Author: NY TIMES

The idea was to isolate him, to make him a pariah, to put him in a box as punishment for brazen violations of international law. They kicked him out of their world leaders’ clubhouse, cut off his country’s economy, even issued an arrest warrant against him for war crimes.But Vladimir V. Putin does not look all that isolated these days. Mr. Putin, the Russian president with czar envy who invaded neighboring Ukraine without provocation, killing or injuring hundreds of thousands, is having something of a moment in the United States.With the help of a populist former Fox News star and…

In 2018, an emaciated male body was found in the Florida wilderness. Blood work showed that he was healthy, with no drugs in his system beyond Tylenol. Among his belongings were food and money, but no phone. The man had been hiking the Appalachian Trail. Several hikers recalled encountering him within the eight months before his death — he was handsome — but they knew him only by his trail name, Mostly Harmless.Mostly Harmless did not want to be found.Directed by Patricia E. Gillespie, the Max true-crime documentary “They Called Him Mostly Harmless” is, on one level, about the quest…

In an interview released on Thursday, Tucker Carlson urged President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to release an American reporter for The Wall Street Journal who has been held in a notorious Moscow prison for nearly a year.Mr. Carlson’s appeal on behalf of the reporter, Evan Gershkovich, was only the second time that Mr. Putin directly addressed a case that has galvanized press freedom groups and strained diplomatic relations with the United States.Large portions of the two-hour interview were taken up by Mr. Putin’s recounting hundreds of years of Russian history. But in the final minutes, Mr. Carlson asked, “as…

On Wednesday night, a throng of actors, cycling through a swirl of events — awards season, New York Fashion Week and the Super Bowl — assembled in Midtown Manhattan, wearing Chanel, dressed by Chanel and for Chanel.Over cocktails, guests mingled for the opening of the brand’s first U.S. watch and fine jewelry flagship boutique on Fifth Avenue near 57th Street, designed by the architect Peter Marino with elements from Coco Chanel’s apartment in Paris.America Ferrera greeted Natasha Lyonne. Kerry Washington chatted with Elizabeth Olsen. Katie Holmes posed for photos with Michelle Williams. Zazie Beetz convened with Rachel Brosnahan. Dianna Agron…

Last spring, it seemed Tucker Carlson might have reached the end of his fiery path through American media and politics.Fox News canceled his top-rated show, depriving Mr. Carlson of his nightly platform in prime time. But it kept him under a contract, worth more than $15 million a year, that prohibited him from taking a job with a rival.Under the old rules of the legacy media, Mr. Carlson would have been off the air and out of sight through the end of the 2024 election, when his contract runs out. But Mr. Carlson is no typical television star. And what…

MS. DUNCAN AND MS. HOOPER’S RELATIONSHIPS with Mr. Majors briefly overlapped, though neither initially realized it.When Ms. Hooper and Mr. Majors began dating, she said that he quickly expressed deep love for her but also became controlling, dictating where she could go, who she could socialize with and how she could behave. She was “not allowed to speak to anyone about their relationship, isolating her from a support system,” according to the pretrial statement. She became a shadow of herself, a Yale classmate said.Ms. Chaudhry described Mr. Majors as “young and insecure” at the time of his relationship with Ms.…

Airstrikes hit a southern Gaza border city crowded with civilians on Thursday, a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced a cease-fire proposal by Hamas and signaled that the Israeli military was preparing to move into the area.The strikes on two houses in Rafah killed and injured multiple people, according to Palestinian news outlets, and heightened fears among the more than one million Palestinians who have sought refuge in the city as Israel’s army has repeatedly warned that it plans to push farther south in its ground invasion.“There is no place for the people to run to,” said Fathi Abu…

President Vladimir V. Putin called on the United States to “make an agreement” ceding Ukrainian territory to Russia in order to end the war, speaking for two hours with a former Fox News host in an interview broadcast Thursday that was the Kremlin’s most direct appeal to American audiences since his invasion began two years ago.“Wouldn’t it be better to negotiate with Russia? Make an agreement,” Mr. Putin told Tucker Carlson, the American conservative commentator, in the Russian leader’s first interview with an American outlet since 2021. “Start respecting our country and its interests and look for certain solutions.”Much of…

The estimated price tag for President Biden’s clean-energy and climate agenda has effectively doubled since the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law a year and a half ago.Nearly all of the increase is attributable to forecasters’ belief that the law will be more popular than they had originally expected, in part because of the way the Biden administration wrote certain regulations. That rising price tag may actually be good for reducing greenhouse gas emissions — and for the U.S. economy.The Inflation Reduction Act, which Democrats passed on a party-line vote in summer 2022, includes tax credits and other subsidies…

RAY WAS MAC’S MUSIC DIRECTOR for “The Lily’s Revenge,” a sprawling theatrical work from 2009. Since then, their collaborations have been prolific; Mac traced the inspiration for “Bark of Millions” to that show, but also to “24-Decade.”“Almost all of those 240 songs are centered around straight people” and cisgender people, Mac said. “And there was this desire to give us some of the things that we’ve missed in life.”“Bark of Millions,” which will feature supernova-spectacular costumes by another frequent Mac collaborator, Machine Dazzle, is considerably shorter but still unusually substantial — “party-length,” Mac called it. “We say this in the…