Aurelia Butler

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    Trump’s Attacks Give Zelensky a Popularity Boost in Ukraine

    The Ukrainian leader’s approval rating is rising, and critics have backed off after he was humiliated and criticized by President Trump, who has also demanded new elections in Ukraine.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was losing popularity at home for months, seen by many as a thin-skinned leader who had concentrated power around him. Political opponents saw an opening to win a future election against him. His former top general in the war against Russia had a higher approval rating.Enter President Trump. In recent weeks, he has echoed Moscow’s talking points on the war and called Mr. Zelensky a “dictator without elections” who “has done a terrible job.” Mr. Trump and his allies have demanded new presidential elections in Ukraine, despite the war, and humiliated Mr. Zelensky at a disastrous meeting in the White House.But Mr. Trump’s actions appear to have helped the Ukrainian leader at home.Mr. Zelensky’s approval ratings have risen, according to two recent polls, and his political opponents have said publicly that now is not the time for elections. Suggestions by political opponents and some analysts that Mr. Zelensky should share power and form a coalition government — a Ukrainian team of rivals — have not gained traction. And even if critics haven’t exactly rallied around the president, they haven’t outright attacked him.“Some people expected me to criticize Zelensky,” Petro Poroshenko, Mr. Zelensky’s predecessor as Ukraine’s president and a frequent needler-in-chief, said after the explosive meeting between Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Trump. “But no, there will be no criticism, because that’s not what the country needs right now.”Mr. Zelensky is still in a precarious position. He needs to somehow chart a path forward with a U.S. president who clearly wants to deal with a different Ukrainian leader.Mr. Zelensky has offered to step down in exchange for peace or Ukraine’s membership in NATO. Political opponents have agreed that elections cannot be held while the country is at war, because frontline troops and Ukrainians outside the country cannot vote. But given that Ukraine was to hold an election in spring 2024, they will probably push for one if a cease-fire is reached — likely long before a final peace deal is inked. And opposition politicians seem to be biding their time, despite public calls for unity.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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    Jean Smart Will Star in a One-Woman Broadway Show

    The new play, “Call Me Izzy,” will begin previews in May and open in June at Studio 54.Jean Smart, a veteran stage and screen actress whose oft-praised comedic chops reached new audiences via the Max series “Hacks,” plans to return to Broadway this spring and summer in a one-woman show.Smart will star in “Call Me Izzy,” a dark comedy about a rural Louisiana woman. The play, which has not been previously staged, is written by Jamie Wax, a CBS News contributor, and is directed by Sarna Lapine, who also directed the last Broadway revival of “Sunday in the Park With George.”Smart, 73, is best known for her prolific work on television; she has won six Emmy Awards, for “Frasier,” “Samantha Who?” and “Hacks,” and has been featured in shows including “Designing Women” and “Mare of Easttown.”She made her Broadway debut in 1981 in the play “Piaf.” She has returned just once since, in a 2000 revival of “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” and was nominated for a Tony Award for that performance.“Call Me Izzy” is scheduled to begin previews on May 24 and to open June 12 for a 12-week run at Studio 54. The play is being produced by Robert Ahrens and P3 Productions (Ben Holtzman, Sammy Lopez and Fiona Howe Rudin), and is being capitalized for up to $5.4 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. More

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    Skirmish in Syrian Capital Raises Fears of Expanding Violence

    The overnight incident in Damascus appeared to have been contained, but it has heightened concerns that the violence sweeping the country’s coastal region could spread.Gunmen attacked a position held by Syrian security forces in Damascus overnight, a war monitor said Monday, raising fears that the deadly violence sweeping Syria’s coastal region could spread to other parts of the country.The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has monitored the Syrian conflict since 2011, said that unidentified gunmen threw grenades and opened fire overnight on a building housing government security forces in the highly fortified Mezzeh district of the capital, Damascus. Clashes with government security forces ensued, and it was unclear if anyone was injured, the observatory said. It added that an unspecified number of arrests had been made.There was no immediate comment from Syria’s new government or on state news media, and the information could not be independently verified.The attack came as the country was reeling from a spate of violence that erupted last week between fighters affiliated with Syria’s new government, headed by Ahmed al-Shara, and those loyal to the ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad.More than 1,300 people have been killed since the fighting began, largely in the coastal Latakia and Tartus Provinces, the heartland of Syria’s Alawite minority, according to the observatory. It said on Monday that about 1000 civilians were included in that figure, most of whom were killed by armed forces affiliated with or loyal to the new government. The information could not be independently verified.The violence has stoked fears of a renewed sectarian conflict and presented what appeared to be the most serious challenge yet to Syria’s new leaders as they attempt to unite the country after more than a decade of war. The Assad family is Alawite and the sect dominated the country’s upper class and highest ranks of the former regime’s military.While state news media quoted a spokesman for the defense ministry, Col. Hassan Abdul Ghani, as saying on Monday that the “military operation” was over, the violence reportedly continued, as fighters affiliated with the government stormed a town near the coastal port city of Baniyas and set fire to homes, according to the observatory. . Syria’s interim president, Mr. al-Shara, said on Sunday that the government was forming a fact-finding committee to investigate the violence in the coastal regions and to bring the perpetrators to justice. But it wasn’t clear if he was acknowledging possible killings at the hands of his forces or laying the blame on former regime elements.In an apparent bid to reassure the nation, he appealed for calm on Sunday and repeated calls for Assad loyalists to lay down their arms.“We must preserve national unity and civil peace,” Mr. al-Shara said at a mosque in Damascus, according to video that circulated online. More

