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Honesty Butler was not planning to go to college, let alone leave her home state of New York. She loved art class, but hated math and history. Art school was too expensive, so she began to give up on the idea of higher education entirely.But one day her social studies teacher at Binghamton High School told her he was coaching flag football, which New York State had just begun offering as a varsity sport, and asked if she might be interested in joining the team.Butler had never played a team sport, beyond a brief stint on the track team, but from the first practice, she was hooked. Suddenly, she had an outlet for her competitive drive. She received positive reinforcement at school as her team started winning games. The team had a G.P.A. requirement, so Butler was suddenly motivated to keep ...

Decisions like these, involving people who almost certainly cannot give express consent, hang over the sterilization debate. Katrin Langensiepen, a German politician and one of the few visibly disabled members of the European Parliament, is pushing for a strict Europewide ban on nonconsensual sterilization. Many of history’s notorious eugenics practices, she said, were justified as being in a disabled person’s best interest.But she acknowledged that some parents saw things differently. “They have the deep, strong belief: I need to protect my children,” she said.At 20, Ms. Hreidarsdottir’s daughter has soft eyes and a knack for puzzles. She loves audiobooks. In March, her mother explained that she would go to sleep and have an operation to feel better.“I don’t think she understood,” Ms. Hre...

After nearly seven weeks in captivity, 13 Israeli hostages abducted by Hamas and other groups during the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel were released on Friday as part of a deal that paused the fighting in the Gaza Strip.The 13 — all women and children — were returned to Israel. Five other hostages had been released or rescued earlier in the fighting.Twelve of those newly released were among roughly 75 people who had been kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7. One of the 13 was among those taken from Kibbutz Nirim.In addition, 10 Thais and one Filipino were freed, but details about their identities have not been released.Here’s what we know about the Israelis released on Friday.Keren Munder, 54; Ohad Munder Zichri, 9; Ruth Munder, 78Keren Munder and her son, Ohad Munder Zichri, residents of Kf...

All but one of the 13 Israeli hostages released on Friday were abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, an Israeli village close to the Gaza border where Hamas militants took more than 70 people on Oct. 7.Family members said they were thankful that 12 hostages taken from the kibbutz had been returned home to Israel, but that was only “a drop in the bucket,” said Larry Butler, 73, a Nir Oz resident who survived the attack. Of the estimated 215 hostages who remain in Gaza, roughly 30 percent of them are from Nir Oz.Per capita, Nir Oz is the Israeli village most affected by the Oct. 7 assault.That day, roughly 100 Nir Oz residents were killed or abducted — one quarter of the village’s prewar population.On Friday night, the survivors felt some sense of salvation as 12 of their neighbors and relatives — r...

Soon after three children and a woman were wounded in a knife attack outside a Dublin school on Thursday, rumors about the perpetrator’s nationality began to proliferate online.The Garda Síochána, the Irish police force, declined to comment on the background of the suspect, who was taken into custody after being tackled to the ground by bystanders. The police said only that he is a man in his 50s.But unconfirmed reports that he was an Algerian migrant quickly began circulating in anti-immigration and far-right groups, according to researchers specializing in extremist movements online.Alongside those rumors: a call to gather in central Dublin, in what anti-immigrant voices framed as a stand against crime and in defense of Irish children.What started as online chatter ended with the worst u...

Since the war, new checkpoints have been erected and barricades built, making movement between some areas practically impossible. Violence by Israeli settlers has reached record highs, according to the United Nations. And the Israeli military has carried out nightly raids in the West Bank, in what it says are part of a counterterrorism operation.“They have built fear in our hearts,” said Hanna Tufaheh, 50. “Everyone feels extremely depressed, and it’s extremely difficult for everyone.”As she spoke, the sun began to sink beneath the beige apartment buildings of Ramallah. The call to prayer rang out from a nearby loudspeaker, and men lined up in the street to pray. Jihad Mtoor, 32, stood with a group of friends smoking cigarettes and waiting as cars brought more Palestinians.For Mr. Mtoor an...

After years of heady spending, the budget cuts announced by Mayor Eric Adams last week hit New York City like a punch to the gut: Most libraries would be closed on Sundays. The expansion of the city’s signature prekindergarten program would be delayed. So would efforts to improve New York’s notoriously dirty streets and keep rats at bay. The city’s police force would be pared down in coming years.Fiscal reality has caught up with a stunned city. The brutal cuts come as Mr. Adams scrambles to fill a $7 billion budget deficit in the next year. The Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan watchdog group, estimates that the budget gap could be significantly higher, closer to $10.6 billion. New Yorkers may want to brace themselves. Much deeper cuts to city services could be ahead.How did the n...

By early afternoon, there had been no reports of fighting for several hours, and 60 trucks of aid, including fuel, had entered Gaza. A four-day cease-fire paves the way for an exchange of some Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners.

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. had made the request for inf...

The Netherlands, long regarded as one of Europe’s most socially liberal countries, woke up to a drastically changed political landscape on Thursday after a far-right party swept national elections in a result that has reverberated throughout Europe.Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom, which advocates banning the Quran, closing Islamic schools and entirely halting the acceptance of asylum seekers, won 37 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives, making it by far the biggest party, in a clear rebuke of the country’s political establishment.The results, tabulated overnight after Wednesday’s voting, give Mr. Wilders enough support to try to form a governing coalition. Centrist and center-right parties long wary of the firebrand have left the door ajar to a possible partnership, giving Mr. ...