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      The Torlonia Marbles Are Coming to Museums in Chicago, Texas and Montreal

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      For the first time, the ancient marbles are traveling out of Europe to the United States and Canada, for a prolonged stint.Stashed away in a cavernous Roman deposit, hidden from the world for the better part of the last century, the Torlonia Collection — the largest collection of classical sculpture still in private hands — now appears to be continuing its jet-set itinerary that started in 2020.After a glittering debut in Rome, and star turns in Milan and the Louvre Museum in Paris, 58 of the sculptures belonging to the Torlonia family, based in Rome, will be showcased at the Art Institute of Chicago in March, and will then travel to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.Dating from approximately the fifth century B.C. to the early fourth century, the works on view will include highlights of the Torlonia Collection, but also 24 sculptures that were specifically selected for the North American run by the co-curators Lisa Ayla Cakmak and Katharine A. Raff of the Art Institute of Chicago, after “multiple trips” to the Torlonia laboratory in Rome where the collection is being restored. (“A magical, once in a lifetime experience,” Cakmak said during a video interview.)Titled “Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture From the Torlonia Collection,” the exhibition will “feel very different from the European presentations,” Cakmak said. For the curators, it has been important to make it clear “that this is a completely new project,” not just in how it “was presented in our interpretation and storytelling but also the checklist” of works, she added.The Torlonia Nile, formerly Barberini-Albani. Sculptures from the collection had been visible, off and on, until World War II. Then they fell out of sight.Lorenzo De Masi; via Torlonia FoundationIt is “intended to be for non-specialists,” people who “might not know much about the ancient world,” but would be interested in seeing what Marcus Aurelius, known to modern audiences through the first “Gladiator” film, actually looked like, said Cakmak. She added that a scholars day limited to experts was “in the planning stages.”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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      Albertsons Backs Out of Merger Deal and Sues Kroger After Court Rulings

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      The supermarket chain had tried to join forces with Kroger, but judges sided with federal and state regulators who charged that the merger would reduce competition.The grocery chain Albertsons said on Wednesday that it had backed out of its $25 billion merger with Kroger and sued its rival for failing to adequately push for regulatory approval, after both a federal and state judge blocked the deal on Tuesday.The deal, which would have been the biggest grocery store merger in U.S. history, faced three separate legal challenges — one filed by the Federal Trade Commission — over concerns that the combined company would reduce competition and raise prices. Judge Adrienne Nelson of U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon temporarily halted the deal on Tuesday, siding with federal regulators who have argued that the merger would lessen competition at the expense of consumers and workers.Another decision blocking the merger in Washington State court, issued by Judge Marshall Ferguson just one hour later, added to the hurdles facing the companies.“Given the recent federal and state court decisions to block our proposed merger with Kroger, we have made the difficult decision to terminate the merger agreement,” Vivek Sankaran, chief executive of Albertsons, said in a statement. “We are deeply disappointed in the courts’ decisions.”On Wednesday, Albertsons also said it filed a lawsuit against Kroger in the Delaware Court of Chancery, seeking billions of dollars in damages and accusing Kroger of failing to exercise “best efforts” to secure regulatory approval. Kroger refused to divest assets necessary for antitrust approval, ignored regulators’ feedback and rejected strong buyers of stores it had planned to divest, Albertsons said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.Erin Rolfes, a spokeswoman for Kroger, disputed Albertsons’s claims, calling them “without merit.” Albertsons breached the merger agreement multiple times, she said in a statement, and the company filed the lawsuit in an attempt to deflect responsibility and seek payment for the merger’s termination fee.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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      Police Have Luigi Mangione’s Notebook Describing Rationale for UHC CEO Killing

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      “It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents,” said a sentence in a spiral notebook belonging to the man charged with murdering Brian Thompson.Luigi Mangione, who has been charged with killing Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthCare at a company investors’ day, was found with a notebook that detailed plans for the shooting, according to two law enforcement officials.The notebook described going to a conference and killing an executive, the officials said.“What do you do? You wack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention. It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents,” was one passage written in the notebook, the officials said.The shooting occurred early Dec. 4 as Mr. Thompson arrived early at a Hilton hotel on West 54th Street to prepare for the UnitedHealthcare investors’ meeting.Mr. Mangione, 26, was captured Monday after a tip from an employee at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa., who was alerted by a customer who recognized him. Mr. Mangione, who faces a murder charge and has been denied bail, is fighting extradition to New York, which starts a process that could take weeks. “He is contesting it,” his lawyer, Thomas Dickey, said on Tuesday.The suspect was found with a ghost gun, a suppressor and false identification cards similar to those believed to have been used by the killer, officials said. In addition to the false identification cards, he was carrying identification with his real name.The authorities also found a 262-word handwritten note with him, which begins by appearing to take responsibility for the murder. The note, which officials described as a manifesto, also mentioned the existence of a notebook.The suspect saw the killing as a “symbolic takedown,” according to a New York Police Department internal report that detailed parts of a three-page manifesto found with him at the time of his arrest. The report added that the suspect “likely views himself as a hero of sorts who has finally decided to act upon such injustices” and expressed concern that others might see him as a “martyr and an example to follow.”The recovery of the notebook was first reported by CNN.This is a developing story and will be updated. More

