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    ‘Ghosts’ Review: The Sins of the Father, Visited on Everyone

    Ibsen’s scathing drama about medical and moral contagion gets a high-sheen Off Broadway staging starring a riveting Lily Rabe.As if under the weather, Jack O’Brien’s production of “Ghosts,” the 1881 Ibsen drama about medical and moral contagion, coughs three times to get started.First, as work lights illuminate a handsome study representing the home of Helena Alving, the cast arrives in rehearsal mode: Lily Rabe carrying a slouchy bucket bag and Billy Crudup a copy of The New York Times. Levon Hawke grabs a mint-green script from the library table as Hamish Linklater and Ella Beatty run the opening lines of the play — tonelessly, as if feeling all of its 144 years.Then comes a restart. Now the scene between Linklater (playing Engstrand, an alcoholic carpenter) and Beatty (playing Regina, Mrs. Alving’s maid) seems less perfunctory. They look at each other a little, instead of just their lines.Finally, as the work lights disappear into the flies, the scene is repeated and we are given the real, often remarkable, thing. The play’s opening argument — for Regina is not just Mrs. Alving’s maid but Engstrand’s estranged daughter — is now fully polished: lit, costumed and performed, in the Lincoln Center Theater manner, to a high upper-middlebrow sheen.I don’t know why O’Brien chose to place such a stock contemporary frame around the timelessly alarming 19th-century action. (The device returns briefly at the end of the show.) Perhaps he means his version of “Ghosts,” which opened Monday at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater in an adaptation by the Irish playwright Mark O’Rowe, to honor the process of repetition and refinement by which old ideas become new again as they are brought to life by succeeding generations.Certainly his casting suggests that. Rabe is the daughter of the playwright David Rabe, whose work has frequently been produced in this building. Linklater, her partner, is the son of the theatrical vocal coach Kristin Linklater. Hawke’s father, Ethan, played Macbeth and Hotspur here; his mother, Uma Thurman, played Mrs. Alving at Williamstown. Crudup has been a house star since “Arcadia” in 1995. And if Beatty’s connection to the company is less clear, well, she’s a daughter of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening. Enough said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Inside the Former ‘Underworld’ Where Ai Weiwei Makes Art

    Ahead of his largest-ever exhibition in the U.S., the dissident artist reflects on collecting jade and living below ground.For part of the year, the artist and activist Ai Weiwei works in a cavernous 30,000-square-foot studio on the underground levels of a former 19th-century brewery in Berlin. Its triple-height vaulted cellars, which Ai, a self-taught architect, renovated himself after leaving his native China in 2015, are now pristine and well-lit, but when he first visited the long-abandoned subterranean space, it was “completely dark,” he says, “like an underworld.” In that way, it recalls the underground home where the artist lived for five years as a child, a place he calls “the black hole”: a bare shelter on the edge of the Gurbantünggüt Desert in the remote Xinjiang region, one of the sites where Ai’s father, the renowned poet Ai Qing, was exiled following China’s Anti-Rightist Campaign in the late 1950s. In that half-buried home, Ai first encountered the authoritarianism and censorship that he has now spent four decades resisting, ridiculing and at times enduring again, as a defender of human rights and self-proclaimed political “troublemaker.” Today, he travels frequently, stopping in Berlin; Cambridge, England, where his sixteen-year-old son, Lao, his only child, attends school; and Montemor-o-Novo, a town in the countryside of southern Portugal whose sunny climate reminds him of his childhood in the desert. That approximately 20-acre property hosts a few assistants, as well as many cats, dogs, birds and fish and a reconstruction of his wooden Shanghai studio that was demolished by local authorities in 2011. Ai is used to constant movement, and to the possibility of displacement. “The concept of a home has never been truly established for me,” he says.Ai was first drawn to this once-derelict space as a creative challenge. “I’m more interested in problem-solving than in getting a beautiful studio,” he says.Kathrin TschirnerA detail of a work for an upcoming public installation in New York.Kathrin TschirnerOn a recent visit to his Berlin studio, I followed Ai, 67, down a narrow staircase into an austere, windowless alcove. Its concrete floor was scattered with twisted steel rods from the installation work “Rebar,” which Ai made in China between 2008 and 2012, sourcing the metal from school buildings flattened by the devastating Sichuan earthquake. “Rebar” and similar works made in response to the earthquake critique the government’s corrupt construction regulations and lack of transparency in the tragedy’s aftermath. This is one of the projects that, in addition to his prolific online writings, helped turn Ai into one of the most famous dissident artists of the past few decades. The resulting surveillance and a government-ordered detention eventually drove him to leave Beijing for Berlin, a city he says appealed to him for its mix of “ruin” and “new life.” In Ai’s archival room, a large world map that helped him plan his documentary on refugees, “Human Flow” (2017), leaned against a wall beside an overgrown fiddle-leaf fig tree. On display elsewhere were dozens of antique Qing dynasty wooden chairs, from the participatory project “Fairytale” (2007), for which Ai conveyed 1,001 volunteers from China to the Documenta art exhibition in Kassel, Germany.Life jackets left behind by refugees who arrived by boat in Lesbos, Greece, in 2016. Nearly a decade ago, Ai affixed thousands of the jackets to the facade of Berlin’s Konzerthaus as a humanitarian call to action.Kathrin TschirnerDetail of an in-progress installation.Kathrin TschirnerAccumulation — the head-spinning accrual of hundreds, thousands or millions of identical objects — is fundamental to Ai’s interventions, which often comment on both collective action and consumer culture. Sometimes he finds items that speak directly to a predetermined theme or event, as with his headline-making installation of discarded refugee life jackets affixed to the facade of Berlin’s Konzerthaus in 2016. But if he finds the right object, he may conceive of a whole project around it. Ai began collecting flea-market antiquities in the mid-1990s, when he lived in China, and now acquaintances and strangers alike frequently tip him off about underappreciated goods that are available in astronomical quantities. One such message is how he came into possession of 30 tons of clothing buttons from a defunct British factory. (“‘No’ is not in my vocabulary,” he says.) After years spent classifying the buttons into 9,000 different categories, his team has begun sewing them into new, textile-based works. Some of these are currently on display at Lisson Gallery in London, which had canceled his 2023 show after the artist’s public comments about the Israel-Hamas war. In this exhibit, Ai continues his defense of free speech, with button-adorned block letters spelling out profanity-laden catchphrases across World War II military stretchers and tents. Alongside these works are re-creations of pieces from the Western art historical canon made out of Legos, a material that’s become his trademark in recent years.Skateboards, produced in collaboration with the Brussels-based art and social impact company The Skateroom, bearing images from Ai’s “Study of Perspective” series (1995-2017), affixed to an antique Chinese wooden chair from the artist’s conceptual work “Fairytale” (2007).Kathrin TschirnerWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    3 People Killed in Medical Helicopter Crash in Mississippi

