother’s Thanksgiving Lament*

Thanksgiving began as a time of prayer. We could use some prayers right now, in a country inflamed with hate and prejudice and generational mistrust. Americans are at each other’s throats, living in different realities, fraught by two brutal, calamitous wars. So, as this annus horribilis lurches to a close, with the hope that we can understand each other better, or at least eat pie together, here is the annual holiday column from a man I frequently disagree with, but always love, my conservative brother, Kevin.

Less than a year before the country chooses a president, President Biden’s poll numbers are almost catastrophic. The overwhelming majority of voters say he is too old, and Donald Trump is beating him in five of six battleground states, according to one recent survey.

While majorities of the country find both Trump and Biden unacceptable, Trump remains the Republican front-runner, bolstered by what his supporters see as overeager Democratic prosecutions. This scenario holds great peril for Republicans because Trump is the weakest candidate against Biden. He already lost to him in 2020 and the reflexive hatred he generates, especially among women, could boost Democratic turnout as only Trump could manage.

Biden’s three years have been a disaster. An exorbitant round of unnecessary Covid spending sent inflation through the roof, leading to a destructive rise in interest rates and further squeezing consumers.

We should fear that John Kerry and Antony Blinken are projecting weakness, leading to an unimaginable alliance of China, Russia and Iran that threatens our future. Our botched and tragic withdrawal from Afghanistan set Putin’s invasion of Ukraine into motion.

The disgraceful show of support by college students for Hamas exposed the underlying antisemitism being taught and tolerated in our “best” universities. There should be no moral confusion here. This is a battle between good and evil, and encouraging the side that just massacred 1,200 people and is holding scores more hostages is a pretty clear example of what happens when you get your news from TikTok. It is incomprehensible to see Osama bin Laden lauded online as if he were a great writer, much less a visionary, a mere two decades after his orchestration of the worst terrorist attack in American history.

Biden’s posture toward Iran, the leading sponsor of terror in the world, is inexplicable. He tried to restart the Iran nuclear deal, thankfully to no avail. He even handed over $6 billion to release five hostages, money to which Iran was denied access only after Hamas’s attack.

Biden’s border policies unwittingly created a national security crisis, with asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants pouring over our Southern border; since Biden took office, border patrol estimates approximately 6.5 million encounters. Many of them remain in the United States, unvetted. The tidal wave of migrants has flooded many major cities.

The 2024 election may well decide the future of our republic. Biden is too old, both cognitively and physically, to serve out another term. It is unthinkable that we could have Kamala Harris as an accidental president. His policies have weakened us at home and abroad and invited our enemies to test our resolve. He is in the midst of a House impeachment inquiry, setting the stage for two impeached presidents to run against each other.

Trump’s nomination would distract from framing the conversation on Biden and his job performance. He would have to mount a vigorous presidential campaign while defending himself in four separate criminal cases. The Democrats show no signs of letting up on making the campaign about him and the evil MAGA Republicans. Not to mention that some voters might object to casting a ballot for a convicted felon if any of the cases bear fruit.

Trump has already announced that his second term would essentially be a revenge tour, settling old scores and fighting the deep state. Under less heavy hands, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. could use a deep cleaning, after their disgraceful conduct in the Russia collusion hoax and their handling of the multiple sins of Hunter Biden.

I am conflicted. Trump’s behavior since the 2020 election has been reprehensible, and I fear it will grow worse. I am not sure he could beat Biden and I would find it difficult, if not impossible, to vote for anyone convicted of a felony.

*Israel-Hamas War First Hostages Are Released; Truce Holds as More Aid Enters Gaza*

Twenty-five hostages, including 12 Thai citizens and 13 other women and children, had been freed, Egypt said. At the start of a four-day cease-fire, no fighting was reported since the morning and dozens of trucks carrying aid, including fuel, entered Gaza.

Here’s the latest on the cease-fire.
Twenty-five hostages held in Gaza, including 12 Thai nationals and 13 other women and children, were released from captivity on Friday, the Egyptian government said, the first people to be freed under a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas that took effect hours earlier.

The hostages were transferred to Egypt as part of a prisoner exchange that was set to see 39 Palestinian prisoners and detainees released from Israeli custody on the first day of a four-day truce, which could be the longest pause in fighting in the seven-week war between Israel and Hamas.

All the released hostages were expected to be swiftly moved to Israel to receive urgent medical care.

The cease-fire that took effect Friday morning has already enabled the delivery of more aid supplies to Gaza, where roughly two-thirds of its 2.2 million people have been displaced by the war. By the afternoon, dozens of trucks carrying humanitarian aid had entered Gaza from Egypt, a spokesman for the border crossing, Wael Abu Omar, said by phone.

Israel said that eight aid trucks contained fuel and cooking gas, a small but significant amount for a territory that has all but run out of fuel.

Here’s what to know:

The cease-fire deal, brokered by Qatar in weeks of talks, calls for Hamas to return 50 of the women and children taken hostage during its Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, and for Israel to release 150 imprisoned Palestinian women and teenagers. The exchange would occur in phases across the four days of the cease-fire. Read more about the deal.

The freed Thai hostages were agricultural workers living in southern Israel, and were among scores of foreign nationals who were abducted alongside Israelis on Oct. 7.

In Israel, family members of hostages were hopeful they would soon see their loved ones. Among the roughly 240 people abducted to Gaza is a girl who turned 4 on Friday, whose parents were slain in the Hamas attacks.

Palestinian and Israeli officials said that 39 Palestinians jailed in Israel, including 24 women and 15 teenage males, would be freed on Friday. Among those expected to be released were two women whose families in the West Bank were eagerly awaiting their return.

