Author: NY TIMES

His unit decimated by Ukrainian fire, the last surviving soldier in a Russian assault took cover in a shallow crater while Ukrainians shouted at him to surrender. As he lifted two grenades in the air, a Ukrainian drone swept in from above and exploded.Soon, the smoke cleared, a surveillance drone overhead showed, revealing the Russian soldier’s corpse. That day’s attack, just north of the destroyed city of Avdiivka, was repelled. But the Ukrainians were under no illusions: There would be many more.“They come in waves,” said Lt. Oleksandr Shyrshyn, 29, the deputy battalion commander in the 47th Mechanized Brigade. “And…

Behind the closed door of my closet lies a world of possibility. Give me a few hours to clean it out, and perhaps I’ll finally become a person with a wardrobe of chic, coordinating neutrals instead of someone with four different black turtlenecks that I hate for four different reasons.I know there can be real value in purging. Having better and fewer choices makes it easier to get dressed, and being able to see what you already own means you’re less likely to overbuy. Research also suggests that uncluttered living spaces may decrease stress.And yet there are shoes I love…

Ms. Goodfriend, 79, who started counseling pet owners in 2005, credited this spike to the pandemic, which she said made people “more aware of grief and more inclined to express it.”At the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center, which has been operating in Manhattan since 1910, a free pet-loss-support group has been available to clients since 1983. Susan Cohen, 79, a veterinary social worker who came up with the idea for the group, said it started with about five people attending each in-person session. By the time she stopped working at the center, in 2011, that number had doubled.The demand for such…

I was scrolling through Instagram recently when I found a new page slipped into my feed through a suggested post: @tinyhouseperfect. It seemed designed to poke at my frustrated longings for a space of my own. I want to own a house; I cannot currently buy a house. But what if the house were very small? Very small, and also perfect?Soon I was navigating the reading nooks and chef’s kitchens of an elfin cottage, a gothic coastal A-frame, a cozy “loch house” in the Scottish Highlands. I had projected my future self to the Scottish seaside, wondering how much the…

Pop open the “documentaries” section of your friendly local streaming service, and a bevy of movies about celebrities will greet you. Rockers, politicians, artists, authors, athletes — increasingly everyone you’ve heard of has a documentary, and probably served as a producer on it, too. The appeal of such films is obvious: If you like someone already, you get to hear them talk about themselves. If you know you should like someone, then you’ve got a quick introduction to set you on your way to fandom.That’s the appeal of two documentaries released this week, “The Greatest Night in Pop” (Netflix) and…

Speaker Mike Johnson pledged Saturday that the House would hold a vote next week on legislation to speed $17.6 billion in security assistance to Israel with no strings attached, a move likely to complicate Senate leaders’ efforts to rally support for a broader package with border security measures and aid to Ukraine.Mr. Johnson’s announcement to members of his conference came as senators were scrambling to finalize and vote on a bipartisan national security bill that has taken months to negotiate. The move could further erode G.O.P. support for the emerging compromise, which was already flagging under criticism from party leaders…

Tucked away on a patch of dying grass on the outskirts of Islamabad, the gathering hardly looked like a political rally at the height of an election season. Two dozen men sat on plastic chairs in silence. There were no posters to promote a campaign, no microphones to deliver speeches, no sound system to amp up the crowd.Even the candidate, Aamir Mughal, was missing: He had gone into hiding months earlier, at the first signs of a military-led crackdown on his political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or P.T.I. The authorities had already raided his home, arrested two of his sons and…

A project from Styles charts the stages of gentrification in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with photographs of changing store fronts, street corners and performance spaces. Source link

Federal Reserve officials left interest rates unchanged this week and signaled that their next move is likely to be a cut. As they contemplate when to lower borrowing costs, incoming data on the labor market is likely to remain in focus.Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, made it clear during his news conference on Wednesday that the central bank is not bent on keeping interest rates high just to slow down the labor market. Fed officials are happy to see employers hiring and wages rising as long as inflation is still coming down, Mr. Powell said.On the other hand, a…

‘Orion and the Dark’Stream it on Netflix.It’s not every day that the novelist David Foster Wallace and the topic of nihilism get mentioned in a children’s movie, but then again DreamWorks Animation’s “Orion and the Dark” was written by Charlie Kaufman (“Being John Malkovich,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”) so the dashes of existential dread make sense.Based on a picture book by Emma Yarlett and directed by Sean Charmatz in his feature film debut, the story follows an anxious elementary school child named Orion (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) who is scared of things like school bullies and talking to…