Author: NY TIMES

Waiters in blue jackets wended through a crowded dining room balancing trays of martinis. A woman ran her fingers along a wall covered with markings of the heights of children. Longtime regulars handed servers farewell tips through firm handshakes.It was the last night for Pietro’s, an old guard Italian steakhouse, at its decades-long address in Midtown Manhattan. Among the devout who had come to pay their respects on Thursday was the fashion designer Michael Kors, who sat at a corner table with his husband, Lance Le Pere.“There is no Carbone without Pietro’s,” Mr. Kors said as he waited for a…

Not long ago, streaming TV came with a promise: Sign up, and commercials will be a thing of the past.Netflix rose to streaming dominance in part by luring customers to an ad-free experience. Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and HBO Max followed that lead.Well, that did not last long.Ads are getting increasingly hard to avoid on streaming services. One by one, Netflix, Disney+, Peacock, Paramount+ and Max have added 30- and 60-second commercials in exchange for a slightly lower subscription price. Amazon has turned ads on by default. And the live sports on those services include built-in commercial breaks no matter…

Some readers confessed to never having seen the film whose soundtrack they love; others even reported disliking it. No matter what they thought about the movie, however — including nothing — they were passionate about the music.Finally, a shout-out to Carole Barrowman of Wauwatosa, Wis., for introducing me to “Bellbottoms” by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, from “Baby Driver.” It’s playing as I write this.Here’s a sampling of reader submissions:It Started EarlyFran Cameron of Longmeadow, Mass., on “The Harder They Come” (1972):I was 12, my brother 14. We walked past the theater poster for “The Harder They Come.” The choice…

This is how Dr. Yuval Bitton remembers the morning of Oct. 7. Being jolted awake just after sunrise by the insistent ringing of his phone. The frantic voice of his daughter, who was traveling abroad, asking, “Dad, what’s happened in Israel? Turn on the TV.”News anchors were still piecing together the reports: Palestinian gunmen penetrating Israel’s vaunted defenses, infiltrating more than 20 towns and military bases, killing approximately 1,200 people and dragging more than 240 men, women and children into Gaza as hostages.Even in that first moment, Dr. Bitton says, he knew with certainty who had masterminded the attack: Yahya…

Periodic outcries over incompetence and corruption at the top of the Russian military have dogged President Vladimir V. Putin’s war effort since the start of his invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.When his forces faltered around the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, the need for change was laid bare. When they were routed months later outside the city of Kharkiv, expectations of a shake-up grew. And after the mercenary leader Yevgeny V. Prigozhin marched his men toward Moscow, complaining of deep rot and ineptitude at the top of the Russian force, Mr. Putin seemed obliged to respond.But, at each turn, the Russian…

West Wilson never thought he’d be spending the summer in a house in the Hamptons, let alone as part of a reality television show. The unemployed former football player from Missouri was about to run out of money following a three-week boys’ trip when he got a call that would change his life.“My severance ended that weekend,” Mr. Wilson, 27, recalled. “I came home and it was like the most depressing Monday of all time.”Mr. Wilson decided to check his voice mail to see if there was something — anything — in there to cheer him up. To his shock,…

“Now,” Mr. O’Neal said, “it’s bloggers, emcees, athletes, designers.”At the N.B.A.’s All-Star weekend in February, as Mr. O’Neal and Mr. Iverson made the rounds wearing Reebok varsity jackets that were personalized with their respective titles, Reebok released an N.B.A.-themed collaboration with Victor Solomon, the Los Angeles artist. (The jackets were Mr. O’Neal’s idea.)Star players, though, are still an invaluable piece of the puzzle, and Reebok made an immediate, and somewhat surprising, first splash back in October by partnering with Angel Reese, one of the most popular young players in the women’s game. A former all-American at L.S.U., Ms. Reese recently…

Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Molly Mirhashem is used to running around in circles — literally.Six days a week, Ms. Mirhashem runs near her home in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Much of her weekly mileage takes place on the same, roughly 3.5-mile loop of a nearby park. Her training will come in handy: This weekend, she is running the Buffalo Marathon in upstate New York. It will be her ninth time gutting out 26.2 miles since she first caught the marathon bug in 2017.Ms. Mirhashem, an editor…

Ming Wang, the real-life physician whose biography is the basis for this fictional feature, is a Nashville-based ophthalmologist whose degree in laser physics has presumably been a boon in his work restoring sight to visually impaired patients, many of whom are children.As is the custom with inspirational medical movies, however, the new film “Sight,” directed by Andrew Hyatt, leans hard into uplift — it provides only the narrative-necessary minimum of the science. Wang’s achievement in developing innovative technology is central to one of the stories here, yes. But the dominating narrative is one of personal growth.Weaving several decades’ worth of…

For generations, residents of Collyweston — a village in central England snuggled up against the River Welland — passed down stories of a grand Tudor palace, of royal processions through the valley below, of the mother of a king who had called it home.Over hundreds of years, the stories persisted, even as memory of the palace’s whereabouts faded. But the lore suddenly came to life when a handful of amateur historians unearthed portions of the long-lost palace, buried under a few feet of soil. Historians from the University of York have verified their findings.“We are a small village with a…