Day: February 24, 2024

Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota and the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy tied for the top choice to be former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate in a straw poll on Saturday at a prominent gathering of conservative activists.

The straw poll at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference was the first time in years that a question about whom Republicans should pick for vice president had overshadowed one about the presidential nominee in the survey of attendees.

That was partly because Mr. Trump won the presidential poll, as expected, in a landslide. The last time Mr. Trump was not the top choice for the White House among CPAC attendees was in 2016, when Senator Ted Cruz of Texas finished first.

The straw poll, which provides one measure of enthusiasm on the far right and is not intended to be predictive, was announced at the end of the four-day CPAC gathering outside Washington.

Several Republicans viewed as contenders to be Mr. Trump’s running mate gave speeches at the event. They included Representative Byron Donalds of Florida on Thursday; Ms. Noem, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio and Representative Elise Stefanik of New York on Friday; and Kari Lake, an Arizona Senate candidate, on Saturday. Mr. Ramaswamy spoke on both Friday and Saturday.

Ms. Noem and Mr. Ramaswamy each garnered 15 percent of the vote in the straw poll. Former Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who ran for president as a Democrat in 2020 but has since left the party to become an independent, was third with 9 percent, trailed by Ms. Stefanik and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina with 8 percent each.

“It feels like I’m the only one who isn’t running for vice president,” said Tom Fitton, the president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, who spoke at the conference. “Although — who knows what will happen.”

The attention on the vice-presidential question was also notable because Mr. Trump is still fending off a challenge for the Republican presidential nomination by former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina. He has won the party’s first several nominating contests and is widely expected to prevail again on Saturday in Ms. Haley’s home state.

The top prize at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival was given to “Dahomey,” a documentary by the French filmmaker Mati Diop about 26 looted artworks that were returned to Benin from France in 2021.

The unconventional feature, narrated in part by the gravelly, imagined voice of one of the artworks, is a playful exploration of the legacy of colonialism and the interplay between history and identity in present-day Benin. It is Diop’s first feature since “Atlantics,” a drama about Senegalese migrants that won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019.

In Diop’s acceptance speech for the prize, known as the Golden Bear, she said that “Dahomey” was part of the “collapsing wall of silence” around the need to return artworks looted by colonial powers to their original owners. “We can either get rid of the past as an imprisoning burden,” she said, “or we can take responsibility for it.”

This year’s jury was led by the Kenyan Mexican actress Lupita Nyong’o and included the German director Christian Petzold, whose film “Afire” won the runner-up prize at last year’s festival in Berlin, and the Spanish director Albert Serra.

This year’s runner-up prize was presented to “A Traveler’s Needs,” by the prolific Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo, who also won awards at three of the last five editions of the event. His typically understated film stars Isabelle Huppert as an eccentric Frenchwoman who has a series of encounters in Seoul.

The Special Jury Prize was given to “The Empire,” a critically divisive, visually lavish satire of “Star Wars” by the director Bruno Dumont set in a French coastal town.

The best director award went to Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias for “Pepe,” one of the festival’s strangest entries, about a hippopotamus once owned by the drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. The gender-neutral best performance award went to the actor Sebastian Stan for his work in “A Different Man,” in which he plays a man who undergoes a procedure for his facial disfigurement.

The Silver Bear for best screenplay went to Matthias Glasner, the German writer-director of “Dying,” a drama about a family grappling with parental mortality. The best supporting performance award went to Emily Watson for her role as a sinister Irish nun in “Small Things Like These.”

This year’s festival, known as the Berlinale in Germany, is the last to be headed by Mariëtte Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian, who took over dual leadership of the festival in 2019 with the goal of raising its profile. Much of the discussion around the current event has centered on whether they have delivered on their mandate.

The competition lineup featured a blend of Berlinale mainstays, including Sang-soo and the German director Andreas Dresen, along with more esoteric and explicitly political films from countries such as Iran. But many critics complained that the lineup was more uneven and less bold than the ones in previous years. At the midpoint of the festival, Susan Vahabzadeh of the Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote in German that the “density of truly successful films had not been high.”

Others complained that despite appearances by Adam Sandler and Kristen Stewart, the current event lacked star power. In The New York Times, the critic Jessica Kiang wrote that the festival had “rarely felt this embattled and unstable, or unsure of itself.”

It sets the stakes for Tricia Tuttle, an American who previously led the London Film Festival and who in April will take the helm of the Berlinale, the largest film festival in the world by audience number. In addition to attracting top-level talent, she will have to steer the festival through a perilous financial and political climate.

At a news conference announcing her appointment in December, Tuttle said that her goal was to balance “established filmmakers” with “underrepresented voices,” but noted that the difficulties facing the Berlinale were not unique. “The last few years have been challenging for every festival,” she said.

A South Carolina man was found guilty on Friday in the killing of a transgender woman in what the authorities said was the first federal murder trial of someone charged with a hate crime based on gender identity.

After deliberating for several hours, jurors found the man, Daqua Lameek Ritter, guilty of a hate crime in the murder of the woman, Dime Doe, in 2019.

“It stands as a testament to our commitment to prosecute these crimes,” said Brook Andrews, the first assistant United States attorney for the District of South Carolina. “It also stands as a reminder that Dime’s life mattered. It’s a tremendous result for us and the people in that community.”

