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Jaap van Zweden, the orchestra’s music director, led new works by Joel Thompson and Tan Dun amid pieces by Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn.When Jaap van Zweden, the music director of the New York Philharmonic, led the orchestra at the beginning of the year, the program featured repertory hits: a Wagner prelude, a Beethoven piano concerto and a Brahms symphony. Last week he returned with more of the same: a Mendelssohn overture, a Mozart piano concerto and a Beethoven symphony.This felt a little like “let Jaap be Jaap,” with van Zweden — whose short Philharmonic tenure ends in a few months — finally freed of the burden of presenting new works and past rarities, and able to focus wholly on the standards that have been at the center of his conducting career.But on Thursday at David Geffen Hall, he — or at least the administrators who have encouraged more adventure in his choices — offered a reminder that his time in New York had not been entirely without variety. In fact, the concert offered something unusual in the orchestral field: In a mixed program that will be repeated on Saturday and Sunday, the two (two!) premieres on the first half together lasted longer than the Mendelssohn symphony (yes, more Mendelssohn) after intermission.It was too bad that neither of those new pieces made a positive impression and that performing them together worked against both.First came Joel Thompson’s “To See the Sky,” obscurely subtitled “an exegesis for orchestra.” Two years ago, the Philharmonic premiered Thompson’s sumptuously moody song cycle “The Places We Leave.” Now 35, he has largely specialized in vocal music, and the 20-minute “To See the Sky,” heard for the first time on Thursday, is his longest instrumental work; you got the sense of a young composer trying to figure out how to fill such a substantial span.The titles of the piece’s three sections together form a quotation from the musician Cécile McLorin Salvant: “Sometimes/you have to gaze into a well/to see the sky.” From its beginning, with a series of soft rumbles that explode into violent bursts, much of the work alternates sections of loud and bumptious rhythms, like a parody of hip-hop beats, with periods of subdued lyricism. But these repetitive assertive-then-reticent cycles don’t accumulate interest or tension — though there are nice touches, like the sound of a trumpet flecked with harp.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 deal will pump money into Trump Media, which will allow Truth Social to keep operating. Mr. Trump’s personal stake in the company will be worth more than $3 billion on paper.Former President Donald J. Trump’s social media company on Friday completed a long-awaited merger with a cash-rich shell company, raising Mr. Trump’s wealth by billions and potentially providing him a fresh source of cash to pay his mounting legal bills.In approving the merger, shareholders of Digital World Acquisition Corporation will become shareholders of Trump Media & Technology Group, which will trade on the stock market under the stock symbol DJT. The deal will pump more than $300 million into Trump Media, which has all but exhausted its available cash and will allow Truth Social, the company’s flagship digital media platform, to keep operating.Based on Digital World’s stock price of $44 a share just before the vote announcement, Trump Media will debut with a market value of more than $5 billion. That means Mr. Trump’s personal stake will be worth more than $3 billion. Shares of Trump Media could begin trading under the new stock symbol as soon as next week.The deal’s approval comes as Mr. Trump is facing a Monday deadline to cover a $454 million penalty in a civil fraud case in New York. He is restricted for six months from selling any of his shares or using them as collateral for a loan, although he could ask the board of the merged company to waive that rule for him.Trump Media said in a statement before the vote that “the merger will enable Truth Social to enhance and expand our platform.”This is breaking news. Check back for updates. More

Ohio will almost certainly go for Donald Trump this November. The Democratic senator will need to defy the gravity of the presidential contest to win a fourth term.Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, has always had the luxury of running for election in remarkably good years for his party. He won his seat in 2006, during the backlash to the Iraq War, won re-election in 2012, the last time a Democrat carried the state, and did so again in 2018, amid a national reckoning of Donald J. Trump’s presidency.His campaign in 2024 will be different, and most likely the toughest of his career, with a Republican Party determined to win his seat and a Democratic president hanging off him like one of his trademark rumpled suits. In an election year when control of the Senate relies on the Democratic Party’s ability to win every single competitive race, an enormous weight sits on the slumped shoulders of the famously disheveled 71-year-old.“I fight for Ohioans,” Mr. Brown said in an interview on Wednesday. “There’s a reason I win in a state that’s a little more Republican.”Mr. Brown’s tousled hair and gravelly voice have spoken to working-class voters since he was elected Ohio’s secretary of state in 1982. His arms may be clenched tightly around his chest, but he projects a casual confidence that he can win once again in firmly red Ohio, where he is the last Democrat holding statewide office.But beneath that image is trouble. On Monday, he had just received an endorsement from the 100,000-strong Ohio State Building and Construction Trades Council, when a retired bricklayer, Jeff King, pulled him aside in a weathered union hall in Dayton.Mr. Brown has had plenty of achievements to run on, Mr. King, who made the trip from his local in Cincinnati, told the senator. But, he asked, would workers in a blue-collar state that has twice handed Mr. Trump eight-percentage-point victories understand who should get the credit?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

