Author: NY TIMES

Elaine Hall and Roland Passaro, both 88, met in junior high school in 1950 but lost touch before acting on their connection. They finally did, five decades later. Source link

Pulling all-nighters to assemble PowerPoint presentations. Punching numbers into Excel spreadsheets. Finessing the language on esoteric financial documents that may never be read by another soul.Such grunt work has long been a rite of passage in investment banking, an industry at the top of the corporate pyramid that lures thousands of young people every year with the promise of prestige and pay.Until now. Generative artificial intelligence — the technology upending many industries with its ability to produce and crunch new data — has landed on Wall Street. And investment banks, long inured to cultural change, are rapidly turning into Exhibit…

Arthur Mensch, tall and lean with a flop of unkempt hair, arrived for a speech last month at a sprawling tech hub in Paris wearing jeans and carrying a bicycle helmet. He had an unassuming look for a person European officials are counting on to help propel the region into a high-stakes match with the United States and China over artificial intelligence.Mr. Mensch, 31, is the chief executive and a founder of Mistral, considered by many to be one of the most promising challengers to OpenAI and Google. “You have become the poster child for A.I. in France,” Matt Clifford,…

It was 1:53 a.m., and Peter Fink was on a barren mountain plateau near Campo, Calif., passing out blankets to people from four continents who had arrived there under the cover of night.This was a nocturnal ritual for the 22-year-old, dressed in a ball cap and a wool overshirt, whose perch — just over 300 yards up a rocky incline from the United States-Mexico border wall — had become a round-the-clock boarding space for people who had crossed unlawfully onto American soil.With Mexico’s armed National Guard now stationed at the most popular crossing sites along southeastern San Diego County, migrant…

Before O.J. Simpson became synonymous with the sensational murder trial that riveted the nation in the mid-1990s, he was a football star turned Hollywood fixture who played roles as varied as an astronaut, a comic detective and a fake priest.His acting career began while he was still a star running back. As Simpson, who died on Wednesday, told it, he was waiting out the best deal he could get in the N.F.L. when producers reached out to him asking if he could act. “Sure, I can try to act,” he replied.He scored bit parts in a medical series and a…

The United States dispatched its top military commander for the Middle East to Israel on Thursday, after President Biden stated that, despite recent friction, American support for Israel “is ironclad” in the event of an attack by Iran.Iran’s leaders have repeatedly vowed to punish Israel for an April 1 strike in Syria that killed several senior Iranian commanders. Israel has put its military on alert, and Mr. Biden said on Wednesday that Iran was threatening a “significant” attack.Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, the American commander, will coordinate with Israel on what is widely expected to be imminent retaliatory action by Iran…

The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email. This week’s issue is written by Julia Bergin, a reporter based in the Northern Territory.Eyes closed, head raised, leaning back against the polished stone of the Old Physics Building on the campus of the University of Melbourne, Marie Elena Ellis paused briefly to breathe in the sunshine before heading back indoors to resume talking about publishing.Ms. Ellis, a Central Australian Arrernte and Warlpiri author and publisher, recently joined a six-month fellowship program with the University of Melbourne, both to to learn about…

Pat Connaughton knows what an open shot feels like. As a nine-year veteran in the league, he has played hundreds of games and developed a feel for space and when there is enough room.Connaughton felt that familiar feeling again when his Milwaukee Bucks faced the San Antonio Spurs in early January. With about 8 minutes left in the fourth quarter, Giannis Antetokounmpo double-teamed and found Brook Lopez alone on the right wing. Spurs’ Julian Champagnie, Connaughton’s defender, scrambled to cover him.When Lopez caught Antetokounmpo’s pass, the Spurs player covering Champany’s rotation was 27 feet away from him, with one foot…

In August 2018, Svetlana Dotsenko and Fabián Alejandro Poliak were visiting the Peterhof palace complex in St. Petersburg, Russia, when Mr. Poliak decided to make a move.“I’m not leaving these grounds without trying for a kiss,” Mr. Poliak recalled thinking to himself.A short while later, they were running through the palace gardens in a torrential downpour to catch the last ferry of the day back to the city center. “On the final bridge, I pulled her back,” Mr. Poliak said. “It was very beautiful.”Ms. Dotsenko, 36, and Mr. Poliak, 35, first met at a party at Harvard in 2008. She…

NPR is facing both internal tumult and a fusillade of attacks by prominent conservatives this week after a senior editor publicly claimed the broadcaster had allowed liberal bias to affect its coverage, risking its trust with audiences.Uri Berliner, a senior business editor who has worked at NPR for 25 years, wrote in an essay published Tuesday by The Free Press, a popular Substack publication, that “people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview.”Mr. Berliner, a Peabody Award-winning journalist, castigated NPR for what he said was a litany of journalistic missteps around coverage of several major…