Author: NY TIMES

At 28, Jan Lisiecki can certainly be called a young musician. But of the pianists making recital debuts at Carnegie Hall recently, he’s something of an elder statesman.Last month, Yunchan Lim, then still in his teens, confidently pressed through the challenges of Chopin’s études. And on Tuesday, Alexander Malofeev, 22, was an unruffled guide through the richness of Russian late Romanticism and its afterglow.Both Lim and Malofeev were appearing at Carnegie for the first time, but Lisiecki has been an occasional presence with orchestras there since 2016. While the main hall’s scale can be daunting for a solo recitalist, with…

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken will travel to Israel this week, adding a stop to his latest Middle East trip amid intense diplomatic efforts to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.Mr. Blinken arrived in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Wednesday afternoon. The State Department initially made no mention of Israel in announcing his travel plans, saying only that he would visit Saudi Arabia and then Egypt on the trip — Mr. Blinken’s sixth to the region since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel set off the war in Gaza.On Wednesday, the State Department said that Mr.…

Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s barrier-breaking taoiseach or prime minister, said on Wednesday that he would step down as the country’s leader, days after the defeat of two referendums that the coalition government had championed and after years of waning public support for his political party, Fine Gael.Ireland is scheduled to hold a general election early next year, and his decision will not trigger an earlier election, he said.“I know this will come as a surprise to many people and a disappointment to some, but I hope you will understand my decision,” Mr. Varadkar told a press briefing outside Leinster House in…

A few years ago, my in-laws gave our oldest child and another grandchild generous monetary gifts when they turned 13 in the same year. The other grandchild had a bar mitzvah that year, but we’re not religious so our child did not. Still, they both received checks. Our second child turned 13 two years ago, but she received no such gift. My husband and I think this was an oversight. We don’t believe his parents meant to favor one child over another. Should my husband mention this to them? Our younger child, now 15, feels slighted by her grandparents and…

Microsoft makes another bid for A.I. supremacyThe heavyweight fight to dominate artificial intelligence just entered a new round. Microsoft has poached an A.I. pioneer just as Apple and Google discuss forming a united front to make up lost ground.The latest maneuvers add serious firepower to Microsoft’s bid to lead in artificial intelligence. But they could lead to more regulatory scrutiny into the company’s deal making in this high-stakes sector.Microsoft hired a former Google executive to run its consumer A.I unit. Mustafa Suleyman co-founded DeepMind, a British start-up that was acquired by the search giant in 2014 and became the heart…

It was a performance of hard-won wisdom. When the eminent pianist Mitsuko Uchida and the tenor Mark Padmore teamed up for Schubert’s “Winterreise” on Friday at Zankel Hall, they brought the maturity of hindsight to a genre-defining work of young, unrequited love. The concert was part of Uchida’s Perspectives series with Carnegie Hall.Schubert’s cycle comprises 24 songs, most of them in minor keys, and derives from the natural world endless metaphors for heartache. The winter’s journey of the title begins with a breakup, and the narrator spends the rest of the time ruminating upon the fallout. The narrator’s beloved, he…

Ukrainian soldiers spent hours ducking in trenches as artillery exploded around them, then dashed for the safety of an armored personnel carrier — only to be chased through the open rear ramp of the vehicle by an exploding drone.“All I could see were sparks in my eyes,” said one of the soldiers, a sergeant, recounting how the pursuing drone blew up, leaving him and his team wounded but somehow still alive. He asked to be identified only by his first name, Oleksandr, according to military protocol.Fighting on the plain in southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, where Oleksandr’s vehicle was hit earlier…

In “Challengers,” Zendaya plays a tennis star named Tashi Duncan. Her clothes are central to her identity; the character is sponsored by Adidas and costumed in sporty-and-rich outfits by the designer Jonathan Anderson.“She’ll have a fashion line,” one of Tashi’s suitors predicts to another in the trailer. “She is going to turn her whole family into millionaires.”Fashion is equally important to the real-life Zendaya — a tool of both image-making and moneymaking. She has become a defining star of the modern movie press tour. Coverage of these appearances can be feverish, with thousands of articles and social-media posts produced for…

President Biden plans to announce on Wednesday that his administration will award up to $8.5 billion in grants to Intel, a major investment to bolster the nation’s semiconductor production, during a tour of battleground states meant to sell his economic agenda.Mr. Biden is set to make the announcement during a visit to the Intel campus in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler, Ariz., White House officials said. The award, which will go to the construction and expansion of Intel facilities around the United States, is the biggest the federal government has made with funding from the CHIPS Act, which lawmakers passed…

Los Angeles, to drivers, has never been for the faint of heart. A land where most cannot fathom life without wheels, it offers a daily parade of frustration: congestion, accidents, construction, road rage, tedium.Every transplant has a story about learning to adapt.“You get in the rhythm of matching everyone else’s energy,” said Tamara Siemering, 30, an actor who relocated from Sacramento a year ago. The difference in car culture here, she said, is wild.“It feels very self-centered,” she said. “Everyone is like, ‘I’ve got somewhere to be, out of my way.’ There’s not a lot of cooperative driving — there’s…