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      CEO’s Killing Poses Test for New NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch

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      Weeks ago, Jessica Tisch was in charge of street sweeping and trash pickup. On Monday, she found herself overseeing a ferocious manhunt as the head of the Police Department.Jessica S. Tisch, New York’s police commissioner, was giving her two sons their morning cereal on Dec. 4 when she got a text from a deputy telling her that the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare had been shot dead on a Manhattan sidewalk.“‘Kids, I’ve got to go’,” she said, and jumped in a car that drove her to police headquarters.She ordered that photos of the gunman be sent to all officers as a manhunt got underway. She assigned 10 analysts from the intelligence bureau to work with detectives analyzing surveillance video that might have recorded the gunman’s movements. For five days, investigators scoured thousands of hours of footage, analyzed ballistics and dove in the ponds of Central Park to look for evidence.They were not the only law enforcement agencies that sprang into action. In San Francisco, the police recognized a surveillance photo of the suspect as a man declared missing by his family, and told the F.B.I. in New York, which eventually passed the name to the New York police. The suspect was finally captured on Monday 280 miles away from Manhattan in Altoona, Pa., after a McDonald’s patron recognized him.The case, which has transfixed the nation, was a first test for Commissioner Tisch, who has never been a police officer and just four weeks ago could have been called the city’s street sweeper in chief. As sanitation commissioner, she oversaw more than 2,000 garbage trucks, 450 mechanical brooms, 700 salt spreaders and dozens of specialized machines to clean and plow bike lanes.Then Mayor Eric Adams appointed her to oversee about 49,000 employees at a law enforcement agency still emerging from chaos and turmoil — and the departures of three commissioners since June 2023.The killing of Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, placed the department under intense pressure. It thrust Commissioner Tisch, who was appointed on Nov. 20, into the spotlight.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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      U.S. Will Allow California to Ban New Gas-Powered Cars, Officials Say

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      California and 11 other states want to halt the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035. President-elect Donald Trump is expected to try to stop them.The Biden administration is expected in the coming days to grant California and 11 other states permission to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035, one of the most ambitious climate policies in the United States and beyond, according to three people briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.President-elect Donald J. Trump is expected to revoke permission soon after taking office, part of his pledge to scrap Biden-era climate policies. “California has imposed the most ridiculous car regulations anywhere in the world, with mandates to move to all electric cars,” Mr. Trump has said. “I will terminate that.”The state is expected to fight any revocation, setting up a consequential legal battle with the new administration.“California has long led the nation in pioneering climate policies and innovation,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, earlier this year. “Those efforts will continue for years to come.”He has described the ban as the beginning of the end for the internal combustion engine.Under the 1970 Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency has for decades allowed California, which has historically had the most polluted air in the nation, to enact tougher clean air standards than those set by the federal government. Federal law also allows other states under certain circumstances to adopt California’s standards as their own.The waiver can be used to rein in toxic, smog-causing pollutants like soot, nitrogen dioxide and ozone that lead to asthma and lung disease. But California officials have also been using the waiver to curb greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, a chief cause of global warming. Gas-powered cars and other forms of transportation are the biggest source of carbon dioxide generated by the United States.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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      Timotheé Chalamet and the Stars of ‘A Complete Unknown’ Pack NYC Premiere: Photos