Federal officials have previously prosecuted hate crimes based on gender identity.

A Mississippi man received a 49-year prison sentence in 2017 as part of a plea deal after he admitted to killing a 17-year-old transgender woman. However, this is the first murder case in the country to make it to trial where someone was charged with a hate crime based on gender identity, Mr. Andrews said.

Mr. Ritter, who was also found guilty of obstructing justice and using a firearm in connection with the killing, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole. A sentencing date has not been scheduled.

Mr. Ritter, who is from New York City, would visit his grandmother in Allendale, S.C. During this time he became close with Ms. Dime, according to court documents.

Ms. Dime grew up in Allendale, where she worked as a hair dresser, and transitioned in her early 20s, Mr. Andrews said. She was 24 at the time of her death.

Witnesses told law enforcement officials that Ms. Doe and Mr. Ritter were in a sexual relationship during the time leading up to her death. Mr. Ritter tried to keep the relationship a secret because he did not want his girlfriend or the community to know about it, according to court documents.

Prosecutors said that Mr. Ritter was upset that word about his sexual relationship with Ms. Doe was circulating in Allendale. Mr. Ritter became “irate” after Ms. Doe publicized their relationship, and many of his friends mocked him for it, according to court documents.

Witnesses said he threatened to harm Ms. Doe as a result, according to court documents.

Mr. Ritter had picked up Ms. Doe and was pulled over by an Allendale County sheriff’s deputy for speeding. The deputy’s body camera video showed Mr. Ritter’s “distinctive” jeans as well as a tattoo and a scar on his arm, according to court documents, which did not offer more details.

Prosecutors said that Mr. Ritter then lured Ms. Doe to a remote area in Allendale and shot her three times in the head. Afterward, he burned the clothes he wore during the crime, disposed of the murder weapon and repeatedly lied to investigators, according to federal prosecutors.

Transgender people are four times as likely as cisgender people to experience violent victimization, including rape, sexual assault and aggravated or simple assault, according to a 2021 study by the Williams Institute at the U.C.L.A. School of Law.

One of Mr. Ritter’s defense lawyers, Joshua Kendrick, argued that there were inconsistencies in the government’s case.

He pointed to text messages that showed “a lot of respect and a calm nature” that didn’t match up with the government’s witnesses who told investigators that they knew of Mr. Ritter’s threats of violence.

“I felt we pointed out a lot of inconsistencies, the jury didn’t agree,” Mr. Kendrick said on Saturday. “They reached a verdict that we respect, even though we’re disappointed about it.”

Credit card debt is rising, and shopping for a card with a lower interest rate can help you save money. But the challenge is finding one.

Smaller banks and credit unions typically charge significantly lower interest rates on credit cards than the largest banks do — even among customers with top-notch credit, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reported last week.

But online card comparison tools tend to emphasize cards from larger banks that pay fees to the sites when shoppers apply for cards, said Julie Margetta Morgan, the bureau’s associate director for research, monitoring and regulations. “It’s pretty hard to shop for a good deal on a credit card right now.”

For cardholders with “good” credit — a credit score of 620 to 719 — the typical interest rate charged by big banks was about 28 percent, compared with about 18 percent at small banks, the report found.

For those with poor credit — reflected by a score of 619 or lower — large banks charged a median rate of more than 28 percent, compared with about 21 percent at small banks. (Basic credit scores range from 300 to 850.)

The variation in the rates charged by big banks and smaller ones can mean a difference, on average, of $400 to $500 a year in interest for cardholders with an average balance of $5,000, the bureau found.

“I was surprised by the gap” between the rates, said John Pelletier, director of the Center for Financial Literacy at Champlain College in Burlington, Vt.

The difference is more than academic, since Americans owe more than $1 trillion in credit card debt and delinquencies are rising.

The consumer bureau, in its report, said a “lack of competition likely contributes” to higher card interest rates at the largest card companies. (The top 10 issuers represented 83 percent of credit card loans in 2022, although that was down from 87 percent in 2016, the bureau reported in October.) A deal to combine two big card issuers, Capital One and Discover, was announced this week and is likely to draw regulator scrutiny because of concern that it would give larger financial institutions even more power to set higher rates.

In response to the bureau’s report, the Consumer Bankers Association, a trade group representing mostly large banks, defended the credit card market as “highly competitive” and criticized the bureau for making “troubling, unfounded” statements.

“A thriving marketplace means that consumers can choose products that may have different prices and offer features, perks or other value that’s specific to them,” the association said in a statement.

The bureau based its report on 643 credit cards offered by 84 banks and 72 credit unions during the first half of 2023. Most cards were available nationally, while the rest were offered regionally or in a single state. The report includes annual percentage rates, or A.P.R.s, on general purpose cards offered by the 25 largest card issuers (based on outstanding credit card assets), plus a sample from small and medium-size banks across the country.

The bureau collects data on credit cards in a survey twice a year; last spring the survey began asking for more details, like how credit scores affect rates.

Federally chartered credit unions have a statutory cap of 18 percent on the interest rates they can charge, the bureau noted. But smaller banks also had lower rates overall.

Fifteen card issuers, including nine of the biggest, reported offering at least one card with a maximum rate above 30 percent. Those banks included familiar names like Ally, Capital One and Citibank. (Many such cards were “co-branded,” the bureau said, meaning they also bore the name of partners like stores or airlines.)

