Author: NY TIMES

As the sun set in Manhattan’s meatpacking district on Monday evening, the Whitney Museum of American Art swelled with crowds for the opening of the 81st Whitney Biennial. This year’s show, “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” contends with questions of what is “real” through works about the rise of artificial intelligence, the fluidity of gender and the fragility of nature.Critics and gallerists brushed past the filmmaker Darren Aronofsky while he studied a series of sculptural figures by Rose B. Simpson.“I read the museum’s text on the wall explaining it, and I like this year’s theme,” Mr. Aronofsky said. “Everyone…

Tesla and a former employee have agreed to settle a closely watched lawsuit that cast a harsh light on the carmaker’s treatment of Black workers.Lawyers for Tesla and for Owen Diaz, who worked at the company’s factory in Fremont, Calif., did not disclose the terms of the settlement in a legal filing on Friday. “The parties have reached an amicable resolution of their disputes,” Lawrence A. Organ, a lawyer for Mr. Diaz, said in an email, adding that he could not comment further.Last year, a jury in federal court in San Francisco awarded Mr. Diaz $3.2 million after he presented…

Federal prosecutors said on Friday that Sam Bankman-Fried, the cryptocurrency mogul who was convicted of masterminding a multibillion-dollar fraud, should receive a prison sentence of 40 to 50 years.The prosecutors outlined the recommendation in a filing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Mr. Bankman-Fried’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for March 28, when Judge Lewis A. Kaplan will decide his fate. He faces a maximum possible penalty of 110 years.“Justice requires that he receive a prison sentence commensurate with the extraordinary dimensions of his crimes,” the prosecutors said in a 116-page sentencing memo to the judge.The federal probation department separately recommended…

Kent Campbell, an instrumental figure in the global battle against malaria — most notably in Africa, where he led an innovative program providing bed nets to protect rural villagers from the mosquitoes carrying the disease — died on Feb. 20 in Oro Valley, Ariz., a suburb of Tucson. He was 80.His death, in a nursing care facility, was caused by complications of cancer, his children said.As chief of the malaria branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 1981 to 1993, and later as an adviser to UNICEF and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Dr. Campbell is…

Dear listeners,It’s Jon — I’m filling in for Lindsay today for a very special installment of The Amplifier. By way of introduction, I’ve been a pop music critic at the Times for … around 15 years? (Let us not speak of that further.) I am also the host of Popcast, our weekly music podcast, and the co-host, with Joe Coscarelli, of Popcast (Deluxe), our YouTube conversation show. Like and subscribe!The primary reason I’ve enjoyed this job for so long is that it’s never boring. Surprise lurks around every corner and in every online wormhole. New artists with novel twists on…

President Biden on Friday praised Senator Chuck Schumer’s address lashing out at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, calling it “a good speech” that raised concerns “shared not only by him but by many Americans.”Even though Mr. Biden did not explicitly endorse any of the specific criticisms in the speech, or Mr. Schumer’s call for elections to replace Mr. Netanyahu, the president’s comments were the latest step in his escalating public critique of the Israeli prime minister.In private, the two have clashed in a series of phone calls — the last of which was a month ago — but Mr.…

Serge Raoul, an Alsatian-born former filmmaker who with his brother, Guy, a classically trained chef, founded Raoul’s, a clubby French bistro and SoHo canteen in Lower Manhattan that drew generations of artists, rock stars, writers, models, machers and movie people — along with those who yearned to be near them — died on March 8 at his home in Nyack, N.Y. He was 86.The cause was a glioblastoma, said his son, Karim Raoul.Raoul’s opened in 1975 — it’s still operating under his son’s watch — when the SoHo neighborhood was a partial wasteland, peopled by the artists who had been…

Few people on earth put more thought, care or flair into their outfits than the aficionados at a rare vintage clothing sale.The elite collectors invited to attend the opening-night cocktails for the Sturbridge Show in New York City on Thursday evening think about clothes the way many people think about food — consuming for sustenance as much as for pleasure. Minutes after the doors opened at 5 p.m., the eager vintage hounds wove through rows of artfully merchandised booths noses down in search of something delectable.“Tonight it’s the early birds — mostly dealers shopping for their own stores,” said David…

Since a trio of media titans announced a new sports-focused streaming service last month, key details of the project have been shrouded in mystery. How much would it cost? Where would it be based? And who would lead the new company?Now, some of the particulars are beginning to come into focus.On Friday, the companies behind the service — Fox, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery — said that it would be led by Pete Distad, a former executive at Apple who had been in charge of distribution of the tech giant’s Apple TV+ streaming service. Mr. Distad, 50, will be responsible…

The Supreme Court, in a pair of unanimous decisions on Friday, added some clarity to a vexing constitutional puzzle: how to decide when elected officials violate the First Amendment by blocking people from their social media accounts.Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the court in the lead case, said two things are required before officials may be sued by people they have blocked. The officials must have been empowered to speak for the government on the issues they addressed on their sites, she wrote, and they must have used that authority in the posts in question.The court did not apply…