Author: NY TIMES

Have you ever stood in an art gallery, contemplating a vacuum, wondering if it’s art or if the maintenance staff just forgot to put it away? I love this feeling. To me, art is supposed to leave us re-evaluating everything we think we know about the world. But it does underline how knotty and capricious judging art can be — a matter also taken up by “Art Talent Show.”Directed by Tomas Bojar and Adela Komrzy, “Art Talent Show” (opening this week in theaters) follows hopeful applicants to Prague’s Academy of Fine Arts, the oldest art college in the Czech Republic.…

A large-scale Russian missile and drone attack damaged power plants and caused blackouts for more than a million Ukrainians on Friday morning, in what Ukrainian officials said was one of the war’s largest assaults on energy infrastructure.At least three people were killed in the assault, and 15 others were injured, according to the office of Ukraine’s general prosecutor.The strikes came as ​the Kremlin escalated its rhetoric over the conflict, saying that Russia was “in a state of war” in Ukraine — and moving beyond the euphemism “special military operation” — because of the West’s heavy involvement on the Ukrainian side.In…

SEOUL — For years, it was almost impossible to see Shohei Ohtani anywhere without his longtime translator, Ippei Mizuhara, just a few steps away. Shui was suddenly fired on Thursday for his involvement in illegal gambling, and it was almost impossible to see Ohtani after that.Ohtani did not enter the Los Angeles Dodgers clubhouse during the 50 minutes reporters were allowed in before Thursday’s Seoul series finale against the San Diego Padres. Nor did he venture into the hallway that leads from the clubhouse to the dugout, where more than three dozen cameras from English, Japanese and Korean news media…

Once Michael Mance and Shannie Easterby adopted a child, it didn’t take long to realize that a 400-square-foot apartment wasn’t going to work for them anymore.“It was a lovely little apartment,” said Dr. Mance, a clinical psychologist, of the one-bedroom co-op on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that they bought for about $300,000 in 2006. But when they added Bella, now 8, to the mix in 2015, it began to seem less ideal.“Around the six-month mark, it just became obvious that we were not going to be able to sleep in the same room anymore,” Dr. Mance, 50, said.…

After a utility pole fell and ignited a wildfire, Frank King and his family raced to escape as electrical transformers exploded around their homes near Oregon’s coast. A bright red glow was visible in the rearview mirror for miles.The fire three and a half years ago destroyed 300 homes in Otis, Ore., including the one that Mr. King, a 101-year-old veteran of World War II, had lived in for almost three decades.“A lot of the things that reminded me of the good things in my life are gone,” said Mr. King, who believes things might have turned out differently had…

Listen to and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTubeThis week, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Apple, saying the company holds a monopoly over the smartphone market. We break down the lawsuit and ask whether it will be a major turning point in Apple’s dominance. Then, Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, argues that smartphones and social media are the cause of widespread increases in mental health issues among young people. He tells us his four potential solutions to the problem. And finally, Reddit’s market capitalization hit $9.2 billion when it debuted on the New York Stock Exchange…

When Flau’jae Johnson helped lead the Louisiana State University women’s basketball team to a national championship last April, in her first season on the squad, she ascended to the top of the sport. The win, the school’s first title, also vaulted her as a hip-hop artist, lifting a career that has found her teaming up with rap royalty.At least twice in the past year, Johnson staged rap performances within 24 hours of a game or a practice, in one instance opening for the chart-topping rapper and singer Rod Wave in Atlanta after traveling from Louisiana on a day off from…

When she took the stage to perform at Carnegie Hall in front of 107 Korean War veterans, the singer Kim Insoon was thinking of her father, an American soldier stationed in South Korea during the postwar decades whom she had never met or even seen.“You are my fathers,” she told the soldiers in the audience before singing “Father,” one of her Korean-language hits.“To me, the United States has always been my father’s country,” Ms. Kim said in a recent interview, recalling that 2010 performance. “It was also the first place where I wanted to show how successful I had become…

It’s time to put to bed rumors that King Charles III has died, speculation that has surely been fueled by his recent cancer diagnosis and by the fumbled communications about Catherine, Princess of Wales, as she recovers from a surgery in January. According to Buckingham Palace, the king is alive — and seemingly healthy enough to host a fashion show.On Saturday, an exhibition of garments made as part of a collaboration between Charles and the designers Vin Cara and Omi Ong, who go by Vin + Omi, opens at Sandringham Estate, the royal family’s private property in Norfolk County, England.The…

A sweeping effort by state regulators to find out why homeowners insurance is so expensive and hard for customers to secure is already facing challenges, as some crucial states say they may opt out of the call for data.The National Association of Insurance Commissioners, an umbrella group representing state insurance regulators, said on March 8 that state agencies were asking insurers for detailed data on how they were treating their customers, including information about the kinds of coverage they offer in various ZIP codes, the recent history of claims payouts in those areas, the size of deductibles for insurance customers…