Elections

Mr. Culver, who was best known for his demise as Captain Needa in “The Empire Strikes Back,” was also a familiar actor on British TV and in theater.Michael Culver, the British actor best known for one of the memorable death scenes in the Star Wars franchise, died on February 27. He was 85.Mr. Culver’s death was confirmed by Alliance Agents, which posted a statement to social media on Tuesday, and his agent, Thomas Bowington. The agency did not give a cause of death, though Mr. Bowington said Mr. Culver had had cancer for several years.He had a long acting career onscreen and stage that spanned over 50 years and included roles in “The Return of Sherlock Holmes” on TV and the 1984 film “A Passage to India.”But his most lasting impact on popular culture came in 1980, with his brief role as Captain Needa in the second “Star Wars” film, “The Empire Strikes Back.” Needa, after losing track of Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon, apologizes to Darth Vader, who promptly chokes him to death telepathically.“Apology accepted, Captain Needa,” Vader says, walking around the captain’s body and motioning for others to take him away.Mr. Culver also appeared in two “James Bond” films with the actor Sean Connery, “From Russia With Love” and “Thunderball.”Michael John Edward Culver was born on June 16, 1938, in London to Daphne Rye, a theater casting director, and Ronald Culver, an actor, according to Mr. Bowington.Mr. Culver performed in several Shakespeare plays and worked regularly with the British director Anthony Page, his agent said.Mr. Culver is survived by his second wife, Amanda Ward Culver, and his children, Roderic, Sue and Justin Culver.His son, Roderic Culver, also became an actor, Mr. Bowington said.Later in his life, Mr. Culver mostly gave up acting to focus on politics and would have likely pursued a political career had he not been an actor, Mr. Bowington said.He still visited Star Wars fan events, notably one in Chicago in 2019, his agency said in its statement.“He was lost for words,” it said, “when he saw his queue line with nearly 200 people waiting to see him.” More

The vice president plans to meet with abortion providers and staff members in Minneapolis, a striking political move that shows how assertive Democrats have grown on the issue.Vice President Kamala Harris plans to meet with abortion providers and staff members on Thursday in the Twin Cities, a visit that is believed to be the first stop by a president or vice president to an abortion clinic.The appearance at a health center will be the latest leg in a nationwide tour by Ms. Harris, who has emerged as the most outspoken defender of abortion rights in the administration. While White House officials say they have largely reached the limits of their power to protect abortion rights, the issue has emerged as a linchpin of their re-election strategy.Ms. Harris plans on Thursday to tour the center with an abortion provider and highlight what the administration has done to try to preserve access to the procedure as conservative states enact growing restrictions.Minnesota has become a haven for abortion seekers since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ushering in restrictive laws and bans in neighboring states. The Society of Family Planning, a health research organization, found that the average number of abortions in the state increased by about 36 percent in the year after the Supreme Court decision.Last year, Gov. Tim Walz signed legislation enshrining abortion rights into state law, an effort to ensure the procedure remains legal no matter who takes office in the state. Ms. Harris will be joined on Thursday by Minnesota Democrats including Mr. Walz and Representative Betty McCollum. The tour is part of a White House initiative led by Ms. Harris to highlight abortion rights.The mere sight of a top Democratic official walking into an abortion clinic will offer the clearest illustration yet of how the politics of abortion rights have shifted for the party — and the nation.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

Several communities in the Valparaíso region were being evacuated on Wednesday night. Fires along the coast killed more than 100 people last month.The authorities were battling another round of dangerous wildfires along Chile’s Pacific coast on Wednesday night, several weeks after blazes there killed more than 100 people.Chile’s national disaster agency said on Wednesday night that several communities in the Valparaíso region were being evacuated as emergency crews battled the Cerro Cordillera fire. That part of the coast is dotted with towns that rise steeply from the ocean.Devastating wildfires swept through the region last month after erupting in Viña del Mar, a coastal resort city about 80 miles by road northwest of Santiago, the capital. They ravaged entire neighborhoods, trapped people fleeing in cars and destroyed thousands of homes. President Gabriel Boric called it Chile’s worst disaster since a cataclysmic 2010 earthquake killed more than 400 people and displaced about 1.5 million more.This is a developing story. More