Israel and Hamas have signaled that they will resume fighting after the truce, but officials from both sides said they would abide by the cease-fire. Hamas’s top political official said his group was committed to the truce “as long as the enemy also commits to its implementation.”

*Black Friday Isn’t What It Used to Be*

Big discounts, many of them online only, start appearing well before Thanksgiving and will run long after. Some people still go to the mall, though.

Black Friday was once a hallmark celebration of American consumerism. Lately, it has lost some of its thunder.

It’s true that shoppers looking for big discounts can still line up early at Macy’s or Best Buy on the day after Thanksgiving, in hopes of snagging a bargain. But for many, the bargain has already been had.

Check your inbox: Those emails offering the “Best Prices of the Year” have been coming in for days or weeks as retailers try to beat one another to your wallet.

“When you think about Black Friday, the competitive landscape has really shifted to Black Friday deals prior to Black Friday,” Jeffrey Gennette, chief executive of Macy’s, told investors on a recent call as he explained why the company was spreading out its promotions. “We’re in the midst of that along with our competitors.”

That’s not to say that Black Friday has lost all meaning. The days when scores of customers camped out at big-box retailers or trampled one another in the rush to get cheap televisions may be gone, but Black Friday is still shorthand for the shopping frenzy that grips Americans this time each year.

“It’s still a cultural event, but it’s not what it was some years ago,” said Craig Johnson, founder of the retail consultancy Customer Growth Partners. “It’s nothing like it used to be.”

Here is what you need to know about Black Friday shopping.

How did Black Friday come to be?
The term “Black Friday” was coined around the 1960s by Philadelphia police officers. On the day after Thanksgiving and before the annual Army-Navy football game on Saturday, tourists would storm retailers in the city and the crowds would overwhelm law enforcement.

Retailers embraced the interest but the original meaning was lost on many people — who came to understand being in the “black” as a reference to profits at retailers (compared with red, which signifies losses).

Over the decades, thanks to retail promotions, it became a fixture on the national calendar, — eventually defined by long lines, unruly crowds and occasional casualties. As stores sought to compete for shoppers, they extended their hours — first to the crack of dawn on Friday, then to midnight, then to the night of Thanksgiving.

That trend, facing a backlash from retail workers, began to reverse a few years ago. Many retailers now make a point of staying closed on Thanksgiving.

In the past 20 or so years, Black Friday sales have also spread internationally, said Dale Rogers, a business professor at Arizona State University. “It started off as a little American thing,” he said. “Now it’s really global.”

Sales now start long before Friday.
Retailers slowly introduced sales earlier, and now deals can be found as early as October, said Mr. Johnson, the retail consultant.

“If you’re a retailer, you don’t want to capture demand by dropping your prices so low that you don’t make money,” he said. “The way most people capture demand is by targeting early demand.”

Consumers have spent 5 percent more online in the first 20 days of November than they did in the same period last year, according to Adobe Analytics.

Many retailers say that spending on the other end of the holiday shopping calendar, in the days approaching Christmas, is more important as people rush to nab last-minute gifts.

Barnes & Noble, for example, sells more than 20 million books in December alone, with the seven days before Christmas accounting for 20 times the sales of an average week. In 2022, Christmas Eve and the Saturday before Christmas were the busiest days for dollar stores, according to Placer.ai, a market research company.

Mr. Johnson said his firm predicted that Black Friday would be the third-busiest day for retailers this year, behind Dec. 23 and Dec. 16, the last two Saturdays before Christmas.

What are retailers saying about holiday shopping?
Companies have spent much of the past year celebrating a surprisingly resilient consumer who has continued to spend despite inflation and rising interest rates.

But there are signs that that’s starting to change. Last quarter, many executives told analysts that shoppers had started pulling back.

The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates rapidly starting in March 2022 in an effort to slow down the economy and curb inflation. Though the rate at which prices are rising has eased significantly, the overall increase in prices is starting to weigh on consumers, limiting the amount of discretionary income at their disposal.

“Consumers are feeling the weight of multiple economic pressures, and discretionary retail has borne the brunt of this weight for many quarters now,” Christina Hennington, chief growth officer of Target, told analysts on a recent earnings call.

That doesn’t necessarily mean consumers won’t turn out, but they are more likely to take advantage of promotions and less likely to make big purchases like furniture or certain electronics, analysts expect.

Corie Barry, chief executive of Best Buy, told analysts on an earnings call Tuesday that the company was “preparing for a customer who is very deal focused” and was expecting sales to concentrate on days like Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the days just before Christmas.

The National Retail Federation, an industry trade group, forecasts that holiday sales will increase 3 to 4 percent from last year, which is in line with prepandemic levels but not as high as the past two years. Holiday sales rose 5.3 percent in 2022 and 12.7 percent in 2021.

*Once a Homeless Addict, a Mayor Takes On Housing and Drug Crises*

Dan Carter was on the streets for 17 years. His experience informs his policy agenda as mayor of Oshawa, Ontario, a city of 175,000 struggling with overdoses and affordability.

There are politicians — almost all of them — who try to put the best possible shine on their professional résumés and past lives. Then there is Dan Carter.

“For 17 years, I was an absolutely horrible individual,” said Mr. Carter, the mayor of Oshawa, Ontario. “Horrible individual. I lied, cheated, stole.”

Homeless and addicted to drugs from his teenage years until he was 31, and essentially illiterate because of severe dyslexia, he was fired from more jobs than he could remember, Mr. Carter said, adding, “I really had no skills, no abilities, no education, no nothing.”

But it was perhaps this atypical background that appealed to voters in Oshawa, a city of 175,000 on Lake Ontario’s shoreline, who first elected him mayor in 2018. Or at least his story positioned him as someone who could bring his personal experience to bear on the city’s most pressing problems.

