Author: NY TIMES

A young student fatally shot a 12-year-old and wounded two others at a school in Finland on Tuesday, the police said, a rare act of violence by a child in a country that changed its gun laws after earlier school shootings but where gun ownership remains widespread.The police said they had arrested a suspect, also 12 years old, who had a handgun, about an hour after arriving at the Viertola school, in the city of Vantaa, about 10 miles north of Helsinki.“The shooting incident in Vantaa is deeply distressing,” Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said on X.Finland tightened its gun laws…

When Cailey Heaps wants to get away from it all, one place comes to mind: the island of Newfoundland in Canada.Although she spends most of the year in Toronto, where she runs the real estate brokerage Heaps Estrin and raises her three children — 17-year-old Mimi and 13-year-old twins Declan and Pippa — the craggy, saltwater-sprayed eastern coast of Newfoundland has long held special appeal.“It’s this very romantic, peaceful part of the world where it feels like time moves at a different pace,” said Ms. Heaps, 47. “I can go there for three days and feel like I’ve taken a…

Michele Heisler, 61, is an avid swimmer, putting in 45 minutes three times a week in a local 25-yard-long pool. But swimming while traveling can be challenging. “Most hotel pools are too tiny or too crowded,” she said.Then, while planning a trip to Chicago, Ms. Heisler, from Ann Arbor, Mich., came across a photo of the hotel pool of her dreams. In the Intercontinental Hotel, the 25-yard-long pool, built in 1929, is one of the oldest in Chicago and is surrounded by Greek-inspired marble decoration. “You feel like you’re swimming in an ancient Greek temple. It’s a magical experience,” said…

They may look impromptu. But they are not. Pop-up performances in Times Square aren’t quite the spontaneous events the term suggests.Shakira’s performance on Tuesday evening lasted barely longer than a subway trip from the Port Authority bus terminal to Grand Central and went off without a hitch. But that was largely because of months of behind-the-scenes planning that included securing permits, meeting multiple times with city officials and the police, and carefully calibrating when, exactly, to announce the secretly planned show.Overseeing those preparations was Nick Holmsten, the co-founder and co-chief executive of TSX Entertainment, which operates a large concrete stage…

President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran said on Tuesday that Israel’s airstrikes on an Iranian embassy compound in Damascus, Syria, which killed three top Iranian commanders, will not go unanswered. Government supporters took to the streets and called for retaliation against Israel.The strike, on part of the Iranian Embassy complex in Damascus, killed three generals in Iran’s Quds Force and four other officers, making it one of the deadliest attacks of the yearslong shadow war between Israel and Iran.Mr. Raisi said it was an “inhumane assault in brazen violation of international law,” in comments reported by Tasnim, a semiofficial news agency.…

King Charles III attended the Easter church service on Sunday at Windsor Castle with Queen Camilla, later greeting well-wishers who had turned out to see his first significant public appearance since disclosing last month that he has cancer.Charles, 75, has continued to work while undergoing treatment, greeting visitors and holding his weekly meetings with the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak. But he has suspended public engagements on the advice of his doctors.Strolling out of the church after the service ended, Charles shook hands and chatted with the people who had gathered outside, telling one, “You’re very brave to stand out…

And now? Wrap dresses occupy a more curious category, like skinny jeans or ankle booties or long cardigans: once a closet staple, now a staple of closet clean-outs. Ms. Sanders may not be able to find them in New York department stores, but they’re readily available in Ohio thrift stores, said Kathleen Martin, who lives in Columbus and makes YouTube videos about thrifting.“Specifically, I’m seeing the kind you might connote with 2010s business casual,” she said — with slinky fabric and ditsy prints. Sometimes the stores miscategorize them, Ms. Martin added, as robes instead of dresses. In 2020, during the…

If it seems like plastic surrounds nearly every cucumber, apple and pepper in the produce aisle, it does.What began with cellophane in the 1930s picked up speed with the rise of plastic clamshells in the 1980s and bagged salads in the 1990s. Online grocery shopping turbocharged it.But now the race is on for what people who grow and sell fruits and vegetables are calling a moon shot: breaking plastic’s stranglehold on produce.In a March survey among produce professionals on LinkedIn, the shift to biodegradable material was voted the top trend. “It’s big,” said Soren Bjorn, chief executive officer of Driscoll’s,…

A key relic of the genesis of Giacomo Puccini’s two operas set in Asia can be found not in Italy, where both works premiered, nor in China or Japan, where they are set, but — of all places — in Morristown, N.J.There, in the Morris Museum’s collection of mechanical musical instruments and automata, is a music box from around 1877. During a visit to the museum in 2012, the musicologist W. Anthony Sheppard happened upon the box and, listening to it, was surprised to find that it contained melodies present in those Puccini operas, “Madama Butterfly” (1904) and “Turandot” (left…

Since its founding in 2010 by the chef José Andrés after a devastating earthquake in Haiti, the relief group World Central Kitchen has turned up at some of the globe’s biggest disasters, crises and conflicts, with the goal of doing what chefs do best: feed people.The nonprofit group teams up with local food providers, governments and restaurateurs to quickly scale up and provide meals to people in need. Last week, in an update on its work in Gaza, the organization said the devastation and need there was “the most dire we’ve ever seen or experienced in our 15-year history.”On Tuesday,…