Author: NY TIMES

In a neighborhood of Jerusalem, ultra-Orthodox Jewish residents cheered a soldier returning from military service. At a religious seminary, similarly devout students gathered to hear an officer talk about his military duties. And at a synagogue attended by some of the most observant Jews in the country, members devoted a Torah scroll in memory of a soldier slain in Gaza.The Hamas-led attack on Israel last October has prompted flashes of greater solidarity between sections of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish minority and the secular mainstream, as fears of a shared threat have accelerated the integration of some of Israel’s most insular citizens.As…

Günter Brus, a founder of the radical art movement known as Viennese Actionism, who courted outrage and arrest in the 1960s by using his body — and bodily effluvia — to shatter the bourgeois civility of a country haunted by its Nazi past, died on Feb. 10 in Graz, Austria. He was 85.His death was announced in a statement by Kunsthaus Bregenz, an art museum in Bregenz, Austria, that is currently hosting an exhibition by Mr. Brus. The museum did not say where he died or cite the cause.The weight of his nation’s history bore heavily on Mr. Brus, who…

Divisions among the world’s top economic officials over how to use Russia’s central bank assets to support Ukraine spilled into public view on Wednesday when Bruno LeMaire, France’s finance minister, said that seizing the frozen assets would be a violation of international law.The comments, made on the sidelines of the gathering of finance ministers of the Group of 20 nations in Brazil, came a day after Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said that seizing the assets was a possibility and suggested that there was a legal justification for doing so.Officials from the Group 7 advanced economies have been debating for…

Samsung phones. Hyundai cars. LG TVs. South Korean exports are available in virtually every corner of the world. But the nation is more dependent than ever before on an import to keep its factories and farms humming: foreign labor.This shift is part of the fallout from a demographic crisis that has left South Korea with a shrinking and aging population. Data released this week showed that last year the country broke its own record — again — for the world’s lowest total fertility rate.President Yoon Suk Yeol’s government has responded by more than doubling the quota for low-skilled workers from…

As creative director of Colette, the influential Paris store she founded with her mother, Colette Roussaux, Sarah Andelman created an acclaimed hub of all sorts of distinctive items that were frequently quirky and uniformly stylish.Just in time for Paris Fashion Week, Ms. Andelman has curated another eclectic retail space: the Paris department store Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche. It includes more than 1,000 items in a Colette-esque range of categories and prices, ranging from a three-euro commemorative postcard to a 60,000-euro table designed by the architect Aline Asmar d’Amman. The project, called Mise en Page, French for “layout,” is essentially…

For decades, Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta barreled forward with few rules and limits. As their power, riches and reach grew, a groundswell of regulatory activity, lawmaking and legal cases sprang up against them in Europe, the United States, China, India, Canada, South Korea and Australia. Now that global tipping point for reining in the largest tech companies has finally tipped.The companies have been forced to alter the everyday technology they offer, including devices and features of their social media services, which have been especially noticeable to users in Europe. The firms are also making consequential shifts that are…

Since introducing the App Store in 2008, Apple has run it largely the same way across 175 countries, right down to the 30 percent commission it has collected on every app sold.The company calls the result an economic miracle. The store has generated more than $1 trillion in sales, helped create more than seven million jobs and delivered Apple billions of dollars in annual profits.But as the App Store approaches its 16th anniversary, a patchwork of local rules are upending Apple’s authority over it.On Thursday, European Union regulators will begin enforcing the Digital Markets Act, a 2022 law that requires…

It’s nothing new to say that the scariest beasts are those left to the imagination: In the darkened corners of a room, on the ocean floor, in the vacuum of space — terror tends to lurk in the periphery, where it taunts us with what we don’t (or worse, can’t) know. There’s one unfairly maligned horror-movie feature that, when used wisely, can aid with such artful restraint: the humble PG-13 rating.Since many horror nerds predicate their identity on being able to enjoy content that is too depraved for the general public, they tend to look down on the PG-13 scary…

Elena Milashina, a daring Russian reporter beaten unconscious and doused in liquid iodine last year, said she has bid farewell to far too many journalists, activists and opposition figures who died an untimely death.But never, she said in a phone interview from Moscow, had she seen anything like the scene on Friday on the streets of the sleepy Maryino neighborhood on the outskirts of the Russian capital.“This was the most optimistic funeral I can remember,” said Ms. Milashina, 47, citing the large crowds and a palpable sense of unity. “There was no grief. There was this surge of inspiration that…

El día de Navidad, Catalina, princesa de Gales, asistió al servicio religioso en la iglesia de Santa María Magdalena en Sandringham, Norfolk, Inglaterra, vestida de azul real de pies a cabeza. Acompañó a su esposo, el príncipe Guillermo, y a sus tres hijos, el príncipe Jorge, la princesa Carlota y el príncipe Luis, como había hecho en años anteriores.Al saludar a la multitud reunida y a las cámaras, “lucía encantadora para la ocasión”, señaló el medio Town & Country.La princesa no ha sido vista en público desde entonces.Tres semanas después, el 17 de enero, el palacio de Kensington anunció que…