    A pilot and two crew members were aboard the helicopter, which was not carrying any patients when it plunged into the woods outside Jackson.All three people working aboard a medical helicopter were killed when it crashed into a densely wooded area outside Jackson, Miss., on Monday while returning from transporting a patient, hospital officials said.Two of the people were crew members who worked for the University of Mississippi Medical Center and the other was a pilot, Dr. LouAnn Woodward, the medical center’s top administrator, said during a news conference. The helicopter was not carrying any patients at the time of the accident, she added.It was not clear what caused the aircraft, which the Federal Aviation Administration identified as a Eurocopter EC-135, to lose control. The F.A.A. said that it and the National Transportation Safety Board would investigate the crash, which occurred around 1:15 p.m.Officials did not release the names of the three people who died. They were based out of Columbus, Miss., and were part of AirCare 3, one of four medical helicopter units operated by the medical center.“The entire medical center family is heartbroken over this,” Dr. Woodward said. “This is the crew that responds to emergencies all across the state, and to see them today to respond to one of their own was just something that you can’t put into words.”Dr. Woodward said that the AirCare helicopters and their crews played an integral role in providing critical care services across Mississippi, and that they had a spotless safety record until the crash on Monday.The crews frequently include nurses and paramedics, according to an information page on the medical center’s website. They are equipped with oxygen, ventilators and other critical care equipment.Dr. Woodward said that the pilot who died worked for Med-Trans, the company that leases the AirCare helicopters to the medical center.The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.The crash happened a little more than five weeks after a medical jet crashed in Philadelphia, killing six people aboard the plane and one person on the ground. And it added to a spate of recent aviation accidents. On Jan. 29, an American Airlines regional jet and an Army helicopter collided over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., leaving no survivors. On Feb. 17, a Delta Air Lines flight trying to land at Toronto Pearson International Airport amid strong winds and drifting snow crashed and flipped over on the tarmac; all 80 people who were aboard that plane survived. More

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    Oil Tanker and Container Ship Collide in the North Sea

    Britain’s coast guard said it was “coordinating the emergency response to reports of a collision between a tanker and cargo vessel,” and that a fire had broken out.A container ship collided with a U.S.-flagged oil tanker off the northeastern coast of England, according to emergency responders, who scrambled to the scene on Monday morning. Initial images shared by the BBC showed fire and thick black smoke rising from the ships, and local authorities said that a number of people had been taken to area hospitals.The British coast guard said it was “coordinating the emergency response to reports of a collision between a tanker and cargo vessel off the coast of East Yorkshire,” and that an alarm was first raised at 9:48 a.m. local time. More

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    Our 16th Annual Summer Reading Contest

