As nations severed air links from southern Africa amid fears of another global surge of the coronavirus, scientists scrambled on Sunday to gather data on the new Omicron variant, its capabilities and — perhaps most important — how effectively the current vaccines will protect against it. The early findings are a mixed picture. The variant…
Virgil Abloh, the barrier-breaking Black designer whose ascent to the heights of the traditional luxury industry changed what was possible in fashion, died on Sunday in Chicago after a two-year battle with cardiac angiosarcoma, a rare cancer. He was 41. His death was confirmed by Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the luxury group that bought a…
In the rush to understand the threat posed by the Omicron variant, the worrisome new version of the coronavirus, some experts are pointing hopefully to early signs that it may cause only mild illness, without some of the trademark symptoms of Covid. But it is far too early to assume that the variant will not…
Sylvia Silver was born on Jan. 28, 1930, in the Bronx and grew up in Brooklyn, where her father, Samuel Silver, and her mother, Anna (Benblatt) Silver, owned a bakery and later a liquor store. The family lived above the bakery, an arrangement that suited Sylvia, who would later live above her own cake business.…
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Across the darkened Intracoastal Waterway in Palm Beach, a string of lights traced the twin towers of the Breakers Hotel. The white marble and stone walls of the Henry Morrison Flagler mansion — now a museum of life in the Gilded Age — glowed in a wash of spotlights. At…
One New York night in the early 1970s, a dancer and budding filmmaker named Wakefield Poole went to see a gay porn flick called “Highway Hustler” at a run-down theater in Times Square with his friends. As he settled into a tattered seat, he prepared to spend the next 45 minutes or so enjoyably aroused.…
LOS ANGELES — As the Hammer Museum emerges from last year’s pandemic shutdown, it has assembled a lineup of big names that it hopes will draw crowds back to its campus down the street from the University of California, Los Angeles: Cézanne, Manet, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec. And Waters. That would be Alice Waters, the restaurateur who…
PARIS — A couple decades ago France suffered a severe shock. A Spanish restaurant called El Bulli, on the Catalan coast north of Barcelona, led a culinary revolution so bold that French cuisine suddenly looked stilted, a self-satisfied tradition stuck in a cloying bed of butter and cream. In an article the French have never…
Brian Shelton’s life was ruled by Type 1 diabetes. When his blood sugar plummeted, he would lose consciousness without warning. He crashed his motorcycle into a wall. He passed out in a customer’s yard while delivering mail. Following that episode, his supervisor told him to retire, after a quarter century in the Postal Service. He…
Markets plunged on Friday, hope of taming the coronavirus dimmed and a new term entered the pandemic lexicon: Omicron. The Covid-19 variant that emerged in South Africa was named after the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet. The naming system, announced by the World Health Organization in May, makes public communication about variants easier and…