Author: NY TIMES

Moorhead C. Kennedy Jr., wearing a dark suit and a green polka-dot tie, was working at his desk in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on the morning of Nov. 4, 1979, when a Marine burst into the hallway outside his office.It was a tense period in Iran: A revolution to overthrow the shah was escalating. Mr. Kennedy, a career Foreign Service officer, was filling in for the economics counselor, the embassy’s third-ranking diplomat, who was away on family leave.“I was very interested in seeing a revolution in progress,” Mr. Kennedy later recalled. “It was a very fruitful time until, all…

Royal portraits, as a rule, tend to be fairly staid, predictable affairs. Full of symbolism, sure, but generally symbolism of the traditional, establishment kind: symbols of state, of office, of pomp and lineage.Which is why the new official portrait of King Charles III by Jonathan Yeo, the first since the king’s coronation, has created such a controversy.A larger-than-life (7.5 foot-by-5.5 foot) canvas, the portrait shows the king standing in his Welsh Guards uniform, hands on the hilt of his sword, a half-smile on his face, with a butterfly hovering just over his right shoulder. His entire body is bathed in…

The business of women’s basketball is booming. And the start of the 2024 W.N.B.A. season has many wondering if the sport is entering a new economic era.The arrival of stars like Caitlin Clark, the former University of Iowa phenom who is now a rookie with the Indiana Fever, has boosted interest and ticket sales. All the league’s teams will fly charter for the first time this season, team sponsorships are growing, and marquee players are racking up endorsement deals. A new TV deal could fill its coffers and further elevate the league’s profile.But there are still obstacles the league needs…

At the Cannes Film Festival news conference on Friday for his new film, “Megalopolis,” Francis Ford Coppola entered holding hands with his granddaughters.“When I came here for ‘Apocalypse Now,’ I had Sofia on my shoulder,” Coppola said of his daughter, who also became a director.That trip to Cannes took place 45 years ago and ended with a major laurel, as “Apocalypse Now” won Coppola the Palme d’Or. It’s anyone’s guess how the new film will fare, since “Megalopolis” premiered at Cannes on Thursday night to wildly mixed reviews and has yet to score a distributor.A futuristic melodrama about a visionary…

Senior American and Iranian officials held talks through intermediaries in Oman this past week, the first such conversations since Iran launched a retaliatory attack on Israel with hundreds of missiles and drones last month, according to a person familiar with the recent meetings.Brett McGurk, the top White House official on Middle East policy, and Abram Paley, the deputy special envoy for Iran, attended the talks in Oman. The goal was to try to get Iran, which supplies weapons and training to militias across the Middle East, to move to rein in its partners. Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out, several…

Russian forces continued to press a grinding advance on Saturday into northeastern Ukraine, moving closer to a village about 10 miles from the outer ring of Kharkiv and raising fears that the city, Ukraine’s second largest, could soon be within range of Russian artillery.The Ukrainian Army said on Saturday that Russian troops had tried to break through its defenses near the village of Lyptsi, which lies directly north of Kharkiv. It said the attacks had been repelled, but maps of the battlefield compiled by independent groups analyzing publicly available video of the fighting showed that Russian troops had almost reached…

Ten years and one month after Buzunesh Deba became the legitimate winner of the 2014 Boston Marathon, she finally received the bonus she never received, but it didn’t come from Boston Sports association.Instead, it came from a stranger.When Deba crossed the finish line on Boylston Street in 2014, she didn’t receive international acclaim, a golden wreath or a $100,000 prize ($75,000 for winning, $25,000 for breaking the track record). Instead, those honors and victories belong to Rita Jeptoo, who crossed the finish line first that year but had her victory stripped by the BAA in 2016 due to a failed…

At Barclays Center on Saturday, during the first half of a game between the New York Liberty and the Indiana Fever, a man on the floor level held up a sign that instructed the crowd to “get loud.” There was no need for the prompt.Some of the raucous crowd was there to watch Caitlin Clark — the Fever’s wunderkind rookie — play her first professional game in New York City, some were Liberty fans, and more than a few seemed to be there to cheer for both sides.There were celebrities sitting courtside, like Billie Jean King, Jason Sudeikis, Megan Rapinoe…

Laurence D. Fink built BlackRock into the world’s largest asset manager with a steely grip, a thick skin and a cleareyed vision of what the company could become.Today, it’s a caretaker of $10.5 trillion of investor money and a provider of sophisticated trading technology, and Mr. Fink has been an informal financial adviser to many governments, including the United States. Along the way, he has withstood criticism from lawmakers on both sides — and even the independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — about BlackRock’s policies and politics.He has also earned the adulation of its shareholders.But Mr. Fink’s age…

A judge in New Mexico will rule next week on whether to dismiss the involuntary manslaughter indictment against Alec Baldwin in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the “Rust” film set, after she closely questioned the lead prosecutor on Friday about her handling of grand jury proceedings.Lawyers for Mr. Baldwin — who was rehearsing with an old-fashioned revolver on the set in 2021 when it fired a live bullet, killing the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins — had lodged numerous objections to how the case has been handled, calling the prosecution “an abuse of an innocent person whose rights have been…