A card’s interest rate is of less importance to people who pay their balance in full each month, since they’re not paying interest. Those consumers may be more interested in using credit cards for “cash back” rewards or for points that translate into savings on purchases like frequent flier miles or hotel stays.

But if you’re a “revolver” who regularly carries a balance, a double-digit interest rate will probably wipe out any benefit from cash back or points. “You shouldn’t be choosing a card based on points” if you typically carry a balance, said Adam Rust, director of financial services at the Consumer Federation of America.

Many people, though, undervalue the impact of interest rates on their credit card debt. “The immediate gratification of purchasing, coupled with the deferred pain of payment, can overshadow the long-term financial costs represented by the A.P.R.,” Sachin Banker, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Utah’s business school, said in an email.

People might pay more attention to card rates if they understood the compounding of interest over time, Mr. Pelletier said. He calculates that someone with good credit who carried a card balance of $5,000 would save $42 a month by using a card with the typical small bank rate instead of the big bank rate.

Even if you regularly pay off your card balance, it’s a good idea to have a lower-rate card since an unexpected expense — a medical bill, say — may require you to carry a balance temporarily.

The consumer bureau has said it is considering creating a public search tool that would include a variety of cards from big banks and small. “We are actively looking at that right now,” Ms. Morgan said.

The bureau already makes available an online spreadsheet showing the terms on cards included in its survey.

The Independent Community Bankers of America, a trade group, offers a search tool for local banks at www.banklocally.org. You can then check the websites for card rates or call for information.

The National Credit Union Administration offers a search tool for credit unions. Many limit membership to certain groups, but some are more flexible.

Here are some questions and answers about credit cards:

Do annual credit card fees vary by the size of the issuing bank?

Cards issued by large banks were three times as likely to charge an annual fee as those from smaller banks, the consumer bureau’s report found. Plus, the average fee at big banks was larger — $157, compared with $94 at smaller ones.

Why are credit card rates so high?

Credit cards offer “unsecured” loans — meaning the debt isn’t secured by collateral, as it is with a mortgage or car loan. If you don’t pay your bill, the bank can’t seize property to cover its losses, so it charges higher rates to compensate for its risk. More recently, card rates generally rose as the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate to cool inflation.

But in a separate analysis published on its website on Thursday, the consumer bureau said card issuers had raised interest rates significantly above prime lending rates, costing consumers more interest.

How can I be sure to get the best credit card rate?

An important factor in qualifying for a good rate is your credit score, which is based on information in your credit report. Before applying for a new card, check your report for accuracy. (A recent analysis from Consumer Reports found that complaints to the federal government about inaccurate credit reports had more than doubled since 2021.) You can check your report at the three big credit bureaus as often as weekly at no charge, at www.annualcreditreport.com.

Former President Donald J. Trump laid out what’s in store for America should he or President Biden win the 2024 presidential election, using a Saturday speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference to cast one nearly utopian vision of the country’s future and one reminiscent of a postapocalyptic movie.

If Mr. Biden is re-elected for a second four-year term, Mr. Trump warned in his speech, Medicare will “collapse.” Social Security will “collapse.” Health care in general will “collapse.” So, too, will public education. Millions of manufacturing jobs will be “choked off into extinction.” The U.S. economy will be “starved of energy” and there will be “constant blackouts.” The Islamist militant group Hamas will “terrorize our streets.” There will be a third world war and America will lose it. America itself will face “obliteration.”

On the other hand, Mr. Trump promised on Saturday that if he is elected America will be “richer and safer and stronger and prouder and more beautiful than ever before.” Crime in major cities? A thing of the past.

“Chicago could be solved in one day,” Mr. Trump said. “New York could be solved in a half a day there.”

It’s impossible to fact-check the future. But Mr. Trump’s speech at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Maryland sounded familiar — like 2016 or 2020 all over again.

In his 2020 campaign, Mr. Trump warned that Mr. Biden would “confiscate your guns,” and “destroy your suburbs.” He predicted that the economy would sink into a depression worse than the 1930s Great Depression and that the “stock market will crash.” A Biden presidency, he predicted four years ago, “would mean that America’s seniors have no air conditioning during the summer, no heat during the winter and no electricity during peak hours.” And, he warned in July 2020, “you will have no more energy coming out of the great state of Texas, out of New Mexico, out of anywhere.”

Some of those past predictions are now checkable, and have turned out to be fictions. The stock market has hit record highs under the Biden administration. Guns haven’t been confiscated. Air conditioning is as good or bad as it ever was. And under Mr. Biden, the United States is producing more oil — not only more than it did under Mr. Trump but more than any country ever has.

Mr. Trump also left office with a long list of his own unfulfilled campaign promises, including completing the construction of a wall along the southwestern border. On Saturday, he pinned the blame for that failure on fellow Republicans in Congress — and on his own inexperience.

“Don’t forget, I had never done this stuff before,” he said, describing his border wall negotiations.

Still, Mr. Trump’s vision of the country delivered at CPAC on Saturday has the potential to connect powerfully to the fears and lives of millions of Americans.