Large crowds packed the streets to celebrate the tradition of Chaharshanbeh Suri. Iran has banned dancing in public, which has also been a way to protest.Iranians have looked for opportunities in recent months to display defiance against the rules of the clerical government. In Tuesday night’s annual fire festival, many found a chance.Across Iran, thousands of men and women packed the streets as they danced wildly to music and jumped joyfully over large bonfires, according to videos on social media and interviews with Iranians. The police said the crowds were so large in Tehran and other cities that traffic came to a standstill for many hours and commuters had difficulty reaching public transportation, according to Iranian news reports.Dancing, especially for men and women together, is banned in public in Iran and has long been a form of protest.In many places, the gatherings turned political, with crowds chanting, “Freedom, freedom, freedom,” “Death to the dictator” and “Get lost, clerics,” according to videos and interviews with participants. In the city of Rasht in northern Iran, a crowd booed security officers who drove by in motorcycles, videos showed.A man in Tehran celebrating Chaharshanbeh Suri. This year, the celebration became another example of how many Iranians have moved away from the ruling clerics.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesIranians were celebrating the ancient Persian tradition of Chaharshanbeh Suri before the coming new year, Nowruz, which is on the first day of spring. In a ritual on the eve of the last Wednesday of the year, people jump over fire to cleanse the spirit from malaise of the old year and take on the glow of the flames in preparation for the new year.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 Democratic group is wading into the Republican Senate primary in Ohio with a new television spot aimed at promoting the conservative credentials of Bernie Moreno, a Cleveland-area businessman who has been endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump.The spot criticizes Mr. Moreno as ultraconservative and too aligned with Mr. Trump. But by running the ad in the final week of the primary, those critiques are likely to be viewed as badges of honor by Republican primary voters, a tactic Democrats have employed in other races in recent years.A group called Duty and Country is spending roughly $879,000 on the ad, which is set to run across the state, according to AdImpact, a firm that tracks advertising.The group is funded largely through the Senate Majority PAC, the principal super PAC supporting Democratic efforts to maintain control of the chamber.Mr. Moreno is running for the Republican nomination against State Senator Matt Dolan and Ohio’s secretary of state, Frank LaRose. The winner will face Senator Sherrod Brown, the Democratic incumbent.“Democrats constantly underestimate the America First movement at their own peril,” said Reagan McCarthy, communications director for Mr. Moreno. “They thought President Trump would be easy to beat in 2016 and then they got their clocks cleaned when he demolished Hillary Clinton. The same thing is going to happen to Sherrod Brown this year.”Mr. Moreno has struggled to pull away from his primary challengers despite the endorsement from Mr. Trump and others, including Senator J.D. Vance, a Trump-backed Republican who was elected in 2022. Mr. Moreno won their backing by embracing hard-line conservative positions that Democrats view as potentially easier to run against in a general election.“When Ohio voters head to their polling place, they deserve to know the truth about Bernie Moreno — and the truth is that Moreno is a MAGA extremist who embraced Donald Trump just like he embraced his policies to ban abortion nationwide and repeal” the Affordable Care Act, said Hannah Menchhoff, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority PAC.Republicans need to flip two seats to win back power if President Biden is re-elected, but just one if the White House returns to Republican hands. Republicans already are expected to gain one seat in West Virginia after Senator Joe Manchin III, a Democrat, announced he would not seek re-election.In the California Senate primary last month, Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat, ran a spot describing Steve Garvey, a Republican and a former Major League Baseball player, as too conservative. Mr. Schiff and Mr. Garvey will face off in November in their deep-blue state.In the Pennsylvania governor’s race in 2022, the Democrat, Josh Shapiro, ran an ad in the Republican primary playing up the conservative credentials of Doug Mastriano, the Trump-backed candidate in the race. Mr. Mastriano won and Mr. Shapiro easily defeated him to win the governor’s office. More