Written with colored markers on a whiteboard in the meeting room next to Mr. Carter’s office in city hall are the issues facing Oshawa: the number of overdoses (398 last year); the number of homeless people (currently about 350); the costs to the city for the overdoses (over half a million Canadian dollars, or about $365,000, last year). Next to this list is a flow chart of his plans to change things.

“It’s going to be expensive, it’s going to be labor intensive, but that’s what it’s going to take,” said Mr. Carter, 63, during a stroll around city hall. He gestured toward a nearby park where several homeless people congregate in the cold: “Or,” he said, “we can just keep doing this.”

Born in New Brunswick, Mr. Carter was adopted by a family in Agincourt, Ontario, a farming village that rapidly became a suburb — part of Toronto’s Scarborough neighborhood.

Growing up, Mr. Carter had trouble connecting with his stern adoptive father, their one bond a current affairs radio program. After each show, he and his father debated politics.

His dyslexia, unrecognized in his school years, made learning nearly impossible. But a bright spot was his relationship with his three older siblings, especially Michael, a Toronto police officer whose death at 28 in a motorcycle accident deeply shook the 13-year-old Mr. Carter.

*How Viral Infections Cause Long-Term Health Problems*

In a few patients, the immune system becomes misdirected, attacking the body instead of the virus.

Every day, Davida Wynn sets herself one task: Take a bath. Or wash the dishes. Or make an elaborate meal. By the end of the chore, she is exhausted and has to sit or lie down, sometimes falling asleep wherever she happens to be.

“Anything beyond that is truly excruciating,” Ms. Wynn, 42, said.

Her heart races even during small tasks, and she often gets dizzy. At least once a month, she falls at her home outside Atlanta. Once she badly bruised her face, and another time she banged up her knee.

Ms. Wynn was infected with the coronavirus in May 2020, when she was a nurse in a hospital Covid unit, and became so ill she was put into a medically induced coma for six weeks. Ever since, her bloodwork has indicated that she is experiencing extreme inflammation, a hallmark of autoimmune disease.

Infection with the coronavirus is known to leave behind a long legacy of health problems, many of which are characterized as long Covid. But mounting evidence suggests that independent of that syndrome, the coronavirus also befuddles the immune system into targeting the body, causing autoimmune disorders in some people.

This outcome is more likely in those who, like Ms. Wynn, were severely ill with Covid, multiple studies suggest.

Covid is not unique in this aspect. Scientists have long known that infection can set the body down the path of autoimmune disease. The classic example is Epstein-Barr virus.

About one in 10 people who have mononucleosis, which is caused by the virus, go on to develop myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome. A landmark study last year even linked the virus to multiple sclerosis.

Many other pathogens can also seed autoimmunity — but only in an unlucky few people.

“We are all infected with a multitude of viruses, and in the majority of cases, we don’t get any autoimmunity,” said Dr. Alberto Ascherio, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who led the multiple sclerosis study.

Infections with bacteria such as chlamydia and salmonella can inflame the joints, skin and eyes — a condition called reactive arthritis. Enteroviruses can mislead the body into attacking its own pancreatic cells, leading to Type 1 diabetes.

Like Epstein-Barr virus, dengue and H.I.V. are thought to cause autoimmunity in some people. Still, Covid seems to foment a long-term reaction that is distinct, said Dr. Timothy Henrich, a virologist at the University of California, San Francisco.

“There’s something specific about SARS-CoV-2 that seems to set it apart, in terms of the severity and duration,” he said, referring to the coronavirus.

*W.H.O. Says China Has Shared Data Indicating No Novel Pathogen*

The W.H.O. had requested detailed information about a reported surge in respiratory illnesses in children in China. Chinese data suggested the surge was caused by known bacteria and viruses.

The World Health Organization said that China had shared data about a recent surge in respiratory illnesses in children, one day after the agency said it was seeking information about the possibility of undiagnosed pneumonia cases there.

The Chinese data indicated “no detection of any unusual or novel pathogens,” according to a W.H.O. statement on Thursday. The data, which included laboratory results from infected children, indicated that the rise in cases was a result of known viruses and bacteria, such as influenza and mycoplasma pneumoniae, a bacterium that causes usually mild illness.

Hospital admissions of children had increased since May, as had outpatient visits, but hospitals were able to handle the increase, China told the global health agency.

The W.H.O. requested information after Chinese news reports, and social media posts, indicated a notable surge in sick children in recent weeks. Parents reported long lines, sometimes of eight hours or more, at children’s hospitals. China’s National Health Commission acknowledged the reports of overcrowding.

Some of those reports also caught the attention this week of members of ProMED, a disease tracking site run by the International Society for Infectious Diseases that health officials monitor for early warnings of potential emerging diseases.

China’s transparency in reporting outbreaks has been the subject of intense global scrutiny, after it covered up early cases of both the SARS virus in 2003 and the virus that led to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. The W.H.O. early this year rebuked Chinese officials for withholding data that the agency said could shed light on the coronavirus’s origins.

The W.H.O. issued its formal request for data one day after a ProMED member shared a news report from Taiwan about an uptick in sick children in Beijing and Liaoning, a northeastern Chinese province. Chinese officials had already publicly acknowledged an increase in respiratory diseases among children, but the W.H.O. said it was unclear at the time whether that increase was caused by known pathogens.

“A key purpose was to identify whether there have been ‘clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia’ in Beijing and Liaoning, as referred to in media reports,” the W.H.O. statement said.

The W.H.O. said the increased infections in China were earlier in the season than historically expected but “not unexpected,” given that this was the first winter since China had lifted the stringent coronavirus restrictions it imposed in 2020. Other countries experienced similar leaps in other illnesses after lifting their Covid controls.

