A variety of French wines in New York, July 13, 2024. These easygoing bottles — red, white, rosé and sparkling — are perfect for relaxing and just right for watching the Paris Olympics from afar. (Tony Cenicola/The New York Times) By ERIC ASIMOV The Summer Olympics begins in late July, and I have to say, I’m with all the Parisians renting out their apartments and fleeing their city. If the Games were in New York, I might do the same. Who needs bigger crowds, hyperinflated pri

Max, a 2-year-old German shepherd, Belgian Malinois and husky mix, photographed in Greenlake Park in Seattle on June 14, 2024. Scientists around the world are peering deep into the bodies and minds of cats and dogs, hoping to learn more about how they wriggled their way into our lives, how they experience the world and how to keep them living in it longer. (M. Scott Brauer/The New York Times) By SETH KUGEL Every dog has its day, and July 14, 2004, belonged to a boxer named Ta

The Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, one of three museums in the arts district known as Plateforme 10, in Lausanne, Switzerland, June 13, 2024. The district is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Surrealist Manifesto — a series of 1924 publications whose authors include the French artist André Breton — with multiple exhibits. (Darren S. Higgins/The New York Times) By SETH SHERWOOD Every year is an Olympics year in Lausanne, Switzerland, a city of stone buildings, tile roof

By Ceylan Yeginsu It’s set to be another scorching summer, with extreme and prolonged heat waves forecast across many parts of the United States and Europe. The stifling conditions could impact millions of travelers and wreak havoc on vacations at some of the world’s most popular tourist destinations. Multiple heat-related deaths among tourists have been reported in Greece and Saudi Arabia in June following extreme temperatures in the Middle East and Aegean regions. Even thos

By Esther Zuckerman How did a cat named Schnitzel win the starring role of Frodo in “A Quiet Place: Day One”? He impressed director Michael Sarnoski with his nonchalant confidence, rugged looks and intelligent face. “He had a lot going on behind his eyes,” Sarnoski said in an interview last week, when the film made its theatrical debut. “A lot of the other cats were really adorable but almost too cutesy, like they would be in a cat food commercial. And Schnitzel had a little

By Christopher Kuo When Hurricane Beryl intensified into a Category 5 storm last week, it broke records and left a trail of damage across the Caribbean. The first named hurricane of the season, Beryl is the earliest Category 5 Atlantic hurricane ever recorded, and also the first Category 4 hurricane to form in the Atlantic in June — a portent of what experts say is a hurricane season that will be much more intense than usual. It was also abnormal because of where it formed, f

By Roni Caryn Rabin I never was a Girl Scout, so I came late to s’mores. I was already a teenager when I squished my first blackened marshmallow between graham crackers and chocolate after awkwardly thrusting a skewer amid the glowing embers. Since no one had schooled me in the finer points of smelting a s’more, like rotating the marshmallow to an even shade of toasty brown or letting the molten blob rest on the chocolate for a moment, my first s’more was incinerated and glop

By Elisabeth Egan If you’ve ever tried to wrangle a hissing, scratching, flailing, selectively incontinent beast into a cat carrier, you’ll appreciate the way Amy Attas practices veterinary medicine: She makes house calls. Attas has seen it all, from opulent penthouses to homes she describes in her new memoir, “Pets and the City,” as “so squalid I feared for my life just breathing in the air.” She X-rayed a sapphire ring-swallowing terrier. She treated a pornographer’s potbel

By Lindsey Tramuta Anyone who’s visited Paris in late July and August knows the word “fermé.” It adorns the darkened windows of chic indie boutiques and cozy bistros whose owners, along with other locals, have fled the city on their annual vacations. This summer, with Paris expected to draw nearly 15 million visitors between July 26 and Sept. 8 for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, that ritual is anything but certain. Many shopkeepers, bakers, restaurateurs and tour guides —

Madisyn Crandell with her English bulldogs, Lucy, left, and Tuna, at Al’s Barbershop in Boulder, Colo., Mar. 24, 2024. Stylists and customers at the business discussed a matter of social protocol: the etiquette of remembering your friends’ pets’ names. (Theo Stroomer/The New York Times) By Matt Richtel Kiyomi Lowe regularly hears people mispronounce her name or sometimes forget it altogether. “I get Naomi, Kaiomi, sometimes Kimmy,” she said. It doesn’t bother her: “I’ll respo