Elections

Danvers wrestles with her demons. Navarro does, too, but hers appear to be of a different sort.Season 4, Episode 4: ‘Part 4’There’s a classic bit on “The Simpsons” where a panel of children are seated as a focus group for “The Itchy & Scratchy Show” and asked what they want to see from the long-running cartoon, which has started to flag in the ratings. After an exasperating series of responses, the moderator sums up his findings: “So you want a realistic, down-to-earth show that’s completely off the wall and swarming with magic robots?”That’s what “Night Country” is starting to feel like as it heads down the backstretch. It is a realistic, down-to-earth police procedural that’s swarming with supernatural beings and lots of storytelling bric-a-brac. To an extent, that’s part of the “True Detective” brand, to flood the zone with enough symbols, Easter eggs and plot tributaries to keep the Subreddits humming all season with theories about which ones will pay off and which ones will wriggle off with the other red herrings. As the season’s showrunner, Issa López, and her writers start to bring the season to a close, there’s already some evidence that the show has spread itself too thin, despite an abundance of laudable elements.Take the fate of Navarro’s sister, Julia (Aka Niviana). The image of this lonely, troubled young woman spending her last moments among the icebound wreckage before walking naked into the dark is a haunting one. One of the great strengths of “Night Country” — and the three Nic Pizzolatto seasons of “True Detective” before it — is how beautifully it can conjure these modern noir images from distinct locales.And yet, so little narrative real estate was given over to Julia until this final episode that her death feels more like a device than an emotional payoff. In a pre-credits scene, we witness Danvers’s compassion in scooping her off the streets and bringing into the station, which brings her closer to Navarro. As for Navarro herself, the heaviness of this loss is a family curse that now threatens to swallow her, too.The most touching moment in the episode is a much smaller one. When Navarro gets the call from the Coast Guard about Julia, she and Peter have just finished a harrowing mission back to the nomad encampment on Christmas Eve. She suppresses her devastation when Peter asks if everything’s OK and sends him off to be with a family that is still intact. Her emotional generosity is a subtle payoff to a relationship that has been building around these two interconnected cases; the further “Night Country” strays from the grit-and-grind of police work, the less resonant it becomes. The mysteries around Annie’s murder and the frozen scientists link up so beautifully to the tensions within Ennis that the continued sprinkling of specters, flashbacks and various uncanny events has gotten distracting. There are many questions still to answer and only two episodes left.To that end, this week’s episode does address some of the business at hand. The “Blair Witch”-style video on Annie’s phone, presumably documenting the last moments of her life, includes whale bones frozen in the ice behind her, indicating an ice cave system the detectives are keen to locate. A team from Anchorage finally arrives to take the bodies away, despite Danvers’s desire to poke around them a little more for clues. (In sharing the news that the men were dead before they froze to Captain Ted, Danvers admits to doing “an independent pre-forensic evaluation,” which sounds better than saying that Peter’s veterinarian cousin looked at them.)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

As she accepted the Grammy for best pop vocal album for “Midnights,” Taylor Swift announced that she would be releasing her new album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” on April 19.“I know that the way that the Recording Academy voted is a direct reflection of the passion of the fans, so I want to say thank you to the fans by telling you a secret that I’ve been keeping from you for the last two years,” Swift said. “Which is that my brand-new album comes out April 19. It’s called ‘The Tortured Poets Department.’”Swift said she would post the album’s cover from backstage when she was done accepting the prize.Going into the night’s awards show, Swift fans had noticed that the artist had changed her profile picture on X, Instagram and Facebook to a black-and-white version, and many interpreted this as a hint that Swift would announce a new “Taylor’s version” of her “Reputation” album, which has a black-and-white cover.Swift received six Grammy nominations, including nods for “Anti-Hero” in the best song and record of the year categories and a nomination for “Midnights” in the album of the year category.“This is my 13th Grammy,” Swift said in her speech. “This is my lucky number, I don’t know if I’ve ever told you that.” More

