First Run News

UNITED NATIONS — Vitaly I. Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, who represented his country through times of domestic tumult and rising tensions with the West, died on Monday morning while at work in Manhattan. He would have turned 65 on Tuesday.

The Russian government said he died suddenly but did not specify a cause. The New York City police said there were no indications of foul play.

“The outstanding Russian diplomat died in harness,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement posted on Twitter. The United Nations observed a moment of silence on Monday.

Richard Schickel, who was so captivated by Walt Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” when he was 5 years old that he grew up to be a noted film critic, Hollywood historian and prolific author and documentarian — and estimated that he had watched 22,590 movies — died on Saturday in Los Angeles. He was 84.

His daughter Erika Schickel said the cause was complications of dementia.

A former member of the Norwegian Parliament, she presided over honors awarded to Tunisian pro-democracy organizations and to the president of Colombia.

By HENRIK PRYSER LIBELL

Mr. Schickel reviewed films for Life magazine and wrote 37 books about the movies.

By SAM ROBERTS

Mr. Churkin, something of a legend in diplomatic circles with a caustic, wry wit, served at a time of mounting tensions between Washington and the Kremlin.

The good news is, the human brain is flexible and efficient. This helps us make sense of the world. But the bad news is, the human brain is flexible and efficient. This means the brain can sometimes make mistakes.

You can watch this tension play out when the brain tries to connect auditory and visual speech. It’s why we may find a poorly dubbed kung fu movie hard to believe, and why we love believing the gibberish in those Bad Lip Reading Videos on YouTube.

A small discrepancy in the value of a long-sought number has fostered a debate about just how well we know the cosmos.

By DENNIS OVERBYE

The illustrations of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the father of modern neuroscience, are featured in the new book “The Beautiful Brain.”

By JOANNA KLEIN

Mo Willems and Oliver Jeffers — two of the most beloved, and singular, creators of children’s picture books working today — have both seen their literary creations head to the stage. The musical “Elephant & Piggie’s We Are in a Play!,” based on Willems’s Elephant & Piggie series, recently finished a run at the New Victory Theater in New York and is setting out on a national tour; “The Way Back Home,” a puppet production based on Jeffers’s book of the same title, will be at the New Victory from March 10 through March 26.

PARIS — Sixty-five writers and artists have joined with the advocacy organization PEN America to send an open letter to President Trump, criticizing his executive order banning citizens from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States and urging against further measures that would impair “freedom of movement and the global exchange of arts and ideas.”

For Broadway audiences, she’s become a familiar sight — and another reason to applaud.

By MICHAEL PAULSON

The letter, written by PEN America, reads in part: “Vibrant, open intercultural dialogue is indispensable in the fight against terror and oppression.”

By RACHEL DONADIO

Mo Willems and Oliver Jeffers talk about turning their children’s books into plays.

By MARIA RUSSO

An English soccer player who enjoyed a meat pie on the sideline during a game was forced to resign from his team on Tuesday after his meal spurred a formal investigation into gambling. The strange tale involves a Cinderella team, a bookmaker eager for publicity and, most important, a portly, middle-aged goalkeeper with a taste for meat and potatoes.

MONACO — Looking back, Vadim Vasilyev can pinpoint the precise moment A.S. Monaco changed. Vasilyev, the club’s vice president, can name a place — the Grimaldi Forum, a grand conference center on the Monte Carlo seafront — and a date: Sept. 21, 2015.

That evening, around 1,000 of Monaco’s most ardent fans packed into a hall to hear what Vasilyev — accompanied by Leonardo Jardim, the club’s coach, and Jérémy Toulalan, its captain then — had to say for himself.