Elections

The fair will open in a freshly redone space with a new name. ‘In a way, it’s year zero,’ explained Art Basel’s chief executive.Art Basel Paris returns for its third edition with two big changes: It will be held for the first time in the newly renovated Grand Palais, and its name, formerly Paris+ by Art Basel, has been simplified and brought in line with the organization’s other art fairs.Open to the public Oct. 18-20, 195 galleries will display their wares, an increase of 27 percent from last year, since the Grand Palais can now accommodate more dealers than the former venue, the temporary Grand Palais Éphémère.A new section will debut, too: Premise, for focused presentations of older works that can include those made before 1900, the usual cutoff point for art to appear in the Art Basel fairs. Nine galleries will participate.“In a way, it’s year zero,” Noah Horowitz, the chief executive of Art Basel, said of the fair’s reset.Despite the larger number of exhibitors this year, Horowitz noted that it was still the smallest of the four Art Basel fairs (the others take place in Hong Kong, Miami Beach and Basel, Switzerland) and had the smallest booths. Space is still at a premium.“The selection process for Art Basel Paris was in many ways the most excruciating process I’ve ever borne witness to, only because of the extra amount of demand and the relative paucity of space,” Horowitz said. “There are incredible galleries, all very well deserving, that are not in the show.”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

The aurora borealis, which transformed the sky with startling streaks of pink and purple, arose from a magnetic storm.As a girl in Michigan, Gabriela Aguilar sometimes went looking for the northern lights in the state’s Upper Peninsula. But it wasn’t until Thursday night, when she climbed to the roof of her apartment building in Harlem, that she finally saw them.“I’m just shocked that it took my entire life to be able to see it,” said Dr. Aguilar, 37, who stood with her dog, Gomez, and watched the sky turn pink, purple and green until the autumn chill drove her back inside. “And — of all places — seeing it in New York City!”New Yorkers were treated to a rare light show Thursday night as the aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, spread an ethereal smear across the sky. On social media, people as far south as Washington, D.C., and Kentucky reported seeing the lights, which in pictures seemed to vary in color and intensity from neon pink to a subtle hazy purple.Udi Ofer, a professor of public affairs at Princeton University, was at home shortly after dusk when a neighbor texted to alert him to the sky. He rushed to his backyard in Princeton, N.J., with his 9-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son.For about 20 minutes, they watched stripes of pink and purple as the stars began to come out.“I think the thing that’s most remarkable about it are the streaks of light, which I just didn’t expect,” Mr. Ofer, 49, said. He called them “pretty magical.”The northern lights were also seen from behind Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, on the Upper East Side.City of New YorkWe 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

The first act of “Our Town” takes place in Grover’s Corners on May 7, 1901. Nothing much happens in the fictional New Hampshire village that day, except that two local teenagers, George Gibbs and Emily Webb, fall in love completely unaware that they do so under the shadow of the granitic pillars of time.But we are aware. Even in an act entitled Daily Life, the playwright, Thornton Wilder, quietly batters us with the news that we are mortal. Immediately upon introducing George’s parents, he has his mouthpiece, the Stage Manager, convey as if it were part of their names a detail of their deaths: Doc Gibbs’s in 1930, his wife’s on a visit to Canton, Ohio. He blithely jumbles together, like their bones, the joining and splintering of human lives. “Most everybody in the world climbs into their graves married,” he comments without comment.So if you think of the play as small, sweet or old-fashioned, and Grover’s Corners as a twin town to Bedford Falls or Hooterville, I respectfully offer that you have the soul of a rock. In any good enough production, “Our Town” is titanic: beyond time and brutal.The revival that opened Thursday at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, the fifth on Broadway since the play’s 1938 debut, is more than good enough. To use this word in the only positive sense I can imagine, it’s unbearable: in its beauty, yes, but more so in its refusal to offer beauty as a cure when it is only, at best, a comfort.And though some of the effectiveness of the revival is clearly the result of Kenny Leon’s swift and unsentimental direction, and of a fine cast led by the mercilessly acute Jim Parsons as the Stage Manager, we must begin with wonder and admiration for the play itself. In its portrait of “the life of a village against the life of the stars,” as Wilder described it, the monumental is always expressed in the miniature, and the miniature is always crushed by the monument.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

Former President Barack Obama traveled to Pittsburgh on Thursday to urge voters there to choose Vice President Kamala Harris in November, aiming a message at one group in particular: Black men.The decision voters have between the vice president and former President Donald J. Trump, her Republican opponent, “isn’t a close call,” Mr. Obama said as he visited with a group of campaign volunteers and officials at a field office just ahead of his appearance at a Harris rally. His message was for Black male voters whom he said might not be yet on board with Ms. Harris.Citing “reports I’m getting from campaigns and communities,” he called out what he said was flagging enthusiasm for Ms. Harris compared with the support he received when he was running for the presidency in 2008.“You’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses,” Mr. Obama said. “I’ve got a problem with that.“Part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that,” Mr. Obama continued, adding that the “women in our lives have been getting our backs this entire time.“When we get in trouble and the system isn’t working for us, they’re the ones out there marching and protesting.”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