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*Thirty years ago, a negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seemed achievable. The story of how it fell apart reveals why the fight remains so intractable today.*

The state of Israel was born in war. The year before its founding in 1948, the United Nations produced a partition plan that proposed to divide the stretch of land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea into two states, Arab and Jewish. The surrounding Arab countries rejected the plan, as did Palestinians living on the land. And on May 15, a day after Israel declared itself a state, four Arab countries attacked. Jewish Israelis saw the ensuing war, which they won, as an existential fight for survival, one that came just a few years after the Holocaust. To Palestinians, 1948 marked the Nakba, or catastrophe, in which 700,000 people fled or were forcibly expelled from their homes. Many went to the West Bank, where Jordan took control, or the Gaza Strip, which Egypt occupied.

Chronic conflict followed. So too did periodic efforts to resolve it. None brought lasting peace. Negotiations between Israel and Palestinians barely existed for decades, and subsequent military conflicts made the situation more difficult. When Egypt mobilized troops on the border in 1967, Israel launched pre-emptive airstrikes, and in a war fought in six days against a coalition of Arab states, Israel took over contested territory, beginning a military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. Many Palestinians, living under occupation or as refugees around the world, still saw the founding of Israel as an act of dispossession that had robbed them of their land and homes. In 1968, when Yasir Arafat became chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the group’s charter called the establishment of Israel illegal and sanctioned armed resistance in what it saw as a struggle for liberation. Some P.L.O. factions conducted bombings, hijackings and other attacks, including the killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. As a result, Israel refused to negotiate with the P.L.O., considering it a terrorist group.

A political shift began in the late 1980s. With Arafat and other P.L.O. leaders in exile in Tunisia, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza mounted a locally led popular uprising in December 1987. Television footage of the First Intifada (which means “shaking off” in Arabic) showed Israeli soldiers beating children throwing stones, eroding Israel’s international standing.

Over the following years, with Israel and the P.L.O. under pressure for different reasons, momentum built for the two sides to negotiate a resolution. An opportunity for something unprecedented began to take shape: the first direct dialogue between Israel and the P.L.O. and what would become their most sustained effort to reach a settlement. This was known as the Oslo peace process, named for the city where the secret talks took place. It ran through most of the 1990s and came as close as any negotiated process ever has to resolving this intractable conflict. In the end, Oslo failed. The reasons for that failure — and the lessons it has to teach us — have been debated ever since.

We assembled a panel of scholars and experts — three Palestinian, three Israeli and an American — to help us understand the history of Oslo: Was it a genuine chance for peace? Was it doomed from the start? Why did it unravel?

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity, with some material reordered and added from follow-up interviews.

In the 1990s, the international order in the Middle East realigned as a result of the gulf war. When Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait, most Arab countries joined the U.S.-led coalition to push them out. The P.L.O., however, backed Hussein. The decision cost the P.L.O. the financial and diplomatic backing of many of its Arab allies.

President George H.W. Bush and his secretary of state, James A. Baker III, saw an opening for international intervention. In October 1991, the United States and the Soviet Union hosted the Madrid peace conference, with delegations from Israel, Lebanon and Syria, as well as a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation. The gathering represented a breakthrough, but it did not include the P.L.O. Yitzhak Shamir, Israel’s prime minister, objected to the group’s presence, and Arab countries went along with his wishes.

*Families Fear for the Health of Ailing, Frail Israelis Held Hostage*

Many of the more than 200 people seized by Hamas when it raided Israel had serious medical conditions. Some were badly injured in the attack. Doctors say they need medical care urgently.

When armed Hamas terrorists invaded her home on Oct. 7, Karina Engelbert was still recovering from a double mastectomy and breast reconstruction surgery that had gone terribly awry. She was weak and easily fatigued, and a buildup of painful scar tissue on her chest caused tightness, limiting her mobility.

The militants kidnapped Ms. Engelbert, 51, and her entire family, including her husband, Ronen Engel, 54, and their daughters, 18-year-old Mika and 11-year-old Yuval, snatching them from the safe room inside their home on the Nir Oz kibbutz and taking them to the Gaza Strip, where they have been held for over 40 days.

“The last I heard from my sister was on that black sabbath at 9:30 in the morning, and she spoke very quietly, and she said, ‘They’re inside the house,’” Ms. Engelbert’s brother Diego Engelbert said in an interview.

He has not received any information about his sister’s condition, and she has not been visited by the International Red Cross, he said.

“We don’t know if she’s getting any medical treatment, if anyone is taking care of her, if she is getting any pain relief or any of the medication she needs to keep the cancer from coming back,” Mr. Engelbert said.

Ms. Engelbert is one of about 240 hostages abducted from Israel, many of whom need urgent medical attention.

They range in age from infants to octogenarians, and include a Thai foreign worker who was nine months pregnant on Oct. 7 and may have given birth in captivity. There are many kibbutz members in their mid-80s who were taking medications for chronic conditions like high blood pressure, and younger adults who have both psychiatric conditions and medical conditions that can be fatal if left untreated.

And then there were those who sustained potentially life-threatening injuries in the raid itself, which killed an estimated 1,200 people, most of them civilians.

Ms. Engelbert is one of three women abducted who had breast cancer. Another was 65-year-old Yehudit Waiss, whose body was discovered by Israeli soldiers as they closed in on a hospital in Gaza last week. Israeli officials say she and Noa Marciano, a 19-year-old female soldier, were murdered by their captors. And a few days ago, Hamas said that an 86-year-old kibbutznik, Arye Zalmanovich, had died after suffering a heart attack during the Israeli bombings of Gaza.