In a major coup for the Grammys, an influential artist who walked away from the spotlight made a grand return to the awards stage on Sunday night: Tracy Chapman.Chapman, 59, released eight albums between 1988 and 2008, starting with her blockbuster debut — the self-titled album that featured “Talkin’ ’Bout a Revolution,” “Baby Can I Hold You” and what is perhaps her signature song, “Fast Car.” She won the Grammy for best new artist in 1989, and “Fast Car” was nominated for both record and song of the year.While the song has had notable staying power — it’s inspired dance covers, was sampled by Nicki Minaj and has been strummed in dorm rooms for decades — the country star Luke Combs’s faithful cover, which became a hit last year, has helped bring it a kind of renaissance.On Sunday night in Los Angeles, Chapman and Combs shared the steering wheel at the Grammys with their first-ever duet performance of the track. Chapman opened the performance playing the song’s signature riff on an acoustic guitar, as her and Combs exchanged verses before joining together on the chorus. Many in the audience could be seen standing and singing along throughout, including Taylor Swift. Combs bowed to her at the conclusion of the song as they received a standing ovation from those in the arena.Combs’s “Fast Car” — which reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 as a single from his 2023 album, “Gettin’ Old” — was up for a Grammy for best country solo performance (and lost to Chris Stapleton’s “White Horse”). Surprising many in the industry, however, “Fast Car” missed out on a nomination for record of the year. (The cover was not eligible for song of the year, an award that goes to songwriters, because it was already nominated in that category in 1989.)Chapman has made few public appearances since her most recent tour ended in 2009, mostly taking the stage on late-night shows. In 2015, she covered “Stand by Me” as David Letterman prepared to retire from the “Late Show,” and in the lead-up to the 2020 election, she performed “Talkin’ ’Bout a Revolution” on “Late Night With Seth Meyers.”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 police responded to a call from a U.S. Air Force museum that said a man had offered to donate a Cold War-era missile stored in his late neighbor’s garage.Garages are often cluttered with dusty boxes of heirlooms, untouched gym equipment or a multitude of tools.But how about a piece of a Cold War-era nuclear missile?Members of the bomb squad in Bellevue, Wash., on Thursday were called to inspect parts of a military-grade missile in the garage of a resident.Elements of the larger, intact missile, such as the warhead, were missing and the authorities deemed the piece to be inert and safe, the police said in a news release on Friday.An Air Force museum in Dayton, Ohio, contacted the police in Bellevue on Jan. 31 to report that a resident had offered to donate the missile, which belonged to his late neighbor.The resident had been put in charge of his neighbor’s estate, according to the Bellevue police, and said that his neighbor had originally purchased the missile from an estate sale.The police were unable to contact any of the neighbor’s family, and did not identify the Bellevue man out of respect for his privacy, said Officer Seth Tyler, a Bellevue Police Department spokesman.The next day, the man was “surprised” to hear from the police because he had not called them but invited the bomb squad to inspect the missile remnant, Officer Tyler said.Squad members identified the rocket as a Douglas AIR-2 Genie missile, designed to carry a 1.5-kiloton nuclear warhead.First put into operation in 1957, the Genie was the world’s first nuclear-armed rocket designed to destroy aircraft targets, and was the most powerful interceptor missile deployed by the U.S. Air Force, according to Boeing.In 1954, Douglas Aircraft began work on “a small unguided nuclear-armed air-to-air missile,” according to Boeing. Douglas Aircraft built more than 1,000 Genie rockets before discontinuing production in 1962.It was clear that the missile remnant did not pose a threat given that it was missing its warhead and did not contain rocket fuel, Officer Tyler said.“It was essentially just a rusted piece of metal at that point,” he said. “An artifact, in other words.”Because the military did not request it back, the police left it with the man to donate.It was not immediately clear whether the missile remnant would be destined for the museum in Ohio, and efforts to reach the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton on Sunday were unsuccessful.Given Bellevue’s proximity to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, a large military base, Officer Tyler said it was not unusual for the police to respond to calls about hand grenades or other unexploded ordnance.But a missile from the Cold War would be a first, said Officer Tyler, who has worked for the department for 18 years. The department also seemed to believe it would be the last, referring to Elton John’s classic song “Rocket Man” in a social media post.“And we think it’s gonna be a long, long time before we get another call like this again,” the Bellevue police said. More

Flanked by Republican governors, Gov. Greg Abbott said that Texas would expand the immigration enforcement efforts at the center of a legal confrontation with the federal government.Locked in a legal battle with the Biden administration over immigration enforcement, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said on Sunday that he was expanding his effort to establish state control over areas near the Rio Grande in an effort to deter migrants.Mr. Abbott, flanked by 13 other Republican governors, said that Texas would not limit its high-intensity efforts to the small municipal park along the river in Eagle Pass where the state has taken over and limited access for federal agents. A top Texas official said state law enforcement officers were also looking to move in on riverside ranch land north of the city that migrants have continued to use for crossing.Texas has deployed National Guard troops and state police officers up and down the Texas border since 2021, and began stringing concertina wire along the banks of the river the next year. What changed last month in the park, known as Shelby Park, is that Texas began preventing federal agents from routine access to the riverbank or from using the park to detain and process large numbers of migrants.“As we speak right now, the Texas National Guard, they’re undertaking operations to expand this effort,” Mr. Abbott said during a news conference at the park. “We’re not going to contain ourselves to this park. We are expanding to further areas to make sure we expand our level of deterrence and denial of illegal entry into the United States.”Mr. Abbott described the arrival of migrants as an “invasion” that permitted Texas, under the U.S. Constitution, to take on the job of enforcing immigration laws, an area that the Supreme Court has in the past left to the federal government. Whether he has the power to do so is being contested in court by the Biden administration.A spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The agency has previously said that it, not the state, is responsible for detaining and processing those who have crossed the border illegally.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

