Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Thursday.
Trump says Israel and Lebanon extended their trucePresident Trump announced this evening that the cease-fire between Lebanon and Israel would be extended by three weeks. Earlier in the day, peace talks between Israeli and Lebanese officials were relocated to the White House so Trump could be more closely involved. Just hours before the president’s announcement, Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia in Lebanon, had been trading fire with the Israeli military. Hostilities between the two have threatened to undermine U.S. efforts to negotiate a deal with Iran, which sees peace in Lebanon as a key condition. U.S.-Iran tensions are still heightened in the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran said it seized two ships yesterday. Trump declared today that the U.S. Navy would “shoot and kill any boat” laying mines in the strait. Trump also suggested that Iran was leaderless. Reporting from my colleague Farnaz Fassihi found that the generals in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps were largely running the country. The new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, remains in hiding, surrounded mostly by a team of doctors. Khamenei is struggling to speak after suffering grave injuries to his face and lips in the strikes that killed his father, Farnaz reported. Messages to him are handwritten and relayed via a human chain. The combination of his injuries and isolation has led him to largely delegate decisions to the commanders. For more:
Trump’s disapproval rating hits a new second-term highDisapproval of the president has climbed to the highest level since he returned to the Oval Office last year. The Times’s polling average tracker shows that 58 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s job performance, while 39 percent approve. In other Trump administration news:
A new therapy enables kids with a rare form of deafness to hearThe F.D.A. announced today that it had approved a gene therapy that can cure a rare, inherited form of deafness. It is the first treatment to restore normal hearing in children who were born deaf. The maker of the therapy said that it would provide it free to any child who needed it. Other gene therapies can sometimes cost millions of dollars.
America’s premier opera company has money troublesThe Metropolitan Opera said today that the Saudi Arabian government had backed out of a deal that would have provided the opera company with up to $200 million over the next eight years. The Met’s general manager said the Saudis cited damage to their economy caused by the war in Iran. The financially precarious institution now faces a $30 million shortfall that it needs to fill by the end of July. Our Gulf bureau chief, Vivian Nereim, recently wrote about Saudi Arabia’s pullback from its once-grandiose spending plans.
Some Labubu dolls use cotton banned by a forced labor lawLab tests verified by The Times found that some authentic Labubu dolls — the grinning little elves that became a global sensation over the past couple years — contain cotton from the Xinjiang region of China, which the U.S. has banned because of its association with forced labor. Companies found in violation of the law can be put on a blacklist that bans all their products from being sold in the U.S. More top news
This question comes from a recent edition of the newsletter. Click an answer to see if you’re right. (The link is free.) Vilma Jää, now starring at the Metropolitan Opera, is known for her work in which genre?
It’s draft dayTonight offers a moment of hope for the millions of Americans who love football. It’s Day 1 of the N.F.L. draft, when teams get a chance to upgrade their rosters by picking from among the nation’s best college players. With the first pick, the Las Vegas Raiders are widely expected to select Fernando Mendoza, the quarterback who led Indiana to a title this year. Beyond that, I recommend checking out The Beast, a draft guide from my colleagues at The Athletic (they ranked roughly 2,700 players). Or, ease in with their beginner’s guide.
Japanese designers are changing men’s fashionThe people who obsess most about men’s wear can’t stop talking about a new cohort of Japanese labels, like A.Presse, that are fairly new to the Western markets. Our fashion reporter Jacob Gallagher took a closer look to explain what sets them apart: The Japanese-made clothes often look basic, but they’re opulent to the touch, elevated by the country’s fabrication standards. For more style: In our newsletter The Fashions (sign up here), Jacob highlighted Armani’s new archival line.
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