Author: NY TIMES

Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba’s “They Shot the Piano Player” is an astoundingly vibrant animated project, fitting for its subject matter: the history and legacy of Brazilian bossa nova told through the story of the disappearance and presumed death of Francisco Tenório Júnior, one of the genre’s most celebrated pianists and composers.The film, actually a documentary set in a fictional context, begins in 2010, with Jeff Goldblum voicing the made-up music journalist Jeff Harris, whose article on bossa nova in The New Yorker lands him a book deal and a trip to Rio de Janeiro to investigate the fate one…

A man set himself on fire on Sunday afternoon outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, according to the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington.Officers with the U.S. Secret Service extinguished the fire outside the embassy, in northwestern Washington, around 1 p.m., said Vito Maggiolo, a spokesman with the city’s fire department. The man was taken to a nearby hospital with life-threatening injuries and remains in critical condition.The police also investigated a suspicious vehicle nearby for explosives, but Sean Hickman, a police spokesman, said the scene had been cleared by 4 p.m. Officers with the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol,…

Alfred Grosser, a French political scientist and historian whose writings and activism played a major role in conciliating two ancestral enemies, France and Germany, in the wake of World War II, died on Feb. 7 in Paris. He was 99.His death, in a nursing home, was confirmed by his son Marc.Through more than two dozen books of history, political science and memoirs, decades of teaching at one of France’s premier universities and many articles on contemporary affairs, Mr. Grosser made it his life’s work to bring together two countries with long histories of mutual mistrust, if not mutual hatred.The need…

A Texas man pleaded guilty to insider training after he was accused of making $1.7 million in illegal profits by purchasing and selling stocks based on his wife’s work conversations, which he had overheard while she was working remotely at home, federal prosecutors said on Thursday.The man, Tyler Loudon, of Houston, bought 46,450 shares of stock in the truck stop and travel center company TravelCenters of America after he heard his wife discuss her employer’s proposed acquisition of it, according to a complaint filed in the Southern District of Texas by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.Mr. Loudon’s wife, who…

The Food and Drug Administration approved a drug this month that cuts the risk of severe reactions in children and adults exposed to trace amounts of peanuts, tree nuts, milk, dairy and other food allergens — a move that could dramatically improve quality of life for people coping with these risks. The results of the clinical trial supporting the decision were published on Sunday.While the drug, Xolair, offers a new layer of protection to people who may have life-threatening reactions to common foods, and especially to those who are allergic to several foods, its use comes with important caveats.Does Xolair…

It helped, Davidsen said, when the Met’s orchestra — led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, its music director — joined the cast in rehearsals. “You wouldn’t think that it takes 70 more musicians,” she added, “but they really help concentrate the way I sing.”Nézet-Séguin and Davidsen have worked together since 2019, when she sang a concert “Fidelio” with him in Montreal. This “Forza” is their first staged collaboration. He called her “the dream singer,” not only because of her voice, but also because of “the million shades that she’s finding in it.”What sets her apart from other sopranos, he said, is “really…

Some 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia’s full-scale invasion began two years ago, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday, acknowledging for the first time in the war a concrete figure for Ukraine’s toll.“This is a big loss for us,” Mr. Zelensky said at a news conference in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. But he declined to disclose the number of wounded or missing, saying that Russia could use the information to gauge the number of Ukraine’s active forces.Mr. Zelensky’s tally could not be independently verified. It differs sharply from estimates by U.S. officials, who, this past summer, put the…

Running a child care business has long been a very challenging math problem: Many providers can barely afford to operate, yet many parents cannot afford to pay more.During the pandemic, there was temporary relief. The federal government spent $24 billion to keep the industry afloat. Many providers were given thousands of dollars a month, depending on their size, which they used to pay for expenses, the biggest of which was wages.But that funding, which started in April 2021, expired in September. Five months later, the business is more precarious than ever.In addition to the end of the monthly checks, providers’…

Raphael (Ursel Tilk), the poseur metalhead at the center of Rainer Sarnet’s subversively earnest comedy “The Invisible Fight,” set in 1970s Estonia, swaggers around flaunting a golden cross and fumbling kung fu kicks over a Black Sabbath soundtrack. To modern audiences, he’s just some doofus. But back in the U.S.S.R. — which, at various times, outlawed Eastern martial arts, Western rock music, and religion — he’s a threat to the state.Once, kids like Raphael were mocked on propaganda posters and locked in psychiatric hospitals. “Everything cool is banned in the Soviet Union,” he huffs. And so Raphael ditches the pastel…

When Yulia Seleznyova walks around her home city in Russia, she scrutinizes everyone passing by in the hope that she will lock eyes with her son Aleksei.She last heard from him on New Year’s Eve 2022, when he sent holiday greetings from the school in eastern Ukraine that his unit of recently mobilized soldiers was using as a headquarters.The Ukrainian military hit the school with U.S.-supplied HIMARS rockets on New Year’s Day. The Russian authorities acknowledged dozens of deaths, though pro-Russian military bloggers and Ukrainian authorities estimated that the real number was in the hundreds.Aleksei was not recognized in the…