内容摘要：Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks to the media following a swearing-in ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa, Ontario, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press via AP)

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks to the media following a swearing-in ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa, Ontario, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press via AP)

Banville’s privileged access to the Prado — including after hours and off-limits areas such as its restoration workshops — over the past month is part of the museum’s “Writing the Prado” program.The program, sponsored by the Loewe Foundation, started last year and counts Nobel prize winners John Coetzee and Olga Tokarczuk, as well as the Mexican American author Chloe Aridjis, as its first fellows.

Novelist John Banville looks at Diego Velazquez’s ‘Vulcan’s Forge’ at the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Paul White)Novelist John Banville looks at Diego Velazquez’s ‘Vulcan’s Forge’ at the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Paul White)The fellows immerse themselves in the museum over four weeks before producing a short work of fiction published by the Prado with the editorial guidance of Granta en español magazine.

Banville, author of the Booker prize winner “The Sea,” the recent “The Singularities,” as well as popular crime novels, has an inkling of what he will write following his deep dive into the Old Masters.“I haven’t worked out the details,” he said — but it’s about someone going through the gallery and about those piercing eyes.

“The eyes follow him. And I think ... all his life ... he’d had the fear of being found out, and all these eyes seem to know it. And I think Velázquez says ‘Yeah, I know who you are.’”

While his mesmerizing novel “The Book of Evidence” hinges on a failed art heist, the storyteller’s relationship to painting goes back to a restless teenager tempted to pick up the brush in addition to the pen.Somaia Abu Amsha scooped small portions for her family, saying they have not had bread for over 10 days and she can’t afford rice or pasta.

“We don’t want anything other than that they end the war. We don’t want charity kitchens. Even dogs wouldn’t eat this, let alone children,” she said.Aid groups say the small amount of aid that Israel has allowed is far short of what is needed. About 600 trucks entered daily under the latest ceasefire.

Israel has said its slight easing of the blockade is a bridge until the new aid system it demands is put in place. The U.N. and other humanitarian groups have rejected the system, saying it enables Israel to use aid as a weapon and forcibly displace the population.Netanyahu told reporters the plan will begin “in coming days.”