October 14, 2024 |
Good morning. We’re covering a Hezbollah attack on an Israeli military base and the latest from the U.S. campaign trail.
Plus: Can governments get their citizens to have more babies?
Securing a road in Binyamina, Israel, after a drone attack on Sunday. Amir Levy/Getty Images |
A Hezbollah strike kills 4 Israeli soldiers
A drone strike by Hezbollah on a base in northern Israel killed four soldiers and wounded dozens of other people, the Israeli military said yesterday, in what some saw as evidence of a worrisome gap in Israel’s air defense systems. Cross-border attacks by the militants have continued despite heavy Israeli bombardments aimed at Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.
Israel is also at war with Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip and was struck by Iranian missiles on Oct. 1. Concern about further attacks prompted the U.S. to announce yesterday that it was sending an advanced missile defense system to Israel, along with around 100 troops to operate it, bringing American forces closer to the war in the Middle East.
As Israeli troops moved into southern Lebanon in recent days, they have found themselves at loggerheads with U.N. peacekeepers. Israeli tanks entered a U.N. base yesterday, drawing a protest from the U.N. mission, which said the incursion had endangered the peacekeepers there.
In the West Bank: Reporters for The Times rode along on two bus trips — one for Israelis, the other for Palestinians — that tell a story of separate and unequal roadways.
In Lebanon: Israel’s military showed journalists parts of what it said was Hezbollah’s entrenched military infrastructure.
Investigation: Secret documents seized by the Israeli military show that Hamas tried to persuade Iran to join its devastating Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.
Republican volunteers talked about door-to-door campaigning in Kenosha, Wis., last month. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times |
One race, two very different campaigns
In the final weeks of the 2024 election, Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are using vastly different tactics. Harris’s team has deployed flotillas of paid staff members to organize and turn out every vote they can find. Trump’s campaign is pursuing less frequent voters, while relying on less experienced outside groups to reach a broader swath.
Harris’s support among Hispanic voters is in dangerously low territory for Democrats, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll. Trump has maintained his strength with them, even as he deploys a sharply anti-immigrant message, but about one-quarter of respondents said they were undecided or persuadable. Read more about Trump’s success with Hispanic and Black voters.
Trump campaign: With three weeks to Election Day, the former president is feeling aggrieved, unappreciated by donors and fenced in by security concerns, insiders say.
The latest: At a rally in North Carolina, Harris challenged Trump to release medical information and meet her for another debate. He has tried to bat down questions about his age and cognitive state. And in Coachella, Calif., a man was arrested and accused of illegal weapons possession while trying to enter a Trump rally on Saturday evening.
From Opinion: Ezra Klein offers advice for maintaining your sanity in the last weeks before Election Day.
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A SpaceX rocket booster returned to the launch pad during a test flight yesterday in Boca Chica, Texas. Eric Gay/Associated Press |
SpaceX advanced its Starship program
SpaceX pulled off a feat of technical wizardry during its Starship rocket’s fifth test flight yesterday morning, flying a 233-foot rocket booster back to its launch site near Brownsville, Texas, and catching it with two giant mechanical arms as it descended.
The company, founded by Elon Musk, has built and flown the world’s largest and most powerful rocket and demonstrated key technology needed to let it fly again and again quickly, more like a jetliner than a rocket.
MORE TOP NEWS |
Oksana Parafeniuk for The New York Times |
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What Else Is Happening
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SPORTS NEWS |
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MORNING READ |
Photo Illustration by Matt Chase |
In the 1990s, Japan began rolling out policies designed to encourage people to have more babies. But none have worked, and the number of babies born in the country last year fell to the lowest level since the government started collecting statistics in 1899.
Governments across Europe, East Asia and North America are now following suit, but modern families just don’t seem to want to get bigger. So what, if anything, might induce people to have more babies?
Lives lived: Alex Salmond, the former first minister of Scotland who campaigned for the country to leave the United Kingdom, died on Saturday after delivering a speech in North Macedonia. He was 69.
CONVERSATION STARTERS |
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ARTS AND IDEAS |
Brian Rea |
20 years of Modern Love
Daniel Jones has edited The Times’s Modern Love column for two decades this month. After reading some 200,000 stories — some perplexing, some devastating, some inspiring — he recalls seven lessons that have helped him love better.
One standout: Appreciate the beauty of impermanence.
“A compatibility question on a dating app asks if you would choose to live forever if you could,” Daniel writes. “Many people say yes, which always surprises me: Have they considered what living forever would mean? Nothing that’s limitless can be precious. Life and love are fleeting, which is why we hold onto them so dearly.”
RECOMMENDATIONS |
Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. |
Cook: Sugo finto, “fake sauce” in Italian, is a vegetable ragu full of real flavor.
Read: “Unleashed,” Boris Johnson’s new memoir, makes the case for a Donald Trump comeback — and, perhaps, his own.
Watch: Stream our pick of scary movies ahead of the spooky season.
Comfort: What not to say to a grieving friend.
Play the Spelling Bee. And here are today’s Mini Crossword and Wordle. You can find all our puzzles here.
That’s it for today’s briefing. It’s great to be back. See you tomorrow. — Natasha
Reach Natasha and the team at briefing@nytimes.com.
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