When Mr. Trump said on Saturday that Mr. Biden had allowed “hordes of illegal aliens stampeding across our borders,” he was speaking to a voting public that trusts Mr. Trump significantly more to handle immigration. Under Mr. Biden, record numbers of undocumented migrants have crossed the southern border, straining local services and infuriating even Democratic mayors and governors, who have pleaded with the White House to take the problem more seriously. (Mr. Trump did not mention in his speech how he has all but killed a bipartisan effort to help solve the problem because he wanted to deprive Mr. Biden of a legislative victory in an election year.)

And when Mr. Trump rails against what he portrays as a bad economy under Mr. Biden, his message empirically resonates with voters even if the Biden administration can point to any number of economic data points to brag about. Under Mr. Biden, unemployment is low, real wages are rising, the stock market is booming and inflation is finally cooling. But at the same time, many groceries and other living expenses are vastly higher now than they were under Mr. Trump. When Mr. Trump hammers Mr. Biden for inflation, as he often does, he taps into an issue that Democratic strategists fear as one of Mr. Biden’s biggest liabilities this fall.

On Saturday, after delivering a series of dire warnings about a second Biden term, Mr. Trump ditched his prepared remarks to share long, rambling anecdotes about what he portrayed as his brilliant behind-the-scenes negotiating as president. “Nobody can ramble like this,” he said of his own rambling, as he brought up his late uncle.

For his part, Mr. Biden has delivered his own warning, telling supporters that Mr. Trump would undo America’s democratic principles and be an agent of chaos if he returns to the White House. Last month, on the eve of the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by Mr. Trump’s supporters, Mr. Biden said in a speech, “There’s no confusion about who Trump is or what he intends to do,” adding, “We all know who Donald Trump is. The question is: Who are we?”

Mr. Trump’s CPAC speech came on the day of the G.O.P. primary election in South Carolina, the home state of his main Republican rival, Nikki Haley. He has dominated the primary race so much, and was leading Ms. Haley in polling averages by so many points, that Mr. Trump adopted the rhetoric and posture of a front-runner ignoring the primary and focusing on the general election in November. Not once in his entire speech did he say Ms. Haley’s name.

What made Saturday’s speech different for Mr. Trump from the 2016 and 2020 versions was how he has turned his unprecedented legal situation, as the first former president charged with crimes, into a core part of his campaign message. Even as Mr. Trump now insists that his only “revenge” will be success for the American people — a departure from his previous promises to direct the prosecutions of his political opponents — the theme of retribution coursed through CPAC.

“I stand before you today not only as your past and future president, but as a proud political dissident,” Mr. Trump said.

“For hard-working Americans,” he added, “Nov. 5 will be our new liberation day — but for the liars and cheaters and fraudsters and censors and impostors who have commandeered our government, it will be their judgment day.”

At that, the crowd whistled and roared.

The forecasts are anything but optimistic: The best Ukraine can hope for in 2024, many Western officials and analysts say, is to simply hold the line.

Only a year ago, Ukraine was brimming with confidence. It had defied expectations, staving off Russia’s attempt to take over the country. Western nations, buoyed by Ukraine’s success, promised aid to help Ukrainians break through Russian lines.

But the flow of much-needed weapons from allies into the country was unpredictable, and slow. Ukraine’s own domestic arms production was mired in bureaucracy, top military officials have said. And the command structure of the army was not changing quickly enough to manage a force that had expanded from 200,000 troops to nearly a million in a matter of months.

Those weaknesses, and some strategic battlefield missteps, stymied Ukraine’s widely telegraphed counteroffensive, which resulted in only marginal territorial gains. At the same time, Russia was fortifying its defensive lines, converting its economy to war production, conscripting hundreds of thousands of fighters and adjusting its strategy for renewed offensives this winter.

Now, as the war enters its third year, leaders in Kyiv are trying to find a new path forward amid ferocious Russian assaults, while facing a series of daunting unknowns.

The most urgent of these is out of Ukraine’s control: Will the United States Congress come through with billions more in military and economic aid? Without that, Western officials and military analysts have said, Ukraine’s war effort would be at grave risk.

But other issues are within Ukraine’s power to address. Can its civilian leaders muster the will to enact a potentially unpopular mobilization plan to replenish its depleted forces? Can the military command and the civilian government mend the rifts that have divided them and that led to the recent firing of Ukraine’s top general?

“Of course, uncertainty always affects all processes,” Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, said in an interview. “We can talk for a very long time now about how the war has changed, because it is completely different than it was in February and March 2022. But the main thing that should be there is certainty.”

For now, Ukraine has to move forward without that certainty. Even as he presses the case for more Western support, President Volodymyr Zelensky is starting to take steps to improve some of the systemic problems under his control.

For instance, Kyiv has added several command headquarters to oversee brigades more efficiently. And while the new top general, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, is a product of the Soviet military system, Mr. Zelensky has installed a younger generation of generals under him who he hopes will bring more innovation to the battlefield.

The minister of defense, Rustem Umerov, has vowed to accelerate the development of ammunition production in Ukraine. He has also introduced a new procurement process to replace a post-Soviet system that was slower and more susceptible to corruption; one goal is to ensure the system integrates more seamlessly with those of other nations.

Another initiative is the Future Force Project, which brings together experts from different departments of the government, with the assistance of NATO partners. Its mission is to better organize the Ukrainian military for the needs of fighting a large-scale war, seeking to improve things like communication and coordination between branches.

It is based on best practices in Western militaries and already has the verbal blessing of the president, military officials said.

