Author: NY TIMES

Even though Bill Walton was one of the most unique men who ever lived, they were all the same. Walton was a 6-foot-11, red-haired, inquisitive Grateful Dead fan and television analyst who happened to be one of the greatest basketball players of all time.But when he died on Monday, the tributes were the same because the thread through Walton’s life was his tie-dye passion for people. At times, he may seem like he lives on another planet, but he wants you and others to join him because this is a place where love and dreams come true.That’s why the tributes…

The Cannes Festival jury led by Greta Gerwig announced its winners this weekend, including the Palme d’Or for “Anora,” a comedy from the American filmmaker Sean Baker about a sex worker who marries the son of a Russian oligarch. The ceremony concluded 10 full days filled with movies and long ovations, news conferences peppered with politics, a filmmaker’s return, women-led films that caused a stir, a president’s origin story and, of course, canine stars. But the Côte d’Azur’s red carpet proved also to be a bonanza, where stars upped the ante on style, wearing bright swaths of color, statement hats…

The severe turbulence that killed one passenger and injured dozens on a recent Singapore Airlines flight led to to sudden changes in altitude and airspeed, Singapore’s Transport Ministry said on Wednesday.Flight SQ321 encountered turbulence about 10 hours into a 13-hour trip to Singapore from London last week, officials said. Many of the 211 passengers had just finished breakfast.The turbulence hit as the plane was traveling over southern Myanmar at an altitude of 37,000 feet, the Transport Ministry said in a preliminary report on Wednesday.When the plane rose unexpectedly by 362 feet, probably because of an updraft, its autopilot pitched it…

In a rehearsal last week at the Mecklenburg State Theater in Schwerin, northeastern Germany, Fleshpiece, a shirtless performer with tattoos and purple hair, strode to the front of the main stage and delivered an impassioned monologue.“This opera house, this is our church,” Fleshpiece intoned. “We continue to nail you to the present, just as Jesus was nailed to the cross.”Supervising the scene was the experimental choreographer Florentina Holzinger, wearing a black baseball cap and a T-shirt printed with a picture of two nuns engaged in B.D.S.M. play.Her previous works, including “Ophelia’s Got Talent” at the Volksbühne in Berlin and “A…

Ghada Redwan, a 48-year-old pharmacist in Houston, has been trying to get her parents out of Gaza for months. Their bags, packed and ready to go, have been sitting by their door in Rafah, the city where Israel is now conducting a military offensive.But Ms. Redwan has hit roadblocks at every turn. And like other Palestinian Americans desperate to get their relatives to safety, she has described a confounding bureaucratic maze involving the State Department, the governments of Israel and Egypt, politicians, advocacy groups, lawyers and more.The closure this month of the Rafah border crossing into Egypt — the only…

The Netherlands will be getting a new prime minister, with the four right-wing parties that are forming a government finally naming their pick, more than six months after the elections.The parties selected a top justice official, Dick Schoof, 67, on Tuesday. They will now continue work on forming a cabinet, naming ministers and state secretaries, with the aim of finalizing a government in about four weeks.The choice of Mr. Schoof — the highest-ranking official at the Ministry of Justice and Security and a former counterterrorism chief, who has no political experience or party affiliation — reflects an attempt to govern…

Indianapolis — this timeThe Boston Celtics’ trip to the Eastern Conference Finals is over without any public or press conference clamor that the coach must go, and oh, by the way, let’s throw a wrecking ball at the roster.this timeThe Celtics defeated the Indiana Pacers 105-102 on Monday night at Gambridge Arena to complete a sweep of the Indiana Pacers. Some quick play-by-play is in order here, starting with the Celtics’ 10-2 run after trailing all night. Jayson Tatum’s breakaway dunk made it 100-100, and then, ahem, Series MVP Jaylen Brown’s 8-foot jumper tied the score at 102-102 again. Brown…

Blazing a PathTrading poodle skirts and blouses for trucker hats and flannels, decades before the term “gender nonconforming” entered the mainstream, Aunt Barbara stopped trying to fit into her Missouri farm town. I innocently called her “Uncle Barbara” as a toddler. She always laughed. For all of her standing out, for the acceptance that she demanded and received, Barb’s inner life is unknowable. Long gone from cancer, she left me two important gifts: a record of her courageous clothing preferences — deeply provocative in her time — captured in family photos, and a blazed path for her family to accept…

Holly Meyer Lucas estimates that as many as 30 of the 100 houses her real estate team sold in and around Jupiter, Fla., last year were put on the market because their owners could no longer keep up with skyrocketing home insurance.“It is the housing crisis that nobody is talking about,” Ms. Meyer Lucas said. The houses sold easily, but often to well-off cash buyers who could drop the insurance altogether because they did not have a mortgage that required them to carry it.Jumping insurance rates are acute in coastal Florida, with its exposure to big risks like hurricanes and…

Taylor Swift holds the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s latest album chart for a fifth consecutive week, after an intense contest with Billie Eilish in which both stars released a blizzard of “versions” of their LPs to lure fans.Eilish fought for “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” her third album, with release-week arena listening events in New York and Los Angeles. In an era of supersized track lists as a strategy to maximize streaming yield, the LP had just 10 songs. But fans were given a long menu of options to buy it, including nine colored vinyl editions. There were also…