Author: NY TIMES

The popular district of Kichijoji, in western Tokyo, is the place to hunt for vintage clothes and quirky antiques, enjoy drinks and food in the narrow alleyways called Harmonica Yokocho, or ride the swan boats in scenic Inokashira Park.Right at home in this buzzy area is a shop called Masa’s Pastime, specializing in antique pocket watches and repairs. But its founder and president, Masa Nakajima, has turned the business into more than a pastime over the years.And this spring he plans to introduce two iterations of an original watch — not yet named — that he created with his team…

Zong Qinghou, a self-made beverage entrepreneur who was once the richest person in China, died on Sunday.His death was announced by his company, Wahaha Group, which said that Mr. Zong had died from an unspecified illness and gave his age as 79. The company statement provided no further details.Mr. Zong’s rags-to-riches story had made him prominent in China even before a public feud with his foreign business partner considerably raised his profile — and his wealth. He founded a beverage company in the 1980s, and in the 1990s, he partnered with Danone, the French food giant, to launch one of…

The latest intimate epic from the master filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan asks whether the world can change, and we can change with it. Source link

Amid a number of high-stakes elections to be held around the world this year, the East European nation of Belarus on Sunday offered an alternative to the unpredictability of democracy: a vote for Parliament without a single candidate critical of the country’s despotic leader.Opposition parties have all been banned — belonging to one is a crime — and the four approved parties taking part in the election have competed only to outdo each other in their displays of unwavering loyalty to the country’s leader, President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus with an iron fist for 30 years.For the…

Priced at $73,000, the Polo 79 is to be produced in limited quantities, although exact numbers have not been determined; the brand said any orders made now will start to be fulfilled later this year.The first 150 buyers also will receive a silk satin jacket, a recreation of the one that Ursula Andress was wearing when she was photographed wearing a Polo wristwatch at a polo match in the mid-1980s in Palm Beach, Fla., accompanied by Yves G. Piaget, now the company’s chairman.The jackets are being made by AZ Factory, the fashion brand founded by Alber Elbaz shortly before his…

Home Depot must reinstate a worker who quit after they refused to remove a slogan supporting the Black Lives Matter movement from their apron, the National Labor Relations Board announced on Wednesday after it found that the worker’s actions were protected by federal law.The ruling by the National Labor Relations Board held that Home Depot violated federal law in 2021 when it told the worker that they must quit or remove the letters “BLM,” an acronym for Black Lives Matter, that they had drawn by hand onto their apron.The case is one of several that centered on the issue of…

And it has produced an unusual camaraderie among the cast, a product of the interdependence that circus requires. (You can’t really fly through the air unless you trust the people on the ground to catch you.) “In circus, we’re a bit lawless,” Carroll said. “But we’re also really collaborative.”There is joy in seeing a performer arc out over the audience and a heart-in-your-throat tension when an aerialist dangles by just a hand or a foot. “We have that new language, beside the acting and the dancing, to add a layer of danger, emotion, intensity,” said Alexandra Gaelle Royer, an aerialist…

For an Israeli settlement that has become such a resounding symbol of religious and right-wing politics in the West Bank, Homesh is not much to look at.Three families live in tarpaulin-covered shelters full of bunk beds for some 50 young men, who study in a yeshiva that is a shabby prefab structure surrounded by abandoned toys, building materials and garbage.They live part time here amid the ruins and rubbish of a hilltop settlement ripped down in 2005 by the Israeli army and police. It is one of four West Bank settlements dismantled when Israel pulled all of its troops and…

There’s a change underway in fashion. The safe, swaddling allure of quiet luxury, the sort of luxury that was as much of a local specialty as risotto alla Milanese, seems less and less consequential — a sort of relaxed, neutral approach to self-expression that no longer jibes with the increasing urgency of the world. That seems less like a panacea than a surrender.It started in January, back in couture, when John Galliano’s Maison Margiela show with its extreme theatrics and heightened emotions acted like a wake-up call after seasons of being stultified by camel. Continued in New York, at Willy…

The December day in 2021 that set off a revolution across the videogame industry appeared to start innocuously enough. Managers at a Wisconsin studio called Raven began meeting one by one with quality assurance testers, who vet video games for bugs, to announce that the company was overhauling their department. Going forward, managers said, the lucky testers would be permanent employees, not temps. They would earn an extra $1.50 an hour.It was only later in the morning, a Friday, that the catch became apparent: One-third of the studio’s roughly 35 testers were being let go as part of the overhaul.…