Most elderly captives depend on medications to manage high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease, according to Hagai Levine, an Israeli physician who has been working with the families of the hostages.

Among the roughly 40 children being held, most of whom are girls, there is a 4-year-old boy whose growth is delayed and who takes a nutritional supplement because he is underweight, and the boy’s 10-month-old brother. A photo of the two redheads in the arms of their mother when they were abducted has been widely circulated.

*Before Hillary Clinton, There Was Rosalynn Carter*

When Americans look back and take stock of their most impressive first ladies, they rarely think of Rosalynn Carter.

In a 2020 poll that asked historians and other experts to rank first ladies on a score of exemplary characteristics, Mrs. Carter came in ninth, trailing Dolley Madison, Betty Ford and Jackie Kennedy. When Apple TV+ produced “First Ladies,” a series of six documentary portraits, in 2020, it ignored Mrs. Carter entirely. So too did Showtime’s 2022 drama series “The First Lady.” Both, again, featured Mrs. Ford, who only served a partial term, and whose primary contribution to White House history was her candid persona. While Mrs. Ford’s personal charm and willingness to confront Republican pieties made her a star, she made no lasting change to the institution of the East Wing itself; the only way to understand the first lady entertainment complex’s posthumous preference for Mrs. Ford over Mrs. Carter is that she is the first lady equivalent of Princess Diana, a glamorous, tragic figure whose personal agonies produce riveting television. Mrs. Carter — cheerful, stable, staid — makes for less compelling drama, but much better lessons in wielding power from that singular office.

We are in the midst of a re-evaluation of the Carter presidency — long considered a failure — prompted in part by a celebrated 2021 biography that declared Mr. Carter the “most misunderstood president of the last century.” But his first lady, so far, has merited no second look; perhaps, on the occasion of her death, it is finally time to give Mrs. Carter her due.

Only two first ladies in the 20th century can claim to have transformed the institution. Eleanor Roosevelt shaped America’s highest expectations of a first lady — but it was Rosalynn Carter who built a fully staffed Office of the First Lady to match her activist ambitions, creating a power base not just for herself but for all of her successors.

Serving as an equal partner to her husband, the president, advancing a mental health policy agenda, brokering peace between Israel and Egypt: These were high aspirations. Mrs. Carter had the canny instincts to know that a player who courts influence requires a court. She hired a seasoned Washington journalist as press secretary, set up a separate office led by a highly trained adviser — the director of projects — to handle policy and brought on a chief of staff to oversee it all. She assembled a highly competent team and moved the first lady’s personal office from the residence to the East Wing itself to join them.

Mrs. Carter’s charismatic press secretary, Mary Hoyt, led the fight for decent East Wing salaries, despite stiff opposition. If Mrs. Carter wanted staffers capable of preparing her to testify before Congress and lead a diplomatic tour across Latin America discussing hard policy with government leaders, the White House would need to pay them in accordance with their experience. But it was a time of austerity. President Carter was demanding sacrifice from all Americans and turning down the heat in the White House to cut costs. Ms. Hoyt wore cashmere mittens while typing, to keep her fingers from freezing.

So many Americans wrote in to complain about the office’s staff members getting paid anything at all that Ms. Hoyt prepared a form letter in response. With Mrs. Carter’s backing, she managed to get raises for herself and for most of her colleagues, and also extracted a reserved parking spot next to the vice president’s as a perk. (Up until the Ford administration, East Wing staff members had been chauffeured to work in a government town car, a little privilege that softened the paltry pay.) This remunerated, professionalized, sizable Office of the First Lady that Mrs. Carter established helped her pursue her agenda. It also created the model for the modern East Wing as an office with the stature and capacity to wield profound influence as an arena for setting policy, shaping the presidency and shifting cultural attitudes.

At the time, though, Mrs. Carter’s achievements were largely dismissed. Late ’70s press coverage mocked her as “Rosé Rosalynn,” a dour Southern Baptist who canceled hard liquor, dancing and French cooking at White House dinners — all seen as not elegant or remnants of Kennedy-era decadence — and allowed her staffers to shuffle around in clogs. Feminists like Gloria Steinem faulted Mrs. Carter for not being sufficiently outré in her activism. “I am disappointed in her altogether,” complained Ms. Steinem in 1978. Even women reporters like United Press International’s Helen Thomas, an old White House hand who had witnessed far lazier and media-hostile first ladies, were unimpressed. “There’s no ferment, no mystique,” she wrote. “She creates neither love nor hate.”

*Sunak’s Dilemma: When to Hold an Election He’ll Probably Lose*

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is 20 percentage points behind in opinion polls. But history suggests the timing of a vote might make a difference.

No question in British politics will be more regularly asked, and reliably brushed aside, over the next few months than when Prime Minister Rishi Sunak plans to call the country’s next general election.

He must do so by January 2025. The conventional wisdom is that with his Conservative Party trailing the opposition Labour Party by 20 percentage points in the polls, Mr. Sunak will wait as long as he can. Given the fact that Britons do not like electioneering around Christmas or in the dead of winter, that would suggest a vote next fall.

But some of Mr. Sunak’s colleagues last week pushed for an earlier timetable. Having lost a critical legal ruling on his flagship immigration policy, the prime minister came under pressure from the right of his party to go to the polls in the spring if the House of Lords blocks the government’s efforts to revamp legislation to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Turning the election into a referendum on immigration might deflect attention from the economic woes plaguing Britain. But that assumes voters could be persuaded to swing to the Conservatives out of a fear of asylum seekers crossing the English Channel in small boats, rather than blaming the party for a stagnant economy, a cost-of-living crisis and hollowed out public services.

