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      First Official Photo of Princess Catherine Since Surgery Is Released by Royal Palace

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      Amid rampant rumors on social media about the condition of the princess, Kensington Palace issued the picture to mark Mother’s Day in Britain but provided no details on her condition.Nearly two months after undergoing abdominal surgery, Catherine, the princess of Wales, appeared in an official photograph, released on Sunday by Kensington Palace to mark Mother’s Day in Britain.Catherine, who posed with her three children, George, Charlotte and Louis, has not been seen in public since before she entered the hospital on Jan. 16, provoking a swirl of increasingly far-fetched rumors on social media about her condition.The image of a smiling Catherine, surrounded by her family, will most likely quiet what had become an extraordinary distraction for the British royal family, which is also dealing with a cancer diagnosis for King Charles III. But it did not completely dispel the questions about the 42-year-old princess.Kensington Palace, where Catherine and her husband, Prince William, have their offices, did not release any new details on her condition or convalescence. It said the photograph was taken by William this past week in Windsor, where the family lives in Adelaide Cottage, on the grounds of Windsor Castle.In a post on social media accompanying the photograph, Catherine said, “Thank you for your kind wishes and continued support over the last two months. Wishing everyone a Happy Mother’s Day.”Last week, a grainy paparazzi shot of Catherine, riding in a car driven by her mother, was posted on the American celebrity gossip site TMZ. British newspapers and broadcasters reported widely on the photograph, but did not publish it, honoring the palace’s appeal that she be allowed to recuperate in private.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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      Ex-FBI Informant, Accused of Biden Lies, Said He Had Russian Contacts

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      Federal prosecutors portrayed the former informant, Alexander Smirnov, 43, as a serial liar incapable of telling the truth about even the most basic details of his own life.A former F.B.I. informant accused of making false bribery claims about President Biden and his son Hunter — which were widely publicized by Republicans — claimed to have been fed information by Russian intelligence, according to a court filing on Tuesday.In the memo, prosecutors portrayed the former informant, Alexander Smirnov, 43, as a serial liar incapable of telling the truth about even the most basic details of his own life. But Mr. Smirnov told federal investigators that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter Biden.Those disclosures, including Mr. Smirnov’s unverifiable claim that he met with Russian intelligence officials as recently as three months ago, made him a flight risk and endangered national security, Justice Department officials said. Mr. Smirnov had been held in custody in Las Vegas, where he has lived since 2022, since his arrest last week.He was released from custody on Tuesday on a personal recognizance bond after a detention hearing, said his lawyers, David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld.Prosecutors did not specify which story Russian intelligence is said to have been fed to Mr. Smirnov, an Israeli citizen. But they suggested they could not believe anything he said. And they had many tales to choose from.The memo describes Mr. Smirnov as a human hall of mirrors: He fed the F.B.I. bogus information about the Bidens and misled prosecutors about his wealth, estimated at $6 million, while telling them he worked in the security business, even though the government could find no proof that was true.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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      No, Wind Farms Aren’t ‘Driving Whales Crazy’

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      Donald Trump has attacked the President Biden’s climate and energy policies with gusto, but many of his criticisms are simply untrue.As the South Carolina Republican primary approaches, former President Donald J. Trump, the front-runner, is increasingly hammering President Biden with inaccurate statements on energy issues.Mr. Trump — who has called climate change a “hoax,” “nonexistent” and “created by the Chinese” — rolled back more than 100 climate and environmental protections during his administration, while promoting the development of fossil fuels. He has claimed, falsely, that windmills cause cancer, that energy efficient buildings have no windows and that solar rooftops leave older people without air-conditioning in the summer.This month, Mr. Trump has repeated many of his false claims, sometimes with new twists. Here is a closer look at three of Mr. Trump’s recent climate and energy assertions.WHAT WAS SAID:“I will end Joe Biden’s war on American energy, cancel his ban on exporting American natural gas, beautiful, clean natural gas.”— Donald J. Trump at an event in North Charleston, S.C. on Feb. 14This is false. In January, President Biden announced that he would temporarily pause approvals for permits for new liquefied natural gas export terminals until the Department of Energy conducts a study on the economic, security and climate implications of increased exports. This is not a ban; the United States continues to export more natural gas than any other nation. Even with the pause in approving new terminals, the country is still on track to nearly double its export capacity by 2027 because of projects already permitted and under construction.Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk testified to Congress that the review would take “months,” not years, to complete.WHAT WAS SAID:“We are a nation whose leaders are demanding all electric cars, despite the fact that they don’t go far. They cost too much, and whose batteries are produced in China with materials only available in China when an unlimited amount of gasoline is available inexpensively in the United States, but not available in China.”— Donald J. Trump at an event in Conway, S.C., on Feb. 10This is misleading. There’s a lot here. But let’s start with this: No administration can mandate how many cars sold in the United States must be all-electric.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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      Meta Calls for Industry Effort to Label A.I.-Generated Content

