Aurelia Butler

President Trump will host Micheál Martin, the taoiseach or prime minister of Ireland, at the White House on Wednesday, for a traditional annual visit ahead of St. Patrick’s Day amid deepening tensions with Europe over tariffs and the war in Ukraine.The annual visit is seen as important to reinforce the longstanding diplomatic relationship between the two countries. But this one comes at a time when those ties are being tested — with European leaders announcing plans on Wednesday to hit back against American tariffs, tensions over the Trump administration’s approach to the war in Ukraine, and contentious statements the president has made about the United States developing and governing Gaza.And as recent visits with world leaders have shown, a stop by the White House, even a traditional one, now comes with the heightened risk of the unexpected playing out in front of cameras. There had been questions from the Irish public about whether Mr. Martin should attend at all after the disastrous meeting between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine earlier this month.Mr. Martin, an experienced statesman, had a breakfast meeting with Vice President JD Vance at his official residence, where the two smiled for photographers, both wearing green ties in a nod to the occasion.Speaking during the breakfast, Mr. Martin first thanked the president and vice president for continuing the annual tradition, before reflecting on the longstanding relationship between the two countries.“The United States has been a steadfast friend of Ireland’s for centuries,” he said, adding, “First and foremost, our kinship was built upon the ties between our people, especially the generations of Irish who made their homes here.”Mr. Martin is expected to be greeted by Mr. Trump before the leaders head to the Oval Office, and then the two will hold a closed-door bilateral meeting.According to Mr. Martin’s office, discussions were expected to cover a broad range of issues from trade to the war in Ukraine to the situation in the Middle East, as well as the Northern Ireland peace process, of which the United States has long been a crucial partner.On Wednesday evening, at around 5 p.m., the White House will hold a St. Patrick’s Day reception to mark the holiday commemorating the patron saint of Ireland, which is officially on Monday. Mr. Trump will be gifted a bowl of shamrocks, as is tradition.Ireland has a large trade surplus with the U.S. in goods — driven in large part by the export of pharmaceutical goods manufactured in Ireland by U.S. companies, as well as agricultural products like dairy — but it has a large trade deficit with the country when it comes to services. More

The Syrian Network for Human Rights said armed groups and foreign fighters aligned with the government but not integrated into it were largely responsible for the sectarian violence.Armed groups and foreign fighters linked to the government but not yet integrated into it were primarily responsible for sectarian massacres in Syria’s coastal region over the past week, a war monitoring group said in a new report.The U.S. secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said on Wednesday that the U.S. would “watch the decisions made by the interim authorities” after hundreds of civilians were killed in just several days in areas dominated by the country’s Alawite religious minority. He added that Washington was concerned by “the recent deadly violence against minorities.”The ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad was an Alawite and some members of his minority community enjoyed a privileged status under his rule.The Syrian Network for Human Rights, which monitors the country’s civil war, said in a report released late on Tuesday that the violence in recent days “included extrajudicial killings, field executions, and systematic mass killings motivated by revenge and sectarianism.”The clashes erupted almost a week ago in Latakia and Tartus Provinces — the Alawite heartland of Syria — between fighters aligned with the new government and Assad loyalists. The new government is led by Islamist former rebels who fought Mr. al-Assad in a 13-year civil war.The violence was triggered when pro-Assad militants ambushed security forces last Thursday and killed more than a dozen of them. The government then poured security forces into the coastal region.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

A Democrat and a Republican are vying for a seat in the Minnesota House of Representatives in a special election that could leave the chamber tied or give Republicans a slim majority. A Democrat won the seat by 30 percentage points last November, but a judge later ruled that he did not meet the residency […] More

<!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –> <!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–>More than 1.2 million Americans died in the coronavirus pandemic. For their grieving families, the fifth anniversary of the pandemic’s beginning is an aching reminder of what they have lost.–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> […] More

Desire comes a distant second to violence in a Brooklyn revival of the Tennessee Williams classic.“The sky that shows around the dim white building is a peculiarly tender blue, almost a turquoise, which invests the scene with a kind of lyricism and gracefully attenuates the atmosphere of decay.”Not bloody likely.Those stage directions from Tennessee Williams’s published script for “A Streetcar Named Desire” may amount to a mission statement and an artist’s credo but, 78 years after the play’s debut, they are no longer marching orders.At any rate, no one follows them. The New Orleans neighborhood in which Williams set the action — called Elysian Fields, no less — has for decades been radically reimagined: as a shoe box, a hangar, a manga, a loo. In his New York Times review, Ben Brantley called that last one, directed by Ivo van Hove, “A Bathtub Named Desire.”Now Rebecca Frecknall, whose Broadway production of “Cabaret” is no one’s idea of subtle, takes up the cudgel. In the revival of “Streetcar” that opened Tuesday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, a transfer from London starring the ferocious Paul Mescal, she literalizes the idea of brutal relocation. You will not find a tender blue sky or even a white building, let alone any lyricism, on Madeleine Girling’s square, wood-plank set. Elevated on concrete blocks, in the gritty dark of the Harvey Theater, she makes the world of Stanley and Stella Kowalski — and of their frail interloper, Blanche DuBois — look like a boxing ring.There is some justice in that: Stanley is, after all, Williams’s half-despised, half-beloved icon of a brute. He enters the first scene bearing a package of bloody meat, which he throws at Stella to cook — a gesture she finds briefly annoying but that also turns her on. No less than her husband, she looks forward to making what he calls “noise in the night” and getting “the colored lights going.” That’s his kind of lyricism. And when Blanche, Stella’s impoverished older sister, arrives in desperation for an indefinite stay, we see its flip side as he sets out to destroy her because he can.In Anjana Vasan’s excellent performance as Stella, our critic writes, we sense her love for her sister, even more than the usual weak-tea toleration.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe 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

