Author: NY TIMES

Hezbollah put on a show of strength on Sunday with an elaborate and sprawling funeral for its assassinated leader, Hassan Nasrallah, an event the Iran-backed militant group hopes will revive its battered image in Lebanon after the latest war with Israel.Tens of thousands of people from across Lebanon and the region flocked to the capital, Beirut, for the service, which was held at a large sports stadium on the outskirts of the city. Thousands packed into the arena, while others spilled out onto the streets, many carrying pictures of Mr. Nasrallah and waving large Hezbollah flags.When a truck carrying Mr.…

“Anora” won best feature at the 40th annual Film Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday. Its director, Sean Baker, and lead, Mikey Madison, won in their respective categories. “Shogun” won best new scripted series, while “Baby Reindeer” took home three acting awards.Best Feature“Anora”Best First Feature“Dìdi”John Cassavetes AwardGiven to the best feature made for under $1,000,000.“Girls Will Be Girls”Best DirectorSean Baker, “Anora”Best ScreenplayJesse Eisenberg, “A Real Pain”Best First ScreenplaySean Wang, “Dìdi”Best Lead PerformanceMikey Madison, “Anora”Best Supporting PerformanceKieran Culkin, “A Real Pain”Best Breakthrough PerformanceMaisy Stella, “My Old Ass”Best CinematographyJomo Fray, “Nickel Boys”Best EditingHansjörg Weissbrich, “September 5”Robert Altman AwardGiven to one film’s director, casting…

Add a lot of geopolitics to the equation in the best final with two proud hockey countries (proud hockey countries), then end the game with historic overtime goals from the best player of the game. It’s the secret to a historic audience count – and that’s what we saw on Thursday’s 3-2 victory over the United States against four countries in overtime in Boston.The game attracted 9.3 million viewers on ESPN. From a perspective: This is the 7th game of the NHL final between Boston and St. Louis in 2019, which is the 8.9 million viewers on NBC, the most…

Roman Catholics worldwide prayed for Pope Francis, who is hospitalized in critical condition, at Mass on Sunday after the Vatican announced that he was “not out of danger.”The 88-year-old pontiff went into the hospital on Feb. 14 with an infection that developed into pneumonia in both lungs. He had a long “asthmatic respiratory crisis” on Saturday that required “high flows of oxygen” and a blood transfusion, the Vatican said.Francis has been the spiritual leader of almost 1.4 billion Roman Catholics around the world since 2013. And around the world, there have been prayers for his recovery.At the Myeongdong Cathedral in…

Kremlin officials are dangling the prospect of lucrative investment deals for American energy companies, apparently seeking to convince President Trump that large economic gains could come from siding with Moscow in ending the war in Ukraine and scrapping economic sanctions on Russia.There is no doubt that Russia has vast troves of oil and natural gas, but an effort to lure American or other Western energy companies to undertake Russian projects is likely to encounter skepticism, not least because of the companies’ recent history in Russia.Nevertheless, Kirill Dmitriev, a Kremlin financial official, expressed optimism last week about the prospect, pitching the…

The good news for cryptocurrency investors arrived just after 8 a.m. on Friday: Coinbase, the largest crypto marketplace in the United States, had reached a deal with U.S. regulators to dismiss a lawsuit that had hung over the industry for years.But within hours, the crypto market descended into a new crisis. At 10:51 a.m., Bybit, another leading crypto exchange, said it had been hacked — with industry analysts estimating the loss at nearly $1.5 billion, the largest theft in crypto history.The prices of Bitcoin, Ether and other major cryptocurrencies plunged. Even Coinbase’s share price had dropped 8 percent by the…

The demand left many workers reeling.Most of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s work force had recently been placed on leave as Mr. Musk gutted the agency, and have been instructed not to work — leaving them with no accomplishments to report, a worker there said. Mr. Musk’s allies in government have suggested using artificial intelligence to identify budget cuts, and workers at several agencies worried their responses would be assessed by A.I.The approach echoed one Mr. Musk took with executives and employees at Twitter. In April 2022, Mr. Musk was set to join the board at the social media company,…

In his Tony-winning musical, “Rent,” Jonathan Larson asked: “How do you measure a year in the life?”The question took on an even heavier weight, with striking resonance, after Larson died unexpectedly at the age of 35 in 1996, hours before the show’s first preview.In the years after, dozens of his unheard songs were discovered, revealing the inner workings of a prolific artist looking for his big break. Now, a new musical, “The Jonathan Larson Project,” celebrates those songs and raises a new question: How do you thread together snippets of Jonathan Larson’s creative output into a musical?“It was like an…

Hamas released six more hostages on Saturday as part of its cease-fire deal with Israel, the last living captives to be freed under the current truce in Gaza.As part of the cease-fire agreement, Hamas committed to releasing at least 33 of the nearly 100 captives remaining in Gaza, a number of whom are believed to be dead, in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinians jailed by Israel and a partial Israeli withdrawal. Both sides are set to negotiate terms to extend the truce, but an agreement appears remote.Two of the captives freed on Saturday had been in Hamas’s hands for…

“If you label me, you negate me,” the performance artist and fashion designer Leigh Bowery said in 1993, one year before his death at age 33.Maybe it is this resistance to easy categorization that has meant Bowery never quite became a household name. His cultural influence, though, is beyond question: His provocative performances led him to work with artists including Lucian Freud and Marina Abramovic. His extreme fashions are still referenced on runways, by designers including Rick Owens and John Galliano. And his status as a queer culture icon is cemented by regular invocations at L.G.B.T.Q. club nights and on…