Author: NY TIMES

LJ Rader tries to be online as much as possible during big sporting events, but he missed the first half of last Sunday’s N.F.L. playoff game between the Buffalo Bills and the Kansas City Chiefs because of a dinner engagement. After he left the restaurant, Mr. Rader checked his phone and saw an unusual request: The N.F.L. had tagged him on X, formerly known as Twitter, hoping he would deliver one of his signature creations.“I would’ve been so mad if I was still eating and had missed this,” Mr. Rader said.On social media, Mr. Rader is the wizard behind Art…

The crash diets have crashed, the brand-new budgets won’t budge and your Peloton is now the world’s most expensive laundry rack. But even if every one of your New Year’s resolutions is toast, there’s still one start-of-the-year chore you would be wise to handle: your retirement review.This is a perfect time to take stock of where your retirement is heading — whether you’re still on the job or have stopped working and are now collecting Social Security — financial planners say. It gives you a full year of investment returns and personal spending to review, as well as a momentarily…

Much of 20th-century classical music owes a deep thanks to jazz. And while on paper, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s concert at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday night was organized for a festival at the hall, Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice, the subtext was American jazz.All three of the composers on the program (Stravinsky, Weill and Gershwin) loved and, to one extent or another, made references to the style in their music. Although Stravinsky was based in Europe when he premiered “Petrushka” in 1911, he was already a U.S. citizen when he revised this piece in 1947, and had…

Today the United Nations’ highest court, the International Court of Justice, issued its first, preliminary decision in the genocide case South Africa brought against Israel.South Africa won its application for “provisional measures,” roughly equivalent to a temporary injunction, ordering Israel to take proactive steps to ensure genocide doesn’t occur in the future, while the broader case is pending.But the court declined to order the immediate cease-fire that South Africa requested. Instead, it ordered Israel to prevent its forces from committing or inciting genocidal acts, and to enable humanitarian assistance and basic services in Gaza. It also said it was “gravely…

One is accused of kidnapping a woman. Another is said to have handed out ammunition. A third was described as taking part in the massacre at a kibbutz where 97 people died. And all were said to be employees of the United Nations aid agency that schools, shelters and feeds hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.The accusations are contained in a dossier provided to the United States government that details Israel’s claims against a dozen employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency who, it says, played a role in the Hamas attacks against Israel on…

One night in November, a procession of young artists, critics and curators climbed the creaky stairs of a building in Chinatown in Lower Manhattan to attend an opening at a buzzy little gallery, Ulrik. The show, “Bettina: New York 1965–86,” was made up of rarely seen photographs and sculptures by an enigmatic artist who lived for five decades at the fabled Chelsea Hotel, where she created her works in a cluttered fifth-floor apartment until her death in 2021.Writers for Artforum and Frieze pushed through the crowd to get glimpses of the black-and-white street photography. Students from Pratt Institute drank cans…

Over his 54 years as a financial analyst, Richard X. Bove perfected the art of grabbing attention.Through thousands of newspaper interviews, cable news appearances and radio segments, Mr. Bove turned what can be a dull, by-the-numbers career into a more showy one. Weighing in on the economy and the inner workings of Wall Street, he often bucked conventional wisdom and made enemies along the way. By his own recollection, he never turned down a media request; American Banker once called him “the country’s most quotable bank analyst.”Last week, a few hours after completing a spot on Bloomberg television, the 83-year-old…

There’s a moment near the end of the 2017 documentary “Mommy Dead and Dearest” where Gypsy Rose Blanchard is filming her boyfriend at the time, Nicholas Godejohn, as he lies nude in a hotel room bed. A day earlier, Godejohn had stabbed to death Gypsy’s mother, Dee Dee Blanchard. The killing was part of a plot the couple hatched to free Gypsy, who was then 23, from her mother’s grip so they could be together. In the short video, we hear Gypsy make a playful sexual comment amid her copious, distinctive giggling.Dee Dee Blanchard had abused and controlled her daughter,…

Marlena Shaw, who cultivated a sultry stage presence and husky voice from the final echoes of the big-band era, to the go-go Playboy Clubs of the 1960s, to the rise of funk, to disco and finally to the modern cabaret circuit, died on Jan. 19. She was 84.Her daughter MarLa Bradshaw announced her death on social media but did not share any further details.Ms. Shaw first came to public notice in the mid-1960s, when she performed at Playboy Clubs around the country. Describing one of those performances in 1966, The Los Angeles Times labeled her a “pretty girl singer” but…

American-led negotiators are edging closer to an agreement in which Israel would suspend its war in Gaza for about two months in exchange for the release of more than 100 hostages still held by Hamas, a deal that could be sealed in the next two weeks and will be the subject of talks in Paris on Sunday.Negotiators have developed a written draft agreement merging proposals offered by Israel and Hamas in the last 10 days into a basic framework that, if accepted, would transform the conflict consuming the region. While there are still important disagreements to be worked out, negotiators…