Social Responsibility

The idea of a chicken running around with its head cut off, inspired by a real-life story, may make it seem like the bird doesn’t have much going on upstairs. But Sonja Hillemacher, an animal behavior researcher at the University of Bonn in Germany, always knew that chickens were more than mindless sources of wings and nuggets.“They are way smarter than you think,” Ms. Hillemacher said.Now, in a study published in the journal PLOS One on Wednesday, Ms. Hillemacher and her colleagues say they have found evidence that roosters can recognize themselves in mirrors. In addition to shedding new light…

A Manhattan judge on Wednesday ordered Donald J. Trump to the witness stand, questioned him personally, found that his answers were not believable and fined him $10,000.The judge, Arthur F. Engoron, who is presiding over Mr. Trump’s civil fraud trial, issued the punishment after determining that Mr. Trump had violated an order against discussing court staff when he spoke to reporters earlier in the day.From the stand, Mr. Trump, wearing a navy suit and curtailing his usual monologue, insisted that his spontaneous comments in a courthouse hallway had been about his former lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, a witness.They were not,…

There is a reason so many Jews cannot stop shaking right now. The concept of intergenerational trauma doesn’t begin to describe the dark place into which this month’s attack plunged Jewish communities around the world.On Oct. 7, a Jewish holiday, Hamas terrorists went house to house in southern Israel murdering and abducting children and grandparents, pulling them from their beds, displaying victims’ dead bodies online, in a massacre of at least 1,400 people. In at least one instance, terrorists were reported to have uploaded a video of the murder of one victim to her own social media account for her…

For five years, Michael D. Cohen has waged battle with Donald J. Trump from afar: on social media, on cable television and in the pages of his books.But on Tuesday, Mr. Cohen confronted his onetime boss from the witness stand in a Manhattan courtroom, attacking the former president as a criminal and a cheat and defending his own credibility under a barrage of questions.Mr. Cohen, once Mr. Trump’s loyal fixer and now his antagonist, was testifying in a civil fraud case that threatens to upend the former president’s family business and undermine his public image as a businessman. It was…

House Republicans chose and then quickly repudiated yet another of their nominees for speaker on Tuesday and rushed to name a fourth, pressing to put an end to a remarkable three-week-long deadlock that has left Congress leaderless and paralyzed.Representative Mike Johnson, a little-known social conservative from Louisiana, emerged on Tuesday night as the latest contender for the post after Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the No. 3 House Republican, dropped his bid only hours after securing the nomination. Mr. Emmer’s downfall followed a swift backlash from the right, including former President Donald J. Trump, that left his candidacy in shambles…

Jenna Ellis, a pro-Trump lawyer who amplified former President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud as part of what she called a legal “elite strike force team,” pleaded guilty on Tuesday as part of a deal with prosecutors in Georgia.Addressing a judge in an Atlanta courtroom, she tearfully expressed regret for taking part in efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election.Ms. Ellis, 38, pleaded guilty to a charge of aiding and abetting false statements and writings, a felony. She is the fourth defendant to plead guilty in the Georgia case, which charged…

The Middle East could be on the verge of a regional conflagration. That’s in stark contrast to the atmosphere of just a few weeks ago, when the Biden administration was working on sealing a historic deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel that it hoped would stabilize a region long convulsed by war and sectarianism.Now, in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, Israel appears to be preparing to invade Gaza. Israeli forces and the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah are firing at each other at the Lebanon border. Protests have erupted in cities across the region. The United States has moved…

Eight Republicans are running for speaker, after the party cast aside Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio as its latest nominee for the leadership post.A flood of lawmakers began campaigning just hours after Republicans voted in a closed-door meeting to restart the nomination process after Mr. Jordan, his support ebbing, failed on a third floor vote to win the speakership. The vote essentially ensured that the office of the speaker would remain empty for a third week.The lawmakers vying for the job include veterans of the House, committee chairmen, a top member of Republican leadership and a sophomore. Virtually none have…

Throughout his acclaimed filmography, Martin Scorsese has been known for left-of-center casting choices. His longtime collaborator and casting director Ellen Lewis said in an interview that they always “try to go outside the box in interesting ways.” For evidence, consider memorable appearances by Scorsese’s mother, Catherine, in “Goodfellas” and the writer Fran Lebowitz as a judge in “The Wolf of Wall Street.”The director’s epic new drama, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” is no exception. The film tells the story of a 1920s plot by white Oklahoma men, notably an uncle and nephew played by Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio,…