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      Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie Revisit ‘The Simple Life’

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      The celebutantes-turned-businesswomen are rebooting the show that provided a blueprint for the past 20 years of reality TV.How would two troubled Los Angeles heiresses manage as members of the Bible Belt working class?The answer helped revolutionize reality TV and legitimized the careers of Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. In 2003, the pair of 22-year-olds debuted in Fox’s “The Simple Life,” which documented their move to Altus, Ark. to live with a family on their farm and try out blue collar jobs.Hilton and Richie brought rich-girl haughtiness and high jinks to mundane tasks like cleaning hotel rooms and, in one memorable episode, serving burgers at a Sonic Drive-In. The result was a quotable megahit — with heart. “Their fish-out-of-water ineptitude serves as a social leveler that gives them their comeuppance and preserves the dignity of their rural hosts,” Alessandra Stanley wrote in a review for The New York Times. Unlike the other popular reality programs of the time, like “Big Brother” and “Survivor,” the allure of “The Simple Life” didn’t come from a wild premise or shocking competition: The personalities of and friendship between Hilton and Richie were the drawing card. That recipe has been built upon in subsequent reality franchises like “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” “Jersey Shore” and “The Real Housewives.”More than two decades later, the two are appearing in “Paris & Nicole: Encore,” a three-part reboot which is primarily set in L.A. and involves activities and outings a bit closer to home. It will air on Peacock beginning Thursday. Though the show centers on the pair’s staging of an opera based on “sanasa,” a made-up word which fans might remember as a mainstay joke on the original, Hilton and Richie also revisit Altus, Sonic and the friendship that made their show riveting TV.“There was nothing really to compare it to,” Hilton said of “The Simple Life.” “So we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.”Jerod Harris/Getty Images for VultureAhead of the “Encore” premier, we talked to Hilton and Richie about how reality TV has changed since “The Simple Life,” the impact of social media on the genre and the shows they’re enjoying now.Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.You were some of the first reality TV stars, and now it is an oversaturated industry. How do you think the landscape has changed since “The Simple Life” first aired?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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      Men in Caring Jobs Will Make Society More Equal

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      In her prescient 2012 book, “The End of Men,” my friend Hanna Rosin described a modern American dynamic between archetypes that she called “Plastic Woman” and “Cardboard Man.” These comic book characters represented American women who made miraculous social progress in the 20th century and American men who stalled out. That’s because women in the past 60 years or so have been able to be infinitely flexible and responsive to structural economic changes and men remained rigid planks. This hasn’t just caused a shift in the job market, it’s caused a shift in the marriage market, too. If men aren’t breadwinners, and they’re not caregivers, either — what are they for?Rosin explains that Plastic Woman went “from barely working at all to working only until she got married to working while married and then working with children, even babies. If a space opens up for her to make more money than her husband, she grabs it.” By contrast, Cardboard Man “hardly changes at all. A century can go by and his lifestyle and ambitions remain largely the same. There are many professions that have gone from all-male to female, and almost none that have gone the other way.”She added that a man’s sense of himself is often tied to having a traditionally masculine, physical job in construction, utility work or some kind of manufacturing. “They could move more quickly into new roles now open to them — college graduate, nurse, teacher, full-time father — but for some reason, they hesitate.”A lot of Rosin’s book still rings true 12 years later. Though on the campaign trail both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris promised to bring back those old-school, manly jobs, as Rebecca Patterson pointed out in an Opinion guest essay in October, manufacturing jobs are long gone and they’re not returning. “Even if every estimated open role is filled, the total employed in manufacturing would still be about three million short of its 1979 peak, according to Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis data,” Patterson noted.Which is why I was so pleased to see that Cardboard Man may be softening up, even as the political posturing around him may not have shifted. According to Harriet Torry in The Wall Street Journal, “The number of male registered nurses in the U.S. has nearly tripled since the early 2000s,” going “from about 140,000 in 2000 to about 400,000 in 2023.” In health care, wage and market growth exceed the national average, and people still need emergency surgeries even in recessions, CNN’s Bryan Mena notes. Health care jobs are particularly vital in rural parts of the country, where hospitals may be among the largest employers in the area.Torry describes men who are moving into traditionally female jobs (or the “pink collar” sector) as rational economic actors who are dealing with the job market as it is, rather than as they wish it might be. “Many of the manufacturing jobs that are being moved overseas, replaced by automation or phased out of the American economy were mostly filled by men. As a result, other occupations traditionally dominated by women are now gaining a larger share of men, including elementary and middle schoolteachers and customer service representatives,” Torry writes.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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      A Friend Saw My Daughter-in-Law Flirting With Another Man. What Should I Do?

