Aurelia Butler

For years, Michael Cyril Creighton hoped one of his small TV parts would evolve into something more. With “Only Murders,” it finally happened.On a rainy morning in early August, the actor Michael Cyril Creighton sat in a dog friendly cafe on the outskirts of Astoria, Queens. With him was Sharon, his seven-year-old rescue, who is part Chihuahua, part Jack Russell terrier, with a soupçon of haunted doll. Another dog scampered over to their table. Sharon growled low in her throat and bared her teeth.“She has a troubled past,” Creighton said, soothing her. “But she’s great.”Creighton — bespectacled, bearded, with a cuddlesome physique — is more reliably sociable. During a two-hour conversation that began with savory scones and included a damp walk at a nearby sculpture park, he growled not once, not even when interrupted, frequently, by fans of his work on “Only Murders in the Building.”In “Only Murders,” the Hulu series about occasional homicides in a luxury co-op on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Creighton, 45, plays Howard, a librarian and hobbyist yodeler with an impressive sweater game. A gossip and a noodge, keen to be accepted by the building’s amateur detectives, a trio played by Selena Gomez, Steve Martin and Martin Short, Howard is also capable of surprising vulnerability. So is Creighton, who combines a mordant wit and a clown’s broad instincts with deep feeling.A recurring actor in the show’s first two seasons, Creighton was made a series regular in its third. In Season 4, which premiered on Tuesday, his co-stars include a pig who urinated on his feet between takes.“Look, it’s ridiculous what we’ve got going on in his world,” John Hoffman, the “Only Murders” showrunner said in an interview. “I feel like I can throw him anything and he’ll sort it out. I can’t believe I got so lucky to find him.”In Season 4, Creighton’s character, Howard, owner of many (many) cats, adopts a retired working dog and starts his own podcast, called “Animals and Their Jobs.”Patrick Harbron/DisneyWe 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

The murder mystery comedy returns with more celebrities than ever but in a winking, self-aware way.In its first three seasons, the Hulu mystery comedy “Only Murders in the Building” recruited an impressively starry array of guest stars — including Nathan Lane, Paul Rudd and Meryl Streep — to join the already stellar main cast of Selena Gomez, Steve Martin and Martin Short. Season 4, which starts on Tuesday, has even more famous faces, which can be overwhelming at times. But there’s a knowing quality to the way these celebrities are deployed: “Only Murders” has gone Hollywood, but in a winking, self-aware way.Partly, that’s by … going to Hollywood. In the premiere, Mabel, Charles and Oliver (Gomez, Martin and Short) are summoned to Los Angeles by a Paramount Pictures executive (Molly Shannon, always hilarious) who is desperate to make a movie based on their hit podcast. The A-list cast has already been chosen: Eugene Levy will play Charles, Zach Galifianakis will play Oliver, and Eva Longoria will be Mabel. (For those keeping track of the meta-layers, that’s a group of real celebrities playing themselves as the cast of a fictional movie about a reality-inspired podcast inside a fictional show — starring real celebrities as fictional hosts.)But Mabel has reservations. And Charles is growing increasingly worried about the disappearance of his friend and former stunt double, Sazz Pataki (Jane Lynch), who as we know from the Season 3 finale was murdered in Charles’s apartment — dressed as (and presumably mistaken for) Charles himself. It can be a bit awkward when a show leaves its natural environment, and that’s true when the crime-solving trio heads to California. The characters feel out of place and so do we. Lucky for us, the action soon returns to New York and their Upper West Side apartment building, the Arconia, where they must try to track down Sazz’s killer.There’s cheeky fun in the big-time celebrities playing heightened versions of themselves, but the jokes about haughty famous people are also a little obvious. The most delightful guest turns come from the less-famous actors who play the zany suspects. Jin Ha, so great in “Pachinko,” is an adorably jittery screenwriter. Catherine Cohen and Siena Werber are gloriously eccentric film director sisters. There is also an eye-patch-wearing Richard Kind and other established character actors, like Daphne Rubin-Vega, who show up to cause chaos.“Only Murders” has become comforting in its rhythms. The writers have a working formula, and they use that formula well. But I’m really not watching for the mystery anymore — even though there are plenty of twists and turns this season. I’m watching to see who pops up next and how much they can make me giggle. More