Despite these expected changes, military analysts and Western officials have voiced sobering assessments of Ukraine’s chances against a Russian Army with superior troop numbers and ammunition stockpiles, and a clear willingness to sacrifice thousands of soldiers to achieve even small gains.

As Ukraine confronts these imbalances, it also faces the once unthinkable prospect of waging a long war without American military backing.

With U.S. support held up for months by a faction of increasingly isolationist Republicans in Congress, severe shortages of ammunition have contributed to Ukrainian losses — like the brutal and ultimately unsuccessful fight to hold on to Avdiivka — which in turn has led to Ukraine suffering heavier casualties, further straining its already depleted forces.

Ukrainian military commanders will need to find ways to slow that vicious cycle while the political leaders engage in yet another desperate diplomatic push to try to fill the void left by the United States.

Mr. Zelensky must also repair the relationship between the civilian government and the military. The tensions simmered for months amid disagreements over halting mobilization efforts and military priorities competing with the political need to show allies progress.

Military officials were concerned last year that the government wanted a road map for victory without telling them the amount of men, ammunition and reserves they would have to execute any plan, according to Gen. Viktor Nazarov, an adviser to the former commanding general in Ukraine’s army, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhny.

“This is what, unfortunately, our political leadership did not understand or did not want to understand when they demanded strategic plans from the military without strategic reserves and resources,” General Nazarov said in an interview.

General Zaluzhny leveled many of these same criticisms at the government before his dismissal. In an essay for CNN, for example, he contended that regulatory and production issues had hampered the defense industry, leading to “production bottlenecks — in ammunition, for instance — which further deepen Ukraine’s dependence on its allies for supplies.”

Both men were dismissed in Mr. Zelensky’s military shake-up early this month. But Mr. Zelensky named General Zaluzhny a “Hero of Ukraine” and shared a public embrace in an effort to demonstrate unity. And General Nazarov said the disagreements should not obscure the fact that the military and civilian government wanted the same thing: victory. Without that, he said, there is no military and there is no government.

Officials in the president’s office declined requests for interviews.

Despite the public tensions between the civilian administration and the military command, Mr. Zelensky may have some room to maneuver as he tries to patch up the relationship.

Though his rating in opinion polls has slipped slightly, he still enjoys broad public support. Almost 70 percent of Ukrainians believe he should remain in office for however long the country is under martial law, and that elections should be postponed until it is lifted, according to a survey released this week by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.

Mr. Zelensky and the military leadership are in lock step in professing that they are not interested in any cease-fire that would be struck on terms favorable to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

The Ukrainian leader has said time and again that Russia needs to relinquish any territory it has captured. He has also emphasized that any pause in fighting would not lead to the end of the war. It would simply give Russia time to rearm.

Kyiv’s position is “not only about the territory, but also about the security,” Mr. Zelensky told Fox News on Thursday. The world, he said, should know by now that Mr. Putin simply cannot be trusted.

At the moment, General Syrsky has conceded, the initiative has shifted to the Russians and Ukraine must focus on strategic defense — maximizing Russian losses while fighting smartly to preserve its own fighting force.

General Syrsky has also spoken about the need to increase domestic arms production as well as developing and exploiting new technologies. But, like his predecessor, he will have to make strategic plans without knowing fully what resources his army will have at its disposal.

Simply put, he needs more soldiers.

That challenge is in Kyiv’s control, but the government has yet to reveal a plan to deal with it.

A bill that would overhaul the mobilization process — and potentially add up to 500,000 conscripts — is making its way through the Ukrainian Parliament. But lawmakers nervous about the political ramifications have already added some 1,300 amendments to the proposed law and it is not clear when it will be ready for a vote.

Beyond the thorny politics of the issue, Mr. Zelensky must demonstrate to the public the dire need for new troops without undermining morale, causing social unrest or damaging the already battered economy.

As the world assesses Ukraine’s prospects and the Kremlin pushes a narrative meant to convince onlookers that it cannot be beaten, Mr. Zelensky must work equally hard to show that Ukraine can win.

On Saturday, the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Mr. Zelensky visited the shuttered airport at Hostomel outside Kyiv, where Ukrainians soldiers fought back Russian paratroopers in a key early battle that helped save the capital.

“Any normal person wants the war to end,” Mr. Zelensky said in a video recording. “But none of us will allow our country to end.”

“That is why we always add ‘on our terms’ to the words about ending the war,” he said. “That is why the word ‘independent’ will always stand next to the word ‘Ukraine’ in future history. Let’s fight for it. And we will win.”

As a pop star, Olivia Rodrigo wields a rather unusual arsenal of weapons. She is an acute writer and an un-self-conscious singer. She largely abhors artifice. She is modest, not salacious. In just three years, she has achieved something approaching stratospheric fame — a four-times platinum debut album and a Grammy for best new artist — while somehow remaining an underdog.

But the weapon she returns to again and again is a very pointed and versatile curse word, one that she used to vivid effect on both her 2020 breakout hit, “Drivers License,” the first single from her debut album, “Sour,” and also on “Vampire,” the Grammy-nominated single from her second album, “Guts,” released last year. It’s in plenty of other places, too, giving her anguished entreaties an extra splash of zest. She wants to make it clear that underneath her composed exterior, she’s boiling over.