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      The social network wants to promote standardized labels to help detect artificially created photo, video and audio material across its platforms.Last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta, called a nascent effort to detect artificially generated content “the most urgent task” facing the tech industry today.On Tuesday, Mr. Clegg proposed a solution. Meta said it would promote technological standards that companies across the industry could use to recognize markers in photo, video and audio material that would signal that the content was generated using artificial intelligence.The standards could allow social media companies to quickly identify content generated with A.I. that has been posted to their platforms and allow them to add a label to that material. If adopted widely, the standards could help identify A.I.-generated content from companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft, Adobe, Midjourney and others that offer tools that allow people to quickly and easily create artificial posts.“While this is not a perfect answer, we did not want to let perfect be the enemy of the good,” Mr. Clegg said in an interview.He added that he hoped this effort would be a rallying cry for companies across the industry to adopt standards for detecting and signaling that content was artificial so that it would be simpler for all of them to recognize it.As the United States enters a presidential election year, industry watchers believe that A.I. tools will be widely used to post fake content to misinform voters. Over the past year, people have used A.I to create and spread fake videos of President Biden making false or inflammatory statements. The attorney general’s office in New Hampshire is also investigating a series of robocalls that appeared to employ an A.I.-generated voice of Mr. Biden that urged people not to vote in a recent primary.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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      ‘The Connector,’ a Show That Asks: Should News Feel True or Be True?

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      A new musical from Jason Robert Brown, Daisy Prince and Jonathan Marc Sherman explores the diverging trajectories of two young writers in the late 1990s.The director Daisy Prince had a flash of inspiration for a new show nearly 20 years ago: She wanted to explore the fallout from a string of partially or entirely fabricated news articles (by writers like Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair). The show would be set at a New York City magazine with a storied history — a publication much like The New Yorker. Also, it would be a musical.“I had become somewhat fixated on all these falsified news stories — these larger questions about fact, truth and story,” said Prince, who directed Jason Robert Brown’s “The Last Five Years” and “Songs for a New World.”She jotted the thought down in her great big notebook of ideas. But by the time she finally returned to it, around 2010, she was certain she had missed out.“I thought by the time we were going to be able to tell this story, it would no longer be relevant,” she said.But then the Trump presidency arrived, along with his strategy of labeling unfavorable coverage as fake news — and the premise only became more timely. Now the show, titled “The Connector,” conceived and directed by Prince with music and lyrics by Brown and a book by Jonathan Marc Sherman, is premiering Off Broadway at MCC Theater, where it is set to open Feb. 6.Ben Levi Ross, left, as Ethan Dobson and Hannah Cruz as Robin Martinez in the musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe 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?  More

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      Ukraine’s Latest Challenge: Festering Tension Among Top Leaders

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      Rampant speculation that President Volodymyr Zelensky will fire his top military commander has consumed Ukraine’s capital at a precarious moment in the war.As Ukraine fights against a fierce Russian offensive and its leaders wait to see whether the West will approve more than $100 million in much-needed assistance, the government in Kyiv is dealing with a festering distraction: tumult in its top ranks centered on the fate of the top military commander.Speculation raged on Monday in political and military circles, the news media and online that President Volodymyr Zelensky had fired the commander, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhny, with rumors becoming so widespread that the president’s office was forced to issue a public denial.“There was no dismissal,” the president’s spokesman, Serhiy Nikiforov, told the Ukrainian media.“I cannot say anything else,” he said. When asked whether the president intended to dismiss the general, Mr. Nikiforov replied: “I repeat to you once again — there is no subject of conversation.”The curt response only fueled further speculation, and on Tuesday the capital was still consumed with whether the general would be staying or going.A former senior Ukrainian official said Mr. Zelensky’s government had been planning on dismissing the general, but backed off Monday evening when the news was leaked. Now they were slowing down the process, the official said. A Ukrainian member of Parliament who had been briefed on the plans gave a similar account, saying the two men met Monday night but no decision was made. One of the sticking points for the government was that there was no immediate replacement to take General Zaluzhny’s place, the person said.Both spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal military matters.The general’s job has been in doubt since it became clear in the autumn that Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the country’s south had failed.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?  More

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      On Donald Trump, E. Jean Carroll and the Limits of Libel Law

