Author: NY TIMES

The run-up to this Saturday’s Eurovision Song Contest final in Malmo, Sweden, was unusually tense and anguished, with months of protests over Israel’s involvement in the competition, a contestant suspended just hours before the show began and confrontations between the police and pro-Palestinian demonstrators outside the arena on the night.But when the final began, the uproar swiftly disappeared. Instead of protests and outrage, there was the usual high-camp spectacle, featuring singers emoting about lost loves, near-naked dancers and, at one point, a performer climbing out of a giant egg.At the end of the four-hour show, Nemo, representing Switzerland, won with…

President Biden’s national security adviser said on Monday that while the United States was committed to Israel’s defense, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government had still failed to provide the White House with a plan for moving nearly a million Gazans safely out of Rafah before any invasion of the city.In a lengthy presentation to reporters, the adviser, Jake Sullivan, also said Israel had yet to “connect their military operations” to a political plan for the future governance of the Palestinian territory.Mr. Sullivan, who has been at the center of the administration’s response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel…

To President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, appointing a new defense minister provides a new building block toward fighting a long war.That was evident in Moscow on Monday when Andrei R. Belousov, the economist who was Mr. Putin’s surprise pick to lead Russia’s sprawling defense ministry, made his first public appearance in his new role and spoke about bureaucracy rather than the battlefield.The pick reflects an acknowledgment that the military production that is supplying Russia’s war, and heating its economy, must be carefully managed to sustain a war of attrition with Ukraine. In addition to Mr. Belousov’s appointment, Mr. Putin…

Today, 43 years later, Darryl Strawberry is still named for his 1981 season with the Class-A Lynchburg Mets.”I call it,” Strawberry said by phone last week, “a bad season.”At the time, “bad season” was the most challenging season in Strawberry’s life. It was his first losing season on the baseball diamond. That was the first season he heard racist slurs coming from the stands. This season he came close to quitting baseball and hanging up his jersey for good.So when the Strawberries’ No. 18 jersey is retired on June 1 at Citi Field, it’s fitting that among his distinguished guests…

It was a beautiful spring Saturday around noon, and the actress Julianne Moore was spending it at Dia Beacon, the art museum in New York’s Hudson Valley.“I’ve never been here. Isn’t that crazy?” Ms. Moore said. “We have a house in Long Island — Montauk — and there is that thing in New York, where you go to Long Island or you go upstate.”When asked if she felt like she was betraying the Hamptons, she laughed: “Don’t tell them I’m here.”Ms. Moore was in one of the museum’s vast, natural light-filled, industrial exhibition spaces, for the Dia Art Foundation’s spring…

GameStop’s share price skyrocketed on Monday after the man who became the face of “meme stock” mania in 2021 with his enthusiastic promotion of the struggling video game retailer emerged from a three-year hiatus.On Sunday evening, Keith Gill, the trader known on some social media platforms as Roaring Kitty, posted an illustration of a person holding a video game controller while leaning forward on a chair on X. On no other news, GameStop’s stock more than doubled in early trading, prompting several temporary volatility-related halts by the New York Stock Exchange. The shares were up about 74 percent at the…

Minutes after it became clear that Javier Milei had been elected president of South America’s second-largest nation in November, Elon Musk posted on X: “Prosperity is ahead for Argentina.”Since then, Mr. Musk has continued to use X, the social network he owns, to boost Mr. Milei. The billionaire has shared videos of the Argentine president attacking “social justice” with his 182 million followers. One doctored image, which implied that watching a speech by Mr. Milei was better than having sex, is among Mr. Musk’s most viewed posts ever.Mr. Musk has helped turn the pugnacious libertarian into one of the new…

Richard “Rick” Slayman, who made history at age 62 as the first person to receive a kidney from a genetically modified pig, has died about two months after the procedure.Massachusetts General Hospital, where Mr. Slayman had the operation, said in a statement on Saturday that its transplant team was “deeply saddened” at his death. The hospital said it had “no indication that it was the result of his recent transplant.”Mr. Slayman, who was Black, had end-stage kidney disease, a condition that affects more than 800,000 people in the United States, according to the federal government, with disproportionately higher rates among…

An old-fashioned rap war that unfolded online at lightning speed has sent Kendrick Lamar to No. 1 on Billboard’s latest singles chart, while Taylor Swift easily holds off a challenge from Dua Lipa’s new album.Relations between Lamar and Drake, two hip-hop giants and longtime rivals, exploded into a public war of words in recent weeks, in the form of a rapid-fire sequence of diss tracks packed with insults and unsavory (and unproven) accusations. Lamar seemed to get the last word with “Not Like Us,” released May 4, which becomes his fourth No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart. That…

After Hamas attacked Israel in October, igniting the war in Gaza, Israeli leaders described the group’s most senior official in the territory, Yahya Sinwar, as a “dead man walking.” Considering him an architect of the raid, Israel has portrayed Mr. Sinwar’s assassination as a major goal of its devastating counterattack.Seven months later, Mr. Sinwar’s survival is emblematic of the failures of Israel’s war, which has ravaged much of Gaza but left Hamas’s top leadership largely intact and failed to free most of the captives taken during the October attack.Even as Israeli officials seek his killing, they have been forced to…