On Friday night at Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert, Calif., during the opening performance of the Guts World Tour, Rodrigo couldn’t get enough of that word. She used it for emphasis, to connote dismissiveness and to demonstrate exasperation. But mostly she used it casually, in between-song banter, not because she needed to, but because using it felt like getting away with something.

Much of Rodrigo’s music — especially “Guts,” with its detailed and delirious ruminations about new fame and its discontents — is about how it feels to act bad after being told how important it is to be good. It’s situated at the juncture where freedom is just about to give way to misbehavior.

This was true of her performance as well, which brought the perfection and order of musical theater to the pop-punk and piano balladry that her songs toggle between. Over an hour and a half, Rodrigo alternately roared and pleaded, stomped and collapsed. She led a reverent 11,000-person crowd — a sizable leap from the theaters she played on her first tour — in singalongs that were churchlike and raucous, but never rowdy.

Throughout the concert, Rodrigo made gestural nods to abandon — singing the first verse of “Get Him Back!” through a megaphone, knocking the mic stand down at the end of “All-American Bitch,” performing spicily for a camera peering up from beneath a clear section of the stage on “Obsessed.”

While she has an exuberant stage presence, she is not a full-service pop star, and is better for avoiding that trap. Rodrigo is on her surest footing when performing faithful, unflashy recitations of her songs. She opened the night with a boundlessly energetic “Bad Idea Right?” followed by “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl,” perhaps the truest statement of purpose from her last album, and let the dry, groaning ’90s guitars telegraph anxiety and gloom.

Those songs emphasize Rodrigo’s yen to rock, which is earnest and studied and bolstered by an impressively roaring band that lent her a soupçon of grit. But she followed with an even more powerful troika of howling repudiations: “Vampire” into “Traitor” into “Drivers License,” a string of slow ballads that are among her most invigorating songs. (Almost as moving was hearing three young girls, maybe 8 years old, screaming their brains out to “Traitor” while watching its music video in the back of a tricked-out Mercedes Sprinter van in the parking lot before the show.)

But making her songs feel big didn’t require much besides the songs themselves. At the end of “The Grudge,” Rodrigo stood pointedly alone at the foot of the stage, a flash of self-sufficiency and defiance. (Dancers joined her for several songs, and for some, she danced along with them awkwardly.) Late in the performance, she sang a gasping “Happier” and the casually sinister “Favorite Crime” while seated at the edge of one of the stage’s tentacles. And although she was floating over the crowd on a crescent moon for “Logical” and “Enough for You,” two of her most heartbreaking songs, it was the firm quiver in her voice that thrilled the most, not the spectacle up in the air.

In her outfits, Rodrigo leans into a combination of demure and tough. Her fans have been taking note. In the crowd, there was near sartorial unanimity — young girls, mostly teenagers, in midthigh skirts and either black boots or Chuck Taylors. Almost everyone had at least one item that sparkled. It recalled early Taylor Swift tours, where young fans arrived in sundresses and cowboy boots by the thousands. At one point, Rodrigo asked the crowd if anyone had come with their father (many), then if anyone had come with a boyfriend or girlfriend (not many). Then she asked if anyone had dressed up for the show, and the crowd roared almost in unison. (Women outnumbered men so significantly, most of the men’s restrooms were converted to all-gender for the night.)

At the merchandise booths, vendors were selling the accouterments of girlhood: lavender butterfly-shaped tote bags, star-shaped stickers that adhere to your face (to emulate the “Sour” album cover) and Band-Aids with Rodrigo catchphrases. And onstage, the performers were advertising the power of girlhood: the members of Rodrigo’s band and dance troupe were all female, nonbinary or transgender.

Rodrigo has made supporting young women part of the tour, too: Proceeds from each ticket go to her charitable organization, Fund 4 Good, and will support “community-based nonprofits that champion girls’ education, support reproductive rights and prevent gender-based violence.”

That’s in keeping with Rodrigo’s enduring and persuasive narrative that girlhood is fraught. Her rendition of “Teenage Dream,” a ballad about wondering whether the best years of her life are already past, was particularly revelatory, especially with the backing visuals of Rodrigo as a young child toying around with performing, unaware of the realities of stardom.

The opener was Chappell Roan, a sexually frank singer whose big voice was obliterated by her arrangements. She offered a contrast to Rodrigo, who sings about sex in glancing references and punchlines, often hidden in the middle of a verse. (Beginning in April, the openers will be Remi Wolf, PinkPantheress and, very promisingly for the cross-generationally curious, the Breeders.)

That subject matter is still too raw for Rodrigo, who never places herself too far away from her youngest fans, or her younger self. But that might change soon. Rodrigo turned 21 a few days before this show, perhaps the final publicly acknowledged demarcation line between youth and adulthood. She did not let it pass without comment.

“I went to the gas station the other day and bought a pack of cigarettes,” she said, sitting at the piano after “Drivers License,” in what threatened to be the night’s sole moment of genuine misbehavior.

But then she confessed, “I promise I didn’t consume it, but I just bought it just because I could.” Did she add a curse word for emphasis? She fudging did.

Donald J. Trump is on the clock.

The $454 million judgment that a New York judge imposed on Mr. Trump in his civil fraud case took effect on Friday, placing the former president in a precarious position.