In Jamie Lloyd’s revival of Lucy Prebble’s play, Paapa Essiedu and Taylor Russell are a couple who fall in love during a pharmaceutical trial.A white plastic bucket sits on a spare stage at the Shed, where the director Jamie Lloyd’s stark, riveting production of “The Effect” opened on Wednesday night. By the time its content — a human brain — is revealed, Lucy Prebble’s heady and scintillating drama is already interrogating the biology of desire.What begins as the drug trial of an antidepressant shifts into more slippery territory when a flirtation develops between two of the participants. As they circle each other, neurons blazing, questions swirl about whether their attraction has been chemically engineered — and if love controls the mind or the other way around.The simplicity of a brain plopped in a pail for scientific research becomes something of a mordant sight gag.Previously staged Off Broadway in 2016, “The Effect” digs into what one of the study’s architects calls “nothing short of a revolution in medicine”: drug intervention that considers the psyche a plastic aspect of the self. Lloyd’s production, which premiered in August at the National Theater in London, poses the play’s philosophical inquiries on a stark and minimal plane that feels both cosmic and atomically intimate.During the experiment’s intake, we learn that Connie (Taylor Russell) gets sad but isn’t depressed (“when I’m sad, I’m sad,” she says) and that Tristan (Paapa Essiedu) has a playful swagger, half-flirting with the study’s administrator, Dr. Lorna James (a game and frank Michele Austin), while she asks about his medical history.Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, left, and Austin (with Essiedu and Russell seated onstage), portray the two psychiatrists running the pharmaceutical trial. 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

Jeffrey Martinovic wishes us all a happy holiday.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTHURSDAY PUZZLE — I am not really an observer of occasions such as the one that Jeffrey Martinovic highlights in today’s puzzle, but, if you are, please celebrate responsibly. Run in circles, eat desserts that are not cake. By all means, have a fabulous time.Just don’t round up numbers that should not be rounded up. More about that fabulous story in the theme section of the column.Today’s Theme (and a Great Story About it)You probably guessed Jeffrey Martinovic’s theme right away when you noted the date and saw the black squares in the shape of the Greek letter pi (π), which represents the constant 3.14. The amount of theme material here is a bit light, but his grid is flanked by the mathematical giants STEPHEN HAWKING (3D), who died on PI DAY (33D) in 2018, and ALBERT EINSTEIN (11D), who was born on that day in 1879. In addition, Mr. Martinovic’s puzzle includes Leonhard EULER (29D), whose famous mathematical identity ︎includes pi.The value of pi has been known for almost 4,000 years, but the mathematical constant that is used to help calculate the area of a circle had what is thought to be its first celebration in 1988 at the San Francisco Exploratorium. In 2009, the House of Representatives recognized March 14 as National Pi Day, and we’ve been eating fruit pie on this day ever since.Speaking of government recognition, this declaration was not the first time that pi had been the subject of discussion in the halls of civic discourse.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

He was called a visionary in cable television, but his foray into the world of the internet, in a marriage with AOL, proved disastrous.Gerald M. Levin, a “visionary” media executive, as he was often described, who became C.E.O. of the world’s largest media company, Time Warner, and an architect of its merger with America Online, widely considered the worst corporate marriage in American history, died on Wednesday. He was 84.Jake Maia Arlow, a grandchild of Mr. Levin’s, confirmed the death, in a hospital, and said he lived in Long Beach, Calif. No other details were provided. Mr. Levin had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.Mr. Levin was Time Warner’s chief executive when he and his counterpart at AOL at the time, Steve Case, devised what was then the largest business merger in U.S. history. When the deal was announced on Jan. 10, 2000, Time Warner was the world’s largest media company, and America Online was the largest internet company, with a combined market value of roughly $342 billion (the equivalent of about $600 billion today).The merger, creating AOL Time Warner, was heralded as a watershed moment — the union of old and new media, a storied 20th-century American company whose origins could be traced to the publishing baron Henry Luce and the Hollywood boss Jack Warner, hitching up with a Virginia tech company for a ride into the World Wide Web. Instead, it became shorthand for the excesses of the turn-of-the-century dot-com bubble and the era of so-called synergy.Richard Parsons, who succeeded Mr. Levin as chief executive of AOL Time Warner in 2002, said in a phone interview for this obituary in 2022 that Mr. Levin was “one of the smartest guys in the media and entertainment space,” a “visionary” who saw the digital wave coming and understood how the internet would transform Time Warner’s business.“He saw the merger with AOL as making Time Warner digital by injection,” Mr. Parsons said. “What AOL brought to the party was instant access and competence in terms of how to access the internet world.”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