Author: NY TIMES

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. — When Oklahoma State’s Kelly Maxwell jogged out of the bullpen, fans in the outfield turned their attention to left field. With the Sooners four games away from the national championship, Maxwell’s arrival was met with enthusiasm and a collective deep breath.The Sooners already felt like their destiny was in their own hands, but coach Patty Gasso used her ace up her sleeve to end the championship series against top-ranked Texas. Maxwell, who was later named the Women’s College World Series Most Outstanding Player, did just that, helping the Sooners win 8-4 to sweep the championship series…

“It’s a miracle on the water,” the actress Candice Bergen said, gazing at a grove of trees on Thursday evening as she took shelter from the sun beneath a canopy.It was the opening night of the summer performance season at Little Island, the three-year-old floating park built on a reconstructed pier in the Hudson River.Despite thunderstorms earlier in the afternoon, around 700 actors, designers and media moguls turned up under a smattering of canopies near the island’s amphitheater, among them Andy Cohen, the Bravo host and executive producer; Annie Leibovitz, the photographer; Fran Lebowitz, the writer; Natasha Lyonne, the actress;…

To soccer’s new generation of superrich investors — risk-friendly billionaires, American hedge funds, wealthy gulf states — the appeal of a new model for team ownership lay in its simple strategy.By sweeping up not just a single team but multiple squads and hundreds of players into expansive multiclub networks, these rich new owners believed they could leverage efficiency, best practices and volume into success on the field.Red Bull, the energy drink maker, pioneered the model. Manchester City, the English champion financed by the wealth of the United Arab Emirates, supersized it through its City Football Group. Jim Ratcliffe, the chairman…

The American Cancer Society has begun an ambitious, far-reaching study focusing on a population that has long been overlooked, despite high rates of cancer and cancer-related deaths: Black women.The initiative, called VOICES of Black Women, is believed to be the first long-term population study of its size to zero in specifically on the factors driving cancer prevalence and deaths among Black women.Researchers plan to enroll 100,000 Black women without cancer, ages 25 to 55, in Washington, D.C., and 20 states where most Black American women reside. The subjects will be surveyed twice a year about their behaviors, environmental exposures and…

Limato died two years later, leaving Powell without an advocate.It was a rough time for the young Texan, who supported himself through coaching community sports and small acting jobs (a Dockers commercial, an episode of “The Lying Game,” a cable series). The William Morris Endeavor talent agency had dropped him, and he began to question whether superstardom was even achievable anymore. Hollywood, undercut by video games and YouTube, has long wondered the same thing itself.Michael B. Jordan might say yes. But Garrett Hedlund, Taylor Kitsch, Taylor Lautner, Ansel Elgort, Ryan Phillippe, Zac Efron, Alex Pettyfer, Eric Bana, Ben Barnes, Armie…

Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire across the Lebanese border since the start of the war in Gaza, with more than 150,000 people on both sides of the boundary forced to flee their homes. But the intensity of the attacks has increased in recent days, leading to fears of a full-scale war on another front.This week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel threatened further military action to ensure the return of civilians to communities in northern Israel. Here are some key questions about the conflict and where it might be heading:Why are the two sides fighting?Hezbollah, a powerful Lebanese militia…

Photographs by David GuttenfelderWritten by Peter RobinsDavid Guttenfelder traveled along Ukraine’s northeastern border twice in the months before Russian troops again poured through.June 7, 2024The invaders had not returned. Not yet. But along about 600 miles of Ukraine’s northeastern border territory that The New York Times visited late last year and again in the early spring, the war has never left.Much of this area, in the Kharkiv and Sumy regions, was farmland once. Now a farmhouse hosted a counter-saboteur unit — made up of anti-Putin Russians, to avoid sending Ukrainian troops into Russia — preparing before dawn for a cross-border…

If AI were ever prompted to generate an avatar of a game show host, surely the result would be Pat Sajak.After four decades on the air, Mr. Sajak, 77, presides over his last episode of “Wheel of Fortune” on Friday. And his departure — Mr. Sajak has suggested in a series of televised exit interviews with Maggie Sajak, his daughter, that this will be a welcome retirement — offered a chance to reappraise what it is that made him such a durable fixture of the American cultural landscape.Mr. Sajak, it is probably worth remembering, has been with viewers through seven…

One of the most captivating pieces of entertainment I’ve seen so far this year is a four-hour-long YouTube video in which one woman describes her stay at a Disney World hotel. I’m as shocked by this as anyone.To be clear: I was initially resistant when my partner encouraged me to watch Jenny Nicholson’s epic “The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel,” which breaks down in microscopic detail her visit to Disney’s Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser. During the experience, now closed, guests on vacation were encouraged to live out their George Lucas dreams by participating in a role-playing game while…

Listen to and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTubeThis week, we host a cultural exchange. Kevin and Casey show off their Canadian paraphernalia to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and he shows off what he’s doing to position Canada as a leader in A.I. Then, the OpenAI whistle-blower Daniel Kokotajlo speaks in one of his first public interviews about why he risked almost $2 million in equity to warn of what he calls the reckless culture inside that company.Guests:Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of CanadaDaniel Kokotajlo, a former researcher in OpenAI’s governance divisionAdditional Reading:Credits“Hard Fork” is hosted by Kevin…