Elections

In works like “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” the playwright would force you to laugh, not to dull the pain but to hone it.Pickpocketing Chekhov for dramatic capital is almost a rite of passage among playwrights, but only Christopher Durang invested the loot in beefcake.In his play “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” Vanya and Sonia are more-or-less familiar transplants from the Russian hinterlands to Bucks County, Pa., dithering so much about the purpose of life that they neglect to have one. Masha, though a movie star, is a Chekhov type, too: endlessly fascinating, especially to herself.But you will not find Spike anywhere in the canon; a jovial, amoral, ab-tastic himbo, he is apparently unfamiliar with the function of clothes. They keep coming off.Durang, who died on Tuesday night at 75, was likewise a stripper, peeling the pants off serious theater, both to admire and ridicule what it was packing beneath. When “Vanya” won the Tony Award for best play in 2013, it was the culmination of a writing life spent remaking the respectable precedents and characters of the past in the snarky image of his own times. Drama became comedy, but then — surprise! — swung back toward drama, then swung back again, never quite settling. In making us laugh and then demanding a retraction, Durang became an absurdist Neil Simon for a post-great generation.Billy Magnussen as Spike, with Genevieve Angelson as Nina, in Lincoln Center Theater’s 2012 production of “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.” Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesOften enough, the laughing was of the can’t-catch-your-breath variety, further dizzying the ambivalence of the culturati by punching both high and low. I didn’t see any of the plays and sketches he wrote while a student at the Yale School of Drama in the early 1970s, often collaborating with pals like Sigourney Weaver, Meryl Streep, Albert Innaurato and Wendy Wasserstein, but the titles tell you a lot: “Better Dead Than Sorry,” “The Life Story of Mitzi Gaynor,” “When Dinah Shore Ruled the Earth,” “The Idiots Karamazov.”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

Runners are disappointed that the new finisher medals feature a large bank logo across the bottom. “This isn’t a turkey trot.”Cathy Connor loves the Boston Marathon. She loves the camaraderie. She loves the mystique of the event, which dates to 1897 as the world’s oldest annual marathon. She loves the idea that she gets to run the same rolling course that has been conquered by greats like Kathrine Switzer, Meb Keflezighi and Des Linden.Ms. Connor, 58, loves the Boston Marathon so much that she has raced in it nine times. But there is one thing that she, and many of her fellow runners, do not love: the redesigned medal, which will be bestowed upon the 30,000 athletes who finish the 26.2-mile race on April 15.“It was kind of a letdown when I saw the picture,” Ms. Connor, a graphic designer from Pittsburgh, said in a telephone interview. “Why mess up a good thing? This isn’t a turkey trot.”Cathy Connor has completed the Boston Marathon nine times, receiving a similar medal for each finish.via Cathy ConnorThe new medal bears more than a passing resemblance to versions from past years. The principle image, as usual, is of a golden unicorn, the longtime logo of the Boston Athletic Association, the marathon’s organizing body.But the new medal has raised hackles among purists because of a key difference: It was redesigned to feature a large banner for Bank of America, the race’s corporate sponsor, along the bottom edge.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

