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    A Heat Wave Hits New York Earlier Than Usual for a Second Year in a Row

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    Climate change is increasingly making weather extremes more common.Scorching, record-breaking temperatures on Tuesday kept many people indoors throughout the metropolitan region, strained the electrical grid and stoked concerns among those who are the most vulnerable to the heat, including older New Yorkers and the very young.It was 99 degrees in Central Park this afternoon, the hottest June 24 temperature since records started there in 1869. Kennedy Airport recorded the hottest June day since the site was built in 1948, at 102 degrees.It is the second year in a row that a heat wave has hit the New York City region earlier than usual, as global warming is projected to worsen heat waves and make them more frequent, climate experts say.“Our warming climate underlies everything,” said David Robinson, the New Jersey state climatologist and a geography professor at Rutgers University. “It’s not about the highest temperature; it’s about how long it stays hot and the area of coverage of that heat. It’s 100 up in New England today and down here as well.”Of the 69 weather stations in New Jersey, Mr. Robinson said, over 30 hit 100 degrees. He added that the 10 hottest summers on record for the state had all occurred since 2005.As climate change wreaks havoc with the traditional calendar, the familiar rhythms of the seasons have begun to shift. New York City pools, for example, are not scheduled to open for the summer until Friday.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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      The Works of Christo and Jean-Claude Are Experiencing a Revival

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      Known for their outsized and revolutionary art projects, the couple’s work is seen again in Florida, New York and Germany.It was 42 years ago. Miami awoke to a strange, crooked line of hot pink images floating in the waters of panoramic Biscayne Bay.Eleven small islands had been wrapped in wide, rippling swaths of pink plastic. They were almost glowing as the morning sun swept over the beaches and skyscrapers of the city. Crowds came out in helicopters and speedboats and the family car. Some people perched on condo balconies.It was the work of Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude, the European artists who had wrapped the Reichstag building in Berlin, the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris and run a billowing, tall white nylon fence 24.5 miles over the cattle ranges just north of San Francisco and into the Pacific Ocean.People flew in from Europe and around the world to see the show, and collectors and museum directors and many others say it lifted the curtain on Miami as a city of natural beauty that would eventually become a dazzling global art center.“It was a world happening,” said Norman Braman, a former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, a collector and a Miami car dealer with about a dozen brands, from Hyundai to Rolls-Royce.But it was a tough time for Miami. Cocaine seemed to be everywhere. Gunmen were in the streets. Time magazine had put the city on its cover as “Paradise Lost.” In 1984 — a year after the extravaganza on the bay — the “Miami Vice” TV show took the city’s crime and fashion into American living rooms.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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      Kehlani Concert in Central Park Is Canceled After Pressure From Mayor

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      The singer, a vocal critic of Israel, had been scheduled to perform in June as part of Pride festivities. Two weeks ago, Cornell dropped a plan to have her headline a concert.The nonprofit group behind the SummerStage concerts has canceled a scheduled Central Park performance by the popular R&B singer Kehlani under pressure from the administration of Mayor Eric Adams.The move came on Monday after a top New York City official warned the group, the City Parks Foundation, that its license to stage the long-running concert series could be at risk if it did not “promptly take steps” to address “security concerns” raised by the planned show.Billed as “Pride With Kehlani,” the concert was to take place on June 26 as part of the city’s broader Pride festivities. It was the second scheduled Kehlani performance to be canceled in recent weeks amid a furor over the singer’s pro-Palestinian stance.Unlike Cornell University officials, who explicitly cited what they said were Kehlani’s antisemitic and anti-Israel views when they dropped the singer two weeks ago as the headliner of an annual campus concert, the city official, First Deputy Mayor Randy M. Mastro, did not invoke the singer’s personal opinions.Instead, he said in a letter to the foundation’s executive director, Heather Lubov, that the Adams administration’s concerns were based on “the controversy” surrounding the scheduled Cornell performance, as well as the security demands posed by such an event in Central Park and by other Pride events around the city.Mr. Mastro wrote that the police would conduct a security assessment of the concert. If the department determined that the event posed “an unacceptable risk to public safety,” he added, there could be implications for SummerStage’s future. The series began in 1986.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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      A Stunning New Pool in Central Park Helps Heal Old Wounds