Britain’s Supreme Court last week struck down the policy of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda as unlawful. But Mr. Sunak has vowed to keep the matter alive by negotiating a new treaty with the East African country that would include a legally binding commitment not to remove migrants sent there by Britain — one of the court’s objections.

Mr. Sunak also pledged emergency legislation that would declare Rwanda a safe country for asylum seekers. It remains unclear whether that would survive legal challenges and in the House of Lords, the unelected upper chamber of Parliament that has the right to review the legislation and could block it (though its appetite for a full-scale clash with the government was not clear.)

“I know the British people will want this new law to pass so we can get flights off to Rwanda,” Mr. Sunak told reporters last week. “Whether it’s the House of Lords or the Labour Party standing in our way, I will take them on because I want to get this thing done and I want to stop the boats.”

Political analysts say immigration remains a resonant issue in England’s north and Midlands, where support for the Conservatives in 2019 gave the party a landslide general election victory. Those voters, many of whom traditionally supported the Labour Party, were drawn to the Tory slogan, “Get Brexit done.”

“Immigration is now the top priority for 2019 Conservative Party voters, above even the cost-of-living crisis and the dire state of the country’s National Health Service,” said Matthew Goodwin, a professor of politics at the University of Kent, who has written about populism and identity politics.

“This means, in short, that Rishi Sunak has no way of winning the next election unless he connects with these voters by reducing immigration and regaining control of the country’s borders,” he said. “Yet both of those things currently look unlikely.”

Far from accelerating the date of an election, Professor Goodwin argued that the salience of immigration would pressure Mr. Sunak to delay a vote. It will take months to surmount the legal problems with the existing policy, the professor said, let alone begin one-way flights to Rwanda.

*The Mediterranean Diet Really Is That Good for You. Here’s Why.*

It has become the bedrock of virtuous eating. Experts answer common questions about how it leads to better health.

In the 1950s, researchers from across the globe embarked on a sweeping and ambitious study. For decades, they scrutinized the diets and lifestyles of thousands of middle-aged men living in the United States, Europe and Japan and then examined how those characteristics affected their risks of developing cardiovascular disease.

The Seven Countries Study, as it later became known, famously found associations between saturated fats, cholesterol levels and coronary heart disease. But the researchers also reported another notable result: Those who lived in and around the Mediterranean — in countries like Italy, Greece and Croatia — had lower rates of cardiovascular disease than participants who lived elsewhere. Their diets, rich in fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, nuts, seeds, lean proteins and healthy fats, seemed to have a protective effect.

Since then, the Mediterranean diet has become the bedrock of heart-healthy eating, with well-studied health benefits including lower blood pressure and cholesterol, and a reduced risk of Type 2 diabetes.

“It’s one of a small number of diets that has research to back it up,” said Dr. Sean Heffron, a preventive cardiologist at NYU Langone Health. “It isn’t a diet that was cooked up in the mind of some person to generate money. It’s something that was developed over time, by millions of people, because it actually tastes good. And it just happens to be healthy.”

Here are some of the most searched questions about the Mediterranean diet, answered by experts.

What exactly is the Mediterranean diet?
The Mediterranean diet isn’t as much a strict meal plan as it is a lifestyle, said Julia Zumpano, a registered dietitian who specializes in preventive cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. People who follow the Mediterranean diet tend to “eat foods their grandparents would recognize,” Dr. Heffron added: whole, unprocessed foods with few or no additives.

The diet prioritizes whole grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, herbs, spices and olive oil. Fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids, like salmon, sardines and tuna, are the preferred animal protein source. Other lean animal proteins, like chicken or turkey, are eaten to a lesser extent. And foods high in saturated fats, like red meat and butter, are eaten rarely. Eggs and dairy products like yogurt and cheese can also be part of the Mediterranean diet, but in moderation. And moderate alcohol consumption, like a glass of wine at dinner, is allowed.

Breakfast might be smashed avocado on whole-grain toast with a side of fresh fruit and a low-fat Greek yogurt, Dr. Heffron said. For lunch or dinner, a vegetable and grain dish cooked with olive oil and seasoned with herbs — roasted root vegetables, leafy greens, a side of hummus and small portions of pasta or whole grain bread, with a lean protein like grilled fish.

“It’s very easy to follow, very sustainable, very realistic,” Ms. Zumpano said.

What are the health benefits of the Mediterranean diet?
A number of rigorous studies have found that the Mediterranean diet contributes to better health, and in particular better heart health, in a variety of ways. In one study, published in 2018, researchers assessed nearly 26,000 women and found that those who followed the Mediterranean diet most closely for up to 12 years had about a 25 percent reduced risk of developing cardiovascular disease. This was mainly because of changes in blood sugar, inflammation and body mass index, the researchers reported. Other studies, in men and women, have reached similar conclusions.

Research has also found that the diet can protect against oxidative stress, which can cause DNA damage that contributes to chronic conditions like neurological disease and cancer. And some studies suggest it can help reduce the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.

The diet may also have profound health benefits during pregnancy, said Dr. Anum Sohail Minhas, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine. In a recent study of nearly 7,800 women published in December, researchers found that those who followed the Mediterranean diet most closely around the time they conceived and during early pregnancy had about a 21 percent reduced risk of any pregnancy complications, such as pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes or preterm birth.

“There definitely seems to be a protective effect,” Dr. Minhas said.

On its own, though, the Mediterranean diet isn’t a panacea, Dr. Heffron said — it won’t eliminate your chances of developing cardiovascular disease, and it won’t cure a disease, either. It’s important that people also pay attention to other tenets of good heart health, like getting regular exercise and adequate sleep and not smoking.