It’s been a rainy winter, but that won’t necessarily mean fewer wildfires.Firefighters battling the Happy Camp Complex fire in August 2023.Max Whittaker for The New York TimesLuckily for us, the 2023 fire season in California was exceptionally mild.Wildland fires burned roughly 325,000 acres and damaged 70 buildings across the state last year, making the fire season one of the least destructive in the past decade and a significant departure from some terrible recent fire years.Nearly eight times as many acres — more than 2.5 million in all — burned in 2021, for example, as well as 3,500 structures. And the year before that was California’s worst on record, with 4.3 million acres burned.So what kind of fire season are we in for this year?Like 2023, this year has been a wet one. State officials announced on Tuesday that the depth of the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada stood at 110 percent of the average for this time of year, an encouraging sign that the state would have plenty of water in the months ahead.After the wet winter, vegetation in the state isn’t as parched as it would be during a drought, so wildfire activity is likely to be pretty low in the spring and early summer, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in an online briefing this week.But the year probably won’t stay as quiet as 2023 was. This year’s wet weather hasn’t been as extreme as last year’s — some inland cities, like Fresno and South Lake Tahoe, actually received less rain than usual this year — so plants and soil are more likely to dry out over the rest of this year than they were last year. “I would be somewhat surprised if this year was not significantly more active,” Swain said.Last summer was the coolest in California in more than a decade. Then the storm system that had been Hurricane Hilary dumped so much rain on Southern California in August — typically the peak of fire season — that it effectively ended the season there.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 reader is angered by friends who list their homes with other real estate brokers — sometimes without giving his husband a chance to make his case.My husband is an experienced Realtor. Like many, he has stories of friends who choose not to use him in their real estate transactions. Their excuse is usually that they don’t want to mix business with friendship. (This suggests to me that they don’t believe the friendship is strong enough to weather the experience or that my husband isn’t professional enough to provide top-notch service.) He has lost friends who promised to use him and then didn’t — and others who didn’t even give him a chance to make his case. They have caused him personal and financial pain. One good friend listed her home recently without even telling him. My husband is a sensitive soul, and it angers me to see him hurt by thoughtless friends. Advice?HUSBANDFeeling protective of our loved ones is a great quality — until it tips into one-sidedness. Here, I applaud your sensitivity to your husband’s distress, but you don’t seem to acknowledge the larger context: For most of us, buying or selling a home is the biggest transaction of our lives, and choosing a real estate agent who we believe will create the best outcome for us ranks higher than giving a buddy a job.Now, we real estate civilians may be mistaken in our assessment of the best broker for the job. (It’s still our call, though!) And I have had both good and horrendous experiences speaking to broker friends after I decided not to hire them. So, I understand the difficulty on both sides.My advice: Try to identify less with your husband and be more supportive of him. Rather than becoming outraged on his behalf, it would probably be more useful to help him manage his hurt feelings — which are understandable. Let him vent, then remind him that friends are making high-stakes decisions with imperfect information. It will serve him better, personally and professionally, to wish these friends well than to sever ties with them. Remember: There may be several transactions in a lifetime!Miguel PorlanWhat We Owe Our AnimalsLike many, my life was turned upside-down by the pandemic. I was living in New York but moved back to Seattle to take care of my mother. (My father had just died.) We adopted a dog that I hoped would become her new companion. I told her I would stay for a year to help raise the puppy, but I stayed for four. Now, I have an opportunity to move back to New York, but I can’t take the dog with me. The problem: My mother isn’t as bonded to the dog as I am. I thought we were getting it for her, but whenever I mention leaving, she says: “What will I do with the dog?” Thoughts?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 proposal faces several obstacles, including whether all members would agree to the changes. But the alliance is worried about wavering American support for Kyiv.With continued American aid to Ukraine stalled and against the looming prospect of a second Trump presidency, NATO officials are looking to take more control of directing military support from Ukraine’s allies — a role that the United States has played for the past two years.Under a proposal being discussed this week at the military alliance’s headquarters, NATO would oversee the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a group currently led by the United States that coordinates the donation and delivery of weapons to the battlefield. Discussions are also underway about a plan floated by Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general, to secure an additional $100 billion from the alliance’s 32 member states for Ukraine over five years.“A stronger NATO role in coordinating and providing support is the way to end this war in a way where Ukraine prevails,” Mr. Stoltenberg said on Wednesday at the start of meetings among the alliance’s top diplomats.“There is a need to give this a more robust and institutional framework to ensure predictability and commitment for the long haul,” Mr. Stoltenberg said. He added: “I strongly believe it’s important that allies make decisions fast. And that includes, of course, the United States.”Mr. Stoltenberg would not discuss specifics, but he said he hoped to have the new efforts approved in time for a July summit meeting of NATO leaders in Washington, where officials are expected to again debate when Ukraine might be allowed to join the military alliance, as has been promised for years.A NATO official confirmed the proposals, which were reported earlier by news outlets including Bloomberg News.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

Shake intensity   More

The magnitude 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan on Wednesday was the strongest in 25 years, the island’s Central Weather Administration said.Here’s a look back at some of the major earthquakes in modern Taiwanese history:In September 1999, a 7.6 magnitude earthquake in central Taiwan killed nearly 2,500 people, the United States Geological Survey said. It was the second-deadliest in the island’s history, according to the U.S.G.S. and Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration. More than 10,000 people were injured and more than 100,000 homes were destroyed or damaged.Taiwan’s deadliest quake registered a magnitude of 7.1 and struck near the island’s west coast in April 1935, killing more than 3,200 people, the Central Weather Administration said. More than 12,000 others were injured and more than 50,000 homes were destroyed or damaged.A magnitude 7.3 earthquake in December 1941, which struck southwestern Taiwan, caused several hundred deaths, the U.S.G.S. said.A 6.4 magnitude earthquake in February 2016 caused a 17-story apartment complex in southwestern Taiwan to collapse, killing at least 114 people. The U.S.G.S. later said that 90 earthquakes of that scale or greater had occurred within 250 kilometers, or 155 miles, of that quake’s location over the previous 100 years. More

President Biden is restoring resources and staffing for the refugee program, which was gutted during the Trump administration.With national attention focused on the chaos at the southern border, President Biden has been steadily rebuilding a legal pathway for immigration that was gutted during the Trump administration.The United States has allowed more than 40,000 refugees into the country in the first five months of the fiscal year after they passed a rigorous, often yearslong, screening process that includes security and medical vetting and interviews with American officers overseas.The figure represents a significant expansion of the refugee program, which is at the heart of U.S. laws that provide desperate people from around the world with a legal way to find safe haven in the United States.The United States has not granted refugee status to so many people in such a short period of time in more than seven years. The Biden administration is now on target to allow in 125,000 refugees this year, the most in three decades, said Angelo Fernández Hernández, a White House spokesman.By comparison, roughly 64,000 refugees were admitted during the last three years of the Trump administration.“The Biden administration has been talking a big talk about resettling more refugees since Biden took office,” said Julia Gelatt, an associate director at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington. “Finally we are seeing the payoff in higher numbers.”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