Author: NY TIMES

Some 200 Barbie fans braved a hard rain on Wednesday evening as they made their way to the Rizzoli bookstore in Manhattan for the release of a coffee-table book celebrating the doll’s fashion history.Inside, some took off their raincoats to reveal pink skirts, scarves, sweaters and blazers. Before a panel discussion began, they helped themselves to pink velvet cupcakes and rosé.Two friends in the crowd, Carol Torre and Anahy Antara, reflected on their fandom.“I don’t really know much about the book,” Ms. Torre, an accountant, said. “I’m just here because I love Barbie.”“I’ve been hitting thrift shops to try to…

Cryptocurrency enthusiasts have eagerly anticipated the third week of April, counting down the days until a potentially crucial moment in Bitcoin’s development called “the halving.”Essentially, the halving is a scheduled reduction in the number of new Bitcoin that go into circulation. As the supply falls, some analysts anticipate that the digital currency’s price will soar.These reductions happen every four years or so. But this year’s halving has drawn especially enthusiastic attention as the crypto industry rebounds from years of falling prices and corporate implosions.In recent months, Bitcoin’s price has surged to record highs, reaching $73,000 in March. Much of that…

When he flew to Nigeria for a business trip in late February, Tigran Gambaryan, a top compliance officer at the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, packed a small suitcase with just enough clothes for two days.A former U.S. law enforcement agent, Mr. Gambaryan knew the trip was risky. Only a few weeks earlier, he and a group of colleagues had rushed out of Nigeria, concerned that the local authorities might detain them, five people familiar with that trip said. This time, he assured his wife, he would “get in and get out.”A month and a half later, Mr. Gambaryan is being held…

The sun was setting on the opening night of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival last weekend and the mood backstage in Justice’s artist compound was simmering anxiety, masked by glasses of wine and discrete vaping.In a few hours, the Paris-based electronic music duo would debut an all-new stage show and give fans an early taste of “Hyperdrama,” its new studio album, out April 26. The setting was meaningful: Justice played its first real show at Coachella in 2007 just before releasing “Cross,” the album that propelled it to the forefront of the electro scene, and this appearance would…

The exhibitions have been installed. The artists have arrived. The city of Venice is prepared to welcome throngs of visitors from across the world.The 2024 Venice Biennale, featuring work by more than 330 participating artists from some 90 countries scattered throughout the city, opens to the public on Saturday. And before that come the pre-opening celebrations, early viewing opportunities — and at least one act of protest.Gus Powell, a photographer for The New York Times, is on the ground covering the spectacle that makes the Biennale one of the premier events in the art world’s global calendar. Source link

Not every workplace features a guillotine. At a book conservation lab tucked beneath the first floor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the office guillotine might as well be a water cooler or a file cabinet for all that it fazes the staff. “We have a lot of violent equipment,” said Mindell Dubansky, who heads the Sherman Fairchild Center for Book Conservation.Fearsome machines are part of daily life at the lab, which serves as a hospital where ailing books from every department of the museum are restored to health. The lab’s six employees process an astonishing 2,500 books each year.Those…

Twenty years ago, Wes Moss and Andy Litinsky met Donald J. Trump as contestants on his reality TV show, “The Apprentice” — a connection that led them to help launch the former president’s social media platform, Truth Social, with his blessing.Now, they might as well be starring in an episode of “Family Feud.”For weeks, Mr. Moss and Mr. Litinsky have been fighting with Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, over their roughly 8 percent stake in the company. In February, they sued the company, claiming that Trump Media — which made its trading debut last…

Nearly 1.5 million teenage girls in some of the world’s poorest countries will miss the chance to be protected from cervical cancer because the drugmaker Merck has said it will not be able to deliver millions of promised doses of the HPV vaccine this year.Merck has notified Gavi, the international organization that helps low- and middle-income countries deliver lifesaving immunizations, and UNICEF, which procures the vaccines, that it will deliver only 18.8 million of the 29.6 million doses it was contracted to deliver in 2024, Gavi said.That means that more than 10 million girls will not receive their expected HPV…

Hipgnosis Songs Fund, the British company that helped kick-start the music industry’s rush for catalog deals — acquiring tens of thousands of songs by Justin Bieber, Neil Young, Shakira and others — but has seen its share price plummet, has reached a tentative deal to sell itself to Concord, a major independent music company, for $1.4 billion.Hipgnosis, which trades on the London Stock Exchange, said on Thursday that its board had given unanimous approval. But the deal still faces what could be a significant hurdle in the form of a contractual option held by an affiliated company to buy the…

The scale of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza — and the difficulties faced by aid workers responding to it — goes “beyond what has been seen before” in other conflicts, the United Nations said on Wednesday.The cost of addressing it may be similarly staggering.The U.N. said its agencies and other aid groups would need more than $2.8 billion from their donors to continue their response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza for the rest of the year.“Widespread destruction. Multiple mass displacements. Looming famine. Collapsed health system,” the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement. “Every…