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      In the days since a New York jury ordered Donald Trump to pay $83.3 million in damages to the libel plaintiff E. Jean Carroll, the question has been whether the dollar amount was high enough to put a stop to his lies.That we must ask this question tells us something important about the moment in which we find ourselves. And it tells us something important about both the value and the limits of libel law.Doubt about what will come next is well placed. As Ms. Carroll’s lawyers argued, Mr. Trump has bragged of wealth far exceeding this amount. He has publicly resolved to repeat the falsehood “a thousand times.” Indeed, he doubled down on his false claims about Ms. Carroll on social media and on the campaign trail even as the jury was hearing his case.But this “will he or won’t he?” speculation is only the latest data point in a larger, more alarming trend of libel damages simply not seeming to carry the deterrent effect that defamation law presupposes they will have. We have entered an era in which the incentives to serve up lies for politics or profit are so strong that libel damage awards and settlements may not meaningfully change behaviors.Several examples show a stark break from the past. For most of the long history of libel law, a jury determination that material was false and defamatory settled the question, and defendants facing that liability would take every possible step not to repeat the lie — both because it would be socially reprehensible to do so and because the risk of punitive damages was a powerful deterrent unlikely to be overcome by any stronger incentive. In short, libel law used to stop the libel.But recent cases have revealed some defendants who seem motivated to defame even as their assets are depleted or made unreachable to plaintiffs. Rudy Giuliani, who reasserted his defamatory allegations against two Georgia poll workers outside the courthouse as the jury decided his case, filed for bankruptcy just days after he was ordered to pay $148 million for those lies. Alex Jones did the same less than two months after a jury ordered him and his Infowars parent company to pay close to $1 billion for years of lies about the Sandy Hook families. He had used his broadcasts to rail against the suits throughout the proceedings and to seek audience donations to fund 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?  More

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      Swatting Is a Political Problem

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      In a year with so much political and legal tension, law enforcement is seeing a disturbing trend: targeting public officials with swatting, or false emergency calls intended to draw a heavily armed police response. This conduct isn’t a harmless prank; it’s a symptom of a deeper disorder in American politics. Recent incidents involving officials who have taken stands seen as hostile to Donald Trump and bomb threats in multiple state capitols are signs of a troubling escalation in political violence.These hoaxes pose real dangers. Sending armed police officers to someone’s home on the ruse that violence is occurring there risks tragic outcomes, including fatalities, as we saw in Kansas in 2017, when swatting led to a police officer shooting an unarmed man. In addition, swatting diverts law enforcement resources from real emergencies. But more insidiously, these tactics are tools of intimidation, designed to silence voices in the political process.The frequency and visibility of these incidents suggest that swatting and political violence require prosecutors to prioritize their efforts to stop it. Recent targets of swatting include Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is presiding over the federal election interference case and whom Mr. Trump has accused of election interference; the special counsel Jack Smith, whom Mr. Trump has called “deranged” and a “thug”; and Gabriel Sterling, a Republican election official in Georgia who rejected Mr. Trump’s claims of fraud in the 2020 election. Justice Arthur Engoron, who is presiding over Mr. Trump’s New York civil fraud trial, received a bomb threat at his home on the day of closing arguments. Maine’s secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, became a victim of swatting shortly after she removed Mr. Trump from the presidential ballot in her state under the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment. She rightly sees these acts as attempts to chill efforts to enforce the law, calling the incident at her home “designed to scare not only me but also others into silence, to send a message.”Public officials are human. Threats and the specter of violence can get into their heads. The possibility that a loved one might be unnerved, injured or worse as a result of one’s official duties isn’t easily shrugged off for most of us. The husband of Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, retired from his dental practice about eight years earlier than planned because of threats he received at his office. The risks can go beyond words. A federal judge in New Jersey suffered the loss of her 20-year-old son in 2020 when a gunman, apparently dressed as a delivery driver, came to her home looking for her and killed her son instead. We cannot forget that threats can escalate into violence. Fear of placing family members in harm’s way can make public officials shrink from making unpopular decisions and can even cause some good people to avoid serving altogether.Of course, this phenomenon isn’t entirely new. At the dawn of the American Revolution, some colonists harassed tax collectors and published the names of those who refused to boycott British goods. And we have experienced bomb threats for decades, learning to live with the disruptions caused by evacuations that result when a threat is phoned in or posted online.But the recent uptick in swatting can be attributed, at least in part, to the dangerous drumbeat of disinformation and dehumanization, a tactic long employed by authoritarians. Political extremists engage in what is known as the either-or fallacy. By framing issues as binary conflicts and demonizing opponents, they create a climate in which violence becomes normalized. Recent statements by Mr. Trump exemplify this strategy. He uses Truth Social posts to make unfounded accusations and express disdain for rivals. These posts do more than spread disinformation. They foster an environment in which violence against perceived enemies becomes not just conceivable but justified.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?  More