Author: NY TIMES

It’s only been half a season. He only played 35 games. However, San Antonio Spurs phenom Victor Wembanyama has proven himself to be one of the most versatile players in NBA history. The scary thing is: He’s still improving by leaps and bounds.The player who LeBron James once described as “not a unicorn, but more like an alien” has become one of the most anticipated rookies in NBA history this season. Wembunyama was Considered by most to be the best rookie to enter the league since LeBron James in 2004, Wembanyama became the No. 1 pick in the 2023 NBA…

As a personal assistant to a well-to-do retiree, Nora Szigeti is tasked with much of the usual fare: managing a calendar, booking travel, running errands. But after her 70-year-old boss recently came across an Instagram post shared by the account Class of Palm Beach, which documents outfits people have worn around that wealthy town, she took on another duty: publicist.“My boss would be a perfect person for your site,” Ms. Szigeti, 50, recalled writing in a message to the account in November. Soon after, her employer, Oblio Wish, appeared in a video shared by Class of Palm Beach, in which…

With inflation falling, unemployment low and the Federal Reserve signaling it could soon begin cutting interest rates, forecasters are becoming increasingly optimistic that the U.S. economy could avoid a recession.Wells Fargo last week became the latest big bank to predict that the economy will achieve a soft landing, gently slowing rather than screeching to a halt. The bank’s economists had been forecasting a recession since the middle of 2022.Yet if forecasters were wrong when they predicted a recession last year, they could be wrong again, this time in the opposite direction. The risks that economists highlighted in 2023 haven’t gone…

Last Thanksgiving, Cynthia Mosson had been on her feet all day in her kitchen in Frankfort, Ind., preparing dinner for nine. She was nearly finished — the ham in the oven, the dressing made — when she suddenly felt the need to sit down.“I started hurting in my left shoulder,” said Ms. Mosson, 61. “It got really intense, and it started to go down my left arm.” She grew sweaty and pale and told her family, “I think I’m having a heart attack.”An ambulance sped her to a hospital where doctors confirmed that she had suffered a mild heart attack.…

Following is an overview of some of Callas’s career highlights at La Scala.“Aida” (Verdi): April 12, 1950Callas’s very first performance onstage at La Scala was as a substitute for the much-adored Renata Tebaldi, who was unwell. It was, by all accounts, a tepid debut. A skin condition had given the 26-year-old soprano facial blemishes that she awkwardly covered with veils. In “Maria Callas: An Intimate Biography,” by Anne Edwards, the director Franco Zeffirelli (who would go on to work with Callas) recalled “this overweight Greek lady, peeping out from behind her trailing chiffon,” with an “unevenness” in her voice. Her…

After more than 100 days of war, Israel’s limited progress in dismantling Hamas has raised doubts within the military’s high command about the near-term feasibility of achieving the country’s principal wartime objectives: eradicating Hamas and also liberating the Israeli hostages still in Gaza.Israel has established control over a smaller part of Gaza at this point in the war than it originally envisaged in battle plans from the start of the invasion, which were reviewed by The New York Times. That slower than expected pace has led some commanders to privately express their frustrations over the civilian government’s strategy for Gaza,…

It was the middle of the night in early January when a Russian missile streaked in and exploded in the center of Kharkiv, blasting down walls and shattering windows.The next day, people went shopping and to work, ate out in restaurants and clogged the streets with traffic jams, almost as if nothing had happened.But behind the business-as-usual veneer, residents of Kharkiv have been seething. Over the past month, Ukraine’s second-largest city has taken the brunt of Russia’s missile campaign, which has killed and wounded dozens of people, blown up buildings and unnerved everyone.It’s an almost daily torment. To vent, Kharkiv’s…

The headline was Gucci. The headline was always going to be Gucci, in the same way the Ever Given was destined to dominate the news cycle when the mammoth vessel, one of the largest container ships ever built, got stuck in the Suez Canal back in 2021.Gucci is, in a way, the Ever Given of the personal luxury goods trade. With more than 500 stores worldwide and an estimated market value in 2022 of $35.3 billion, it is that skyscraper-size tanker, caught sideways. The entire fashion business took a hit during the pandemic and then bounced back, or seemed to,…

The S&P 500 index closed at a record on Friday, crossing above its old high-water mark, set in early 2022. The gains show that investors have overcome fears of rising interest rates and panic about a recession that had governed stock trading for much of the past two years.Instead, they’re now betting that a drop in rates will help expand corporate profits, while the economy stays on a relatively solid footing.Even though the S&P 500 had struggled to push into the record — having bumped up against it for weeks before finally crossing above with jump on Friday — the…

An elite hacking group sponsored by Russian intelligence gained access to the emails of some of Microsoft’s senior executives beginning in late November, the company disclosed in a blog post and regulatory filing on Friday.Microsoft said it had discovered the intrusion a week ago and was still investigating. The hackers appeared to focus on combing through Microsoft’s corporate email accounts to look for information related to the hacking group, which Microsoft’s researchers called Midnight Blizzard.The hackers looked through emails from Microsoft’s senior leadership team as well as employees in cybersecurity, legal and other groups, and took some emails and attachments,…