Author: NY TIMES

The last time Lencia Kebede lived in New York, in 2015, she was a 21-year-old college intern at the United Nations, taking and translating notes for the ambassador from Guatemala, who was working on an anti-poverty initiative.What a difference a decade can make. Instead of pursuing a career as a human rights lawyer, Kebede is now a working actress in New York defying gravity eight times as week as the first Black actress to play Elphaba full time in “Wicked” on Broadway.It’s a dream role that is also allowing her to tend to her two passions. “The place where Elphaba…

Airstrikes pounded the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, killing dozens of people, health officials said, as Israel reaffirmed its plans to capture more land in the enclave and force all two million Gaza residents to live in the south. The single deadliest bombing hit near a popular cafe in Gaza City where young people gathered to use the internet, killing 33, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Hospitals across the Gaza Strip reported casualties caused by other airstrikes throughout the day, said a ministry official, Zaher al-Wuhaidi. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to requests for comment regarding the target of…

Do you care where a diamond comes from?Historically, consumers didn’t have a choice. Natural diamonds were formed billions of years ago, deep beneath the earth’s surface, and were then thrust hundreds of kilometers to its crust by volcanic eruptions before eventually being extracted from mines in South Africa, Russia and elsewhere. Companies like De Beers convinced the world that a diamond is forever, made the stones synonymous with engagement rings and encouraged people to spend at least three months’ salary on a rock when they wed.But in recent years, the natural diamond industry has been upended by laboratory-grown diamonds, which…

Russia will celebrate the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s defeat on Friday with visiting heads of state and a show of armed might in Red Square, staged as a display of global clout, grandiose and intimidating, and a portent of eventual triumph in the war against Ukraine.The annual military parade below the walls and towers of the Kremlin is expected to be the largest since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, a commemoration the government and its cheerleaders have used to raise support for the war, conflating what may be the greatest source of national pride with the far more divisive…

Clarence O. Smith, who convinced skeptical advertisers of the power and worth of the Black female consumer market in becoming a founder of Essence, the first general-circulation magazine directed at Black women, died on April 21. He was 92.Mr. Smith, who lived in Yonkers, N.Y., died in a hospital after a short illness, his niece Kimberly Fonville Boyd said. She provided no other details.Essence began publication as a monthly in May 1970, in an era when negative and sometimes hateful stereotypes of Black women were commonplace, said Edward Lewis, who was one of four founders of Essence and who became…

OpenAI said late Wednesday that it hired Fidji Simo, the chief executive of Instacart, to take on a new role running the artificial intelligence company’s business and operations teams.In a blog post, Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, said he would remain in charge as the head of the company. But Ms. Simo’s appointment as chief executive of applications would free him up to focus on other parts of the organization, including research, computing and safety systems, he said.“We have become a global product company serving hundreds of millions of users worldwide and growing very quickly,” Mr. Altman said in the…

After weeks of confusion about his plans for autism research, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Wednesday that his department would build a “real-world platform” that would allow researchers to hunt for causes of the disorder by examining insurance claims, electronic medical records and wearable devices like smart watches.The department will draw the records from Medicare and Medicaid, which together cover around 40 percent of Americans. The National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will partner on the project, Mr. Kennedy said.But it was unclear whether the announcement would assuage researchers, advocates and…

Operas as concerts can be challenging, especially for a work with a four-hour running time, including two intermissions. Handel benefits from eye candy: flashy garb, elaborate scenery, routines with backup dancers — anything to keep hold of our attention. And yet if it’s not Baroque, don’t fix it. Carnegie was packed on Sunday, perhaps with people who just want good music performed well. The English Concert does that consistently.To write “Cesare,” Handel and the librettist Nicola Francesco Haym drew from fictionalized accounts of the end of Julius Caesar’s civil war. After defeating Pompeo, Cesare follows his rival to Egypt. Cesare…

For the second time in less than two weeks, a United States Navy fighter jet from the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman has been lost in the Red Sea.The jet was landing on the flight deck of the Truman on Tuesday when the aircraft’s arrestment system, which helps the aircraft stop on the runway, failed, “causing the aircraft to go overboard,” according to the United States Central Command.The two pilots aboard the plane, an F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet worth at least $67 million, ejected and sustained minor injuries. They were rescued by a helicopter and no one else was…

So much is made of the fashion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute Benefit — otherwise known as the Met Gala — that it can be easy to forget the event is about more than clothes. It’s also a fund-raiser for the museum, which this year collected more money than ever since the gala began almost 80 years ago, as well as an opening party for new Costume Institute exhibitions. This year’s, called “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” is about the history and culture of Black dandyism.The dress code for the gala on Monday was “Tailored For You,” an…