Chandi Deitmer and Kate Hawkins make their collaboration debut.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesWEDNESDAY PUZZLE — No matter your level of skill as a solver, it’s natural to be curious about the logic behind crossword puzzles: why constructors opt for certain words over others, the choice between a vertical theme and a horizontal one, and so on. Anyone curious about these aspects in today’s crossword is in luck; its constructors, Chandi Deitmer and Kate Hawkins, have offered a wonderfully detailed look into the thinking behind their grid and theme design in the Constructor Notes below. Their insights really highlight the complexity of theme creation, and made me appreciate how well they pulled it off.For more behind-the-scenes crossword content, you can also subscribe to the Easy Mode newsletter. In it, Christina Iverson, a puzzle editor, answers a different reader question each week.Today’s ThemeWe’ve got to crack a few entries in the grid before identifying the [classic magic trick that’s depicted figuratively in this grid?] at 58-Across. Since shaded squares are a sure indication of themed content, let’s focus on a couple of those. 32-Across is pretty much a gimme (an obvious answer, in puzzle-speak): [The Wicked Witch of the West, in “Wicked”] is ELPHABA. To the right, at 35-Across, there’s another partially-shaded celebrity figure: The [Grammy’s Album of the Year winner for 2024’s “Cowboy Carter”] is BEYONCÉ. Shaded letters between these two entries read B-A-B-E. Hmm.At 52-Across, the [Kid-lit character with telekinetic abilities] is MATILDA; next to her, at 54-Across, sits the [“Brand New Key” singer, 1971], MELANIE. Between these two names we get D-A-M-E in the shaded squares.Both of these are slangy terms for a woman (for better or worse), which help us identify the “classic magic trick” from 58-Across: SAW A WOMAN IN HALF (58A). Not only do the shaded squares “saw” synonyms for the word “woman” in half, but each half also belongs to part of a woman’s name. MISSUS is split between ARTEMIS at 17-Across and SUSANNA at 18-Across. There’s one thing you can say about either Ms. Deitmer or Ms. Hawkins: When it comes to crossword themes, she never missus. Yuk, yuk! (I’m getting the hook.)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

John Fulton and Anthony Mitchell were teenagers when they were coerced into giving false confessions in a 2003 murder in Chicago.A federal jury in Chicago awarded $120 million on Monday to two Illinois men who spent more than 16 years behind bars for a 2003 murder they did not commit.John Fulton and Anthony Mitchell were teenagers when they were convicted in 2006 for the murder of Christopher Collazo, whose body was found bound and partly burned in an alley on the South Side of Chicago in the early hours of March 10, 2003. Their convictions were vacated in 2019.Mr. Fulton and Mr. Mitchell each filed a federal lawsuit in 2020 against the City of Chicago, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and several Chicago police officers, arguing that the men had been framed and were coerced into giving false confessions.After a month of testimony, a federal jury deliberated for two days before finding that the men had been railroaded into giving false confessions and that detectives had fabricated evidence against them, according to court records. Mr. Fulton and Mr. Mitchell were each awarded $60 million in damages.Mr. Fulton said in a phone interview on Tuesday that he knew his day of justice would come.“It was a sense of relief,” he said of the verdict. Referring to others still serving time for crimes they did not commit, he added, “I also thought about all the others who haven’t gotten a chance to see this day for themselves.”Jon Loevy, a lawyer for Mr. Fulton and Mr. Mitchell, described the moment the jury read its verdict as “very emotional.”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

Republicans in the Minnesota House lost a one-seat edge in the Capitol, where tensions over party dominance have simmered for weeks.A Democrat won a special election for a seat in the Minnesota House of Representatives on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, returning partisan control of that chamber to an even split during an unusually acrimonious legislative session.The seat, in a heavily Democratic district north of St. Paul, has been at the center of a weekslong fight for power that led House Democrats to boycott the early weeks of the state’s lawmaking session.David Gottfried, the Democrat and a Minnesota native who works at a law firm, defeated Paul Wikstrom, a Republican who is an engineer and had sought the seat previously.The election leaves each party with 67 seats in the chamber, ending a brief period during which Republicans had a one-seat majority. Even with Democrats securing the additional seat, the even split means that Democrats do not hold full control of the Legislature and the Governor’s Mansion as they did the previous two years.The Minnesota Senate is also closely divided. Senators began the session with an even split, but a special election held in late January gave Democrats a one-seat majority.Tuesday’s special election came after a judge ruled late last year that the candidate who won the Minnesota House seat in November, Curtis Johnson, a Democrat, had not met residency requirements for the district. Mr. Wikstrom, an engineer, was also the Republican candidate in that race, and lost by 30 percentage points.The fight over control of the Legislature underscored the challenges that Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, came home to face after spending much of last year campaigning for vice president.The early weeks of the legislative session were chaotic. When House members were sworn in last month, Representative Lisa Demuth, a Republican, was elected as speaker, becoming the first Republican woman and the first Black person to serve in that role. A Democrat had led the chamber since 2019.In negotiations that ended the Democratic boycott, leaders from both parties agreed to jointly run legislative committees if a Democrat won the special House election, as was widely expected, leaving the House evenly split.In the past few weeks, Republicans have used their narrow majority to advance bills on contentious issues, including an initiative to bar transgender students from competing in female sports. The proposal was brought to the floor, but failed.Most pressing now for Minnesota lawmakers is passing a state budget. State officials projected last week that Minnesota may face a nearly $6 billion shortfall by 2028. Concerns about the state’s finances have deepened as the Trump administration has begun cutting grants and other federal programs. More