Author: NY TIMES

Little Island, the $260 million park on the Hudson River that opened in 2021, was imagined as a haven for innovation in the performing arts. But the park’s cultural offerings — mostly sporadic, one-off works — have so far fallen short of those ambitions.Now Barry Diller, the billionaire media mogul who paid for the park, is setting out to deliver on the original vision, financing a robust, four-month annual performing arts festival on Little Island, the park announced on Monday. He is doing so with the guidance of Scott Rudin, the film, television and theater producer who retreated from public…

Look, the French know how to make a great baguette, right? There isn’t a lot of dispute there. No one is regularly saying, “Eh, I don’t think the French have really proven their baguette-making skills just yet.”But hold on. Can the French make a big baguette? An enormously long baguette that could feed a small town?Yes. It turns out they can do that, too.French bakers in Suresnes, just west of Paris, made a 461-foot baguette on Sunday. The massive loaf successfully returned the title of world’s longest baguette to France, according to Guinness World Records, as it exceeded a 435-foot…

On Sunday evening, the rapper Doja Cat swept into an upscale French restaurant in SoHo carrying a disposable Starbucks cup. She stashed it at the bar, and then made her way to the rear of the room to kiss the actress Pamela Anderson on one makeup-free cheek.Ms. Anderson was hosting a party with the label Monse as a kind of amuse-bouche for the Met Gala the next night. About 100 designers, editors and models gathered at La Mercerie, the restaurant and home goods store, to greet one another with some version of the line: “I have such a busy day…

Scientists are proposing a new way of understanding the genetics of Alzheimer’s that would mean that up to a fifth of patients would be considered to have a genetically caused form of the disease.Currently, the vast majority of Alzheimer’s cases do not have a clearly identified cause. The new designation, proposed in a study published Monday, could broaden the scope of efforts to develop treatments, including gene therapy, and affect the design of clinical trials.It could also mean that hundreds of thousands of people in the United States alone could, if they chose, receive a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s before developing…

Kevin Puts’s “The Hours,” which had its stage premiere at the Metropolitan Opera last season and returned for its first revival on Sunday, is even prettier than I remember.In the often exquisite score, the strings throb and the woodwinds flutter. When Puts reaches for percussion instruments, he chooses the sweeter ones — glockenspiel, crotales, chimes, vibraphone — and combines them luxuriously. Woodwinds at the top of Act II are practically Wagnerian in their extravagant stateliness. Tender piano chords toll lonesomely. Musical surges are thick with nostalgia. The luscious vocal lines revel in love, and understanding, of the human voice.But it’s…

Global shipping lines have become increasingly strained as the Houthi militia in Yemen broadens its attacks on cargo vessels, one of the largest companies in the industry warned on Monday.“The risk zone has expanded,” Maersk, the second-largest ocean carrier, said in a note to customers, adding that the stress was causing further delays and higher costs.Since late last year, the Houthis have been attacking ships in the Red Sea, which cargo vessels from Asia have to travel through to reach the Suez Canal. This has forced ocean carriers to avoid the sea and take a much longer route to Europe…

Twenty-four hours before the Met Gala, a starkly different sort of gala occurred in Brooklyn at the Bell House, a concert venue that sits on a lonesome industrial street near the Gowanus Canal.It was the second annual Debt Gala, which bills itself as a D.I.Y. alternative to the lavish spring benefit in Manhattan, which raises hundreds of millions each year for the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute.The theme, “Sleeping Baddies: Slumber Party,” was a parody of this year’s Met ball theme, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion.” Many of the participants at the Bell House wore bathrobes, pajamas and fuzzy slippers,…

The Federal Reserve spent much of 2022 and 2023 narrowly focusing on inflation as policymakers set interest rates: Prices were rising way too fast, so they became the central bank’s top priority. But now that inflation has cooled, officials are more clearly factoring the job market into their decisions again.One potential challenge? It’s a very difficult moment to assess exactly what monthly labor market data are telling us.Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said during a news conference on Wednesday that the way the job market shaped up in coming months could help to guide whether and when the central…

The Week It Went NuclearLamar’s first targeted response, “Euphoria,” was more than six minutes long and released last Tuesday morning. In three sections that raised the temperature as they built, he warned Drake about proceeding and insisted, somewhat facetiously, that things were still friendly. “Know you a master manipulator and habitual liar too,” Lamar rapped. “But don’t tell no lie about me and I won’t tell truths ’bout you.”He accused the biracial Drake, who was born and raised in Toronto, of imitating Black American heritage and insulting him subliminally. “I hate the way that you walk, the way that you…

For a little mystery, try Louise Penny’s popular “Three Pines” detective series. Though set in a fictional town in Quebec, her novels often feature Montreal (“Glass Houses” in particular.) Kathy Reichs unearths the bones of the city in her thriller “Déjà Dead.” And Montreal’s rich queer culture is captured in the coming-of-age novels “The Geography of Pluto,” by Christopher DiRaddo, and “Bottle Rocket Hearts,” by Zoe Whittall.Perhaps nothing will get you more excited to travel to Montreal than the dazzling work of Heather O’Neill. In novels like “Lullabies for Little Criminals” and “The Lonely Hearts Hotel,” O’Neill captures both the…