Israeli troops have continued their offensives across Gaza, deploying tank fire, artillery bombardment and airstrikes against Hamas militants in the most intensive round of fighting for weeks.

In the far south of the devastated territory on Monday, witnesses reported helicopter strikes and street battles in Rafah as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) consolidated their hold on neighbourhoods east of the strategic Salah al-Din road, which bisects the city.

In the north, the IDF advanced into Jabaliya and Beit Lahiya, both areas in which fierce battles were fought early in the seven-month war.

Officials estimate that as many as 500,000 people have fled Rafah since being told to evacuate by the IDF before their first attacks around and in the city a week ago. Roads heading north and west are choked with cars, trucks, trolleys and pony carts laden with people and their possessions.

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The Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has for years overseen a secret police force in Gaza that conducted surveillance on everyday Palestinians and built files on young people, journalists and those who questioned the government, according to intelligence officials and a trove of internal documents reviewed by The New York Times.

The unit, known as the General Security Service, relied on a network of Gaza informants, some of whom reported their own neighbors to the police. People landed in security files for attending protests or publicly criticizing Hamas. In some cases, the records suggest that the authorities followed people to determine if they were carrying on romantic relationships outside marriage.

Hamas has long run an oppressive system of governance in Gaza, and many Palestinians there know that security officials watch them closely. But a 62-slide presentation on the activities of the General Security Service, delivered only weeks before the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, reveals the degree to which the largely unknown unit penetrated the lives of Palestinians.

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Everyday Gazans were stuck — behind the wall of Israel’s crippling blockade and under the thumb and constant watch of a security force. That dilemma continues today, with the added threat of Israeli ground troops and airstrikes.

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President Biden laid it out for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel long before letting the public know. In a conversation bristling with tension on Feb. 11, the president warned the prime minister against a major assault on the Gaza city of Rafah — and suggested that continued U.S. support would depend on how Israel proceeded.

It was an extraordinary moment. For the first time, the president who had so strongly backed Israel’s war against Hamas was essentially threatening to change course. The White House, however, kept the threat secret, making no mention of it in the official statement it released about the call. And indeed, the private warning, perhaps too subtle, fell on deaf ears.

Six days later, on Feb. 17, Mr. Biden heard from Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. The president’s chief diplomat was calling from his blue-and-white government plane as he was flying home from a security conference in Munich. Despite the president’s warning, Mr. Blinken reported that momentum for an invasion of Rafah was building. It could result in a humanitarian catastrophe, he feared. They had to draw a line.

At that point, the president headed down a road that would lead to the most serious collision between the United States and Israel in a generation.

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Tens of thousands of Palestinians were fleeing Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, on Saturday, after Israeli warnings to evacuate before an imminent military assault that will open a bloody new phase of the seven-month-long conflict.

Roads leading out of Rafah were choked with long columns of young and old, sick and healthy, riding in overloaded pick-up trucks and battered cars, in pony carts and on hand-pulled trolleys. Many walked, carrying their belongings, under a searing summer sun. Some were pushed in wheelchairs or even carried.

More than 150,000 people have fled Rafah – one of the largest displacements for many months – since the Israel Defense Forces ordered the evacuation of eastern neighbourhoods shortly before seizing the border crossing with Egypt to the east of the city on Tuesday in what the IDF said was a “precise, limited operation” to stop Hamas smuggling weapons or funds into Gaza.

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The Biden administration has concluded it is “reasonable to assess” that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has violated international law, but has not found specific instances that would justify the withholding of military aid, the State Department told Congress on Friday.

In the administration’s most detailed assessment of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, the State Department said in a written report to Congress that Israel “has the knowledge, experience and tools to implement best practices for mitigating civilian harm in its military operations.”

But it added that “the results on the ground, including high levels of civilian casualties, raise substantial questions” as to whether the Israel Defense Forces are using them sufficiently.

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Russia already has nuclear warheads on its own soil that are close to Ukraine and NATO countries, but by basing some in Belarus, the Kremlin appears to be trying to accentuate its nuclear threat and bolster its nuclear deterrent.

Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, made reference to such a site early last year, saying Russia would soon be completing the construction of “special storage for tactical nuclear weapons” in Belarus.

The New York Times analyzed satellite imagery and photos, and spoke with nuclear weapons and arms control experts, to track the new construction, which started in March 2023.

The site is 120 miles north of the Ukrainian border at a military depot next to the town of Asipovichy. Some of the recently built structures there have features that are unique to nuclear storage facilities at bases inside Russia. For example, a new, highly secure area is surrounded by three layers of fencing, in addition to the existing security perimeter of the entire base. Another telltale sign is a covered loading area connected to what appears to be a concealed Soviet-era underground bunker.

