Author: NY TIMES

On March 23, 2003, as the rest of the world watched televised images of captives and corpses identified as American soldiers, limos carrying high-fashion-clad celebrities rolled up outside what was then known as the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles.The United States had invaded Iraq just three days before, and, until that morning, there was still the possibility that the Oscars wouldn’t go on.As A-listers like Nicole Kidman, Halle Berry and Steve Martin — the host — were herded through metal detectors amid a large law enforcement presence, a few blocks away, police officers holding clubs faced off with demonstrators trying…

Pope Francis has reiterated in a new interview that Ukraine should negotiate to end the war with Russia, but this time he used language — adopting his interviewer’s expression, “white flag” — that has drawn attention and raised questions about whether the pope was suggesting that Ukraine surrender.On Saturday night, the Vatican spokesman, Matteo Bruni, immediately clarified that the pope meant “cease-fire and negotiation,” not surrender, when he said white flag, a universal symbol for giving up.But the pope’s words and others he used during the interview have underscored how the Vatican has often bewildered Ukraine’s officials and supporters struggling…

Among the most common entry points to cartophilia are representations of where the collectors have set foot in real life. For New Yorkers willing to spend, say, about $280,000 on a 1770s map of the city, they can study how “Brookland Parish” has lost all traces of its pastoral roots yet maintained Colonial-era place names like Red Hook and Flatbush.“There’s so much that’s recognizable, yet there’s so much that’s different, it just sucks you in,” said Matthew Edney, a professor of geography specializing in the history of cartography at the University of Southern Maine, affiliated with the university’s Osher Map…

The Federal Reserve is considering when and how much to cut interest rates, and the employment report on Friday will give policymakers an up-to-date hint at how the economy is evolving ahead of their next policy meeting.Fed officials meet on March 19-20, and they are widely expected to leave interest rates unchanged at that gathering. But investors think that they could begin to lower interest rates as early as June, a view that Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, did little to either strongly confirm or upend during his congressional testimony this week.“We’re waiting to become more confident that inflation…

Buddy Duress, a small-time heroin dealer living on the streets of the Upper West Side who became a sensation in the New York film scene as an actor and muse for the movies “Heaven Knows What” and “Good Time,” which helped launch the careers of the filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie, died in November at his home in Astoria, Queens. He was 38.The death, which was disclosed only in late February, was from cardiac arrest caused by a “drug cocktail” including heroin, his brother, Christopher Stathis, said.Mr. Stathis said their mother, Jo-Anne Stathis, was seriously ill in November, so he…

As the United States military rushes to assemble a temporary port on the Gaza coast, daunting practical challenges to the seaborne humanitarian effort to stave off famine in the territory are becoming increasingly apparent. The obstacles include logistics, cost and security issues, diplomats and aid officials say.But the desperate conditions in Gaza, depicted in images of starving children, make the American-led international plan a necessity, they say, especially given the tight security imposed by Israel that is slowing land shipments of food, water and medicine. Even if it can overcome the hurdles, the international initiative is likely to take several…

My young adult son Jason and I are crossing Riverside Drive to get to the park on the other side.This part of Riverside Drive comprises four lanes separated by a median that’s too narrow to make for a good stopping place; the whizzing cars and buses make you feel like either your toes or your heels or even both might get grazed as you wait for the light to change in your favor. I thus always plan to make the journey in one go.However, Jason has nonspeaking autism, and we don’t know why he does some of the things he…

President Biden used his State of the Union speech on Thursday to remind Americans of his efforts to steer the nation’s economy out of a pandemic recession, and to lay the groundwork for a second term focused on making the economy more equitable by raising taxes on companies and the wealthy while taking steps to reduce costs for the middle class.Mr. Biden offered a blitz of policies squarely targeting the middle class, including efforts to make housing more affordable for first-time home buyers. The president used his speech to try and differentiate his economic proposals with those supported by Republicans,…

David Bordwell, a film studies scholar whose immersive, accessible writing transcended the corridors of academia and illuminated the mechanics of moviemaking to a generation of cinephiles and filmmakers, died on Feb. 29 at his home in Madison, Wis. He was 76.The cause was interstitial pulmonary fibrosis, said his wife, Kristin Thompson, a prominent film scholar who frequently collaborated with him.Dr. Bordwell taught at the University of Wisconsin for 30 years and wrote or co-wrote more than 20 books, including “Film Art: An Introduction” (1979), a textbook written with his wife that is widely used in film studies programs. After retiring…

Canada and Sweden are resuming funding for the main United Nations agency supporting Palestinian refugees in Gaza, citing the spiraling humanitarian catastrophe there and saying that the agency had taken steps to improve accountability amid accusations that some of its employees had links to Hamas.The countries were among more than a dozen that suspended payments to the aid organization, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, known as UNRWA, after accusations in January by Israel that a dozen of its 13,000 employees in Gaza had been involved in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel or their aftermath.Israel’s…