Elections

On the heels of Earth’s warmest year, January was the eighth month in a row in which global temperatures blew past previous records.The exceptional warmth that first enveloped the planet last summer is continuing strong into 2024: Last month clocked in as the hottest January ever measured, the European Union climate monitor announced on Thursday. More

Samuel A. Donaldson returns with some advice for people trying to date.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTHURSDAY PUZZLE — The first time I heard that Sam Donaldson was coming to the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, I was very excited. Mr. Donaldson had been the highly respected chief White House correspondent for ABC for as long as I could remember, and there were rumors at the tournament that he enjoyed making crossword puzzles as well.So you can imagine my confusion when a man who was decades younger than the veteran journalist walked up to me and introduced himself as Sam Donaldson. It turned out that the puzzle constructor was a law professor in Georgia with the same name as the correspondent.I was not disappointed. I made a friend that day, and he is an incredibly nice person who happens to enjoy crossing words. Also, it may be the reason that he now uses Samuel A. Donaldson for his byline.This is his 39th crossword in The New York Times, and I’m happy to see him back. Also, it may be the reason that he now uses Samuel A. Donaldson for his byline.Today’s ThemeIn four places, two theme entries lie next to each other on the same row. Please note that the theme clues are not italicized or starred, but you will know that you are onto something when the answers don’t make any sense. I know. Welcome to the Thursday puzzle.At 18A, the answer to the clue “Highway crossing” is written as PASSOVER. Now, I have been to plenty of Passover seders in my life, and not one of them took place on a public roadway. There must be more to this entry. In fact, it makes a lot more sense if you flip the word and make it OVERPASS.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

In drawing rooms and ballrooms of the elite in Manhattan, any enthusiasm for a second Biden term seemed to be mingled with fear about the thought of a second one for Donald J. Trump.There is one thing a president can do when Congress is an ungovernable mess, polling numbers are blinking red and crises abroad show no signs of resolving themselves. And that thing is: get out of town.President Biden traveled to New York on Wednesday to headline three fund-raisers, where he presented himself as the last line of defense against the re-election of Donald Trump and as a dedicated — if imperfect — leader who had been around long enough to recognize the existential threat Mr. Trump poses to democratic institutions, including the presidency.“It is dangerous for us to be engaged in this kind of politics, because it ends up dragging us all to the bottom,” Mr. Biden said during his third reception, where his voice had lowered to a whisper after a day of shaking hands, taking selfies and delivering speeches.“It’s not that I’m so good, but you have to have someone who can beat somebody.”Mr. Biden also pre-empted criticism of his age by joking that he was not 81, but “40 times two.” But in the drawing rooms and ballrooms of New York City, any enthusiasm for a second Biden term seemed to be mingled with fear about the thought of a second one from Mr. Trump.Groups lined streets in Manhattan to see the president’s motorcade.Kent Nishimura for The New York Times“We’re here for him, and for the next four years,” said Maureen White, a Democratic donor and the host of Mr. Biden’s third reception of the day, as she stood next to the president. “But we’re also here because the consequences of not electing Joe Biden are terrifying.”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

“We’ve got to take back 42nd Street,” Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the anti-crime group, said on “Hannity” as the Guardian Angels pushed a man to the ground.The Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa was being interviewed live from Times Square on Tuesday night by the Fox News host Sean Hannity when their exchange took a startling turn.The topic was what both men seemed to agree was a migrant-fueled wave of crime and chaos that they claimed had overtaken New York amid a surge of arrivals into the city from the southern border over the past two years.Suddenly, Mr. Sliwa had a prime-time example. As he spoke, the half-dozen red-jacketed Angels flanking him slipped out of the frame.“Our guys have just taken down one of the migrant guys right here on the corner of 42nd and Seventh where all this is taking place,” Mr. Sliwa said, pointing off camera.“Can you pan the camera?” Mr. Hannity asked his cameraman.The cameraman swung around and captured the Angels confronting a slightly built man in a hooded sweatshirt, throwing him to the ground and putting him in a headlock.“He is out of control,” Mr. Sliwa said as the camera turned away and Mr. Hannity shifted to criticizing President Biden over his administration’s border policies.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

If Taylor Mac and Matt Ray’s four-hour rock opera were aiming to succeed on aural gorgeousness and visual spectacle alone, there would be no cause to quibble.Somewhere close to the four-hour mark in “Bark of Millions,” the polychromatic cavalcade of splendor that is Taylor Mac and Matt Ray’s new rock opera, I finally realized why the woman in front of me had been reading on her phone throughout the performance. And why she had looked at me like I was way out of line when I couldn’t bear the glowing screen any longer, leaned forward and implored her to stop.The words on her phone were excerpts from the show’s lyrics, a free digital version of the printed fan deck on sale at concessions. More than 50 songs in, she was grasping at that text in an attempt to follow along. Because the great frustration of “Bark of Millions,” which continues through Saturday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater, is that there are far too many songs in which the music drowns out the lyrics, making the meaning a bafflement. (Sound design is by Brendan Aanes.) In those moments, time decelerates.If “Bark of Millions” were aiming to succeed on aural gorgeousness and visual spectacle alone, there would be no cause to quibble. Those are plentiful in Ray’s genre-hopping music, richly interpreted by the band he directs, and in Machine Dazzle’s ingeniously odd costumes, such as the sparkly pastel number in which Mac begins the evening, looking like Weird Barbie as an acid-tinged sprite, dressed for Versailles by way of ’60s Vegas.But Mac’s vivid, often poetic lyrics are not incidental. In the creation of the score, they were the starting point, each of the 55 songs inspired by a figure in queer history. It is a mosaic of a show, inherently political in its affirmation of queer heritage and community, though as Mac tells the audience, it is not a history lesson: “We beg you not to Google in your seats.”From left, Jack Fuller, Mama Alto and Thornetta Davis.Julieta Cervantes for The New York TimesStill, there are degrees of mystery, and I do not believe that “Bark of Millions” — which Mac, its principal director, describes aptly in a program note as “an opera-concert-song-cycle-musical-performance-art-piece-play” — means to leave us so much in the dark.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

