Author: NY TIMES

Jürgen Klopp’s week has been one long goodbye. On Tuesday, Klopp, Liverpool’s soon-to-be former manager, was at Anfield, the stadium that has sung his name and thrilled at his team for the last nine years, bidding farewell to hundreds of members of the club’s staff. On Thursday, he and his players shared one last barbecue at Liverpool’s training facility on the fringe of the city.In between, there have been countless jerseys to sign — “I don’t know how many, but everyone has one now,” he said — and endless hands to shake. There is still the looming specter of Sunday,…

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Scottie Scheffler’s score dropped, but the leaderboard remained crowded after the third round of the PGA Championship on Saturday. Collin Morikawa and Xander Schauffele (15-under) will head to Valhalla Golf Club, tied for the lead and in the final pairing playing together, but seven other players were within four strokes of them.Schauffele, who is seeking his first major championship, has led every round of the PGA Championship but is sharing that score with Morikawa, who is looking for third in a major for the first time. After shooting a 68 on Saturday, the latter shot a 67.Sahith…

“If I’m independent today, it’s thanks to him,” Mr. Akkad said. “I don’t need to depend on anyone else for a shape.” He sculpts and produces all his jewels himself, although he works with a master gem-setter for mounting stones — always without prongs — and a polisher to finish the pieces.His bold, sculptural style has made Mr. Akkad an insider favorite.“When you look at Walid’s work, you can see this high jewelry mastery, with perfect execution and stones, but there’s something else to it,” Esther de Beaucé said by phone. She now owns Galerie MiniMasterpiece in Paris, which specializes…

It would have been the greatest insult to rock the Upper East Side on any normal night, but instead the private equity heir Holly Peterson could only laugh. Why had a Sotheby’s official denied her access to a bidding paddle?In February 2022, Ms. Peterson, an author and art collector, was surrounded by a new clientele: the crypto nouveau riche, who made a temporary home of the art market. Their purchases occurred through the trendy innovation of NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, which registered the ownership of often digital artworks on the blockchain. Collectors then used the NFTs as rapidly appreciating investments…

Samm-Art Williams, who made his mark in several fields — as an executive producer of the sitcom “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” as an actor on both stage and screen and as a Tony-nominated playwright for “Home,” died on Monday in Burgaw, N.C. He was 78.His death was confirmed by his cousin Carol Brown. She did not cite a cause.An imposing 6-foot-8 (a lefty, he once served as a sparring partner to Muhammad Ali), Mr. Williams appeared in films including Brian De Palma’s Hitchcock homage, “Dressed to Kill” (1980), and the Coen brothers’ neo-noir, “Blood Simple” (1984). He had a…

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…