Author: NY TIMES

In the new Yorgos Lanthimos film “Kinds of Kindness,” a character played by Emma Stone recounts a dream in which she was the denizen of a bizarre world. “There, dogs were in charge,” she murmurs. “People were animals, animals were people.” But being brought to heel by their canine masters wasn’t as bad as it sounds, she says: “I must admit, they treated us pretty well.”Compared with how the human beings treat each other in “Kinds of Kindness,” a dark new comedy that just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and is in theaters June 21, the dogs would surely…

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, performed funeral prayers on Wednesday for the country’s president who was killed in a helicopter crash, as thousands of Iranians packed the streets of Tehran on an official day of mourning.The president, Ebrahim Raisi, 63, was killed along with Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, 60, and five others traveling with them on Sunday. Funeral observances began on Tuesday with a procession in Tabriz, the closest big city to the crash site in northwestern Iran. The bodies of Mr. Raisi and of the others killed were then taken to the holy city of Qom…

This little bus was filled with people from Vovchansk and the smaller villages around it, in the path of Russia’s surge into the Kharkiv region of Ukraine.I met them at the interim point from where they were being taken to Kharkiv itself, the nearest big city.Volunteers and rescue workers helped those who could not walk and handed out water and food. Cellphone service has been limited during the fighting, so a satellite internet connection was set up, which allowed the evacuees to tell their loved ones they were safe or let them try to check whether family members were still…

Time may be divided into past, present and future, but for the independent Swiss watchmaker Ludovic Ballouard, the only time that counts is the present.It’s a philosophy he developed the hard way, through personal suffering and loss. Watching his wife, Eveline, endure cancer for 10 years took a toll. “I realized you have to live in the moment,” he said. “Time is now.”Mr. Ballouard’s work, known for being innovative yet iconoclastic, expresses his carpe-diem approach to life. On the rule-breaking Upside Down watch introduced in 2009, 11 of the hour markers are displayed upside down on the dial — the…

The 2010s were a frothy time for digital publishing. Billions of dollars flowed into publishers like BuzzFeed and Vice, with big media companies and venture capitalists betting those start-ups would eventually make lots of money.For the most part, those huge profits were a pipe dream. But despite the lost money, disappointed investors and a slew of negative press coverage, the executives who founded those companies never had to answer for their conduct in a courtroom. Until now.The jury trial of Carlos Watson, who is charged with trying to defraud investors in the digital media start-up he co-founded, Ozy Media, is…

At the Cannes Film Festival, much is made of the standing ovation. Every round of applause earns breathless headlines, with outlets racing to report which movie received the most prolonged cheers.But sometimes at Cannes, where you sit is just as important as when you leap to your feet.This is something Lily Gladstone found out Sunday night at Kering’s annual Women in Motion dinner, a star-studded bash that drew the likes of Michelle Yeoh, Julianne Moore, Isabelle Huppert and the jury president, Greta Gerwig. As one of Gerwig’s fellow jurors, Gladstone will help decide the winner of the Palme d’Or. It’s…

What does Raziq’s story tell us about why the United States failed in Afghanistan? Although the immediate cause of the republic’s collapse might have been the precipitous U.S. withdrawal in 2021, the real question is why the Afghan government could not stand on its own despite the hundreds of billions of dollars invested over 20 years by America and its allies. How did hundreds of thousands of soldiers and police officers, armed with modern equipment, lose to insurgents who rode their motorcycles in sandals?Many corrupt and unpopular governments survive insurgencies. And it’s clear that the Taliban’s violence against civilians did…

Britain’s inflation rate slowed last month to its lowest level in about three years, approaching the Bank of England’s 2 percent target.Consumer prices rose 2.3 percent in April from a year earlier, down from 3.2 percent in March, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday. The rate, which declined slightly less than economists expected, was the lowest since July 2021.It was pulled down by a decrease in the cap on household energy bills set by a government regulator. Food inflation also slowed to 2.9 percent, from 4 percent.The steep decline in headline inflation, closing in on the central bank’s…

A 10-time winner at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève, the annual industry event often called the “Oscars of watchmaking,” Kari Voutilainen is among the most prestigious figures in independent horology.And in March, his work actually went to the Academy Awards: Cillian Murphy, who won best actor for “Oppenheimer,” wore a yellow gold brooch by the Hong Kong design house Sauvereign that Mr. Voutilainen had finished in guilloché, the decorative patterning that has become his signature.But Mr. Voutilainen, who has lived and worked in Switzerland for more than 30 years, has not forgotten his roots. In late April, he visited…

OpenAI’s Scarlett Johansson problemWhen OpenAI unveiled the latest version of ChatGPT last week, a chatbot that can listen to spoken questions and respond verbally, many users had one question: Is that Scarlett Johansson?The actress, who provided the voice for an A.I. assistant in the movie “Her,” has now made clear that she did not do the same for OpenAI — and she demanded that the company stop using the sound-alike. It’s another sign of eroding trust in OpenAI, which has taken fire from creative industries and former employees.“I was shocked, angered and in disbelief,” Johansson said in a statement on…