Analysts say Pakistan’s powerful military has never intervened so openly on behalf of its preferred candidate.Pakistan heads to the polls on Thursday for an election that analysts say will be among the least credible in the country’s 76-year history, one that comes at a particularly turbulent moment for the nation.For nearly half of Pakistan’s existence, the military has ruled directly. Even under civilian governments, military leaders have wielded enormous power, ushering in politicians they favored and pushing out those who stepped out of line.This will be only the third democratic transition between civilian governments in Pakistan’s history. And it is the first national election since former Prime Minister Imran Khan was removed from power after a vote of no confidence in 2022. Mr. Khan’s ouster — which he accused the military of orchestrating, though the powerful generals deny it — set off a political crisis that has embroiled the nuclear-armed nation for the past two years.The vote on Thursday is the culmination of an especially contentious campaign season, in which analysts say the military has sought to gut Mr. Khan’s widespread support and pave the way to victory for the party of his rival, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.Here’s what you need to know.What’s the campaign been like?Over the past two years, Pakistanis have come out in droves to protest the behind-the-scenes role that they believe the military played in Mr. Khan’s ouster. The generals have responded in force, arresting Mr. Khan’s allies and supporters, and working to cripple his party ahead of the vote.While the military has often meddled in elections to pave the way for its preferred candidates, analysts say this crackdown has been more visible and widespread than others.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

Officers were responding to a report that an 11-year-old girl had been shot at a house in East Lansdowne, Pa., outside Philadelphia, the authorities said.The fire in East Lansdowne, Pa., broke out where two police officers were shot on Wednesday afternoon. Several people were missing.Charles Fox/The Philadelphia Inquirer, via Associated PressAt least six people, including children, were unaccounted for in a house fire in southeastern Pennsylvania where two police officers were shot on Wednesday afternoon, the authorities said.Jack Stollsteimer, the Delaware County district attorney, said at a news conference that police officers responded to a call at 3:47 p.m. reporting that an 11-year-old girl had been shot at a house in East Lansdowne, Pa., just west of Philadelphia. More

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has also received a copy while the White House reviews it for claims of executive privilege, indicating a public release is nearly at hand.The final report of Robert K. Hur, the special counsel investigating President Biden’s handling of classified documents retained from his vice presidency, has been sent to the White House and to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, two of the final steps before its public release, officials said on Wednesday.Mr. Garland received the report on Monday, he told congressional leaders in a letter on Wednesday. He said that Mr. Hur had previously sent a copy to the White House Counsel’s Office for possible revisions based on claims of executive privilege, and that the White House was still reviewing the report.Ian Sams, a spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office, said the review would be completed by the end of the week. He did not comment on its findings.Mr. Garland’s letter contained no indication that the department would pursue an indictment, and people around Mr. Biden have said they do not expect one.The report is expected to criticize Mr. Biden and his aides for sloppy record-keeping and storage, according to people in Mr. Biden’s orbit, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter. But those people have long doubted that any charges will be filed, based on the lines of inquiry that prosecutors have pursued in their interviews with witnesses and on the president’s cooperation with investigators.Mr. Garland appointed Mr. Hur, a veteran prosecutor who worked in the Trump administration, about a year ago to examine “the possible unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or other records discovered” after Mr. Biden left the Obama administration.Former President Donald J. Trump, who was charged last summer with obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim classified materials at his resort in Florida, is likely to seize on the report to downplay his own legal woes — and to claim the Justice Department has targeted him politically while letting Mr. Biden escape punishment.But Mr. Hur’s investigation does not appear to be comparable in scope or seriousness to the one into Mr. Trump’s retention of sensitive government documents.Mr. Biden’s lawyers immediately notified the National Archives and Records Administration upon discovering a cache of classified documents in late 2022 when they were closing an office in Washington he occupied after leaving the vice presidency in 2017. They have since cooperated with the Justice Department, and gave the F.B.I. access to his house in Wilmington, Del., where investigators discovered more material.Mr. Trump, by contrast, repeatedly resisted requests from the National Archives, which is responsible for storing sensitive White House documents, and initially turned over only a portion of what he had taken when he left office in January 2021. He failed to fully respond to a subpoena to return the rest, and ultimately F.B.I. agents with a warrant searched his home and office. More