    Students are invited to tell us what they’re reading in The Times and why, this year in writing OR via a 90-second video. Contest dates: June 6 to Aug. 15, 2025.Our Summer Reading Contest is our longest-running challenge — and our simplest.All you have to do to participate is tell us what you’re reading, watching or listening to in The New York Times and why. Students can enter by submitting a short written response — or they can make a video up to 90 seconds long.Don’t have a subscription? No problem! We’ll be providing dozens of free links to teen-friendly articles, essays, videos, podcasts and graphics every week from June through August.Got questions? We have answers. Everything you need is detailed below.But if you’re a teacher who would like to have your students practice for this now, before the contest begins, note that the only rule around content is that a piece must have been published in 2025. Beyond that, we don’t care if your students pick something on sneakers, starlight, Syria or Saturday Night Live; TikTok, the tropics, Trump or Timothée Chalamet. We just want to hear what they think. Join us!Have fun, and, as always, post your questions here or write to LNFeedback@nytimes.com.This announcement is available as a one-page PDF to hang on your class bulletin board.Here’s what you need to know:The ChallengeRules and GuidelinesResources for Teachers, Students and ParentsFrequently Asked QuestionsHow to SubmitThe ChallengeBen HickeyWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Supreme Court to Hear Challenge to Law Banning Conversion Therapy

    Colorado, like more than 20 other states, bars licensed therapists from trying to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of minors in their care.The Supreme Court said on Monday that it will hear a First Amendment challenge to a Colorado law banning professional counseling services engaged in conversion therapy intended to change a minor’s gender identity or sexual orientation.More than 20 states have similar laws, which are supported by leading medical groups. Kaley Chiles, a licensed professional counselor, challenged the constitutionality of the Colorado law in federal court, saying it violated her rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion.The challenged law prohibits licensed therapists in Colorado from performing conversion therapy, which it defines to include efforts “to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.” That includes trying “to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”The law, adopted in 2019, allow treatments that provide “acceptance, support and understanding.” It exempts therapists “engaged in the practice of religious ministry.”Ms. Chiles’s lawyers told the justices in her petition seeking review that as “a practicing Christian, Chiles believes that people flourish when they live consistently with God’s design, including their biological sex.”In her lawsuit, Ms. Chiles said she wanted to help her clients achieve their goals, which can include “seeking to reduce or eliminate unwanted sexual attractions, change sexual behaviors or grow in the experience of harmony with one’s physical body.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Lila Sciences Uses A.I. to Turbocharge Scientific Discovery

    Across the spectrum of uses for artificial intelligence, one stands out.The big, inspiring A.I. opportunity on the horizon, experts agree, lies in accelerating and transforming scientific discovery and development. Fed by vast troves of scientific data, A.I. promises to generate new drugs to combat disease, new agriculture to feed the world’s population and new materials to unlock green energy — all in a tiny fraction of the time of traditional research.Technology companies like Microsoft and Google are making A.I. tools for science and collaborating with partners in fields like drug discovery. And the Nobel Prize in Chemistry last year went to scientists using A.I. to predict and create proteins.This month, Lila Sciences went public with its own ambitions to revolutionize science through A.I. The start-up, which is based in Cambridge, Mass., had worked in secret for two years “to build scientific superintelligence to solve humankind’s greatest challenges.”Relying on an experienced team of scientists and $200 million in initial funding, Lila has been developing an A.I. program trained on published and experimental data, as well as the scientific process and reasoning. The start-up then lets that A.I. software run experiments in automated, physical labs with a few scientists to assist.Already, in projects demonstrating the technology, Lila’s A.I. has generated novel antibodies to fight disease and developed new materials for capturing carbon from the atmosphere. Lila turned those experiments into physical results in its lab within months, a process that most likely would take years with conventional research.Catie Ramnarine, a research assistant at the Lila Sciences lab in Cambridge, Mass., where artificial intelligence is rapidly accelerating the scientific process. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump’s Call to Scrap ‘Horrible’ Chip Program Spreads Panic

    The president’s attack on the key tenet of the Biden administration’s industrial policy has set off concerns that he may claw back its funding.As President Trump addressed Congress last week, he veered off script to attack a sensitive topic, the CHIPS Act, a bipartisan law aimed at making the United States less reliant on Asia for semiconductors.Republican lawmakers had sought and received reassurances over the past few months that the Trump administration would support the program Congress created. But halfway through Mr. Trump’s remarks, he called the law a “horrible, horrible thing.”“You should get rid of the CHIP Act,” he told Speaker Mike Johnson as some lawmakers applauded.The CHIPS program was one of the few things to unite much of Washington in recent years, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle worked with private companies to draft a bill that would funnel $50 billion to rebuild the U.S. semiconductor industry, which makes the foundational technology used to power cars, computers and coffee makers. After President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. signed it into law in 2022, companies found sites in Arizona, New York and Ohio to construct new factories. The Commerce Department vetted those plans and began to dole out billions of dollars in grants.Now, Mr. Trump is threatening to upend years of work. Chip company executives, worried that funding could be clawed back, are calling lawyers to ask what wiggle room the administration has to terminate signed contracts, said eight people familiar with the requests.After the speech, Senator Todd Young, the Indiana Republican who championed CHIPS, said he reached out to the White House to seek clarity about Mr. Trump’s attack because the criticism was “in tension” with the administration’s previous support.Senator Todd Young, the Indiana Republican who championed CHIPS, said he reached out to the White House to seek clarity about Mr. Trump’s attack, which he said was “in tension” with the administration’s previous support.Eric Lee/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More