Of this year’s 94 Grammy categories, all but nine were given out during a fast-paced, nontelevised ceremony, where some stars (Billie Eilish, Joni Mitchell, boygenius) showed up to accept their awards, but many others (SZA, Michelle Obama) didn’t.The tallies for the early awards gave no clear advantage to any artist. SZA, the night’s most nominated artist, with nine citations, won two (progressive R&B album and pop duo/group performance, with Phoebe Bridgers) but lost three, which puts her in a challenging position going into the main ceremony.The indie-rock trio boygenius won three early prizes, including best rock song, rock performance and alternative music album (for “The Record”). Dressed in identical white suits, with black ties and pink carnations, the band’s three women ran excitedly to the podium and gave emotional speeches.“We were all delusional enough as kids to think this might happen to us one day,” Lucy Dacus, one group member, said.Songs from “Barbie” — which logged 11 nominations total, including some multiple nods in individual categories — took two prizes early in the night. Eilish and her brother, Finneas, were present to accept the award for best song written for visual media, for “What Was I Made For?”“I want to thank our parents,” Finneas said. “Our dad who worked as a construction worker at Mattel Corporation for much of our childhood to keep food on the table. That’s very sick. Thank you for parenting us.”Jack Antonoff — the producer of Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey and other stars — won producer of the year, non-classical, for the third year a row.Although this nontelevised segment is seen by few fans, it can feature notable, heartfelt speeches. Mitchell, 80, accepting the award for best folk album, for “Joni Mitchell at Newport,” a live recording of her surprise comeback appearance in 2022, said: “We had so much fun at that concert, and I think you can feel it on the record. It’s a very joyous record because of the people that I played with and the spirit of the occasion was very high. And it went onto the record. Even the audience sounds like music.”Killer Mike, the Atlanta rap veteran and political activist, was up for three awards in the rap field for music from his album “Michael” — rap album, performance and song — and he won all three.In a passionate series of speeches, his head covered in sweat, he exhorted: “For all the people out there that think you get too old to rap, [expletive]!” He added: “Dreams come true! It is a sweep! It is a sweep! It is a sweep!” More

Federal Reserve officials are debating when to lower rates. An interview with Jerome H. Powell confirms a move is coming, but not immediately.Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, made clear during a “60 Minutes” interview aired on Sunday night that the central bank is moving toward cutting interest rates as inflation recedes, but that policymakers need to see continued progress toward cooler price increases to make the first move.Mr. Powell was interviewed on Thursday, after the Fed’s meeting last week but before Friday’s blockbuster jobs report. He reiterated his message that lower borrowing costs are coming. But he also said that the Fed’s next meeting in March is probably too early for policymakers to feel sure enough that inflation is coming under control to reduce rates.“We think we can be careful in approaching this decision just because of the strength that we’re seeing in the economy,” Mr. Powell said during the interview, based on a transcript released ahead of its airing. He added that officials would want to see a continued moderation in price increases, even after several months of milder readings.The progress on inflation “doesn’t need to be better than what we’ve seen, or even as good. It just needs to be good,” Mr. Powell said.His remarks reaffirm that lower borrowing costs are likely coming this year — a change that could make mortgages, car loans and credit card debt cheaper for Americans. They also underscore how much better today’s economic situation is proving to be than what economists and Fed officials expected just a year ago.Many forecasters had predicted that the Fed’s rapid campaign of interest rate increases, which pushed borrowing costs from near zero to a range of 5.25 to 5.5 percent from March 2022 to July 2023, would slow the economy so much that it might even spur a recession. Central bankers themselves — including Mr. Powell — believed that some economic pain would probably be needed to cool consumer and business demand enough to prod businesses to stop raising prices so quickly.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

What’s Behind a $10 Chicken Over Rice From a Cart? An $18,000 Permit. Feb. 4, 2024 Blame rising costs, shrunken crowds and a black-market permit trade. Chicken over rice — a sauce-drenched, workweek staple — costs $10 at the Halal Plates, a cart in Lower Manhattan, up from $6 prepandemic. Nearly everything has surged in […] More