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      A mother-in-law is unsure whether to say something to her son (or his wife) after hearing through the grapevine about an upsetting scene at a hotel bar.A friend of mine saw my daughter-in-law in a hotel bar with a man who is not my son. As my friend reported it, my daughter-in-law was dressed to the nines, draped all over the man and feeding him with her fingers. My friend walked over to her and asked, “Where are your husband and the kids?” My daughter-in-law answered calmly, and my friend walked away. This information is making me quite angry and sad. Do I tell my son about it, ask my daughter-in-law or keep it to myself?MOMLet’s start with the loving heart of your question: You feel protective of your son and want good things for him. Nothing wrong with that! Now, your friend’s account — though it may be totally accurate — strikes me as the stuff of romance novels: a steamy seduction in a hotel bar. But your daughter-in-law’s nonchalance with your friend tells a different story: Wouldn’t she be flustered if she were caught doing something wrong? Things aren’t adding up here!So, is your friend trustworthy? If you have doubts, put this matter on hold (for now). If not, and you want your son to know the story, report it to him in a more measured way. Be sure to tell him that you did not witness any of it personally. I would not talk to your daughter-in-law about this. Your relationship with her, even if it’s close, is based on her marriage — the intimate workings of which are none of your business.Now, I know that I am threading a dubious needle here: sanctioning meddlesome behavior for the sake of (possibly) mitigating harm. Your son and daughter-in-law may have an arrangement that could explain what your friend saw, and reporting the story may strain your relationship with the couple. Still, if you decide to speak up, try to put aside your own feelings. Your anger and sadness — which I sympathize with — are not the point here.Miguel PorlanNext Subject, PleaseI celebrate holidays with my mom’s side of the family. They live closer than my father’s side. But my maternal grandparents are extremely conservative; I am not. I would be fine keeping our views to ourselves, but they lecture me. This Thanksgiving, topics included why I should share their religious beliefs and why it’s inappropriate for me to wear short pants. How do I tell them I’m not OK with this?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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      Syria After al-Assad’s Overthrow: What’s Happening and What Comes Next

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      Rebels are asserting control in Damascus as Israel and other countries carry out military operations.Follow live updates here.As a rebel alliance tries to create a transitional government for Syria, armed factions and outside powers are still fighting to fill the void left by retreating government forces.Kurdish-led fighters in northern Syria who are backed by the United States said early Wednesday that they had agreed to a U.S.-brokered cease-fire in Manbij, a city where they have been battling to fend off forces backed by Turkey.And the Israeli military has launched hundreds ofairstrikes against military assets across Syria in recent days, saying it was trying to keep them out of the hands of Islamist extremists.Here’s a guide to understanding where things stand in Syria, and what may come next.Here’s what you need to know:Who’s in charge?Who is Ahmed al-Shara?What is Israel doing in Syria?What is Turkey doing?What is the U.S. doing?What are the internal factions in Syria?Who’s in charge?Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, whose name means Organization for the Liberation of the Levant, was the main rebel group leading the latest offensive, launching a surprise assault in late November from northwestern Syria that quickly led to the fall of President Bashar al-Assad. It is now leading the transition to a new Syrian government.Mohammed al-Bashir, a rebel leader affiliated with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, announced in a brief address on Syrian television on Tuesday that he was assuming the role of caretaker prime minister until March. 1. Mr. al-Bashir previously served as the head of the administration in rebel-held territory in the northwest.Approximate advance of the Israeli military into the buffer zone More

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      North Korea Breaks Silence on South Korea’s Martial Law Declaration

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      In its first statement about the turmoil over President Yoon Suk Yeol’s martial law decree, the North said nothing about how inter-Korean relations might be affected.North Korea made its first public statement on Wednesday about the short-lived declaration of martial law in South Korea last week, with its state media saying that President Yoon Suk Yeol had plunged his country into “pandemonium.”The article gave no indication of how the turmoil in the South might affect relations between the Koreas. Since Mr. Yoon, who has a confrontational policy toward North Korea, took office in 2022, the relationship has reached its lowest point in years.The North’s main government newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun, gave the article relatively little prominence, running it on the sixth page of its Wednesday edition. It summarized Mr. Yoon’s failed attempt to seize control of the National Assembly on Dec. 3 by sending in troops, the spread of protests across South Korea and the political uncertainty that has prevailed since then.“The puppet Yoon Suk Yeol’s shocking decision to level his fascist guns and bayonets at his own people has turned the puppet South into pandemonium,” the article said.It also said that the failure of opposition lawmakers’ attempt to impeach Mr. Yoon in the National Assembly on Saturday, after Mr. Yoon’s People Power Party boycotted the vote, had turned all of South Korea into a “protest scene.”The political vacuum in the South has raised concerns that its government and military could be ill-prepared for any escalation in tensions with Kim Jong-un’s regime in the North.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