Author: NY TIMES

Seizing one of his biggest media moments ahead of the election in November, President Biden delivered a State of the Union address on Thursday that doubled as a campaign kickoff speech, presenting himself to Americans as a still-feisty leader prepared for the rigor of a grueling campaign.Whether his pitch resonates with voters remains to be seen. But plenty tuned in to see what he was offering.The live viewership for Mr. Biden’s speech will probably exceed last year’s television audience of 27.3 million, according to early figures released by Nielsen on Friday. Preliminary numbers show that roughly 28 million people watched…

OpenAI said on Friday that Sam Altman, its high-profile chief executive, would rejoin its board of directors, more than three months after he was briefly pushed out of the company.The move comes ahead of a highly anticipated report by a law firm hired by OpenAI’s board of directors to investigate Mr. Altman and his sudden removal from the company in November. In reinstating Mr. Altman to its board, the nonprofit’s independent board members expressed confidence in him and signaled that the coming report could remove concerns about his leadership style.Mr. Altman returned as chief executive just five days after being…

As a child, Josh Patner became accustomed to stepping over his mom, who used to lie down in the kitchen whenever her mother-in-law would call.“My grandmother would talk her ear off,” Mr. Patner, 61, recalled. To cope, his mother would “lie on the floor and hold the phone away from her head.” Mr. Patner’s father, also a fan of the floor, took a 20-minute nap under the family’s piano each night after work.So it is unsurprising, perhaps, that Mr. Patner enjoys floor time at his home in Brooklyn or even at his friend’s places — in part to stretch and…

At a time when many orchestras are relying on entrenched repertoire and beloved artists to shore up their dwindling audiences, the New York Philharmonic on Thursday night offered three thrilling new perspectives — two from younger, female performers making their Philharmonic debuts, the third a world premiere.One of the debuting artists was the dynamic conductor Elim Chan. Born in Hong Kong, trained in the United States and already a sensation in Europe, Chan walked to the podium with confidence. Her physical ease was justified: She showed up to her first gig with the Philharmonic fully ready to harness its forces.She…

A pro-Palestinian group slashed and spray-painted a century-old portrait of Arthur James Balfour at the University of Cambridge on Friday, defacing a painting of the British official whose pledge of support in 1917 for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” helped pave the way to Israel’s founding three decades later.The group, Palestine Action, said in a statement that the destruction of the portrait in Trinity College, Cambridge, was intended to call attention to “the bloodshed of the Palestinian people since the Balfour Declaration was issued,” particularly in light of the current conflict in Gaza.A…

A federal judge has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to submit documents related to Prince Harry’s visa for the court to review after the department refused to release them to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, under the Freedom of Information Act.The Heritage Foundation has sued the department, contending that it has a right to see the documents as part of research into whether Prince Harry had been improperly allowed to reside in the United States given his admissions in his 2023 memoir and elsewhere that he had used cocaine and other drugs.The foundation had sought the documents…

Christopher Joseph Marazzo did the unthinkable one Friday evening in October 2019. He left his bowl of pasta unfinished, and walked over to Rose Angelina Teresa Minutaglio’s booth in the back room at Forlini’s Italian restaurant in Lower Manhattan.“She has this old world beauty, like a black-and-white photo,” said Mr. Marazzo, who turns 33 on Saturday. “She looks just like Sophia Loren.”He often wrangled five to 15 friends to join him in his regular booth two Fridays a month while the singer Angelo Ruggiero belted out ’50s and ’60s tunes and Italian songs. The restaurant closed in 2022. (The painting…

Max Hardy, who helped bring a new level of chef-driven yet accessible cuisine to his native Detroit, and who was widely considered among the most promising of a young generation of Black culinary stars, died on Monday. He was 40.His publicist, David E. Rudolph, announced the death but did not provide a cause or location. He said Mr. Hardy had been in good health as recently as the weekend.Though he was born in Detroit, Mr. Hardy moved with his family to South Florida when he was young. As a budding chef, he drew on the region’s Latin American influences, as…

Days after Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, complained publicly that Apple had blocked it from starting a competing app store in Europe, the technology companies said Apple had reversed course and would allow Epic to go ahead with its plan.The reversal highlights the way that Apple is changing its operations to comply with a new European tech competition law. That law, the Digital Markets Act, which went into effect on Thursday, requires Apple to give app makers alternatives for selling software to iPhone and iPad users, including the ability to use competing app stores and payment systems other than…

The Food and Drug Administration has decided to delay action on a closely watched Alzheimer’s drug, donanemab, which the agency was widely expected to approve this month. The F.D.A. will instead require donanemab to undergo the scrutiny of a panel of independent experts, the drug’s maker, Eli Lilly and Company, said Friday.“The F.D.A. has informed Lilly it wants to further understand topics related to evaluating the safety and efficacy of donanemab, including the safety results in donanemab-treated patients and the efficacy implications of the unique trial design,” the company said in a statement.The decision is likely to surprise many Alzheimer’s…