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      “I saw him,” said Charlotte Barbié, 18, who stood outside the SVA Theater on Friday night, shaking from either the cold or the excitement. “He was blond.”She indicated her white Adidas sneaker had just been signed in black marker by the actor Timothée Chalamet.Ms. Barbié stood among a gaggle of young fans who shrieked when Mr. Chalamet arrived at the New York premiere of “A Complete Unknown,” the Bob Dylan biopic in which he stars that has been nominated for three Golden Globes.The premiere took place just down West 23rd Street from the fabled Manhattan hotel where Mr. Dylan had lived 60 years earlier. The film, directed by James Mangold, traces Mr. Dylan’s arrival in New York as a teenager and his ascent through the Greenwich Village music scene.Mr. Chalamet sang live in the movie and said he had spent five years working with a harmonica coach to nail the singer’s mannerisms. Although his dark hair is tousled to Dylanesque proportions in the film, on Friday, it was blond and straight, sticking out from a turquoise beanie. Mr. Chalamet appeared to be dressed as Mr. Dylan had at a Sundance Film Festival appearance in 2003 for the premiere of the film “Masked and Anonymous,” which the musician starred in and co-wrote.“A Complete Unknown,” which will be released in theaters on Dec. 25, is based on the 2015 book “Dylan Goes Electric!” by Elijah Wald, which recounts the years leading up to Mr. Dylan’s polarizing performance with electric instruments at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.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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      OpenAI Fires Back at Elon Musk’s Lawsuit

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      The artificial intelligence start-up argues that Mr. Musk is trying to hamstring its business as he builds a rival company.Earlier this month, Elon Musk asked a federal court to block OpenAI’s efforts to transform itself from a nonprofit into a purely for-profit company.On Friday, OpenAI responded with its own legal filing, arguing that Mr. Musk is merely trying to hamstring OpenAI as he builds a rival company, called xAI.What Mr. Musk is asking for would “debilitate OpenAI’s business, board deliberations, and mission to create safe and beneficial A.I. — all to the advantage of Musk and his own A.I. company,” the filing said. “The motion should be denied.”OpenAI also disputed many of the claims made by Mr. Musk in the lawsuit he brought against OpenAI earlier this year. In a blog post published before Friday’s filing, OpenAI portrayed Mr. Musk as a hypocrite, saying that he had tried to transform the lab from a nonprofit into a for-profit operation before he left the organization six years ago.The filing and blog post included documents claiming to show that in 2017, Jared Birchall, the head of Mr. Musk’s family office, registered a company called Open Artificial Intelligence Technologies, Inc. that was meant to be a for-profit incarnation of OpenAI.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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      U.S. Court Denies TikTok’s Request to Freeze Sale-or-Ban Law

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      TikTok had sought to temporarily freeze a law that requires its Chinese parent to sell the app or face a U.S. ban next month. The case may now head to the Supreme Court.A federal court on Friday denied TikTok’s request to temporarily freeze a law that requires its Chinese parent company to sell the app or face a ban in the United States as of Jan. 19, a decision that puts the fate of the app in the Supreme Court’s hands.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said in a filing late on Friday that an injunction was “unwarranted,” and that it had expedited its decision so that TikTok and its users could seek an emergency freeze from the Supreme Court.A week ago, three judges in the same court unanimously denied petitions from the company and its users to overturn the law. TikTok then asked the court on Monday to temporarily block the law until the Supreme Court decided on TikTok’s planned appeal of that decision, and sought a decision by Dec. 16.The court said on Friday that TikTok and its users “have not identified any case in which a court, after rejecting a constitutional challenge to an Act of Congress, has enjoined the Act from going into effect while review is sought in the Supreme Court.”It isn’t clear whether the Supreme Court will agree to temporarily freeze the law and hear the case, though experts say that is likely.Michael Hughes, a spokesman for TikTok, said, “As we have previously stated, we plan on taking this case to the Supreme Court, which has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech.” He said that American users’ voices would be “silenced” if the law were not stopped.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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      Supreme Court to Hear Catholic Charity’s Bid for Tax Exemption