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      For more than a century and a half, Central Park has been a leafy barometer of New York’s shifting fortunes. Projecting the city’s vast ambitions and ideals in the 19th century, it morphed into a Hooverville during the Depression, becoming a beehive of ball fields and “Be-Ins” during the 1960s.A decade later it was a lawless dust bowl, the poster child for urban decline. “An unattended Frankenstein,” one city parks commissioner called it.Restoring Central Park’s glory has been a labor of decades, its maintenance an endless task. But the $160 million Davis Center, opening to the public Saturday, is a culmination of sorts.The Davis Center, under construction, with the pavilion tucked underneath the hill to the left and the pool covered by artificial turf for the spring season.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesIt’s a spectacular new swimming pool, skating rink and pavilion on six remade acres at the Harlem end of the park — the most dramatic change in years to Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s pastoral masterpiece of the 1850s.This northern stretch of the park was shamefully neglected when the city was at its nadir and it became the site of a brutal attack that led to one of the more horrendous miscarriages of racial justice in New York’s history.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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      Joseph Gitnig, Central Park Minstrel Known as Pegasus, Dies at 95

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      For nearly two decades, he delighted children and adults in New York City with songs and silly antics. He also scored a victory for free speech.Pegasus, the mythological winged stallion, symbolized divine inspiration and boundless freedom. So did Joseph Gitnig, the itinerant minstrel who called himself Pegasus and delighted children and adults who gathered spontaneously for nearly two decades to see him perform at the Central Park Zoo.Pegasus, the stallion, achieved immortality when Zeus transformed him into a constellation in the northern sky. Pegasus, the man, died on Sunday in Tilburg, the Netherlands, where he had lived since he gave up his New Age performance art in 1984. He was 95.Tineke Gitnig-Bertrums, his wife and only immediate survivor, said the cause was kidney failure.Pegasus — referring to him formally as Mr. Gitnig would be demystifying — epitomized a more innocent era, or at least one in which children, and adults, could be distracted and even entertained by a ballad, a soap bubble or a balloon and other less mind-blowing diversions than violent video games, Super Bowl halftime pyrotechnics and Las Vegas extravaganzas.“I’m a poet, writer, actor, dancer, and I put it all together in the package of a clown,” he told The New York Times in 1974. He once told Dramatics magazine, “I’ve been called an astronaut of inner space, a cosmonaut of the imagination, bard of brotherhood, troubadour, rhapsodist, folklorist and the indefinable fool.”Whatever you want to call him, he did more than entertain. After being arrested twice in the mid-1970s, he helped establish a precedent for free speech: For better or worse, according to Arthur Eisenberg, executive counsel of the New York Civil Liberties Union, the city agreed that performance art in parks and other public spaces is a form of free expression protected by the First Amendment.“Creative Sharer” was how he described himself on the business cards that he handed out, hoping to be booked at children’s parties and other events as a way to supplement the up to $3,000 a year in coins and small bills he collected in a basket at the zoo. He made a living in the off-season as a clerk and shoe salesman.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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      Met Museum Unveils Design for New Modern Wing

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      The architect Frida Escobedo has drawn on her Mexican heritage in reimagining the galleries for Modern and contemporary art.The metaphor of weaving has informed Frida Escobedo’s design for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s long-awaited new wing for Modern and contemporary art, which was unveiled on Tuesday.It is present in the architectural screen of limestone lattice that wraps the new wing’s exterior on the museum’s southwest corner, creating a diaphanous surface that will change as the sun moves through it during the day. It is present in the placement of windows, offering glimpses of the city and the park. And it is present in the way that the new wing will connect to the adjacent galleries, emphasizing the connectivity between different regions, disciplines and civilizations.“How can we start understanding the rhythm and the cadence that the museum has?” Escobedo said in a recent joint interview with Max Hollein, the museum’s director, in his Met office.“The challenge was to weave these connections with the existing museum and adjacent wings and also to make connections with the park in a very subtle way,” she continued. The current campus “is very complex — it looks like a medieval town with plazas and towns and squares and little alleys, where you can get lost, which could be fascinating, but also very disorienting.”The architect Frida Escobedo and Max Hollein, director of the Met, looking over a model of the new Tang Wing for Modern and contemporary art that Escobedo is designing.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesAt a time when museums all over the world are rethinking how they present art for a modern audience, Escobedo’s design marks a significant step forward for the long-delayed Met project. It also represents a do-over; a previous design by the architect David Chipperfield, who was selected for the job in 2015, was jettisoned after ballooning in cost to as much as $800 million.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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      An N.Y.P.D. Manhunt Caught a Subway Shooter. This Time, It’s Different.