Billy Bratton opens our solving weekend.Jump to: Tricky CluesFRIDAY PUZZLE — We’ve talked about crossword stacks in the past, and how constructors must make sure that the entries crossing these stacks are interesting fill as well. If you try to stack entries as a newer constructor, there is a chance that you will run into issues as you build out the rest of the puzzle around the stack. You may find yourself resorting to less than desirable fill, such as obscure acronyms or crosswordese. If you are not sure what crosswordese is, you can learn more about these words by taking our quiz.Billy Bratton, who constructed today’s puzzle, has mastered the fine art of stackery. His 10-letter stacks in the northwestern and the southeastern parts of the grid are lively reading across, and their crossings aren’t plagued by obscure and dull fill. (I allow for one or two whiffed entries. I’m not a monster.) The same goes for the stair-step stacks in the southwest and northeast.I learned a bit from Mr. Bratton’s puzzle, too, which is always a good thing. More on that in the Tricky Clues section.Tricky Clues15A. The clue [Musician’s pitch?] sounds as if it refers to how well a musician hits the notes, but this is about a marketing pitch. Musicians who are looking for work in advertising and television pitch their work via DEMO tapes. Up-and-coming artists post their work on social media and send out DEMOs. Source: My ex-husband, who is in the music industry.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

The woman was weeping as she told Vice President Kamala Harris about her mother, who she said died six weeks ago without having ever achieved legal status in the United States.“My question for you is, what are your plans to support that subgroup of immigrants who have been here their whole lives, or most of them, and have to live and die in the shadows?” Ivett Castillo asked at Ms. Harris’s first voter town hall as the Democratic nominee, an event hosted by Univision for undecided Hispanic voters.In her answer, Ms. Harris strove to connect, gently urging Ms. Castillo to “remember your mother as she lived.” But the vice president’s response also underscored how much her hard-line immigration message has focused on enforcement rather than reform, as former President Donald J. Trump uses the border to paint Ms. Harris as a weak and ineffective leader.While Ms. Harris called the nation’s immigration system “broken” and pointed out that the first bill proposed by the Biden-Harris administration would have created an earned pathway to citizenship for many undocumented immigrants, she quickly turned to the topic of the southern border — and condemned Mr. Trump for helping kill a bill that would have devoted more resources to securing it.“Real leadership is about solving the problems on behalf of the people,” she said at the town hall, which was held in Las Vegas and will be broadcast at 10 p.m. Eastern time. Many questions were asked in Spanish and translated for her. Hispanic voters could help decide the election, but Ms. Harris’s support among them is lagging.On Thursday, she also faced intense and emotional questions on health care and the economy, giving her a chance to display a greater degree of empathy and humanity than in the more choreographed interviews she has recently given. Much of the conversation centered on themes that Democratic presidential candidates have used to appeal to Latino voters for decades, including promises to stimulate small businesses, lower costs for families and create more legal pathways for undocumented workers.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

The U.S. Coast Guard on Thursday rescued a man who had seemingly done the impossible: he survived for hours in the Gulf of Mexico with nothing but a life jacket and a cooler to cling to.The agency posted a video of a Coast Guard crew member dropping from a helicopter about 30 miles off Longboat Key to grab the man from choppy seas and lift him to safety.The man, the captain of a fishing vessel, had lost contact with the Coast Guard around 7 p.m. on Wednesday as the storm worsened. He wasn’t found until 1:30 p.m. on Thursday.He managed to stay alive despite winds as fast as 90 miles per hour and waves as high as 20 to 25 feet through the night, said Lt. Cmdr. Dana Grady, the St. Petersburg command center chief of the U.S. Coast Guard.“This man survived in a nightmare scenario for even the most experienced mariner,” he said in a statement. The rescued captain, who was not identified, was taken to Tampa General Hospital to receive medical care. More

The wait to return to Sanibel Island on Thursday was agonizing for residents and business owners, many of whom were still rebuilding from Hurricane Ian in 2022 and just digging out after Hurricane Helene two weeks ago.“The anxiety and PTSD with Ian, I swear every one of these is taking another five years off my life span,” said Sean Niesel, 34, who took over the Shalimar Beach Resort from his grandparents after it was battered by Hurricane Ian.The resort still hasn’t recovered from the hurricane two years ago, and Mr. Niesel has been working to rebuild the property and reopen it to tourists. It has been under his family’s ownership for some 20 years.He rushed to the resort as soon as officials opened the island to residents and business owners around 2:30 p.m.“I’m alright,” he said. “There is cleanup to do, but for the most part, the structures held strong.”Sanibel Island, off the coast of Southwest Florida, is renowned for its seashells and its commitment to environmental protection, with 70 percent of the island under conservation. The vast undeveloped tracts help to absorb storm water, but the island floods during storms of Milton’s magnitude.Hurricane Milton left Sanibel in mixed condition overall. As of Thursday evening, low-lying areas remained underwater, while mounds of sand appeared like snowbanks along Sanibel-Captiva Road, a major island thoroughfare. The island remained without power and its wastewater system was down, though utility crews were hurrying to make repairs.This year alone, Mr. Niesel has endured months of scares between Hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton ever since breaking ground on the resort on March 28, his grandmother’s birthday.“This whole summer has been storm prep — clean up, prep, clean up,” he said.Wylie Griffin, 57, was supposed to have had the final inspection Thursday on her Sanibel Island home, which was finally ready for her to move back in after it was severely damaged in Hurricane Ian. She has been living with her mother for two years.They battened down both of their Sanibel Island properties and evacuated to the mainland before Hurricane Milton arrived. To their relief and delight, the homes were OK when they were allowed back onto the island Thursday.“It was dry,” Ms. Griffin said of her newly renovated home. “It’s unbelievable.” More