Author: NY TIMES

Since queer characters are today put at the center of many more stories than they used to be, it’s probably no surprise that most of the attempts to revive the Gay Best Friend are period pieces — including “And Just Like That … ,” which, for all of its contemporary inclusiveness (there are nonwhite and nonstraight “Sex and the City” ladies now!), still has one Manolo Blahnik planted firmly in the late ’90s. In the second season, Anthony is granted a boyfriend, a handsome, sweet, literary, affectionate, prodigiously endowed Italian poet decades younger (honestly, even as wish fulfillment, it’s a…

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah fired more than 100 rockets into northern Israel on Tuesday morning, according to Israel’s military. It was one of the heaviest barrages in the months of cross-border strikes that have fed fears that the war in Gaza could expand to another front.It was not immediately clear how many of the rockets landed or were intercepted by Israeli air defenses. Israel’s military said its fighter jets had retaliated by striking a number of sites linked to Hezbollah in Lebanon.In a statement, Hezbollah said it had launched the volley in response to Israeli military strikes on Monday…

The first sea shipment of food for Gaza left the Mediterranean island of Cyprus on Tuesday morning, officials said, the start of an untested maritime corridor to bring aid to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians whom the United Nations says are on the brink of starvation.The ship was pulling a barge loaded with about 200 tons of rice, flour and other food from World Central Kitchen, a charity group. The ship, provided by the Spanish aid group Open Arms, is the first authorized to deliver supplies to Gaza by sea since 2005, according to Ursula von der Leyen, the president…

There’s a youthquake underway at one of France’s oldest institutions.The Mobilier National, the national repository of furniture and the decorative arts, was formally established in the 17th century under King Louis XIV. Now housed in a massive Art Deco complex in the 13th Arrondissement — on land that was once the vegetable garden for the Les Gobelins tapestry factory — it houses more than 130,000 commodes, clocks, candelabras, chairs, tapestries, carpets and other antiques spanning four centuries of French history. For elected officials, a selection from the Mobilier National’s reserves is made available for refurbishing government agencies and residences, from…

This year is looking grim for the news business.Facing a set of harsh financial realities — resulting from a mix of news fatigue, an unsteady advertising market and a precipitous fall in traffic from tech giants — many outlets have been forced to fold or make significant cuts in recent months.But there are some signs of hope. A small cohort of for-profit digital media companies that sprang up during the pandemic have found success — at least for the moment — by taking the opposite approach of many predecessors, such as BuzzFeed and Vice, which fatefully relied on huge amounts…

What about the poster for “Little Miss Sunshine”?LIPPERT This is a daring and exciting poster because of all the negative space. She chose to essentially not use two-thirds of the poster and have it be a bright school bus yellow that’s pushing down on the family, and they’re all composited together into this running scene. It has this playfulness to it. It’s comical, strange, unexpected.BAILLIE The executive at Fox Searchlight, Stephanie Allen, gave the direction to our team to explore what she called “color branding.” She wanted to own yellow for the season. So sunshine yellow was owned.Who decides which…

Israel attacked an underground space used by Marwan Issa, the deputy commander of Hamas’s military wing, an Israeli military spokesman said Monday, adding that investigators were still analyzing the outcome of the strike.Hamas, which has revealed little information about its senior military leaders since the war began, did not immediately comment.The Israeli spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, emphasized that Israel had not finished verifying the results of the attack by Israeli warplanes, which he said had hit a location that has been used by Mr. Issa and another senior Hamas military official responsible for the group’s weapons.If Mr. Issa were…

Andrew Tate, the wealth-flaunting online influencer known for his misogynistic views, and his brother, Tristan, were taken into custody Monday night in Romania on a European arrest warrant issued by the British authorities, a spokesman for Mr. Tate said.The charges related to the arrest were made between 2012 and 2015 and include allegations of sexual aggression, the spokesman said. He added that the charges had been dismissed by the Crown Prosecution Service years later.It is unclear which British force issued the warrant or why the case has been reopened.The Bucharest Court of Appeal in Romania is expected to make a…

There were many head-turning moments at the Balmain show at Paris Fashion Week, which was a love letter by the creative director Olivier Rousteing to his childhood home of Bordeaux. There were twisted gold snail shells hanging from ears and as belt buckles; there were metal handbags cast into clusters of grapes, which were later served up on rhinestone-encrusted minidresses and strapless peplum bustiers.But the most striking aspect of the show was not the clothes on the runway but the age of many of the models wearing them. It was impossible to ignore that scores of them were … well,…

It is costing Americans more to protect against disaster, a development that is pushing up official inflation figures.Various kinds of insurance — including car, medical and property protection — are costing more, at least as official inflation figures measure them. Although it is tough for economic policymakers to do much to snuff out the various drivers behind the trend, the pressure is helping to increase overall prices.“Insurance of various different kinds — housing insurance, but also automobile insurance, and things like that — that’s been a significant source of inflation over the last few years,” Jerome H. Powell, the Federal…