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      The justices agreed to hear an appeal from a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that the charity’s activities were insufficiently religious to qualify.The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether Wisconsin was free to deny a tax exemption to a Catholic charity on the grounds that its activities were not primarily religious.The court has been notably receptive to arguments from religious groups, and the new case will give the justices another opportunity to explore the limits of the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty.The case concerns a Wisconsin law that exempts religious groups from state unemployment taxes so long as they are “operated primarily for religious purposes.”Catholic Charities Bureau, the social ministry of the Catholic Diocese in Superior, Wis., has said its mission is to provide “services to the poor and disadvantaged as an expression of the social ministry of the Catholic Church.” State officials determined that the charity did not qualify for the exemption because it “provides essentially secular services and engages in activities that are not religious per se.”The Wisconsin Supreme Court said it accepted the charity’s contention that its services were “based on Gospel values and the principles of the Catholic social teachings.” But the court ruled that the group’s activities were “primarily charitable and secular” and did not “attempt to imbue program participants with the Catholic faith nor supply any religious materials to program participants or employees.”The court added that “both employment with the organizations and services offered by the organizations are open to all participants regardless of religion.”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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      Gerd Heidemann, Journalist Duped by Fake Hitler Diaries, Dies at 93

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      What was supposed to be the crowning scoop of his career became his downfall when a trove of notebooks he acquired in Germany turned out to be forgeries.Gerd Heidemann, a globe-trotting, high-flying German journalist who thought he had landed the scoop of the century — the private diaries of Adolf Hitler — but who came crashing back to earth after they were exposed as crude forgeries, died on Monday at a hospital in Hamburg, Germany. He was 93.Thomas Weber, a history professor at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland who was in close contact with Mr. Heidemann, confirmed the death.Mr. Heidemann was one of the highest-paid correspondents in Germany when, at a news conference in 1983, he revealed what he said were 62 notebooks in which Hitler had written his innermost thoughts. He told reporters he had bought them from a dissident East German general who had found them in a barn near Leipzig.The notebooks, Mr. Heidemann said at the time, offered groundbreaking insights into the Nazi leader’s thinking. Among other things, they seemed to indicate that Hitler was largely unaware of the Holocaust — and also that he had bad breath, chronic flatulence and a rocky relationship with his mistress, Eva Braun.An accompanying editorial in Stern, the magazine where Mr. Heidemann worked, declared that thanks to Mr. Heidemann, “the biography of the dictator and with it the history of the Nazi regime will be largely rewritten.”But his story began to unravel almost immediately, revealing a long trail of deception, delusion and comic ineptitude.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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      Paula Abdul Settles Sexual Assault Lawsuit Against Nigel Lythgoe

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      Mr. Lythgoe, a producer she worked with on “American Idol” and “So You Think You Can Dance,” had vehemently denied her allegations.Paula Abdul has settled a lawsuit that she filed against Nigel Lythgoe, a television producer, accusing him of sexually assaulting her when they worked together on “American Idol” and “So You Think You Can Dance.”A notice of settlement was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Thursday, ending a case that had resulted in Mr. Lythgoe’s exit this year as a judge on “So You Think You Can Dance,” a show he helped create. He had vehemently denied the accusations and was fighting the lawsuit in court.The details of the settlement were not disclosed. In a statement, Ms. Abdul said that she was “grateful that this chapter has successfully come to a close and is now something I can now put behind me.”Mr. Lythgoe, who was one of the producers who made “American Idol” a phenomenon in the United States, said in a statement that, like Ms. Abdul, he was glad to put the issue behind him. “We live in a troubling time where a person is now automatically assumed to be guilty until proven innocent, a process that can take years,” he said.He said in the statement that “I know the truth and that gives me great comfort.”In Ms. Abdul’s lawsuit, which was filed late last year, she said that during one of the early seasons of “American Idol,” which premiered in 2002, Mr. Lythgoe shoved her against the wall of a hotel elevator, grabbed her genitals and breasts and began “shoving his tongue down her throat.”After leaving “American Idol” she joined Mr. Lythgoe as a judge on “So You Think You Can Dance” in 2015 and 2016, and her lawsuit said that he again made advances during that time. She alleged in the suit that Mr. Lythgoe assaulted her again when she visited his home to discuss work, accusing him of groping her breasts and buttocks while trying to kiss her. The suit said she did not report the encounter out of fear of retaliation.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