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      New Details in Menendez Bribery Case: A Diamond Ring and Covid Tests

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      In a court filing, prosecutors say Senator Robert Menendez urged New Jersey mayors to use a coronavirus testing lab that was paying his wife.A luxury Mercedes-Benz, gold bars, exercise equipment and stacks of cash featured prominently in a federal indictment that charged Senator Robert Menendez with accepting a sordid array of bribes.Now, prosecutors say a diamond engagement ring for the senator’s future wife, Nadine Menendez, was also part of the elaborate bribery scheme — and a source of infighting between co-defendants who are expected to stand trial together in May.Wael Hana, a longtime friend of Ms. Menendez’s who is also charged in the alleged conspiracy, attempted to cheat her out of the full value of the ring, according to court documents filed late Monday by prosecutors in Manhattan.In doing so, Mr. Hana, an Egyptian-American businessman who founded a halal meat company that prosecutors say was used to funnel bribes to the Menendezes, threatened to derail plans for the senator to assist the government of Egypt — part of the complicated plot he is accused of.“[Hana] was about to ruin things with Bob,” a confidential source, who was in touch with Egyptian officials, said, according to the government’s filing. “Bob who is starting to listen to us.”Mr. Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, has pleaded not guilty, as have Ms. Menendez, Mr. Hana and two other defendants.Read the documentProsecutors say a diamond engagement ring was part of an elaborate bribery scheme involving Senator Robert Menendez and his future wife, Nadine Menendez.Read DocumentWe 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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      My Father, Ronald Reagan, Would Weep for America

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      The night before my father died, Ronald Reagan, I listened to his breathing — ragged, thin. Nothing like that of the athletic man who rode horses, built fences at the ranch, constructed jumps from old phone poles, cut back shrubs along riding trails. Or of the man who lifted his voice to the overcast sky and said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”Time and history folded over themselves inside me, distant memories somersaulting with more recent realities — the 10 years of his journey into the murky world of Alzheimer’s and my determination to abandon the well-worn trail of childhood complaints and forge a new path. To be blunt, I had resolved to grow the hell up.I can still remember how it felt to be his child, though, and how the attention he paid to America and its issues made me jealous.Long before my father ran for office, politics sat between us at the dinner table. The conversations were predictable: Big government was the problem, the demon, the thing America had to be wary of. I hated those conversations. I wanted to talk about the boy who bullied me on the school bus, not government overreach.In time I came to resent this country for claiming so much of him. Yet today, it’s his love for America that I miss most. His eyes often welled with tears when “America the Beautiful” was played, but it wasn’t just sentiment. He knew how fragile democracy is, how easily it can be destroyed. He used to tell me about how Germany slid into dictatorship, the biggest form of government of all.I wish so deeply that I could ask him about the edge we are teetering on now, and how America might move out of its quagmire of anger, its explosions of hatred. How do we break the cycle of violence, both actual and verbal? How do we cross the muddy divides that separate us, overcome the partisan rancor that drives elected officials to heckle the president in his State of the Union address? When my father was shot, Tip O’Neill, then speaker of the House and always one of his most devoted political opponents, came into his hospital room and knelt down to pray with him, reciting the 23rd Psalm. Today a gesture like that seems impossible.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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      Imran Khan Uses A.I. To Give Victory Speech in Pakistan

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      It was not the first time the technology had been used in Pakistan’s notably repressive election season, but this time it got the world’s attention.Imran Khan, Pakistan’s former prime minister, has spent the duration of the country’s electoral campaign in jail, disqualified from running in what experts have described as one of the least credible general elections in the country’s 76-year history.But from behind bars, he has been rallying his supporters in recent months with speeches that use artificial intelligence to replicate his voice, part of a tech-savvy strategy his party deployed to circumvent a crackdown by the military.And on Saturday, as official counts showed candidates aligned with his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or P.T.I., winning the most seats in a surprise result that threw the country’s political system into chaos, it was Mr. Khan’s A.I. voice that declared victory.“I had full confidence that you would all come out to vote. You fulfilled my faith in you, and your massive turnout has stunned everybody,” the mellow, slightly robotic voice said in the minute-long video, which used historical images and footage of Mr. Khan and bore a disclaimer about its A.I. origins. The speech rejected the victory claim of Mr. Khan’s rival, Nawaz Sharif, and urged supporters to defend the win.As concerns grow about the use of artificial intelligence and its power to mislead, particularly in elections, Mr. Khan’s videos offer an example of how A.I. can work to circumvent suppression. But, experts say, they also increase fear about its potential dangers.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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      What Happens Next in Pakistan’s Politics?

