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A new problem is plaguing humanitarian aid convoys attempting to deliver supplies to Gaza’s starving population: attacks by organized mobs looking not for the flour and medicine trucked in, but for the cigarettes smuggled inside the cargo.In the tightly blockaded Gaza Strip, cigarettes have become increasingly rare, now typically selling for $25-30 each. UN and Israeli officials say coordinated attacks by groups seeking to sell contraband cigarettes for profit are a formidable obstacle to transporting desperately needed aid to the southern Gaza Strip.Israeli authorities carefully monitor everything entering and leaving Gaza through Israeli-administered checkpoints. But cigarettes have managed to pass for weeks inside aid trucks, mainly through the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Gaza.To ...

The nervous energy was palpable as hundreds of cyclists, clad in brightly colored Lycra, awaited the start of the 50-mile ride known as the Half-Century from the Santa Fe Railyard, a hub of art galleries, restaurants, and a weekly farmers market in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Then, finally, we were riding through town with eight motorcycle cops ahead of us, patrolling the intersections.We passed the Roundhouse, where the New Mexico Legislature meets. We passed Museum Hill, where four museums explore the Native American Southwest, the Spanish colonial past, and more. Then, finally, after a dozen miles or so, Santa Fe was far away and we were alone, riding through rolling ranchland.It was the second day of a two-day cycling event that each spring attracts more than 1,500 participants, who come for...

Emphatic, combative and demanding: this style found its peak in the speech given by far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon before an inflamed crowd of thousands celebrating his victory in Sunday's French legislative elections.Standing before supporters in the working-class 20th arrondissement of Paris, Mr. Mélenchon addressed President Emmanuel Macron, and not in a polite manner. “The president should resign or appoint one of us as prime minister,” he declared.Other leftist leaders have said there should be "discussions" about the country's future. Not this one. The crowd roared Sunday.Mr. Mélenchon’s tone and hard line have won him a devoted, young following—the only leftist leader with one—and made him both adored and hated, marginalized and central to French politics. More French pe...

In 1994, when Sumner M. Redstone bought Paramount Pictures for about $10 billion, the equivalent of about $22 billion today, he did more than buy a company. He ascended to a cultural throne.Studios like Paramount, founded in the 1910s, which operated complexes of recording studios and controlled vast film libraries, were valuable companies on the verge of striking a goldmine: the DVD. But perhaps more importantly, they gave their owners a valuable identity as certified members of the cultural elite.Movies still dominated. The top-selling films of 1994 included such landmarks as "The Lion King," "Schindler's List," "Interview with the Vampire," "Mrs. Doubtfire," "Philadelphia," "Speed," and "Pulp Fiction." In 1995, when Paramount's "Forrest Gump" won the Academy Award for Best Pictu...

The images are haunting: black-and-white prints of a snow-covered shack and paintings surrounded by barbed-wire fences and skeletal trees, eerie depictions of a World War II camp in France where Jews were interned before being deported to concentration camps.Artist Jacques Gotko created one painting using a background of crushed eggshells glued to a wooden board; for others he used a piece of old tire as a printing block. These were some of the few materials available to him in the camp where he was held before being transported to Drancy, another camp in France, then to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland, in 1943.Fragile and rarely exhibited, these works are part of a vast archive of Holocaust-related artifacts, including millions of pages of documents, tens of thousands of pages of testimonies, ...

According to official visitor logs, a Parkinson’s disease expert from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center visited the White House eight times in eight months from last summer to this spring, including at least once for a meeting with President Biden’s physician.The expert, Dr. Kevin Cannard, is a neurologist who specializes in movement disorders and recently published a paper on Parkinson’s. The logs, released by the White House, document visits from July 2023 to March of this year. More recent visits, if any, would not be released until later, under the White House’s voluntary disclosure policy.It was unclear whether Dr. Cannard was at the White House to specifically consult with the president or if he was there for unrelated meetings. Dr. Cannard’s LinkedIn page describes him as...