Author: NY TIMES

On Mother’s Day in the main hall of the Ridgewood Presbyterian Church in Queens, a handful of members of Gamelan Dharma Swara, an ensemble that plays traditional and contemporary Balinese music, practiced its new piece, “Pagar Ayu.” It was a joyous cacophony — a melding of metallophones, other percussive instruments and flute — though it was still in need of refinement.“You’re giving away some part of yourself to the people,” Victoria Lo Mellin, Dharma Swara’s president, directed the musicians. Lo Mellin, 38, who has been with the ensemble since 2007, tried to communicate a sense of urgency. The world premiere…

Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen warned Israel on Thursday against cutting off ties between Palestinian and Israeli banks, arguing that such a move would further destabilize the economy of the West Bank at a time when Palestinians are already facing dire economic conditions.Ms. Yellen’s comments came in the wake of Israel’s decision on Wednesday to withhold tax revenue from the Palestinian Authority in retaliation for three European countries unilaterally agreeing to recognize a Palestinian state. Ms. Yellen and other top economic officials from the Group of 7 nations are expected to discuss the matter and the humanitarian situation in Gaza…

Scanning the Dark Universe, Euclid Finds Scenes of Cosmic Light By Katrina MillerEuclid, a European Space Agency telescope launched into space last summer, finally showed off what it’s capable of with a batch of breathtaking images and early science results released Thursday.The telescope will help astronomers make sense of two of the universe’s greatest mysteries: dark matter, the invisible glue clumping galaxies together, and dark energy, the force pushing them apart.“Before trying to understand what it is, you have to understand how it behaves,” Jean-Charles Cuillandre, an astronomer at CEA Paris-Saclay, said, referring to dark matter.The mysterious substance makes light…

Shirley Conran, the industrious and proliferous British author whose 1982 novel, “Lace,” was a tale of female autonomy disguised as a bonkbuster (to use the British term for a steamy best seller) that made her a millionaire and introduced the lowly goldfish into the erotic canon, died on May 9 in London. She was 91.The cause of her death, in a hospital, was pneumonia, her son Jasper Conran said.Ms. Conran was already a household name in England when she set out to write a sex guide for schoolgirls, but ended up writing the potboiler that was “Lace.” In 1968, she…

News Corp, the Murdoch-owned empire of publications like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post, announced on Wednesday that it had agreed to a deal with OpenAI to share its content to train and service artificial intelligence chatbots.News Corp said the multiyear agreement would allow OpenAI to use current and archived news content from News Corp’s major news outlets, including brands in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia as well as MarketWatch and Barron’s. The agreement does not include content from News Corp’s other businesses, such as its digital real estate services or HarperCollins.“We believe an historic…

The Justice Department and a group of states plan to sue Live Nation Entertainment, the concert giant that owns Ticketmaster, as soon as Thursday, accusing it of illegally maintaining a monopoly in the live entertainment industry, said three people familiar with the matter.The government plans to argue in a lawsuit that Live Nation shored up its power through Ticketmaster’s exclusive ticketing contracts with concert venues, as well as the company’s dominance over concert tours and other businesses like venue management, said two of the people, who declined to be named because the lawsuit was still private. That helped the company…

Louisiana could become the first state to classify abortion pills as dangerous controlled substances, making possession of the pills without a prescription a crime subject to jail time and fines.A bill that would designate the abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol as Schedule IV drugs — a category of medicines with the potential for abuse or dependence — passed the state’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives on Tuesday by a vote of 63 to 29. Should the Senate follow suit, Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican and a vocal opponent of abortion, is likely to sign the legislation into law.The measure — which…

Maybe “Megalopolis” was just an amuse-bouche.After Francis Ford Coppola’s $120 million movie polarized audiences during the first week of the Cannes Film Festival, the big swings have continued with “The Substance” and “Emilia Pérez,” two much-discussed films that are either stone-cold classics or total fiascos depending on whom you talk to here.But at a festival where a dozen new movies arrive every day and each title is in danger of being overshadowed, there’s nothing more effective than causing a commotion.The gory horror-comedy “The Substance” casts Demi Moore as Elizabeth Sparkle, an Oscar-winning actress who, as she ages, can find no…

While uncertainty surrounds political succession in Iran after its president and foreign minister died in a helicopter crash, analysts say it is unlikely their deaths will alter the country’s projection of power through heavily armed allied groups in the Middle East.Those groups — Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, multiple militias in Iraq and Hamas in the Palestinian territories — are central to Iran’s ability to wield influence far beyond its borders despite being under strict economic sanctions for decades.Iran works with these groups through the Quds Force, a division of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The I.R.G.C. answers…

Spain, Norway and Ireland said on Wednesday that they would recognize an independent Palestinian state, delivering a diplomatic blow to Israel that showed the country’s growing isolation on the world stage more than seven months into its devastating military offensive in the Gaza Strip.In closely coordinated announcements, the leaders of the three countries said that Palestinian independence cannot wait for a negotiated peace deal with Israel’s right-wing government, which largely opposes a two-state solution, has been expanding settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and is continuing to bombard Gaza without either toppling Hamas or bringing home all its hostages.Prime Minister…