Will the Mediterranean diet help with weight loss?
The diet can be conducive to weight loss, Ms. Zumpano said, but you’ll still need to pay attention to calories.

“Nutrient-rich foods aren’t necessarily low in calories,” said Dr. Heffron, who noted that the diet includes foods like olive oil and nuts, which are heart-healthy yet high in calories and can lead to weight gain if consumed in large portions. But if you’re changing your diet from one that is rich in calories, saturated fats and added sugars, for instance, with one that prioritizes vegetables, fruits and leaner proteins, that can result in some weight loss, he said.

The Mediterranean diet is not meant to be a hack for rapid weight loss, though. Rather, it should inspire a long-term shift in eating behavior. In one study of more than 30,000 people living in Italy, for instance, researchers found that those who followed the Mediterranean diet most closely for about 12 years were less likely to become overweight or obese than those who followed the diet less closely. A smaller study, published in 2020, enrolled 565 adults who had intentionally lost 10 percent or more of their body weight in the year prior. It found that those who reported adhering to the Mediterranean diet closely were twice as likely to maintain their weight loss as those who did not closely follow the diet.

How long do you need to follow the Mediterranean diet to gain benefits?
If you’re just starting to follow the Mediterranean diet, limited evidence suggests that you may notice some cognitive improvements — including in attention, alertness and contentment, according to one review of studies published in 2021 — within the first 10 days or so. But for there to be sustained, long-term payoffs in terms of heart health, people need to stick with it, Ms. Zumpano said, ideally for their whole lives.

That being said, she added, the diet allows for some flexibility; the occasional cake or steak won’t undo its overall benefits.

*Why Do Evil and Suffering Exist? Religion Has One Answer, Literature Another.*

In the third installment of an essay series on literature and faith, Ayana Mathis explores how writers have grappled with one of theology’s oldest conundrums.

In the church of my childhood, we believed God’s angels battled demons in a war for our souls. This was not a metaphor. We were Pentecostals, though not strictly and not always. We weren’t picky about denomination; what mattered was belief in the redeeming blood of Christ, in the Bible literally interpreted and in God’s endless love. And evil. We believed in evil.

Sometimes evil was obvious — lies, betrayals, the misfortunes of innocents — but just as often it was camouflaged and seductive. It lurked in the card game, in the pop song and on the movie screen. It was in the allure of those things prohibited by religious or moral standards. The world was sunk in an evil passed down through Adam and Eve’s original sin and their fall from Eden.

I long ago abandoned this version of reality, but the questions it meant to address persist: Are the sensational evils that continue to plague us — murder and torture and its ilk — an expression of a (metaphorically) fallen world? Why these wars and more wars, these repeating atrocities of every stripe? How do we navigate a world beset by dark forces, and what do we do in the face of the suffering they cause?

Evil looms large in James Baldwin’s first novel, “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” set in 1930s Harlem. The novel unfolds on the protagonist John Grimes’s 14th birthday, a moment of spiritual and psychic reckoning for his fervently Pentecostal family. Young John is pious, though he has not yet given his heart to Jesus Christ. His salvation is nigh, but first he must wrangle with temptation. He takes the few coins his mother gives him as a present and leaves Harlem on foot by way of Central Park. The Grimeses are a poor family, squeezed by the ubiquitous racism of the times, and further beleaguered by John’s father’s weaponized Christianity, which slaps and shoves and bellows at his wife and children.

In Midtown, luxe shop windows beckon and well-heeled white women stride down the wide avenues in furs. John takes in this Manhattan of plenty: “The way of the cross had given him a belly filled with wind … but here, where the buildings contested God’s power and where the men and women did not fear God, here he might eat and drink to his heart’s content.” Baldwin’s language recalls Christ’s temptation in the wilderness in the Gospel of Matthew, where Satan “showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ‘All these things I will give you,’ he said, ‘if you will fall down and worship me.’”

John’s temptation is short-lived. Baldwin quickly reminds us that the wealthy white world below the park is not available to John, nor to any Grimes. Evil here is double-edged: The spiritual threat John fears in secular godlessness is yoked to the social evils of economic inequality and racism that circumscribe his family.

With a heavy heart, John returns home to his family’s troubles and the safety of the church, “not daring to feel it God’s injustice that he must make so cruel a choice.” Despite the demands of their faith, John and his family hold fast — belief buoys them and transcends the hardships of their lives. It is fiercely and utterly theirs, and cannot be taken from them, even in a world in which so many other things are denied. There is a pragmatic utility as well: The Grimeses believe religious strictures around behavior — including prohibitions against alcohol and sex outside of marriage — protect their bodies and minds, the sanctity and value of which are under constant threat. Social evils — racism, economic disparity and homophobia — take center stage in the novel and cause immense suffering, as evil of any kind inevitably leads to agony.

In S.M. Hulse’s novel “Black River” (2015), the protagonist, Wes Carver, wrestles with his faith, and a painful past, in the aftermath of evil. After many years, Wes returns home to the fictional Montana town of the title following his wife Claire’s slow death from cancer. He left behind a now adult stepson, Dennis, with whom he has a troubled relationship, along with a slew of frayed social connections and the state prison in which he worked as a corrections officer. Bone-aching winter is coming soon and Wes’s grief is so intense that it’s a haunting: “Wes kept seeing Claire at the periphery of his vision. … Not quite hallucinations. Not quite ghosts.”

Black River is a company town — most residents are employed by the prison in some way, sons following their fathers into the work. People in Black River have known one another all their lives. They are polite, if laconic; they go to church, help one another in tough times. They are decent people, but they view the world in stark dichotomies: good versus evil, the law-abiding versus criminals. Such divisions are perhaps inevitable in a town where livelihoods and identities are tied to the bleak carceral system. In Black River, and for Wes, bad folk and bad behavior have a fated quality; evil is immutable and cannot be vanquished, even if it goes dormant for a time. Wes helped raise his stepson, Dennis — born to Claire after she was sexually assaulted — all the while “waiting for the poisonous half of Dennis’s blood to show itself.”