Coldplay and Billie Eilish have tried to drive down carbon emissions while touring, but the British band Massive Attack has tried to take the efforts even further.When the British band Massive Attack was halfway through a West Coast tour in 2019, flying from show to show, the rapper and singer Robert Del Naja had a moment of crisis. Given all the carbon emitted by moving the band and its equipment around, he recalled wondering: Can I justify this anymore?Not long afterward, the band made a decision. It would work with climate scientists to develop a model for touring that made as little climate impact as possible.On Sunday, Massive Attack staged a daylong 35,000-person festival in the band’s home city of Bristol, England, to showcase the carbon-cutting measures it has developed with the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research, a British organization, and A Greener Future, a nonprofit focused on lowering the music industry’s emissions.The concert on Sunday was powered by batteries charged from wind and solar energy.Sandra Mickiewicz for The New York TimesFans were encouraged to travel to the show by walking, cycling or using public transportation.Sandra Mickiewicz for The New York TimesWhereas other bands, including Coldplay, have staged attention-grabbing stunts to draw awareness to the industry’s climate impacts, they have sometimes ignored the main sources of emissions from gigs, such as audience travel and venues’ power supplies. With its show on Sunday, Massive Attack wanted to show how to tackle all of the polluting parts of a show.In an interview a few days before the event, Del Naja said that previous music industry efforts to cut emissions had not been in line with the United Nations-agreed goal to stop average temperatures rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 Fahrenheit.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

After a stabbing attack that prosecutors say was committed by a Syrian who was rejected for asylum, the city of Solingen finds itself at the center of a longstanding debate.Two days after a deadly knife attack in the German city of Solingen, the youth wing of the far-right AfD party put out a call for supporters to stage a protest demanding the government do more to deport migrants denied asylum.The authorities had identified the suspect in the stabbing spree that killed three people and wounded eight others as a Syrian man who was in the country despite having been denied asylum and who prosecutors suspected had joined the Islamic State. The attack tore at the fabric of the ethnically diverse, working-class city in the country’s west.But even before the right-wing protests had begun on Sunday, scores of counterprotesters had gathered in front of the group home that housed the suspect and other refugees. They carried banners that read, “Welcome to refugees” and “Fascism is not an opinion, but a crime,” and railed against those who would use the attack to further inflame an already fraught national debate over immigration and refugees.The dueling protests — not unlike those recently in Britain — are emblematic of Germany’s longstanding tug of war over how to deal with a large influx of asylum seekers in recent years. The country needs immigration to bolster its work force, but the government often finds itself on the defensive against an increasingly powerful AfD.The party and its supporters are attempting to use the stabbing attack to bolster their broader anti-immigrant message, with some blaming the assault on “uncontrolled migration” even before the nationality of the suspect was known.“They are trying to use this tragedy to foment fear,” said Matthias Marsch, 67, a Solingen resident who was at Sunday’s counterprotest and worries about a rightward drift in society. “I’m here to stand against that.”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

The Klamath River was once so flush with fish that local tribes ate salmon at every meal: flame-roasted filets on redwood skewers, stews flavored with fish tails, strips of smoky, dried salmon. In the language of the Yurok, who live on the river among California’s towering redwoods, the word for “salmon” translates to “that which we eat.”But when hydropower dams were built on the Klamath, which wends from southern Oregon into far northwest California, the river’s ecosystem was upended and salmon were cut off from 420 miles of cooler tributaries and streams where they had once laid their eggs. For decades, there has been little salmon for the tribes to cook, sell or use in religious ceremonies. The Yurok’s 60th annual Salmon Festival this summer served none of its namesake fish.But tribal members hope the situation is about to dramatically change.Four giant dams on the Klamath are being razed as part of the largest dam removal project in U.S. history, a victory for the tribes who have led a decades-long campaign to restore the river. This week, as the final pieces are demolished, a 240-mile stretch of the Klamath will flow freely for the first time in more than a century — and salmon will get their best shot at long-term survival in the river.“The salmon are going to their spawning grounds for the first time in 100 years,” said Ron Reed, 62, a member of the Karuk tribe who has been fighting for dam removal for half his life. “There’s a sense of pride. There’s a sense of health and wellness.”Juvenile chinook salmon before being released into the Klamath River near Hornbrook, Calif.Salmon play an outsize role in nourishing and holding together ecosystems, scientists say, and their plight has fueled a growing trend of dam removals nationwide. Of the 150 removals on the West Coast in the past decade — double that of the previous decade, according to data from American Rivers, an environmentalist group — most have benefited salmon. Chinook salmon, or king salmon, in the Klamath are predicted to increase by as much as 80 percent within the next three decades.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