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Russian forces have attacked across the Ukrainian border to the north of Kharkiv in a potential effort to open a new front in the war and intensify the pressure on Ukraine’s second city.

Ukraine’s defence ministry said there had been “an attempt by the enemy to break through our defence line using armoured vehicles” at about 5am on Friday near the town of Vovchansk, and the initial attacks had been repelled.

There were also reports of fighting in the border villages of Strilecha, Pylna and Borysivka farther west, and that Russian forces had advanced by about 1km around Vovchansk, though these could not be confirmed.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said his country’s forces had been ready for the attack. “Ukraine met them there with troops – brigades and artillery,” he said at a press conference in Kyiv, though he warned that Russia could send more troops to support its fresh attack.

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Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that Israel will stand alone and “fight with our fingernails” in defiance of US threats to further restrict arms deliveries if Israeli forces proceeded with an offensive on the southern Gazan city of Rafah.

Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, was speaking on Thursday after Israeli and Hamas delegations left the ceasefire negotiations in Cairo.

It was unclear whether the talks had broken down or simply paused, but the failure to reach an agreement on this week’s round of meetings raised apprehension of an imminent Israeli attack on Rafah.

Netanyahu appeared to shrug off a public warning from the US president, Joe Biden, the previous night that if the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a major offensive on the city the US would not provide bombs and artillery shells to support the operation.

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The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, traveled to Columbia University two weeks ago to decry the “virus of antisemitism” that he said pro-Palestinian protesters were spreading across the country. “They have chased down Jewish students. They have mocked them and reviled them,” he said to jeers from protesters. “They have shouted racial epithets. They have screamed at those who bear the Star of David.”

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Amid the widening protests and the unease, if not fear, among many Jews, Republicans have sought to seize the political advantage by portraying themselves as the true protectors of Israel and Jews under assault from the progressive left.

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Debate rages over the extent to which the protests on the political left constitute coded or even direct attacks on Jews. But far less attention has been paid to a trend on the right: For all of their rhetoric of the moment, increasingly through the Trump era many Republicans have helped inject into the mainstream thinly veiled anti-Jewish messages with deep historical roots.

The conspiracy theory taking on fresh currency is one that dates back hundreds of years and has perennially bubbled into view: that a shady cabal of wealthy Jews secretly controls events and institutions contrary to the national interest of whatever country it is operating in.

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Keefe on Thursday, five days after they were eliminated from the playoffs.

The Leafs lost a seven-game first-round series to the Boston Bruins, the fourth time in Keefe’s five postseasons as coach that his team failed to advance beyond the opening round. Nothing will define the Keefe era in Toronto more than that.

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The message was not getting through. Not through the phone calls or the emissaries or the public statements or the joint committee meetings. And so, frustrated that he was being ignored, President Biden chose a more dramatic way of making himself clear to Israeli leaders. He stopped sending the bombs.

Mr. Biden’s decision to pause the delivery of 3,500 bombs to Israel was meant to convey a powerful signal that his patience has limits. While insisting that his support for the Jewish state remains “ironclad,” Mr. Biden opted for the first time since the Gaza war erupted last fall to use his power as Israel’s chief arms supplier to demonstrate his discontent.

The hold on the bombs represents a significant turning point in the 76-year-old relationship between the United States and Israel, historically one of the closest security partnerships in the world. But it may not necessarily be a breaking point. The Biden administration is still allowing other weapons to be sent to Israel, and in fact officials emphasized that no final decision has been made on the bombs that are currently in limbo. Mr. Biden hopes the pause will prompt Israel to change course.

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Steve Albini, a rock musician and revered audio engineer who played a singular role in the development of the sound of alternative rock music in the 1980s, the ’90s and beyond — recording acclaimed albums by Nirvana, PJ Harvey, Pixies and hundreds of others — while becoming an outspoken critic of the music industry, died on Tuesday at his home in Chicago. He was 61.

The cause was a heart attack, according to Taylor Hales of Electrical Audio, the studio in Chicago that Mr. Albini founded in 1997.

With a sharp vision for how a band should be recorded, and an even sharper tongue for anything he deemed mediocre or compromised, Mr. Albini was one of rock’s most acerbic wits. He was also a withering critic of the exploitive extremes of the major-label music business, describing in a widely-quoted 1993 article, “The Problem With Music,” the ways that naïve bands are lured into major deals with labels that, in most cases, leave them broke and in debt.

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