Wes’s departure from Black River was occasioned by a riot in the prison during which Wes was held captive and tortured for 39 hours by a man named Bobby Williams. The torture was methodical and sadistic: Williams burned Wes with cigarettes, broke two ribs, carved letters into his flesh and snapped his fingers one by one. Wes was a gifted fiddler; when we meet him his gnarled fingers can hardly curve around his bow. Now, after decades in prison, Williams is up for parole and proclaims himself a changed man, born again in Christ.

Wes doesn’t buy it. He’s convinced Williams has invented his faith to sway the parole board. “He’s an inmate,” Wes tells a local pastor. “Saying he’s dishonest is redundant.” The pastor initiates a discussion about forgiveness, but Hulse pivots to the dark heart of Wes’s righteous outrage. “When I said he doesn’t deserve it, I didn’t mean Williams doesn’t deserve forgiveness,” Wes says. “I mean God. He doesn’t deserve God.” Wes goes on: “A man like that doesn’t deserve to believe when I spent my whole life trying and still can’t do it.”

Williams is paroled. Wes meets him on a cold morning as Williams waits for the bus that will take him out of town. Wes’s hands ache where his broken bones fused badly; a gun weighs in his pocket. Wes hopes he can look into Williams’s eyes and see whether he is a changed man. But his seeking yields nothing: “I know I don’t like you and I wish more than anything you were still locked up. … All I got’s your word that you are what you say you are.” Williams responds, “So. … What are you going to do?” And Wes says: “I’m going to believe you.”

Like Job in the Hebrew Bible, Wes voices his indignation at the injustice of all that has transpired, at how he’ll never know why such evil has befallen him. He imagines the satisfaction he’d feel from firing his revolver. Ultimately, though, he keeps the gun in his pocket and drives home. He may not actually believe Williams but he has taken the harder path, and chosen to believe him.

Wes’s choice calls to mind the philosopher Paul Ricoeur’s ideas about what’s left to us when theodicy reaches its limits: “We believe in God in spite of evil,” he writes. It’s a bitter pill, but to believe in spite of is the only way Wes will ever be able to attend to what yet lives in his life. It’s a way to retain his humanity in the face of all that he has lost, and may yet lose if he cannot find some means of spiritual survival.

Hulse implies, too, some shift in Wes’s belief in the indelibility of evil. As the biblical prophet Jeremiah wrote: “In those days they shall no longer say: ‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’” That is, the children need not pay for the sins of their parents. Wes returns home to find his stepson undone, unable to put down a suffering horse too old to survive another harsh winter. “I could be there with you,” Wes says. “When the vet comes. If you want.” His words convey more tenderness than he has ever shown his stepson.

Hulse doesn’t shortchange the horror of Wes’s experience. Both Wes and Williams are part of a penal system so poisonous and compromised that it multiplies evils rather than curbs them. Prisons beget more prisoners, which beget more prisons. In “Black River,” these political and social realities don’t negate Williams’s crime, nor the spiritual aspects of Wes’s trajectory toward a subtle redemption. But they do argue against a conception of evil as anomalous and unalterable, always and only supernaturally derived. If we think of evil purely in metaphysical terms, we risk overlooking our collective responsibility to work toward its eradication. If we consider Dylann Roof, for example, to be an anomalous evil, we miss the fact that he is the product of the endemic social evils of white supremacy and our nation’s staggering number of easily accessible firearms. What he did is singular, but the evil that created him is no mystery.

*¡Buenos días, excelente martes!*
🔹Emite AMLO decreto para habilitar 7 rutas de trenes de pasajero.
🔹Arrancan precampañas Claudia, Xóchitl y Samuel.
🔹Ejército, el ángel de la guarda de México: AMLO.
🔹Nearshoring detonará 50 mil mdd a exportaciones: Julio Carranza.
🔹Estudiantes mayas crean UMUUK’IIK, buscan solucionar falta de agua y luz.
🔹Milei promete ola de privatizaciones y acabar con la inflación en Argentina. Asumirá el 10 de diciembre.
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*MAGACÍN CDMX EN EL INDEPENDIENTE*

*•* *MENSAJE POLÍTICO* 
*Podrían ‘congelar’ ratificación de Godoy*
https://cdmx.info/podrian-congelar-ratificacion-de-godoy/

*•* *GLORIETA DE COLÓN*
*✓ Brugada y Taboada arrancan raspados y abollados*
*✓ Godoy, Cuevas y Rubalcava*
*✓ Se completan en Coyoacán*
https://cdmx.info/brugada-y-taboada-arrancan-raspados-y-abollados/

*•* *CDMX MAGACÍN*
*Brugada quiere ‘segundo piso de la 4T’*
https://cdmx.info/brugada-quiere-segundo-piso-de-la-4t/
*Taboada va por decepcionados de Clara*
https://cdmx.info/taboada-va-por-decepcionados-de-clara/
*Sí hay mejor futuro para la ciudad: Chertorivksi*
https://cdmx.info/si-hay-mejor-futuro-para-la-ciudad-chertorivksi/

*•* *NACIONAL*
*Refrenda Ana Lilia Rivera compromiso con protección de niñas y niños*
https://cdmx.info/refrenda-ana-lilia-rivera-compromiso-con-proteccion-de-ninas-y-ninos/

*ATENTAMENTE*
*MAESTRO FEDERICO LA MONT*

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