Author: NY TIMES

When a Russian soldier appeared outside 98-year-old Lidiia Lomikovska’s shattered home in eastern Ukraine in late April, the first thing he did was shoot and kill the family dog.“What have you done?” her daughter-in-law, Olha, 66, shouted at the Russian. “He was protecting me.”“Now, I will protect you,” he told her, Olha recalled in an interview.Ms. Lomikovska — who lived through a famine orchestrated by Stalin that killed millions in the 1930s and the German occupation of her town, Ocheretyne, during World War II — said she did not know why her life has been bracketed by sorrow.But when war…

The NFL’s offseason schedule begins this week with three-day minicamps starting Tuesday for 10 teams. The remaining 22 teams will continue with organized team activities before holding mini-camps next week.Prior to minicamp, offseason meetings and on-site meetings are voluntary. But now is the mandatory work period, which means teams can fine players who choose not to participate.These practice sessions help coaches and players further prepare for training camp, which begins in late July, paving the way for the preseason and regular season.Here are some of the hottest storylines around the league as minicamp gets underway.deeperSandow: My favorite offseason move by…

On the eve of the closing day of a federal fraud trial in Minneapolis, a woman drove up in a Mazda to a juror’s home holding a Hallmark gift bag emblazoned with butterflies and flowers. Inside were wads of $100, $50 and $20 bills totaling roughly $120,000.The juror in the case, in which defendants are charged with using a charity to steal millions of dollars, was not home Sunday night when the unusual package arrived. But a relative of the juror grabbed it, according to an F.B.I. agent’s account.“This is for Juror 52,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson quoted the…

‘28 Days’ (June 30)Stream it here.Years before winning an Oscar for “The Blind Side,” Sandra Bullock revealed the first hints of her considerable range in this engaging serio-comic drama from the director Betty Thomas (“Private Parts”) and the screenwriter Susannah Grant (“Erin Brockovich”). Bullock stars as a fast-living New York writer whose functional alcoholism is becoming less functional; she checks into a rehabilitation facility only when ordered to do so to avoid jail time for a D.U.I. As Michael Keaton did in 1988’s “Clean and Sober,” Bullock allows the loose formula of the rehab narrative to stretch her acting chops…

Mr. Biden had anticipated that the plan would be unacceptable to some members of the Israeli government, Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, said on Monday.“And of course, we’ve seen some members of the Israeli government already come out and oppose it,” Mr. Miller said. But he said that the proposal was “in the long-term security interests of Israel. It’s obviously in the long-term interests of the Palestinian people, as well.”Mr. Miller said that since Mr. Biden announced the plan on Friday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken had spoken to the foreign ministers of Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan,…

EDMONTON — You’re Miro Heiskanen. You are one of the best defensive players in the world. Rather than being a modern-day “defenceman,” he was essentially the fourth forward on the ice, receiving the majority of Norris Trophy votes in the offensive zone. You are a defender. you play defense, man. Probably better than all but a few people alive today. You know what you’re doing out there.So when you see Connor McDavid take a pass from Leon Draisaitl, you prepare yourself accordingly. You know his speed. You know his shot. You know his creativity. When he blows past Sam Steel…

[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]Cuando, la semana pasada, un artículo de opinión del semanario británico The Spectator cuestionó la deseabilidad de Penelope Featherington, personaje de la serie de Netflix Bridgerton interpretado por la actriz irlandesa Nicola Coughlan, se desató una tormenta de objeciones. La gente se apresuró a criticar la afirmación de que su emparejamiento con Colin Bridgerton, el esculpido y apuesto protagonista interpretado por Luke Newton, nunca sucedería en la vida real porque ella no es delgada.Después de que la tercera temporada de la serie se estrenara en Netflix este mes, los fans se sintieron ofendidos por…

A new frontier has opened in fashion’s fur wars, as protesters targeted the homes of more than a dozen employees of Marc Jacobs in recent months, using signs, noisemakers and fake blood in an effort to force the designer to officially renounce the use of fur in his collections.Over the weekend, Mr. Jacobs accused the protesters of “bullying” in a statement on Instagram, but averred: His brand “does not work in, use or sell fur, nor will we in the future.” He also emphasized that he had not used fur in any of his own brand’s collections since 2018.“This organization…

Margot Benacerraf, a critically acclaimed Venezuelan documentary filmmaker whose hypnotic “Araya,” a visual tone poem chronicling the daily lives of salt workers on an austere peninsula on her country’s coast, shared the critics’ prize at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, died on Wednesday in Caracas. She was 97.Her death was announced by the country’s culture minister.Hailed as a major figure of Latin American cinema, Ms. Benacerraf founded Venezuela’s national cinematheque and in 2018 was given the Order of Francisco de Miranda, honoring outstanding merit in the sciences and humanities, by the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro.But although Ms. Benacerraf was celebrated,…

Harman also pointed me to a moment in “The Castle,” an unfinished novel published after Kafka’s death, in which the antihero K. tries to phone that bureaucratic fortress. “At first, he hears only what sounds like high-pitched singing,” Harman said. But after an official picks up and methodically interrogates K. about his identity, K. is left wondering: “Who am I, then?”“Kafka was a notoriously severe judge of himself, and would certainly not have wanted completely uncritical admiration,” Harman said of the author’s online fans. And yet it is precisely Kafka’s painful self-awareness that plays so winningly on social media, among…