Author: NY TIMES

After Tiffany Quynhnhu Langlinais and Michael Steven Graves had their first date in central New Orleans, Mr. Graves drove off to Chicago in a green 2008 Kia Sedona minivan to officiate a friend’s wedding. And so, to Ms. Langlinais’s friends, he was known as “minivan Mike.”Ms. Langlinais, 33, wasn’t used to dating a man who drove a minivan, but she said she appreciated seeing him in an “unfiltered way” throughout the date. She found him forthright and intentional, plus she was “a fan” of his beard.The two met in June 2021 on Magazine Street, a six mile-long, major thoroughfare in…

Streaming services have transformed the way we view film and television, leaving us isolated on our couches, subject to the suggestions of an algorithm. But a small group of film buffs with a fondness for physical media are hoping to lure people back into the real world — one abandoned newspaper box at a time.The Free Blockbuster project began in 2019, when Brian Morrison, a film and television producer in Los Angeles, and a former Blockbuster employee, painted the company’s blue-and-yellow logo onto an old box and filled it with DVDs. For many, the brand evokes memories of the trip…

Surgeons in Boston have transplanted a kidney from a genetically engineered pig into an ailing 62-year-old man, the first procedure of its kind. If successful, the breakthrough offers hope to hundreds of thousands of Americans whose kidneys have failed.So far, the signs are promising.Kidneys remove waste products and excess fluid from the blood. The new kidney began producing urine shortly after the surgery last weekend and the patient’s condition continues to improve, according to physicians at Massachusetts General Hospital, known as Mass General. He is already walking the halls of the hospital and may be discharged soon.The patient is a…

Amnon Weinstein, an Israeli luthier who restored violins belonging to Jews during the Holocaust so that musicians around the world could play them in hopeful, melodic tributes to those silenced in Nazi death camps, died on March 4 in Tel Aviv. He was 84.His death, at a hospital, was confirmed by his son Avshalom Weinstein.Mr. Weinstein was the founder of Violins of Hope, an organization that provides the violins he restored to orchestras for concerts and educational programs commemorating the Holocaust. The instruments have been played in dozens of cities worldwide, including Berlin, at an event marking the liberation of…

The memories are unforgettable. A flood of screaming families carrying their bloodied loved ones through the doors of an already inundated hospital. A small boy trying to resuscitate a child who looked not much older than himself. A 12-year-old with shrapnel wounds to his head and abdomen being intubated on the ground.That January day at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza — the aftermath of a missile strike on an aid distribution site — has haunted Dr. Zaher Sahloul, an American critical care specialist with years of experience treating patients in war zones, including in Syria and…

The head of one of India’s leading opposition parties was arrested in dramatic fashion on Thursday, the same day another party said it had been blocked from access to its bank accounts — actions taken by the government of Narendra Modi, critics say, to put his rivals at a disadvantage before a pivotal general election in April.The leader of the Aam Aadmi Party, Arvind Kejriwal, was taken into custody late on Thursday at his home in New Delhi, where hundreds of protesters had gathered to protest his arrest by the federal financial crime agency. Mr. Kejriwal, who is also the…

If you want to buy a Birkin bag, the pièce de résistance from the French luxury retailer Hermès, you should know that you probably can’t.Vogue delivered this tough-love message to readers in a recent article that described the quest for an Hermès bag as “daunting.” The magazine cautioned that customers “might wait months or years for the right style to become available” and further dashed hopes by noting that “waiting lists at Hermès stores no longer exist.”The exclusivity of the item is very much part of its appeal — but a pair of California residents who have struck out in…

Sports leagues of all shapes and sizes have barreled headfirst into gambling in the six years since the Supreme Court struck down a law that limited wagering on games to Nevada. Casting aside decades of resistance, professional leagues have taken millions of dollars from casinos and sports books that are spending heavily to lure new customers. Former no-go zones like Las Vegas are now free-for-alls; the National Football League even held the Super Bowl there last month.Still, in a nod to the zero-tolerance policies that they once argued in court, the leagues continue to claim that their priority when dealing…

For more than a decade, Apple could do almost no wrong. The iPhone made it the world’s most valuable company. The App Store helped launch businesses such as Uber and Airbnb. And the company’s new products made it a player in health, Hollywood and finance.Now, the difficulties are piling up. The Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple on Thursday for giving its own products advantages that it deprived rivals of having. The suit is the latest in a series of actions brought against the company by regulators on three continents.The troubles are testing the resiliency of Apple’s brand…

This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.Yvonne Barr was a 31-year-old research assistant seeking a new challenge when she was hired by a pathologist in London in 1963 to help find the cause of an unusual malignancy: exceptionally large facial tumors in Ugandan children.The pathologist, Anthony Epstein, was almost certain that the tumors were caused by a virus, but he was struggling to prove his hypothesis.Barr was by then known for her superior laboratory skills, having worked on the bacterium that causes Hansen’s disease,…