Before the United States presented a resolution at the United Nations Security Council on Friday calling for an “immediate and sustained cease-fire” in Gaza, it had vetoed three previous ones demanding a halt to the fighting. The United States has long used its veto power as a permanent Security Council member to block measures that Israel, its close ally, opposes. But the Biden administration has become increasingly vocal in criticizing Israel’s approach to the war against Hamas, and the resolution offered on Friday reflected that, using the strongest language the United States has supported at the U.N. in an effort to pause the war. (The resolution failed after Russia and China vetoed it.)Here is a look at the three previous resolutions and how the U.S. position has changed:OctoberLess than two weeks after the war began in response to the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, Brazil put forward a resolution that condemned the attacks while calling for humanitarian access and protection of civilians in Gaza and the immediate release of hostages captured in the incursion. The United States was the only no vote; Russia and Britain abstained, and the two other permanent members of the Council, France and China, joined with the remaining 10 members in voting for passage.Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the American ambassador to the United Nations, said the United States couldn’t support the resolution without a mention of Israel’s right to self-defense. DecemberThe United States cast the lone dissenting vote against a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire, one that the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, and some U.S. allies including France supported. The vote was 13 to 1, with Britain abstaining. 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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The UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, has suggested the Aukus pact and Nato alliance must get into the best possible shape to increase their chances of surviving Donald Trump’s potential return to the White House. Speaking after high-level talks in Australia, Cameron was careful to avoid criticising the former US president and presumptive Republican nominee for 2024, saying it was ‘up to America who they choose as their president’. The comments were in response to a question about whether the election of Trump in November would affect the Aukus agreement that was sealed with the Biden administration in March last year More

The authorities said they were executing a search warrant at the home of the executive, whom they accused of illegally selling firearms. His family said the action was unnecessary.The executive director of Arkansas’s largest airport died on Thursday after being wounded in a shootout this week with federal agents who were executing a search warrant at his home, the authorities said.According to the authorities, Bryan Malinowski, 53, the director of the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock, shot at agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who then returned fire as they tried to carry out the search warrant on Tuesday.One A.T.F. agent suffered a gunshot wound that was not life-threatening, the authorities said.In a 51-page affidavit that was unsealed on Thursday, officials offered insight into what had led to the early-morning search warrant in suburban Little Rock, which Mr. Malinowski’s family has criticized as unnecessary and dangerous.The authorities accused Mr. Malinowski of having purchased more than 100 guns in recent years and of illegally selling many of them, including at least three that were later found to be connected with a crime. Mr. Malinowski first bought the guns legally, checking a box on purchase forms stating that the guns were for himself, before selling them privately to individuals, the affidavit states.He would go to gun shows, the affidavit said, including two in Arkansas and one in Tennessee, and sell guns to people “without asking for any identification or paperwork.”Photographs included in the redacted affidavit show Mr. Malinowski at a gun show, standing behind a booth filled with firearms. The affidavit also states that Mr. Malinowski had sold guns to two undercover agents who were investigating him.Mr. Malinowski’s family said in a statement issued by their lawyer that they did not understand the government’s decisions that had “led to a dawn raid on a private home and triggered the use of deadly force.”The family added that while they were “obviously concerned about the allegations in the affidavit,” they still believed that the accusations did not “justify what happened.”“At worst, Bryan Malinowski, a gun owner and gun enthusiast, stood accused of making private firearm sales to a person who may not have been legally entitled to purchase the guns,” the family said.The A.T.F. did not immediately respond to calls seeking comment Thursday night.The Arkansas State Police said in a statement that the results of an investigation would be presented to a prosecuting attorney, who would “determine whether the use of deadly force was consistent with Arkansas law.”Mr. Malinowski began working at the Clinton National Airport in 2008 and became executive director in 2019, according to his biography on the airport’s website. He previously held leadership roles at other airports, including in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; El Paso; and Lehigh County, Pa.The Clinton National Airport said in a statement on Thursday that under Mr. Malinowski’s leadership, “our airport has experienced significant growth and success, expanding services and offerings to our community and state.” More

In his solo show, the screen and stage star shines a light into his formative dark corners and on the people who made an impression.When Laurence Fishburne wants to get closer to audiences of his one-man show, he lowers himself into a deep squat near the lip of the stage. Hands clasped and knees spread wide, the actor — who has become an avatar of inscrutability during his half-century screen and stage career — seems to be trying to shrink himself down to life-size.Fishburne’s indomitable presence is the muscle behind “Like They Do in the Movies,” which opened on Thursday night at the Perelman Performing Arts Center in Lower Manhattan. His vigor and gravitas are unwavering, even as Fishburne, the 62-year-old “Matrix” star, softens to reveal difficult details from his childhood and to portray others whose vulnerability made a personal impression.Part memoir and part ethnography, the show opens with Fishburne, who played a schemer in the 2022 Broadway revival of “American Buffalo” and a Supreme Court justice in the 2008 one-man play “Thurgood,” as you’ve likely never seen him before: draped in sequins (the flowing black robes are credited to Jimi Gureje). Addressing the audience in griot fashion, Fishburne briskly sketches his early years, introducing his mother, Hattie, a charm-school matron turned abusive stage mom. Using the refrain “but more on that later,” he indicates open questions he’ll return to, including how his father fits into the picture.These recollections have a clipped momentum, like listening to a celebrity narrate a tell-all at 1.5 speed. If the pacing makes him seem a bit guarded, it also serves a practical purpose: The production, written by Fishburne and crisply directed by Leonard Foglia, runs nearly two and half hours with an intermission. Greater economy would pack a more decisive punch, but the show rarely goes slack and Fishburne’s performance is thoroughly engrossing.That’s especially true as he slips into the more familiar territory of playing other people, in a series of vividly drawn monologues book ended by his own reflections. The play’s title may suggest a tour through Fishburne’s own Hollywood résumé, which includes an Oscar-nominated turn as Ike Turner in “What’s Love Got to Do With It.” But here, Fishburne plays a truck packer for The New York Daily News, a Hurricane Katrina survivor and a homeless man who washes cars, among others.Stalking Neil Patel’s sparse set — a stage with only a long table and a pair of chairs — Fishburne nimbly dons each persona with a keen and easy sensitivity. The assembly of character studies, mostly everyday New Yorker types, lacks an obvious sense of cohesiveness, though Fishburne himself emerges as the common thread.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