Author: NY TIMES

It was that rarest of sights when I walked into the Cleveland Orchestra’s hall on Sunday afternoon: a dark curtain drawn across the stage.Rare, that is, in a concert hall. Orchestras don’t tend to have dramatic unveilings before they start to play. And while Cleveland has done near-annual opera presentations over the past two decades, the ensemble has almost always been onstage alongside the singers, as the stagings have worked around (and sometimes incorporated) the presence of dozens of players.But for Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” which ended a sold-out four-performance run at Severance Music Center on Sunday, the orchestra was…

U.S.WorldBusinessArtsLifestyleOpinionAudioGamesCookingWirecutterThe AthleticMay 27, 2024Updated 2:39 p.m. ETPresident Emmanuel Macron of France said Monday he was “outraged” by an Israeli attack in Rafah that the authorities in Gaza said killed dozens of people. “These operations must stop,” he said, referring to the strike on Sunday. “There are no safe areas in Rafah for Palestinian civilians.” Mr. Macron called “for full respect for international law and an immediate ceasefire.” His comments came after the International Court of Justice on Friday ordered Israel to halt its offensive in the city and added to a drumbeat of criticism of Israel over its conduct in…

A member of Egypt’s security forces has been killed during a shooting incident near the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip and an investigation is underway, an Egyptian army spokesman said on Monday, after the Israeli military reported a shooting incident on the border.There were few details on what happened, and neither country said who had opened fire. But the shooting reflects the escalating tension between the two nations since early May, when the city of Rafah in southern Gaza became the focus of Israel’s military campaign to defeat Hamas, an armed group that led a deadly attack on…

A fines del año pasado, Zackary Smigel, un creador de contenidos en YouTube, hizo un video titulado “¿Por qué YouTube es así?”. Se refería a que la plataforma estaba repleta de videos con títulos sensacionalistas, contenidos muy editados e imágenes en miniatura muy llamativas, a menudo con la cara emotiva de una persona.Una manera más concisa de decirlo sería: ¿Por qué todo el mundo en YouTube imita a MrBeast?MrBeast —cuyo nombre real es Jimmy Donaldson— es el youtuber más popular del planeta, con un dominio de los más jóvenes (y de internet en general) que puede resultar difícil de comprender…

Buteau’s stand-up origin story is either depressing or uniquely hopeful: She first got onstage on Sept. 14, 2001, after editing footage about the attacks three days before, and realizing she needed a different path.Her family was not initially supportive. Talking about penises onstage “after he paid for college in cash?” she said of her father, an international auditor. Her mother, a customs broker, “was really sad.” And she didn’t want to ask them for money. So she continued to work her midnight production shift, going from comedy clubs to the newsroom, for six years, building up her network of besties…

North Korea launched a rocket on Monday in what appeared to be an attempt to put a military reconnaissance satellite in orbit, in defiance of United Nations Security Council ​resolutions, the South Korean military said. Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, has made deploying a fleet of spy satellites one of his latest ​military ambitions. He has ​also focused on ​testing what he claimed were nuclear missiles ​capable of targeting the United States and its allies in the Asia-Pacific region.North Korea ​has said it needs satellites to ​increase its ability to monitor and target its enemies and to make…

At the award ceremony for the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève last November, one winner provoked a few double takes.The victor among six finalists in the annual design competition’s Challenge category which, last year, focused on watches priced at 2,000 Swiss francs, ($2,203) or less, was the Millesime Automatic Small Seconds, a 39.5-millimeter vintage-inspired dress watch with a steel case and a sector dial, with separate concentric hour and minute tracks.Its maker? Raymond Weil, a brand making a new play for watch enthusiasts.Competing against timepieces including a dive-GMT from the industry giant Seiko and a colorful chronograph from the buzzy…

President Biden wants more of America’s cars and trucks to run on electricity, not gas. His administration has pushed that goal on multiple fronts, including strict new regulations of auto emissions and lavish new subsidies to help American consumers take as much as $7,500 off the cost of a new electric vehicle.Mr. Biden’s aides agree that electric vehicles — which retail for more than $53,000 on average in the United States — would sell even faster here if they were less expensive. As it happens, there is a wave of new electric vehicles that are significantly cheaper than the ones…

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, said on Sunday that it has raised $6 billion, helping to close the funding gap with OpenAI, Anthropic and other rivals in the red-hot industry.The funds would be used “to take xAI’s first products to market, build advanced infrastructure, and accelerate the research and development of future technologies,” the company said in a statement.Mr. Musk, who founded xAI in July, said in a social media post the funding round valued the company at $18 billion, not including the new money. Investors included the Silicon Valley heavyweights Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, along with Saudi…

After China performed two days of military drills intended to punish Taiwan, Representative Michael McCaul of Texas on Monday stood alongside the island nation’s newly elected president, Lai Ching-te, and issued a promise.“The United States must maintain the capacity to resist any resort to force or coercion that would jeopardize the security of the people of Taiwan,” Mr. McCaul, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said. “That is what we stand for, and that is what we continue to say.”Mr. McCaul, a Republican, traveled this week to Taipei with a bipartisan delegation of other American lawmakers in an attempt,…