The Israeli military on Tuesday celebrated the rescue of Farhan al-Qadi, who was taken hostage during Hamas’s attacks on Oct. 7. The 52-year-old was hospitalized in stable medical condition.Mr. al-Qadi, a member of Israel’s Bedouin Arab minority, is from Rahat, a city in southern Israel. He was working in a small Israeli kibbutz, called Magen, near the Gaza border, when he was abducted, according to a post on X from President Isaac Herzog of Israel.His brother, Khatem al-Qadi, told Israeli television that the family planned a huge party to celebrate his return. Calling for a cease-fire deal, he wished the same for other hostages still in captivity: “They are still waiting to see their loved ones back today,” he said. “We are wishing for all of the hostages to be released and for there to be a deal now.’’For some, Mr. al-Qadi’s rescue was a reminder of the toll the attacks took on Israel’s impoverished Bedouin community. At least 17 Bedouins died in the Oct. 7 attacks. Many more who had worked on Jewish farms in southern Israel lost their livelihoods after the farms were ransacked.Even before the attacks, the Bedouins were suffering. Few have access to bomb shelters and health clinics because they live in villages that the Israeli government does not recognize. Even though Hamas does not specifically target them, Bedouins are not always able to seek shelter when the group fires rockets into southern Israel.Gabby Sobelman More

A female student was fatally shot. A man who was not a student had a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the university president said.Two people were found shot dead in a dorm room at Rice University in Houston, the university president said on Monday, in what appeared to be a murder-suicide.One was a female student who had lived in the dorm room in the Jones College residential hall, Reginald DesRoches, the university president, said at a news conference. The other was a man who was not a university student and who had a self-inflicted gunshot wound, he said.The university identified the student as Andrea Rodriguez Avila, a junior.She appeared to have been in a romantic relationship with the man, Clemente Rodriguez, the university police chief, said.The two were discovered on Monday afternoon during a welfare check by the Rice University police, after a family member reported not being able to get in contact with Ms. Avila, Mr. Rodriguez said. Both were pronounced dead at the scene. It appeared that Ms. Avila let the man into the residential building, he added.The deaths occurred on the first day of classes. The university issued a shelter-in-place alert at about 5:40 p.m. urging all students to stay in their rooms as the police investigated.The alert was lifted before 7 p.m. All classes and activities were canceled for the rest of Monday, the university said on social media. More

Julia Hoepner makes her New York Times debut.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — If you’re coming to this column before having solved today’s crossword, constructed by Julia Hoepner, then allow me to prepare you for the visceral reaction you may have to 68-Across. The overall theme is wonderful, but that revealer is almost certain to inspire groans for reasons beyond the puzzle.If you do experience a jolt — or, should I say, a jilt — of recognition, take heart in the fact that thousands of solvers around the world are probably doing the same. I also have to wonder, given the subject matter: Was it intentional not to have any X’s in this puzzle?Today’s ThemeShaded squares in the grid tell us where to find the themed content, but we’ve still got to figure out what we’re looking at. For instance, at 38-Across, there’s an [Epigram or elegy] — a POEM, with the letter M shaded. To the right, at 40A, we have a word meaning [Set straight], ALIGN, with all of its letters shaded. And to the right of that, at 42A, there’s [Opposed to]. That’s ANTI, with only the first three letters shaded.String these shaded letters together and you get MALIGNANT. The key to interpreting this is at 68-Across, with an expression that refers to the [Messy end of a relationship]: a BAD BREAKUP.MALIGNANT means very bad, and it’s been “broken up” across entries. With that in mind, have a look around. You may find that there’s something ROTTEN split between 17- and 18A, or an ICKY feeling between 26- and 30A. Gosh, there’s a lot of bad stuff in here! And I mean that as a compliment.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