Now, he must either come up with the money quickly or persuade a company to post a bond on his behalf, essentially vouching for him to the court with an I.O.U.

The bond is likely to be his best bet: Mr. Trump, who also faces an $83.3 million judgment in an unrelated defamation case, does not have enough cash on hand to do it all himself, according to a recent New York Times analysis of his finances. If Mr. Trump can find a bond company willing to do a deal this big, it will require him to pay the firm a fee as high as 3 percent of the judgment and to pledge collateral.

The bond would prevent the New York attorney general’s office, which brought the civil fraud case against Mr. Trump, from collecting the $454 million while Mr. Trump’s appeal is heard. Without it, the attorney general, Letitia James, is entitled to collect at any moment.

Ms. James is expected to allow Mr. Trump up to 30 days, but if he fails to secure a bond by March 25, and an appeals court denies him extra time, he has a lot to lose. The attorney general’s office could seek to seize some of Mr. Trump’s properties in New York, perhaps even a crown jewel like Trump Tower or 40 Wall Street.

“The attorney general is in the catbird seat and can make this a very unpleasant experience for Trump,” said Mark Zauderer, a partner at the law firm Dorf Nelson & Zauderer who is a veteran New York business litigator and has secured many appeal bonds.

As Mr. Trump races to secure a bond, here is what we know about this perilous new phase.

Why does Trump owe $454 Million?

Ms. James took Mr. Trump to trial last year, accusing him of orchestrating a conspiracy to inflate his net worth to receive favorable loans. This month, the judge Arthur F. Engoron ruled that Mr. Trump had done so and meted out several punishments.

The most severe was a $355 million penalty — $454,156,783.05 as of Friday afternoon, thanks to interest that continues to accrue. The judge said the sum accounted for Mr. Trump’s ill-gotten gains from the scheme.

Nearly half of the base penalty, $168 million, reflected the interest that Mr. Trump had saved by misleading lenders, while the remaining amount represented his purported profit on the recent sale of two properties. The judge’s penalty essentially clawed back that money, and it will go into New York State’s coffers if the ruling is upheld on appeal.

In theory, Mr. Trump has two options to prevent Ms. James from collecting while he appeals. He can either write a check for more than $450 million to New York State, which will then hold the money in escrow, or he can secure an appeal bond from a specialized company licensed to provide them.

In reality, unless Mr. Trump reaps a sudden and unexpected windfall, a bond is the only way to go.

Mr. Trump’s net worth, which he estimates to be in the billions, is largely derived from the value of his real estate, not cash. As of last year, he was sitting on more than $350 million in cash — as well as stocks and bonds he can sell in a hurry — but that stockpile is well short of what he needs, according to The Times’s review of his financial records. Justice Engoron’s $454 million judgment and the $83.3 million judgment Mr. Trump is facing from the defamation trial involving the writer E. Jean Carroll will collectively eclipse the former president’s cash reserves, forcing him to seek out a bond in both cases.

For now, he has not secured appeal bonds in either case. On Friday, Mr. Trump’s lawyers in the defamation case asked a judge to either grant him more time or reduce the size of the bond.

At its most basic, an appeal bond is a document filed with a court by a bonding company, a financial institution that promises a judgment will be paid. Under New York law, a defendant also owes 9 percent interest to the plaintiff until the judgment is paid or the appeal is resolved, an amount that is reflected in the size of the bond.

As such, Mr. Trump’s bond might creep up to nearly $500 million.

But the company providing the bond will be on the hook if Mr. Trump loses his appeal and fails to pay — and so it will want the former president to have skin in the game.

To secure the bond, Mr. Trump will have to pledge collateral to the company, including cash, stocks and bonds. Although each deal is different, companies offering appeal bonds generally shy from taking property as collateral, especially if a building already has a mortgage, experts said.

It won’t be cheap. Mr. Trump will have to pay the company a premium fee, typically anywhere from 1 to 3 percent of the bond.

What happens if he doesn’t secure a bond?

While there is no indication that Mr. Trump will fail to line up a bond, it is easier said than done.

Only about a dozen bonding companies licensed in New York have the ability to handle a judgment of this size, experts said. And while some might salivate at the possibility of collecting a huge premium, others might be spooked by the sheer size of Justice Engoron’s penalty, or by being associated with Mr. Trump’s polarizing politics and his litigious nature.

Bonds this large are typically found in cases against big companies, not individual businessmen, even wealthy ones like Mr. Trump.

“For an individual, this amount is unprecedented,” said Neil Pedersen, the owner of Pedersen & Sons, a surety bond agency in New York that is not involved in the Trump case.

Mr. Trump is also a unique defendant: He is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, and if he reclaims the White House, it could be difficult for the bonding company to collect from a sitting president, particularly one who has stiffed lenders and lawyers in the past.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets it, or if he doesn’t,” Mr. Pedersen added.

If he doesn’t, that is where things could get ugly for the former president. Ms. James has a number of tools to freeze his assets and ultimately recover the money.

With help from a sheriff, she can collect from any entity holding Mr. Trump’s assets, like a bank, as well as from anyone who owes Mr. Trump money, like a tenant in one of his buildings. Perhaps most important, she can file liens on his marquee New York properties, potentially setting in motion a seizure of the buildings.

In a recent interview with ABC News, Ms. James said as much, hinting that she had her eye on one of Mr. Trump’s buildings in Lower Manhattan, a five-minute walk from her office.

