Author: NY TIMES

Hello, I’m Luca Guadagnino, and I am the director and one of the producers of ‘Challengers.’ In this sequence, we see the two male characters of ‘Challengers’— Patrick Zweig, played by Josh O’Connor, and Art Donaldson, played by Mike Faist — when they are in their early 20s. And they are very good tennis players. We meet them in Stanford, where Art is attending, while Patrick has left education to become a professional tennis player. This scene in particular depicts a moment, and evolution in their friendship that has been kind of diverted because of a third person came into…

Seven rabbis and peace activists were arrested on Friday near the border with Gaza after they tried to bring food supplies into the territory, according to two participants and the campaign group that organized the effort.The detainees were among a group of roughly 30 rabbis and activists from Israel and the United States who were stopped by police officers as they tried to reach the Erez crossing, a major transit point between Israel and northern Gaza.Organized by Rabbis for Ceasefire, a peace movement based in the United States, the effort was intended to build support for a truce and to…

ExxonMobil and Chevron, the largest American energy companies, said on Friday that their earnings in the first quarter fell from a year earlier, pulled down by lower refining margins and plunging natural gas prices.But the oil and gas business remains highly profitable for the two giants even at a time of moderate oil prices.ExxonMobil said that earnings were $8.2 billion in the quarter, compared with $11.4 billion in the same period a year earlier. Chevron reported a decline to $5.5 billion, from $6.6 billion a year ago.Both companies attributed their declines to lower profitability from refining crude oil into products…

“People want to sit around with the family and watch football,” Roger Goodell, the National Football League commissioner, said Thursday night before the 2024 N.F.L. draft. It is also increasingly the case that people want to sit around, alone or in groups, watching phenomenal athletes and physical specimens doing nothing more physically taxing than sauntering down a red carpet.And, while the N.F.L. has a long way to go before it can stage a real challenge to the style dominance of N.B.A. tunnel-walk kings like Jerami Grant, Jarred Vanderbilt or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, it was clear that this year’s football draft prospects…

An effort to give Trump more say on rates This week, investors had planned to examine the latest inflation data, due out at 8:30 a.m. Eastern on Friday, for clues about when the Fed would start cutting interest rates. But they now have something potentially bigger to digest.The Wall Street Journal reports that allies of Donald Trump are devising ways of watering down the central bank’s independence if he is re-elected president.If true, that change would represent the biggest shake-up in U.S. monetary policy in decades. But it also raises questions about whether such a plan is possible — or…

In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.Churros have never tasted more bitter than in this scene from “Challengers.”In this sequence, which takes place at Stanford, the character Art (Mike Faist), who is attending the university, reconnects with his dear friend Patrick (Josh O’Connor), who has left education to become a tennis pro. Not present in the scene, yet hanging…

A baby who was born premature after her mother was killed in an Israeli strike died on Thursday, a relative said, less than a week after news of her birth brought a glimmer of hope to war-torn Gaza.The baby, who was born after a strike in southern Gaza that also killed her father and sister, suffered respiratory problems and doctors were unable to save her, said her uncle, Rami al-Sheikh.“I buried her in her father’s grave,” he said in a phone interview on Friday.The mother, Sabreen al-Sakani, was killed along with her husband, Shukri, and their 3-year-old daughter Malak when…

Tony Probst’s passion for the Titanic is unwavering.Since the mid-1990s, he has amassed hundreds of artifacts from the ship’s maiden voyage in 1912, including a lifeboat plaque, china, sheet music and an array of personal documents.“I believe I’m the only person on planet Earth who has every piece of paper for one individual to get on board Titanic,” Mr. Probst, 64, said proudly this week.His collection is sometimes on display at the audio and visual store he runs with his sons in the Bay Area of California, but it has also toured prominent spaces, including the National Geographic Museum in…

It never bothered Benjamin Andrew Krauss in the slightest if Shana Gabrielle Mansbach took a call from Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, while they were out to dinner, and then ran off to draft a letter or a speech.“That happened not infrequently,” said Mr. Krauss, 40, who knew the situation all too well. “This is the nature of what we do.”The two Washington speechwriters had never met or heard of each other before connecting on the Hinge dating app in July 2020, during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.“He was in his bubble, I was in mine,” said…

Rising prices have made people grumpy. They have depressed consumer confidence, despite a growing economy and low unemployment.But exactly how inflation is hurting, helping and confusing people is hard to understand. Everyone knows that the cost of living has increased. Yet unless you’re constantly pulling out a calculator, you’re unlikely to know whether your wages are keeping up with inflation, whether the stock market has actually hit a real peak or whether a lottery jackpot is as sweet as the marketers claim.There’s a fancy name for the common human failure to see past the gaudy prices largely created by inflation.…