Context

Here — in a side office, up the stairs of an unmarked building hidden away on a block of the city center jammed with flashy music stores that used thumping loudspeakers to attract customers — was the workshop of one of this city’s oldest and most accordion repairmen. “Everything I do is to improve the…

On the beaches of Western Australia, by California’s crashing waves and in sight of Hawaii’s blue depths, “shark attacks” are slowly disappearing, at least as a phrase used by researchers and officials who have been rethinking how to describe the moments when sharks and humans meet. Last week, two Australian states drew mockery when The…

Have you ever taken in a natural vista, say the soaring ranges of a national park, and thought: Three thousand feet of nothingness between me and the ground would really improve this. For Breannah Yeh, a 24-year-old professional slackliner, such an experience is quite a walk in the park. Ms. Yeh shares her aerial escapades…

For a stretch late last year into the early months of this year, the most withering style assessments available online came in the form of Mark Boutilier’s very round, very calm, very expressionless face. On TikTok, he used the app’s duet function, with which you can post a reaction video side by side with someone…

For women in conducting, there are reasons to be optimistic. Administrators at major ensembles in cities like Atlanta, Minneapolis and Cincinnati, as well as Baltimore, are vowing to ensure that women are serious contenders. Search committees are looking at a mix of artists and rising stars, according to interviews with 20 committee members, administrators, players…

Welcome to our new weekly interactive Vocabulary in Context Quiz, created with help from Vocabulary.com. We will be publishing a new one every Thursday this school year, and you can find them all here. This week's quiz comes from a "burst" published on Jan. 24, 2022. Choose the word or phrase that BEST completes each…

Scores of its roughly 300 contestants have leveraged the show to open restaurants and grow empires in cities like Chicago, New York, Honolulu, Houston and Miami, and to draw attention and tourists to smaller markets like Boulder, Colo., Athens, Ga., and Paducah, Ky. Through its 17 years on television, “Top Chef” has reflected the evolution…

“I made a deal with myself that I was going to either learn how to do hair really well so I could make it a final touch to all my outfits or buzz my head,” she said. In late January, when Ms. Perlmutter, 23, was on set at a photo shoot, she watched as a…

“Getting here and being in our first drivers’ meeting gave me ,” said Atefa Saleh, 41, a Siemens engineer from the United Arab Emirates. “I’m excited to be the driver. But we’re switching if something goes really wrong,” she quipped. Ms. Saleh’s co-driver, Eleanor Coker, 48, is an American living in Saudi Arabia. She had…

More research should be conducted to develop and evaluate new tools to eradicate pythons and to refine existing ones, the study found, adding that controlling the species’ spread is critical to protecting the Everglades. Earlier studies found that Burmese pythons, which are nonnative apex predators originally from South Asia, had native species, including wading birds,…