Author: NY TIMES

Talks between Israel and Hamas over the release of dozens of Israeli hostages held in Gaza have stalled, dimming hopes that a deal could be reached before Ramadan begins in a few days, according to several people briefed on the conversations.Negotiators had been discussing a proposal for an initial six-week cease-fire during which Hamas would release about 40 people — including women, elderly and ill hostages, and five female Israeli soldiers — for a substantial number of Palestinian prisoners.The discussions included terms for releasing at least 15 prisoners convicted of serious acts of terrorism who would be exchanged for the…

In the spring of 1943, Josette Molland, a 20-year-old art student, was certain of two things: that she was making a pretty good living creating designs for Lyon’s silk weavers, and that it was unbearable that Germans occupied her country.She joined the Resistance. Fabricating false papers and transporting them for the famed Dutch-Paris underground network unburdened her of guilt. But it was dangerous.Captured by the Gestapo less than a year later, Ms. Molland lived the hell of Nazi deportation and Nazi camps for women, at Ravensbrück and elsewhere. She tried to escape, organized a rebellion against her guards, was severely…

GRETNA, Neb. — This is not a story about high school basketball. This is not a story about a cherished coach who died midway through the season. This is not a story of redemption, grief, or achievement.It’s about unity. This is a story about a community and a team that, through its resilience and struggle to honor its lost leaders, reveals what sport at its best looks like.Gretna High School will play Millard North in a Class A boys state tournament first-round game Wednesday night at Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln, Neb.Brad Ficken coaches the Dragons to victory. He coached…

After a red carpet reveal last year that upended the foundations of Hollywood’s staid tradition — it was champagne-colored — the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences revealed on Wednesday that, this year, it would be returning to the traditional red.Last year’s departure from tradition was prompted by the introduction of an orange — sorry, sienna — tent over the carpet that offered the couture-clad arrivals shelter from a forecast rainstorm, which Lisa Love, a red-carpet creative consultant for the Oscars, told The New York Times necessitated the color change to prevent a color clash.After initially considering a chocolate…

The capricious churn of internet-charged culture is producing more main characters, apocrypha and relics than we can handle. Remember when the Canadian musician known as Grimes — former partner of one of the world’s most powerful men, the tech entrepreneur Elon Musk — brought a sword to the 2021 Met Gala? The image of a futurist pop star lugging a medieval blade (made from a smelted AR-15, no less) down the red carpet summed up the mystifying way contemporary culture seems to run in all directions, chasing myths both new and old.Simon Denny, an artist working in Berlin, creates sculptures,…

John Walker, a groundbreaking, if reclusive, technology entrepreneur and polymath who was a founder and chief executive of Autodesk, the company that brought the ubiquitous AutoCAD software program to the design and architecture masses, died on Feb. 2 in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. He was 74.His death, in a hospital, was caused by complications of head injuries he suffered in a fall at home, his wife, Roxie Walker, said. His death was not widely reported at the time.Mr. Walker was well known in tech circles, not just for his triumphs in business but also for his outsize skills as a programmer —…

Two years ago, German doctors stumbled across news reports of a man being investigated for receiving scores of coronavirus vaccines with no medical explanation.Then followed a flurry of speculation about what he had been up to. As it turned out, prosecutors were looking into whether he had been receiving so many extra doses as part of a scheme to collect stamped immunization cards that he could later sell to people who wanted to skirt vaccine mandates.But to the doctors, the man was a medical anomaly, someone who had defied official recommendations and turned himself into a guinea pig for measuring…

If you turned on MTV for any length of time in 2001, you almost certainly saw Christopher Walken flying around the lobby of a Marriott in Los Angeles. Even in an era when music videos were far more hotly discussed than they are now, it was a weird sight. Walken’s trim shock of gray hair matched his gray suit, punctuated by a red tie; he looked less like the movie star he was than some guy on a long layover.The music was Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice,” a weird little ditty that did make you want to dance. Having trained…

Marina, a Moscow lawyer, decided to stay home when the Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny was buried last Friday. She had expected a big crowd and widespread arrests at the Borisovsky Cemetery, given Russia’s current climate of repression, and thought it would be better to pay her respects another day.She wasn’t alone in that thought. When she came to lay flowers on Sunday, she had to wait in line for up to 40 minutes, Marina said in a phone interview from Moscow. (Like others, she asked that her last name be withheld for fear of retribution.)After Mr. Navalny’s funeral…

On a chilly afternoon in February, Logan McGrath and Mack Fritz were preparing to shoot a video advertising the green Austrian army fatigue shirts they were selling on Americana Pipedream Apparel, the online military surplus store Mr. McGrath started out of his parents’ basement in Appleton, Wis., three years ago.After outgrowing their last two locations and grabbing the attention of customers like the singer Post Malone, they had recently settled into a new venue: a onetime furniture showroom that was repurposed as a 24,000-square-foot warehouse. The large space was already filling up. Afghan war rugs were piled up in one…