Author: NY TIMES

The thriller “Monkey Man” opens on a tender scene and a nod to the power of storytelling, only to quickly get down to down-and-dirty, action-movie business with a flurry of hard blows and faster edits. For the next two frenetic hours, it repeatedly cuts back to the past — where a mother and child happily lived once upon a bucolic time — before returning to the grubby, raw-knuckle present. There, the hits keep coming and the hero keeps taking them, again and again, in a movie that tries so hard to keep you entertained, it ends up exhausting you.Set largely…

In the fall of 2016, the Obama administration sealed a major military agreement with Israel that committed the United States to giving the country $38 billion in arms over 10 years.“The continued supply of the world’s most advanced weapons technology will ensure that Israel has the ability to defend itself from all manner of threats,” President Barack Obama said.At the time, the agreement was uncontroversial. It was a period of relative calm for Israel, and few officials in Washington expressed concern about how the American arms might one day be used.Now that military aid package, which guarantees Israel $3.3 billion…

South Korea’s polarized electionSouth Koreans are heading to the polls today to ​select a new Parliament after a particularly fraught campaign. The general election, the first since President Yoon Suk-yeol won the presidency in 2022, is seen as a midterm referendum on his leadership.Voting was getting underway across the country, just as we sent this newsletter.Many parties are vying for 300 seats in the Parliament. But the election is largely a contest between Yoon’s conservative People Power Party and the main opposition group, the liberal Democratic Party, led by Lee Jae-myung. It has become a bitter contest between the two…

In the completed watch, the Chinese perpetual calendar boasts 11 functions and displays the date of the Lunar New Year for the next 20 years on a disk at 6 o’clock on the front dial. To identify the New Year date to 2200 was too much information for just one disk, so the brand made eight more disks, and a house watchmaker will have to change it every 20 years.The movement also includes a Gregorian perpetual calendar, said to be accurate to 2100, and a Chinese agricultural perpetual calendar, based on a solar calendar that divides the year into 24…

The United States Postal Service on Tuesday proposed an overall increase of nearly 8 percent on the price of postage, the latest in a series of stamp hikes over the past three years.The new prices would take effect in July, pending approval from an independent regulatory commission. Among other changes, a Forever stamp would cost 73 cents instead of 68 cents, and the price of a domestic postcard would rise to 56 cents from 53 cents.The proposed changes, like several others since 2021, are part of the service’s 10-year plan to raise prices and slow some deliveries, among other measures,…

Larisa Oleynik, who played Kat’s kid sister, Bianca, recalls rewatching “10 Things” recently. “The thing I love so much — and I’m going to get emotional — is, she’s so earnest,” Oleynik said. “She’s so genuine. And to me, that is the most beautiful thing about Julia’s portrayal of that character. It is coming from a deeply heartfelt, vulnerable, sensitive, insanely intelligent place,” she said, while adding: “I don’t think anyone else would have been able to be that real.”Stiles started acting as a 12-year-old in New York’s La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, but had a hard time finding her…

She attended the elite Holton-Arms School for girls in the suburbs outside Washington. On weekends she strolled with friends on shopping trips through the Tysons Corner Center mall in Northern Virginia. Three American secretaries of state — Colin L. Powell, James A. Baker and Madeleine Albright — were regular guests in her parents’ home.These days, Princess Reema Bandar al-Saud, 48, the daughter of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, one of the most powerful diplomats in Washington when he was Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States for more than two decades, occupies her father’s old job.It has not been easy.She landed…

Germany on Tuesday defended itself against accusations that its arms sales to Israel were abetting genocide in Gaza, arguing at the International Court of Justice that most of the equipment it has supplied since Oct. 7 was nonlethal and that it has also been one of the largest donors of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians.The case at the U.N. court in The Hague pits Germany, whose support for Israel is considered an inviolable part of the country’s atonement for the Holocaust, against Nicaragua, which brought the allegations to the court and is a longstanding supporter of the Palestinian cause.Debate over…

TAG Heuer Monaco Split-Seconds ChronographTAG Heuer’s early 21st-century flirtations with haute horlogerie produced some memorable watches that were not always mechanically infallible. The madcap belt-driven Monaco V4 and the Carrera Mikrogirder, with its exposed linear coupling beam, spring to mind. But the watchmaker best known for its consumer-favorite Carrera and Monaco chronographs insists that its latest venture into high-end complications is no hurried concept, but rather heralds a new era of experimental fine watchmaking. The new watch’s signature function is its rattrapante, or split-seconds chronograph, which can time two events that start simultaneously but finish independently, such as two cars…

Fortune named Anastasia Nyrkovskaya as its next chief executive on Tuesday, making her the first woman to lead the 95-year-old business publication.She takes over from Alan Murray, who announced in October that he would step down in 2024 after nearly 10 years at Fortune. Ms. Nyrkovskaya had been the chief financial officer and chief strategy officer since 2019.In an interview, Ms. Nyrkovskaya said Fortune was profitable and had added more than 130 positions in the past 12 months across the editorial and business sides. The newsroom has doubled in size since 2021, she said. The company now has about 360…