Author: NY TIMES

The Pentagon announced on Sunday that Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III had been taken that afternoon to a military hospital to be treated for “symptoms suggesting an emergent bladder issue.”Mr. Austin was taken to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., 2:20 p.m., a Pentagon spokesman, Maj. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, said in a statement. He added that the deputy defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had been notified, as well as the White House and members of Congress.In a second statement on Sunday evening, General Ryder said that Mr. Austin, 70,…

When Pakistan’s government censored the media, former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party posted campaign videos on TikTok. When the police barred his supporters from holding rallies, they hosted virtual gatherings online.And when Mr. Khan ended up behind bars, his supporters produced speeches using artificial intelligence to simulate his voice.Mr. Khan’s message resonated with millions across the country who were frustrated by the country’s economic crisis and old political dynasties: Pakistan has been on a steep decline for decades, he explained, and only he could restore its former greatness.The success of candidates aligned with Mr. Khan’s party in last week’s election…

Clyde Taylor, a scholar who in the 1970s and ’80s played a leading role in identifying, defining and elevating Black cinema as an art form, died on Jan. 24 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 92.His daughter, Rahdi Taylor, a filmmaker, said the cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.As a young professor in the Los Angeles area in the late 1960s — first at California State University, Long Beach, and then at the University of California, Los Angeles — Dr. Taylor was at the epicenter of a push to bring the study of Black culture into academia.Black culture…

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, brushing aside a chorus of international condemnation, said Sunday that an invasion of the southern Gazan city of Rafah would move forward as soon as Israel completed plans for the more than a million people sheltering there to be allowed to move to safety.“Those who say that under no circumstances should we enter Rafah are basically saying: ‘Lose the war,’” Mr. Netanyahu said on This Week With George Stephanopoulos.But given the complexity of an operation in Rafah, a ground invasion does not appear likely to happen any time soon, analysts said. More than half…

The writer and director Laura Chinn amassed a lifetime’s worth of material while in her teens. Her fantastic memoir, “Acne,” is a survivalist tale of enduring her distracted Scientologist parents; one darkly funny low point comes when she drops out of high school and gets a nightclub gig as M.C. of topless Jell-O wrestling events. “Suncoast,” Chinn’s promising feature debut, fictionalizes the book’s most excruciating part: her older brother’s slow death from brain cancer at the same time — and same Florida hospice — as Terri Schiavo, the vegetative patient whose right to die became a moral and legal flashpoint…

Khan’s party shocks in PakistanCandidates aligned with the party of the imprisoned former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan won the most seats in Pakistan’s parliamentary elections, despite the military’s efforts to suppress support.The stunning performance humiliated the country’s powerful generals, upended most political forecasts and created a political crisis. Now, uncertainty looms large.Khan’s supporters are electrified. But they are also enraged by what they call blatant rigging, and are challenging dozens of results. Protests have erupted and many more are planned as pressure grows on the country’s Election Commission to acknowledge widely reported irregularities in the vote counting.Khan’s supporters are…

By almost any measure, Khaite, the women’s wear label founded in 2016 by Catherine Holstein, is one of the great recent success stories of American fashion — if not the great success story.The brand has been in existence for less than a decade, but Ms. Holstein has already been twice named designer of the year by the Council of Fashion Designers of America, in 2022 and 2023. She has a dream of a Zen brutalist store in SoHo, not far from Prada and Balenciaga. Last year she took on investment from Stripes, the private equity firm that also backs the…

This rom-com brings futuristic absurdity and nimble timing to a comfort-food story line of friends turned soul mates. Source link

Less than two weeks after bombs began raining down on the Gaza Strip, Ghada al-Kurd arrived in the southern city of Khan Younis. She had already been displaced three times, and hoped it would be her final journey to safety.But three months later, Israeli forces advanced south. Ms. al-Kurd, 37, speaking by telephone, said she, her sister, brother-in-law, and four nieces and nephews abandoned the tent they had been sharing “without taking anything with us,” and headed to Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city.Many of the roughly 1.7 million Gazans that U.N. agencies say have been displaced by Israel’s relentless bombardment and…

Long before Donald J. Trump threatened over the weekend that he was willing to let Russia “do whatever the hell they want” against NATO allies that do not contribute sufficiently to collective defense, European leaders were quietly discussing how they might prepare for a world in which America removes itself as the centerpiece of the 75-year-old alliance.Even allowing for the usual bombast of one of his campaign rallies, where he made his declaration on Saturday, Mr. Trump may now force Europe’s debate into a far more public phase.So far the discussion in the European media has focused on whether the…