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      As supporters of Imran Khan lodge complaints of vote rigging in hopes of increasing their lead, his opponents are jockeying to form a government.Imran Khan’s stunning performance in Pakistan’s national election has upended most traditional political forecasts in a country where leaders who run afoul of the powerful military rarely find electoral success.Supporters of Mr. Khan, the jailed former prime minister, are both electrified by the showing of candidates aligned with his party, who won the most seats in last week’s vote, and enraged by what they call blatant rigging and the possibility that other parties will ultimately lead the government.Here’s what to know about the uncertainty now hanging over Pakistan’s political system.What’s next for the government?Mr. Khan’s supporters are challenging the results of dozens of races in the country’s courts, and pressure is growing on Pakistan’s Election Commission to acknowledge the widely reported irregularities in the vote counting.Backers of Mr. Khan say they will hold peaceful protests outside election commission offices in constituencies where they contend the rigging took place. Protests have already erupted in several parts of the country, especially in the restive southwestern Baluchistan Province.As of midday Sunday, the Election Commission had not finalized the results from Thursday’s vote. Preliminary counts showed victories for 92 independents (primarily supporters of Mr. Khan, whose party was barred from running), with 77 seats going to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, the party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and 54 going to the third major party, the Pakistan People’s Party, or P.P.P.Nawaz Sharif, the leader of the P.M.L.N. party, speaking to his supporters in Lahore on Friday.Rahat Dar/EPA, via ShutterstockWe 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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      ‘It Is Suffocating’: A Top Liberal University Is Under Attack in India

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      A campaign to make the country an explicitly Hindu nation has had a chilling effect on left-leaning and secular institutions like Jawaharlal Nehru University.Jawaharlal Nehru University, named for India’s first prime minister, is one of the country’s premier liberal institutions, a hothouse of strong opinions and left-leaning values whose graduates populate the upper echelons of academia and government.But to the Hindu nationalists who hold power in India, the university and others like it are dangerous dens of “anti-India” ideas. And they are working to silence them.Masked men have stormed the J.N.U. campus and attacked students, shouting slogans associated with a far-right Hindu group. Vocal supporters of the right-wing governing party who have been installed as administrators have suspended students for participating in protests and, in December, imposed new restrictions on demonstrations. Professors have been denied promotions for questioning government policies.“It is suffocating,” said Anagha Pradeep, a political science student who has received warnings from J.N.U. after protesting her housing conditions and helping to screen a documentary critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “And you can’t learn in fear.”A student protest near Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2019.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe pressure being put on J.N.U. is part of a broader effort to neutralize dissenting voices — media organizations, human rights groups, think tanks — as right-wing Hindus pursue their cause of transforming India into an explicitly Hindu 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

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      Don’t Underestimate the Mobilizing Force of Abortion

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      Poland recently ousted its right-wing, nationalist Law and Justice Party. In 2020, a party-appointed tribunal severely restricted the country’s abortion rights, sparking nationwide protests and an opposition movement. After a trip to Poland, the Times Opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg came to recognize that similar dynamics could prevail in the United States in 2024. In this audio essay, she argues that Joe Biden’s campaign should take note of what a “powerful mobilizing force the backlash to abortion bans can be.”(A full transcript of this audio essay will be available by Monday, and can be found in the audio player above.)Illustration by Akshita Chandra/The New York Times; Photograph by Getty ImagesThe Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, X (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram.This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Jillian Weinberger. It was edited by Kaari Pitkin and Alison Bruzek. Engineering by Isaac Jones and Sonia Herrero. Original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. More

