Author: NY TIMES

In early February, as a referendum approached that had been called by Ireland’s coalition government to consider two proposals to alter the country’s Constitution, polls showed that a clear majority of voters intended to support it.Many analysts assumed it would be the latest in a series of votes in recent years amending the country’s 1930s-era Constitution to reflect Ireland’s increasingly secular and liberal identity.But as the day of the referendum, held to coincide with International Women’s Day, drew closer, public opinion seemed to turn, with polls showing support for the “yes” vote plummeting. When voters cast their ballots on Friday,…

Some attendees of the Academy Awards on Sunday night plan to wear red pins calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war, a notable exception to an awards season in which many Hollywood stars have been reluctant to draw attention to the conflict.The pins represent the attendees’ alignment with Artists4Ceasefire, a group of celebrities and members of the entertainment industry who signed an open letter urging President Biden to call for a cease-fire. The nearly 400 signatories include Bradley Cooper and America Ferrera, who are both Oscar nominees this year, as well as Cate Blanchett, Drake, Ben Affleck and Jennifer…

Washington lawmakers introduced a bill this week calling for TikTok to cut ties with its Chinese parent company or face a ban in the United States. When many users opened the popular app on Thursday, the company greeted them with a message to oppose the legislation, prompting a flood of phone calls to several Capitol Hill offices.“Stop a TikTok shutdown,” the message on the app read. It included a button for people to call their representatives, saying: “Let Congress know what TikTok means to you and tell them to vote NO.”By noon, the phone lines for members of Congress were…

Kathy Goldman, who devoted her career as a civic leader to establishing food banks, pantries and free breakfast and lunch programs in public schools to sustain low-income New Yorkers, died on March 5 in Brooklyn. She was 92.The cause of death, in a hospital, was congestive heart failure, her daughter, Julie Goldman, said.Ms. Goldman was determined to confront the collective indifference that she felt had contributed to the Holocaust. Over five decades she worked with many collaborators to successfully lobby for federal subsidies like food stamps and nutrition assistance for women, children and infants; create partnerships between corporate providers of…

In “Space: The Longest Goodbye,” scientists researching the problems of long-term space exploration go where movies have gone before. Sending astronauts into hibernation to conserve scarce resources? Pairing them with an artificially intelligent entity that can act as a pal and sounding board? Screenwriters have tried these things already, with results probably best kept in fiction.But such gambits may offer real solutions for getting humans to Mars. And they are gambits that this fitfully intriguing, sometimes wide-eyed documentary, directed by Ido Mizrahy, takes seriously.“Soft, squishy humans are completely unfathomable to engineers,” says Jack Stuster, an anthropologist who asked residents of…

The U.S. military said on Sunday that a ship had set sail carrying equipment to build a floating pier on Gaza’s coast, part of a Biden administration effort to deliver aid to the enclave by sea and help ease its hunger crisis.The administration’s plan for a pier and causeway, announced last week, could eventually help deliver as many as two million meals a day for residents of Gaza. But the Pentagon has said that the project will take weeks to complete, and humanitarian officials have criticized the plans, saying delivering aid by truck is far more efficient.On Sunday, the U.S.…

Nearly two months after undergoing abdominal surgery, Catherine, the princess of Wales, appeared in an official photograph, released on Sunday by Kensington Palace to mark Mother’s Day in Britain.Catherine, who posed with her three children, George, Charlotte and Louis, has not been seen in public since before she entered the hospital on Jan. 16, provoking a swirl of increasingly far-fetched rumors on social media about her condition.The image of a smiling Catherine, surrounded by her family, will most likely quiet what had become an extraordinary distraction for the British royal family, which is also dealing with a cancer diagnosis for…

Before the war and during the Occupation, Arletty and Chanel were part of an extraordinary social set from across the arts and political spectrum. Right-wing and antisemitic views dominated the politics of this group. The French journalist Boulos Ristelhueber reported in 1940 that Chanel had gone into “into a long tirade against the Jews” during a dinner. Unlike some in her circle, however, Chanel didn’t embrace Nazi ideology. Above all, she was an opportunist.Still, given Chanel’s involvement with the Nazis, it’s hard to believe two curious documents that surfaced recently “attesting” to her participation in the French Resistance. The documents,…

A year ago, the government and America’s largest banks joined forces in a rare moment of comity.They were forced into action after Silicon Valley Bank collapsed on March 10, 2023, quickly followed by two other lenders, First Republic and Signature Bank. Faced with the threat of a billowing crisis that could threaten the banking industry — the worst one since 2008 — rivals and regulators put together a huge bailout fund. Eventually all three ailing banks were declared insolvent by the government and sold off.The biggest banks emerged from the period even larger, after picking up accounts from their smaller…

Watching Kristen Stewart is always an adventure. A performer who makes good movies better and dreary movies tolerable, she has a restlessness that has made her one of the more interesting attractions in American film. She has a gift for making a character’s inner life transparently readable, and while she can be subtle and withholding, it is her fascinatingly unquiet presence that draws you in, an itchy intensity that can keep her (and you) on edge. Pauline Kael wrote that Jane Fonda’s “motor runs a little fast” — so does Stewart’s.In her latest vehicle, “Love Lies Bleeding,” a neo-noir in…