| A cease-fire between Israel and Palestinian fighters in the Gaza Strip was largely upheld yesterday, aside from a brief exchange. |
| At least six people have died after Cyclone Mocha made landfall near Myanmar’s border with Bangladesh.Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party lost elections in Karnataka, the only state government it held in India’s south. |
| Other Big Stories |
 Lindsey Wasson/Associated Press |
| More than 12 million people remained under a heat advisory yesterday in the Pacific Northwest, as temperatures toppled longstanding records.Sweden won this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. European solidarity with Ukraine was clear throughout the event.Meet “Chonkosaurus,” a gargantuan snapping turtle living in the Chicago River. |
| From Opinion |
| The story of Asian American girls called Connie is the story of a generation, Connie Wang writes.Nicholas Kristof traveled to the Rio Verde Foothills of Arizona to learn what it’s like when water can no longer be taken for granted.Saying goodbye to hard pants is one way that the pandemic has altered the fabric of our lives, David Mack says. |
| A Morning Read |
 Yasuyoshi Chiba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
| In a remote wilderness in southeastern Kenya, a pastor, Paul Mackenzie, told hundreds of believers in a Christian doomsday cult to starve themselves to death to meet Jesus. |
| Why did so many of them do it — and why, in a country that counts itself among Africa’s most modern and stable nations, did law enforcement miss the macabre goings-on for so long? |
| SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC |
| Solskjaer on offering Haaland to Manchester United for $5 million: Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, the former United manager, talked about his frustration that the club ignored his offer to sign Erling Haaland in 2018. |
| If Chelsea buys into Pochettino, the sky’s the limit: Mauricio Pochettino’s stints at Tottenham and P.S.G. reveal a lot about his methods, and what he might be capable of. |
| Chelsea wins the Women’s F.A. Cup in front of a record crowd: Chelsea beat Manchester United, 1-0, to win the Women’s F.A. Cup final in front of a record crowd of 77,390 spectators. |
| ARTS AND IDEAS |
 George Etheredge for The New York Times |
| Van Gogh’s cypress trees |
| In an 1889 letter to his brother, the artist Vincent van Gogh described a fascination with the tall, evergreen Mediterranean cypress trees of southern France. “The cypresses still preoccupy me,” he wrote. “I’d like to do something with them like the canvases of the sunflowers because it astonishes me that no one has done them as I see them.” |
| Van Gogh’s treatment of the trees is celebrated in a new show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Opening next week, the exhibition comprises 24 paintings, along with 15 drawings and four illustrated letters in which the cypress makes an appearance — not always as the main subject. |
| The show follows “Van Gogh and the Olive Groves,” which appeared last year at the Dallas Museum of Art and elsewhere, in a similarly hyperfocused look at the artist. Such niche exhibitions may reflect postpandemic cutbacks, but, as an alternative to the blockbuster parade of the past, they allow the viewer the pleasure of taking in art one work at a time. |
