Author: NY TIMES

Casey Benjamin, who brought colorfully expansive saxophone flourishes to the Grammy-winning Robert Glasper Experiment and added rich layers of texture to recordings by Solange, A Tribe Called Quest and many others, died on March 30 in Maryland. He was 45.The cause was pulmonary thromboembolism, his brother, Kevin Benjamin, said. He did not say where in Maryland Mr. Benjamin died.Known for his willingness to experiment, his exuberant stage persona and his trademark swirl of hair, often streaked with teal or red, Mr. Benjamin was a founding member of the pianist Robert Glasper’s combo, which, the critic Nate Chinen wrote in The…

More than 150 Jewish actors, filmmakers and other artists signed an open letter that was published on Friday in defense of remarks about Jewishness and the war in Gaza that the director Jonathan Glazer made in his Oscars acceptance speech for “The Zone of Interest,” his film about the Holocaust.Glazer’s speech has become one of the most hotly debated in Oscars history, drawing an open letter of strong denunciation from other Jewish film professionals last month and now one of support.“Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which…

Nicaragua, a longstanding supporter of the Palestinian cause, is broadening the legal battle over the Gaza conflict at the International Court of Justice by bringing a case against Germany, a major supplier of arms to Israel.In hearings that opened on Monday in The Hague, Nicaragua argued that Germany is facilitating the commission of genocide in Gaza and violating the Genocide Convention by providing Israel with military and financial aid. Carlos Jose Arguello Gomez, Nicaragua’s ambassador to The Netherlands, told the court that “it does not matter if an artillery shell is delivered straight from Germany to an Israeli tank shelling…

One important thing to remember about Andre Villas-Boas is that he has really good hair.You don’t spend a record-breaking fee of €15 million (£12.9; $16.3m) to sign a rookie manager from Porto unless you’re absolutely sure what you’re going to get, and Chelsea are sure of one thing, back in 2011. In the heady days, the man with the swirling fox-red side part looked impossibly cool as he was tossed into the air during trophy celebrations. Villas-Boas in Porto in 2010 (Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images)There’s a sexy new idea to such hair—a philosophy, perhaps. It has a swagger that…

When Dianne Brill arrived at the Soho Grand Hotel for her 66th birthday party on Saturday night, she did so with the same sense of spectacle that made her an icon of Manhattan nightlife in the 1980s.People stopped and stared as she stepped out of a black S.U.V. Standing 6-foot-3 in white platform boots, Ms. Brill was wearing a silver satin wraparound dress and holding a glittering wand in one hand. Her hair was big and blonde, and she wore a big necklace that read “B-R-I-L-L.”“I’m back,” she said. “Maybe not everyone knows it yet, but I am, and that’s…

Brandon Blackwell sits in his apartment in the Jamaica section of Queens, training with a collection of 30,000 homemade flash cards the way weight lifters train with barbells. Each card contains an obscure fact about the world. Which country is home to Lake Assal, the largest salt reserve on earth? (Djibouti). Which metal is smelted using the Hall-Héroult process? (Aluminum).It is the fall of 2016 and the 22-year-old is struggling to reach the highest echelons in the little-known world of competitive quizzing. He’s earned about $400,000 by appearing on “Jeopardy!” Teen Tournament, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” and a…

For nearly 14 years, an online message board called Memegen has served as a virtual water cooler for Google employees.Memegen has been a place for employees to offer blunt critiques of their bosses, to share gallows humor about job cuts or to joke about getting notes from their parents to excuse them from returning to the office after the pandemic.But Google executives, after watching employees snipe about the war in Gaza in recent months, are making big changes to turn down the temperature on their company’s beloved message board, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.One of the…

Over the past decade, R.I.P. Medical Debt has grown from a tiny nonprofit group that received less than $3,000 in donations to a multimillion-dollar force in health care philanthropy.It has done so with a unique and simple strategy to tackling the enormous amounts that Americans owe hospitals: buying up old bills that would otherwise be sold to collection agencies and wiping out the debt.Since 2014, R.I.P. Medical Debt estimates that it has eliminated more than $11 billion of debt with the help of major donations from philanthropists and even city governments. In January, New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, announced…

The rapper J. Cole apologized on Sunday for releasing a diss track about Kendrick Lamar, saying he felt “terrible” and vowing to update the song or remove it from streaming services.The apology followed an exchange of verses that began in October, when J. Cole and Drake ranked themselves, with Lamar, as the “big three” in hip-hop in the song “First Person Shooter.” In March, Lamar dismissed that comparison in a guest verse on the song “Like That” by Future and Metro Boomin, rapping that there was no big three, “it’s just big me.”In response, J. Cole on Friday released the…

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met on Monday with Israel’s opposition leader, Yair Lapid, who reaffirmed the underlying U.S.-Israel bond despite tensions between President Biden and Mr. Lapid’s chief political rival, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.“The United States and the State of Israel are the best of allies and best of friends and we need to maintain this friendship. No current events, no government, even, will interfere with this friendship,” Mr. Lapid told reporters at the State Department after the meeting.“We are thankful for the support of the American administration to Israel in one of the most difficult moments of…