Author: NY TIMES

When his creative, funny, independent mother, Kathy, began to exhibit signs of dementia, the writer Max Lugavere moved cross-country and picked up a camera to start documenting his journey to figure out how to help her. The result is “Little Empty Boxes,” a new documentary that’s strongest when it chronicles their relationship. Kathy’s memories of Max’s upbringing and his desire to be close to her bring them both a strange comfort. (She passed away in 2019.) The rest of the film — notably interviews with researchers studying links between nutrition, exercise and brain health — is uneven. Its visual language…

Israeli airstrikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Saturday killed several civilians, including women and children, according to Palestinian state media, sending more fear through an area where over one million displaced Palestinians are crowded into tents and temporary quarters.For many weeks, Palestinians have been bracing for an announced Israeli ground offensive on Rafah, the southernmost part of Gaza, where more than half of the strip’s 2.2 million residents fled after being forced from their homes by more than six months of Israeli bombardment and a ground invasion.The airstrikes hit two family homes, killing 10 residents, and missiles…

An Israeli airstrike on Iran on Friday damaged an air defense system, according to Western and Iranian officials, and appeared calculated to deliver a message that Israel could bypass Iran’s defensive systems undetected and paralyze them.The strike damaged a defensive battery near Natanz, a city in central Iran that is critical to the country’s nuclear weapons program, according to the officials.Even though the Israeli attack was in retaliation for Iran’s aerial barrage last week, it used a fraction of the firepower Tehran deployed. That attack, intercepted by Israel and its allies, caused minimal damage.The strike on Friday was the latest…

The trappings of dressmaking — including thimbles, thread, scissors and measuring tapes — feature in a new 20-piece Couture O’Clock watch collection by Chanel, inspired by the house’s couture workshops on Rue Cambon in Paris.Arnaud Chastaingt, director of Chanel’s Watchmaking Creation Studio, wrote in an email that he had chosen to focus on the “roots of the House” by reimagining the brand’s core watch designs, including the J12, the Première and the Boy.Friend.The collection, available in Chanel boutiques in June, includes seven limited-edition versions of the J12, in varying combinations of steel, 18-karat gold, black and white ceramic and diamonds…

“We’re way undervalued today,” Cathy Engelbert, the commissioner of the W.N.B.A., told DealBook.Stars have powered viewership peaks in women’s sports. In a 2018-19 survey by researchers at Ohio State University, only 3 percent of respondents said women’s sports constituted all or almost all of their sports consumption, and 10 percent said half or most of it. But viewers will show up in hordes, particularly when those matches are being played on a big global stage.Serena Williams’s final match of the 2022 U.S. Open brought in between 4.8 million and 6.9 million views, the most for a tennis match in ESPN’s…

From the start, the British filmmaker Ken Loach came out swinging in support of the underdog. Long before his films opened in theaters, his 1960s television plays introduced uncomfortable topics like back-street abortion (“Up the Junction”) and homelessness (“Cathy Come Home”) to audiences who were not always appreciative of their documentarylike realness and divisive politics.Since then, his dogged championing of society’s strugglers and stragglers has sometimes resulted in his films’ being misread or underappreciated by American audiences. (Even the British film critic David Thomson once judged Loach easier to respect than enjoy.) Inseparable from his time and place, Loach responded…

Iraq’s joint military command says one person was killed and eight were injured in an explosion early Saturday at a base used by an Iranian-backed armed group, Harakat al Nujaba, in Iraq’s Babylon Province.In a carefully worded statement, Iraq’s military did not attribute the explosion to an air attack with a missile or a drone. “Air Defense Command confirmed that there was no drone or jet fighter in the airspace of Babylon Province before and during the explosion,” the statement said.Privately, however, military officials say it appears that at least one projectile had hit inside the Kalsu base’s perimeter. A…

Shipments of American weapons could begin flowing to Ukraine again soon after House approval of a long-stalled aid package, U.S. officials say, with goods from the Pentagon’s stockpiles in Germany shipped quickly by rail to the Ukrainian border.The measure would provide the Ukraine war effort with about $60 billion. A sizable amount is set aside to replenish U.S. defense stockpiles, and billions more would be used to purchase U.S. defense systems, which Ukrainian officials say are badly needed.The Senate was expected to pass the legislation, and President Biden has said he would sign it into law.For months, Ukrainian military officials…

Bulgari has its world record back. On Monday, the Italian luxury house with the Swiss fine watchmaking division reclaimed the record for the world’s thinnest mechanical wristwatch.The Octo Finissimo Ultra Mark II is 1.7 millimeters thick, 0.05 millimeters thinner than Richard Mille’s 1.75 millimeter RM UP-01 Ferrari, which two years ago snatched the record from Bulgari’s 1.8 millimeter Octo Finissimo Ultra.The difference? Half a tenth of a millimeter, approximately the thickness of a piece of office printer paper.“This is sci-fi,” Antoine Pin, managing director of Bulgari’s watchmaking division, said of his record-breaker. “It makes people excited and brings global attention…

Loren Brey, a poultry grower in Minnesota, walked onto the farm where his egg-laying turkeys nest in November to discover a handful of hens, dead from the highly pathogenic avian flu.Within a week, he lost nearly half of his entire flock.So when Mr. Brey’s turkeys began producing eggs again in the spring, he gave a seemingly unconventional prevention method a go: lasers installed atop his barns, firing beams of green light to fend off wild ducks, owls and other possible carriers of the deadly virus.As migratory birds fly north for the spring, poultry farmers and backyard keepers across the country…