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      Putin Calls on U.S. to ‘Negotiate’ on Ukraine in Tucker Carlson Interview

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      In a two-hour interview, President Vladimir Putin of Russia was more direct than usual about how he sees his Ukraine invasion ending: not with a military victory, but a deal with the West.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has worked for decades to win allies in the West, using his spy agencies to interfere in elections and deploying diplomats to build links with Kremlin-friendly politicians.On Thursday, the world witnessed a new, verbose chapter in those efforts: Mr. Putin’s two-hour interview, taped in a gilded hall at the Kremlin, with one of America’s most prominent and most divisive conservative commentators.Speaking to Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, Mr. Putin called on the United States to “make an agreement” to cede Ukrainian territory to Russia in order to end the war. He sought to appeal directly to American conservatives just as Republican lawmakers are holding up aid to Ukraine on Capitol Hill, echoing the talking points of politicians like former President Donald J. Trump who say that the United States has more pressing priorities than a war thousands of miles away.“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Mr. Putin said in response to Mr. Carlson’s question about the possibility of American soldiers fighting in Ukraine. “You have issues on the border, issues with migration, issues with the national debt.”He went on: “Wouldn’t it be better to negotiate with Russia?”Much of the interview constituted a familiar Kremlin history lesson about Russia’s historical claim to Eastern European lands, beginning in the ninth century, that Mr. Putin made little effort to distill for American ears. He opined on artificial intelligence, Genghis Khan and the Roman Empire. He also laid out his well-worn and spurious justifications for invading Ukraine, asserting that Russia’s goal was to “stop this war” that he claims the West is waging against Russia.But Mr. Putin was more direct than usual about how he sees his Ukraine invasion ending: not with a military victory, but through an agreement with the West. At the interview’s end, Mr. Putin told Mr. Carlson that the time had come for talks about ending the war because “those who are in power in the West have come to realize” that Russia will not be defeated on the battlefield.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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      Brazil Police Raid Bolsonaro and Allies Over Attempted Coup

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      The operation was part of a broad investigation into efforts to overturn the country’s 2022 election.The Brazilian federal police carried out a sweeping operation on Thursday that targeted former President Jair Bolsonaro and many of his closest advisers and former ministers as part of an investigation into efforts to overturn Brazil’s 2022 election.The federal police force said that it was carrying out 33 search warrants and four arrest warrants. The agency said it would order another 15 people to hand over their passports, not leave the country and not contact any other people under investigation.Mr. Bolsonaro was a target of the operation and would hand in his passport within 24 hours, the former president’s spokesman said.The raids also targeted Brazil’s former defense secretary, former intelligence chief, former justice minister and former head of the Navy, Mr. Bolsonaro’s running mate and the head of his political party.The police said the raids were part of a number of wide-ranging investigations into the former president and his allies, including into suspicions of an attempted coup; attacks on Brazil’s election systems; attacks on Covid-19 vaccines; falsifying vaccination records; and stealing government funds and foreign gifts to the president.For months ahead of Brazil’s 2022 election, Mr. Bolsonaro sowed doubts about the security of his nation’s election systems and warned that if he lost it would be the result of fraud.When he, in fact, lost to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Mr. Bolsonaro declined to unequivocally concede and his supporters staged monthslong protests that culminated in a January 2023 riot at Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court and presidential offices.Mr. Bolsonaro has already been ruled ineligible to run for office until 2030 over his attempts to undermine Brazil’s voting systems. But Thursday’s operation suggests that the authorities believe the former president and his allies had carried out a more coordinated effort to hold onto power after his election loss.Mr. Bolsonaro said on Thursday that he was the innocent victim of a politically motivated operation.“I left the government more than a year ago and I continue to suffer relentless persecution,” the former president told Folha de São Paulo, a Brazilian newspaper. “Forget about me. There is already someone else running the country.”This is a developing story.Julia Vargas Jones More