Author: NY TIMES

True-crime doc watchers who are in committed relationships may see “Lover, Stalker, Killer,” a bracing account of a lurid series of misdeeds directed by Sam Hobkinson, and breathe a sigh of relief over being out of the dating pool.It begins in 2012, when Dave Kroupa, an auto mechanic in Omaha, was rebounding from a breakup. He finds himself at 35, single and ready to mingle. On a dating app he meets Liz Golyar (likes bowling, enjoys giving the finger to video cameras, as per the archival footage) and then, believing their relationship to be nonexclusive, also takes up with one…

Soon after former President Donald J. Trump took office, his staff explained how NATO’s mutual defense obligations worked.“You mean, if Russia attacked Lithuania, we would go to war with Russia?” he responded. “That’s crazy.”Mr. Trump has never believed in the fundamental one-for-all-and-all-for-one concept of the Atlantic alliance. Indeed, he spent much of his four-year presidency undermining it while strong-arming members into keeping their commitments to spend more on their own militaries with the threat that he would not come to their aid otherwise.But he took it to a whole new level over the weekend, declaring at a rally in South…

Steve Ostrow, the founder of the Continental Baths — an extravagant gay men’s sex club and performance space that flourished at the turn of the 1970s in the basement of the Ansonia Hotel, a Beaux-Arts landmark on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and launched the careers of Bette Midler and Barry Manilow — died on Feb. 3 at his home in Sydney, Australia. He was 91.His death was announced by Toby Usnik, a friend. Mr. Ostrow’s business plan in 1968 was to create a gay fantasia, a palace devoted to hedonism. The Ansonia, built at the turn of the century by…

Joe Keery plays a seeming dupe in a crime movie that plays dumb, then tries to play smart, but only becomes dumber. Source link

Israeli leaders have framed an invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah as an imperative to achieve its goal of eliminating Hamas. But it’s a strategy that is fraught with complexity and is generating criticism over the potentially catastrophic impact such an operation would have on the more than 1 million Gazans sheltering there.The planning will likely take Israel’s military some time, Israeli officials and analysts said on Sunday. A major challenge for Israeli forces will be how to move civilians who have crowded into the city out of harm’s way. Many Gazans fled to Rafah on the instructions…

At Completedworks, a jewelry studio in London, hand-threaded seed pearls and candy-colored globs of bio resins united by knots, ties and weaves have become recurring creations.“Our beadwork definitely allows for expressiveness,” said Anna Jewsbury, the studio’s artistic director and founder, “because you can compose and arrange in a freehand way, but it’s also time- and labor-intensive work that can only be achieved by hand, and requires a huge amount of patience.” A choker-length necklace called Cove (685 pounds, or $870), combining baroque pearls with twisted threads of tiny freshwater pearls, can take at least a day to make, she noted.Jennifer…

Lilly Calman is not in the mood this Valentine’s Day for the flowers, chocolates or a romantic dinner for two, especially after a recent breakup.“I’m very angry,” said Ms. Calman, 26, adding that it had been painful to see all the holiday paraphernalia in store aisles.She found a more fitting outlet for her mood this year: a fund-raiser for the San Antonio zoo that will symbolically name a roach or rodent after an ex and feed it to one of the zoo’s animals.“The visual image of him getting eaten by a Komodo dragon is pretty satisfying,” said Ms. Calman, who…

If you start at the middle C of a piano and strike every key on your way up to the next C on the keyboard, you will play each of the 12 notes that make up an octave. Those 12 semitones are the foundation of most Western music.But what if they were not? What if that same octave were equally divided into 14 tones, or 16? What if Beethoven had written the “Eroica” Symphony with a scale of 19 notes, or Schoenberg had written tone rows with 23? What would their music sound like?Those were the questions that the composer…

Imran Khan’s stunning performance in Pakistan’s national election has upended most traditional political forecasts in a country where leaders who run afoul of the powerful military rarely find electoral success.Supporters of Mr. Khan, the jailed former prime minister, are both electrified by the showing of candidates aligned with his party, who won the most seats in last week’s vote, and enraged by what they call blatant rigging and the possibility that other parties will ultimately lead the government.Here’s what to know about the uncertainty now hanging over Pakistan’s political system.What’s next for the government?Mr. Khan’s supporters are challenging the results…

Chocolate has long been synonymous with Valentine’s Day.But rather than buying one of those heart-shape boxes with lots of mystery sweets inside for loved ones and friends, what if you made your own?“Crafting candies is not just a sweet treat,” said Kirsten Fear, a Londoner taking a class at Melt, a chocolate shop in the Notting Hill neighborhood, “but it’s like weaving my affections and memories into each delicate piece.”On this particular day in January, the shop’s chocolatiers were busy creating sea salt chocolate truffles, orange slices dipped in dark chocolate and other confections. But in the back room, six…