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    30 Charts That Show How Everything Changed in March 2020

    We left a world we might not get back to. Many things that we took for granted never returned to their former levels, with no guarantee they ever will. The pandemic took a hammer to society and left us struggling to climb back from shutdowns, from fear and from illness. It can be easy, in […] More

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    Origin Story

    On This Week’s Episode:Little-known and surprising stories of how all sorts of institutions began.This is a rerun of an episode that first aired in September 2014.New York Times Audio is home to the “This American Life” archive. Download the app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. More

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    ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3, Episode 4 Recap: Party Time

    The gal pals finally moved out of their hermetic bubble this week in search of a little fun. The results were questionable.Season 3, Episode 4: ‘Hide or Seek’There is something about the experience of being on a luxury vacation that can get into the vacationers’ heads. Mike White understands this. Through three seasons of “The White Lotus,” he has focused on the nagging dissatisfaction of the privileged — especially when they are supposed to be at leisure. Are they really enjoying themselves? Are they getting the escape from the everyday they needed? Most important: Are they getting their money’s worth?White seems to love characters who are earnestly searching for something, who could be on the precipice of a real change in their lives if they could just get past their doubts, their fears, their patterns of behavior, the general sense that they are being cheated. White clearly empathizes with these people. He also manages to make them hilarious.With that in mind, I want to start again this week with the gal pals, who have been this season’s most reliable source of pure, pitiless comedy. In this episode, the ladies finally move out of their hermetic bubble of giggles and gossip and start trying to engage more with their surroundings. The experiment does not go well.Jaclyn, as always, drives the action. Frustrated that her husband is not responding to her texts, she decides to do a little misbehaving. The resort is too staid, too serious. She asks Valentin to suggest someplace she and her friends can go that has “more of a vibe.”Valentin directs them to what seems to be a more party-friendly hotel. The music is loud, and the drinks are large and colorful. But when Jaclyn gets roped into a conversation with two very un-“posh” Australian widows who recognize her from TV, she senses something is off. They appear to be at “a bargain hotel for retirees.” They return to Valentin, feeling insulted.Valentin next recommends a fun club that will open in the evening for the local community’s full moon celebration. But when the ladies try to kill time by shopping in the marketplace, they are chased by hordes of children armed with water pistols. Jaclyn, Kate and Laurie take refuge in a convenience store. The children lurk outside, like ravenous zombies.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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    New Deal Reached to End Wildcat Strikes by N.Y. Prison Guards

    The state and the correctional officers’ union agreed that officers should return to work Monday and that some provisions of a solitary confinement law would be put on pause.A new agreement has been reached to end wildcat strikes by thousands of New York State correctional officers, which have created chaos throughout the prison system.Under the agreement, negotiated by state officials and the correctional officers’ union, the officers are expected to return to work Monday.The officers, who maintained that staffing shortages, forced overtime and dangerous working conditions prompted the illegal strikes, had received an ultimatum this week from the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision: go back to their posts or face discipline, termination or, possibly, criminal charges, according to a memorandum issued by the agency.The union agreed on Saturday to the terms outlined in the memorandum, the corrections department said in a statement. Those terms will take effect when 85 percent of staff return to work. Any disputes over the agreement will be resolved by an arbitrator.It was unclear on Sunday how the union, the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association, would enforce the return-to-work provision since it did not authorize the strikes. The department and the union struck a similar deal last month that would have ended the strikes by March 1. Most officers ignored that agreement.In the new memorandum, the state agreed to a 90-day pause on some provisions in the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act, known as HALT, which limits the use of solitary confinement for prisoners.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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    Geoff Nicholson, Author of Darkly Comic Novels, Dies at 71

    In more than a dozen books, he created characters who were obsessed with maps, urban walking, sexual fetishes and Volkswagen Beetles.Geoff Nicholson, whose darkly comic literary novels and eclectic nonfiction were full of characters defined by their obsessions — with cartography, Volkswagen Beetles, urban walking, jokes and sexual fetishes, many of which were enduring interests of Mr. Nicholson himself — died on Jan. 18 in Colchester, England, northeast of London. He was 71.His death, in a hospital, was from chronic myelomonocytic leukemia, his partner, Caroline Gannon, said. It is a rare bone marrow cancer, though, as Mr. Nicholson mordantly observed, “not rare enough, obviously.”In novels with far-fetched plots, characters who often flirted with the cartoonish and stylized, noirish dialogue, Mr. Nicholson wrote with verve and biting wit, and he attracted a dedicated, if not large, readership for his prolific output.His Facebook profile once had a list of “liked” books whose first two titles were “Gravity’s Rainbow” and “The Big Sleep,” a thumbnail distillation of his own oeuvre of highbrow plundering of lowbrow culture.Mr. Nicholson was a verbal jokester, whether in ambitious fiction or in more prosaic writing. For the “About” page of his website, he annotated his own Wikipedia entry. In response to Wikipedia’s assertion that his work was “compared favorably” to that of Kingsley and Martin Amis, Will Self and Zadie Smith, Mr. Nicholson wrote, “I don’t recall anybody ever comparing me to Kingsley Amis, but I suppose they might have.”One person who did compare him to Kingsley Amis, the midcentury British satirist, was the New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani, writing a 1997 review of Mr. Nicholson’s best-known novel, “Bleeding London.”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