Author: NY TIMES

The art gallery had barely closed for the business day when guests started wandering into the space on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Before them was a curiosity that made passers-by pause for a peek: amid the paintings on the walls was a long dinner table with place settings for 30 people.Toward the entry way, Alex Delany, host of the Sound Radio show, was spinning 1970s-era Guinean and Ethiopian jazz and funk as invitees in Balenciaga, Prada and high-end Adidas sneakers mingled. And in the back of the gallery was the chef Roze Traore, spinning plates of poached lobster…

A failed crop, followed by a wave of financial speculation, put cocoa prices on a roller coaster this year, rattling an industry reliant on inexpensive crops and labor.This is not how things normally go in the cocoa market. For much of the past decade, the price of cocoa in one key global benchmark hovered around $2,500 per metric ton. Last year, after poor harvests in West Africa, the price began to creep up — rising to $4,200 a ton by December, a threshold that hadn’t been crossed since the 1970s.Then the financial speculators began to pile in — betting prices…

Days before Christie’s expected to sell as much as $840 million worth of art at an auction set to include paintings by Warhol and Basquiat, the auction house experienced what it described as a “technology security issue” that took its website offline.Some collectors and art advisers noticed the problem on Thursday evening. By the next morning, the website was redirecting visitors to a temporary page outside of its own web domain. “We apologize that our website is currently offline,” it said. “We are working to resolve this as soon as possible and regret any inconvenience.”Edward Lewine, a Christie’s spokesman, said…

“I hope you fall in love, I hope it breaks your heart” is the refrain (in English translation) of “Pasoori,” Ali Sethi’s 2022 global hit. Is this a curse or a blessing? The song, performed as a duet with the Pakistani singer Shae Gill, defies such simple classifications — it’s a pop banger sung in Urdu and Punjabi, punctuated with flamenco handclaps and driven by a reggaeton beat. Sethi, a Pakistani-born artist who lives in Manhattan’s East Village, composed it in the wake of a thwarted collaboration with an Indian organization that feared reprisal (because of a 2016 ban on…

The president was livid. He had just been shown pictures of civilians killed by Israeli shelling, including a small baby with an arm blown off. He ordered aides to get the Israeli prime minister on the phone and then dressed him down sharply.The president was Ronald Reagan, the year was 1982, and the battlefield was Lebanon, where Israelis were attacking Palestinian fighters. The conversation Mr. Reagan had with Prime Minister Menachem Begin that day, Aug. 12, would be one of the few times aides ever heard the usually mild-mannered president so exercised.“It is a holocaust,” Mr. Reagan told Mr. Begin…

Ukraine rushed reinforcements to its northern border on Friday after Russian forces attempted to break through Ukrainian lines along several stretches, applying new pressure on Ukrainian forces already stretched thin along a 600-mile front.The Russian assaults began at around 5 a.m. Friday with massive shelling and aerial bombardments of Ukrainian positions followed by armored columns trying to punch through at several points along the border, according to a statement from Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense.“As of now, these attacks have been repelled, and battles of varying intensity are ongoing,” the ministry said. “To strengthen the defense in this sector of the…

The scene: Two hard-bitten dames clash over a man. At issue: Did one steal the other’s lover, then go on to marry … and murder him?One of the women, Margaux Goldrich, is fictional. The other is the Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon, who performs a flinty version of herself grilling Margaux, an imperious fashion diva played by Patricia Black, about the character’s suspected role in her husband’s untimely death.You won’t find this brooding melodrama on Netflix. The narrative spools out instead on social media as a string of darkly comic vignettes conceived and produced by the jewelry designer Alexis Bittar as…

When Emrullah Karaca began working at a factory in Gifhorn, Germany, where the auto parts supplier Continental builds components for hydraulic brakes, he was looking for a temporary job after finishing high school.But after spending more than two decades building a career at the factory, Mr. Karaca, a 49-year-old father of three, learned that Continental planned to close the plant by 2027. Facing a daunting job hunt, he will head back to school to earn his trade certificate, courtesy of his employer.It’s a necessary step if he wants to find a job in Germany, where despite a desperate lack of…

Listen to and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTubeKevin reports on his monthlong experiment cultivating relationships with 18 companions generated by artificial intelligence. He walks through how he developed their personas, what went down in their group chats, and why you might want to make one yourself. Then, Casey has a conversation with Turing, one of Kevin’s chatbot buddies, who has an interest in stoic philosophy and has one of the sexiest voices we’ve ever heard. And finally, we talk to Nomi’s founder and chief executive, Alex Cardinell, about the business behind A.I. companions — and whether…

Day’s 2015 debut album had a reverberant, widescreen, retro sound. By contrast, “Cassandra (Cherith)” favors focused close-ups; it heightens details, making Day’s voice more exposed and even more daring. Throughout the album, her delivery feels questing and improvisatory. She’s so sure of her melodies that she can embellish them at any moment, stretching or rushing or wriggling them as the impulse strikes.She breezes across styles and eras. From a base in neo-soul, with hip-hop beats underpinning sinuous R&B melodies, Day also touches on jazz, Motown, jazz, bossa nova, piano rock and vintage-sounding orchestral pop. But the most important sound on…