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      Capturing a suspect who slips away from a crime scene requires solid police work, help from the public and a little luck, experts say. So far, it’s not working.A shocking early morning act of violence, a frantic New York Police Department search for a suspect and a gunman seemingly in the wind: The year was 2022, and the man the police had fanned out to find was Frank R. James, who had set off smoke grenades inside a crowded subway car in Brooklyn and opened fire.Now, more than two years later, another manhunt has gripped the city. But unlike Mr. James, who was apprehended the day after his rampage, the man who assassinated the chief executive of a health insurance company just before dawn on Wednesday in Midtown Manhattan has not been caught or even identified after more than four days.The two most recent fugitive searches in New York City have involved gunmen who made seemingly improbable escapes in a city teeming with surveillance cameras and people. But despite some similarities between the cases and the investigative tactics being used to try to solve them, the search for the man who killed Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, has proved far more challenging.The suspect’s ability to evade capture appears to be tied to his methodical planning, including wearing a mask and a hood during nearly all of his time in New York City and paying with cash everywhere, along with using a fake driver’s license.And unlike Mr. James, who did essentially nothing to conceal himself after slipping away amid the chaotic aftermath of the shooting that wounded 10 people, the suspect in Mr. Thompson’s killing fled quickly into Central Park, away from the surveillance cameras that blanket much of Manhattan. He also appears to have left the state long before the police could possibly have begun to track his movements.“I don’t think I’ve seen this level of operational preplanning in any crime, never mind in a murder,” said Kenneth E. Corey, a former chief of department in the New York Police Department.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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      For Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Millions Line Sidewalks and Tune In

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      There will be some differences this year because, after three decades, a new company has taken over production of the annual event.As the 98th iteration of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade makes its way down Central Park West and to the heart of Herald Square, there will be all the old familiars: Snoopy overhead, Tom Turkey kicking things off and, of course, the Taylor Swift of Thanksgiving, Santa Claus, bringing up the rear.But there will be some differences this year because, after three decades, a new company has taken over production of the annual event.Changes introduced by the new company, Silent House, will include more cameras trained on the spectators lining the parade route, according to a spokeswoman.There will also be cameras from the parade itself, circulating among the 700 clowns, 11 marching bands and the thousands of volunteer balloon handlers, who will keep icons like the new Minnie Mouse balloon from flying away.The spokeswoman for Silent House — which produced the halftime performance of this year’s Super Bowl — said its aim was to make the expected 30 million people watching on screens feel as if they’re standing and cheering alongside the 3.5 million or so people watching in person.Just before start time on Thursday morning, a group of star-shaped sugar cookies and human jingle bells stepped off a coach bus on Columbus Avenue and 77th Street, headed into position. Groups of people were gathered around the knees of a new Spider-Man balloon, and cheers were going up among the balloon handlers as they made ready to hit the parade route.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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      Storm Expected to Bring Snow to Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, Again

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      Two to four inches of snow were possible in New York City overnight Friday through early Saturday, forecasters said.A fast-moving storm system was expected to bring several inches of snow to parts of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions for the second time this week, with two to four inches predicted for New York City overnight Friday into Saturday morning and up to 10 inches in portions of West Virginia and Maryland.Dominic Ramunni, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in New York, described the system that was expected to move through as a “quick hitter.”“It’ll be in and out before folks may even wake up tomorrow morning,” Mr. Ramunni said.The greatest snowfall totals were expected across parts of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and southern Pennsylvania, where a winter storm warning was issued for late Friday through Saturday morning, according to the National Weather Service.In parts of Maryland and West Virginia, up to 10 inches of snow were possible, with snowfall rates of up to two inches per hour at times, the Weather Service said.Austin Mansfield, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Sterling, Va., said the snow could make travel difficult at times and reduce visibility.“Anytime you have a significant accumulation like that, you certainly start to see road impacts across those areas,” he said.Philadelphia could record four to six inches of snow, and Washington could see snowfall totals ranging from two to five inches, forecasters said.In New York City, where snow from a storm on Tuesday was still melting on Friday afternoon in parts of the area, there could be snowfall totals from two to four inches, Mr. Ramunni said.The storm system is expected to bring snow to some Northeast cities for the second time this week.A storm that moved through the region on Tuesday dropped 3.2 inches in Central Park and more than eight inches of snow in parts of Maryland, according to the Weather Service.Ahead of the expected weekend snowfall, the New York City Emergency Management Department issued a citywide travel advisory, warning that slippery roadways and reduced visibility were possible late Friday through early Saturday.Temperatures overnight Friday into Saturday were expected to be lower than during Tuesday’s storm, indicating that New York City could get a more powdery snow.“We’re not expecting that really heavy wet snow that we saw with this last event,” Mr. Ramunni said. “You’re not shoveling bricks of cement, so to speak, tomorrow morning.”Snow has been something of a rarity in New York City over the past couple of years. After 701 days without meaningful accumulation, a total of 1.7 inches fell in Central Park on Jan. 15 and Jan. 16.If more than 3.2 inches are recorded in Central Park on Saturday, it would be the city’s highest snowfall in two years, Mr. Ramunni said.“As a snow lover,” he said, “my tail’s wagging.” More