Author: NY TIMES

BroadwayOPERATION MINCEMEAT A sneaky compassion lies at the heart of this caper of a show, a deliciously eccentric London import that won the 2024 Olivier Award for best new musical. Starring the original West End cast, it’s a riff on a bizarre true story from World War II, when British Intelligence, keen to misdirect the Germans, dressed up a dead man as a Royal Marines major, planted a fake invasion plan on him and dropped him in the sea for the enemy to find. Through June 15 at the Golden Theater. (All theater listings by LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES)BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB…

Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived on Monday in Saudi Arabia for the second leg of a whistle-stop Middle East tour to discuss the future of both Gaza and Ukraine. The visit came amid criticism that the Trump administration was acting without consulting relevant foreign partners about the wars in both countries.The Saudi embassy in Washington announced that Mr. Rubio met with Faisal bin Farhan, the Saudi foreign minister, while a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was expected later in the day.Mr. Rubio, who flew to Riyadh from Israel, was expected to press the Saudi leadership to propose…

South Korean actress Kim Sae-ron, a former child star whose promising career suffered a setback in recent years after a drunk-driving incident, was found dead in her home on Sunday afternoon, police said.Ms. Kim, who was 24, was discovered by a friend who had visited her house, according to the Seongdong Police Station in Seoul. The police on Monday said Ms. Kim’s death was a suicide. One of South Korea’s most lauded young actors, Ms. Kim had not appeared in any shows since she faced public criticism after being convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol in 2022.Her death…

The Internal Revenue Service is preparing to give a team member working with Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency access to sensitive taxpayer data, people familiar with the matter said.The systems at the I.R.S. contain the private financial data tied to millions of Americans, including their tax returns, Social Security numbers, addresses, banking details and employment information.“Waste, fraud and abuse have been deeply entrenched in our broken system for far too long,” Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said. “It takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it.”Mr. Fields added: “DOGE will continue to shine a…

OpenAI’s board of directors on Friday rejected a $97.4 billion bid by Elon Musk and a consortium of investors to gain control of the artificial intelligence company, deepening a feud between Mr. Musk and OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman.In a statement, Bret Taylor, the chairman of the OpenAI board, said, “OpenAI is not for sale, and the board has unanimously rejected Mr. Musk’s latest attempt to disrupt his competition.” Mr. Taylor was referring to Mr. Musk’s own A.I. company, xAI.OpenAI sent a letter on Friday to Marc Toberoff, the lawyer representing Mr. Musk and the investors making the bid, saying…

Soon, Irene Mekel will need to pick the day she dies.She’s not in any hurry: She quite likes her life, in a trim, airy house in Castricum, a Dutch village by the sea. She has flowers growing in her back garden, and there is a street market nearby where vendors greet villagers by name. But if her life is going to end the way she wants, she will have to pick a date, sooner than she might like.“It’s a tragedy,” she said.Ms. Mekel, 82, has Alzheimer’s disease. It was diagnosed a year ago. She knows her cognitive function is slowly…

Nobody doubted that Lea Salonga could sing.She had won a Tony Award at the age of 20 for her breakout role as the besotted Vietnamese teen Kim in “Miss Saigon,” and sung her heart out as Éponine, and later Fantine, in Broadway productions of “Les Misérables.” She provided the crystalline vocals of not one but two Disney princesses: the warrior heroine of 1998’s “Mulan” and the magic carpet-riding Princess Jasmine in 1992’s “Aladdin.”But could the singer handle Sondheim — a composer heralded for creating some of the most challenging, idiosyncratic work seen on the American stage — on Broadway? Could…

No international body is searching for hundreds of Yazidi women and girls still held captive by the Islamist terrorists. Instead, their fates depend on a ragtag army of activists, relatives and armchair detectives.Feb. 16, 2025The investigator’s eyes dart between the two photographs. In one, a young girl, maybe 10, is wearing a colorful shirt, her hair loose. In the other, a woman, her face weathered to an indeterminate age and framed by a black hijab, stares into the camera.The first picture is among hundreds of images of young girls sent in by families desperate to find loved ones who were…

Gunnar Nielsen’s Premier League career is short.It’s actually very brief: lasted 17 minutes. Goalkeeper was introduced to Manchester City’s late substitute against Arsenal in 2010 as Shea gave a shoulder injury aggravated by him a week ago in vain for Paul Scholes at Manchester Derby ) the late champion suffered a dive.But this is a big deal. Those 17 minutes represented the first (and only) of the Faroe Islands players in the Premier League. It was a big deal and the local radio station couldn’t even wait until the game was over to call his brother for some reaction. Happily,…

Hostile to Russia ever since Soviet tanks appeared near her childhood home in 1968 in what was then Czechoslovakia, the now grandmother was delighted to have her photograph taken with a soldier who was fighting Russian invaders in Ukraine.“He was a hero to me,” Lucia Stasselova, 66, said of the soldier, whom she met two years ago in Bratislava, the capital of what is now Slovakia. “Everyone wanted a picture with him. I was very happy to get one.”The soldier, a commander of the Georgian Legion, a unit of volunteers fighting for Ukraine from the former Soviet republic of Georgia,…