“We will ask the judge to seize his assets,” Ms. James said in the interview, adding, “I look at 40 Wall Street each and every day.”

Can he delay the bond?

He can try, but the decision is not in his hands.

In federal court, Mr. Trump would have 30 days to secure the bond, but this case is in New York State Court, where no grace period exists. Ms. James, though, is expected to allow him that time to line up a bond, a window that closes on March 25 — which happens to be the first day of his first criminal trial, to be held in Manhattan.

Mr. Trump can also ask an appeals court to pause the requirement that he post a bond — and to reduce the size of the bond to something more manageable.

Can Trump supporters bail him out?

It’s complicated.

The New York court system relies on trusted companies, regulated by the state, that have a lengthy track record of posting bonds.

In contrast, an I.O.U. from a wealthy Trump supporter is unlikely to pass muster with the attorney general, Mr. Zauderer said, and the appeals court could refuse to accept it.

While there is nothing to stop one or several of Mr. Trump’s billionaire benefactors from paying off his entire $450 million debt, that seems somewhat far-fetched. Not only would it require laying out a huge sum, but it would also lead to a significant tax bill for the donor or donors.

Grassroots efforts are unlikely to make a significant dent in Mr. Trump’s debt. In the last eight days, a GoFundMe campaign has raised more than $1 million from over 20,000 supporters.

Unless a more substantial bailout emerges, Mr. Trump will have to pay most of the penalty out of his own pocket, assuming Justice Engoron’s decision is upheld. To do that, Mr. Trump might have to sell or mortgage one of his properties.

And then there’s his run for the White House, which could constrain him further.

The former president has used a political action committee in his control to pay for lawyers and witnesses in his legal cases. But that committee does not have enough money to address the penalties he is facing. A super PAC coordinating with his candidacy is legally banned from coordinating with him and cannot pay the judgments.

Flaco spent a year defying expectations, an owl born into captivity that quickly learned to hunt and fend for himself in the wilds of New York City. That ended on Friday when he flew into a building near Central Park. What went wrong?

Did he hit a window that he failed to perceive as glass, like hundreds of millions of birds across the United States each year? Or was he compromised in some way that impeded his ability to navigate New York’s concrete canyons?

A necropsy, to be performed by the Wildlife Conservation Society, will provide the most definitive answers. His initial examination, performed Friday by the Wild Bird Fund, a rescue group, showed a contusion on his chest and an impact to his right eye. He may have been dead by the time he hit the ground, said Rita McMahon, the group’s director. If not, the impact from the fall may have killed him.

But the examination also indicated that he was thin, possibly underweight.

“He wasn’t truly thriving,” Ms. McMahon said.

Poisoning by rodenticide, lead or even disease like avian flu could have all contributed to his death, she noted. Sluggish, poisoned rats make easy targets for birds of prey, which in turn ingest the poison.

Barry, the celebrity barred owl in Central Park who died after colliding with a car in 2021, was found to have high levels of rat poison in her system.

Pigeons, which Flaco had been seen hunting recently, can ingest high levels of lead while pecking around the city. Lead can accumulate in birds of prey, causing lack of coordination, weakness and other symptoms. Poisoned birds become more vulnerable to predation, trauma and other diseases, according to the Cornell Wildlife Health Lab.

Moreover, Flaco could have been infected with a highly pathogenic form of avian flu that has been wreaking havoc on birds and even some mammals around the world.

Preliminary gross findings from his necropsy by the Wildlife Conservation Society, which operates the Central Park Zoo, are expected as early as Saturday, a spokeswoman said. The results of testing on tissue samples are expected in coming weeks.

While Flaco was unique, having escaped from a zoo, birds of prey have been increasingly adapting to life in cities over the last few decades. New York is home to substantial breeding populations of red-tailed hawks, peregrine falcons, American kestrels and osprey, according to NYC Audubon.

Three species of owl live in the city’s parks. For a year, with Flaco, it had been four.

As Flaco’s legions of fans grieve his death, bird advocates hope the loss will jolt the public into making cities safer for birds.

“We celebrate these creatures,” Ms. McMahon said, pointing not only to Flaco, but also to Barry the barred owl and a bald eagle named Rover that reportedly died a few days ago. “In essence, they probably will all die from human interference, from things we’ve done.”

Bird-friendly glass, turning off lights at night and avoiding the use of anticoagulant rodenticide can all help, experts emphasize. To protect smaller birds, keep cats inside.

“That’s the one good thing that can happen,” Ms. McMahon said. “Often you have to lose something to care about it.”

In solemn ceremonies and small vigils, state visits, stirring speeches and statements of solidarity, Ukraine and its allies marked the dawn of the third year of Russia’s unprovoked invasion with a single message: Believe.

“When thousands of columns of Russian invaders moved from all directions into Ukraine, when thousands of rockets and bombs fell on our land, no one in the world believed that we would stand,” said Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s newly named top military commander. “No one believed, but Ukraine did!”

On the 731st day of the war, Ukrainian soldiers once again find themselves outmanned and outgunned, fighting for their nation’s survival while also trying to convince a skeptical world that they can withstand the relentless onslaught, even as they suffer losses on the battlefield and are challenged up and down the front line by Russian forces.

The leaders of Canada, Belgium and Italy, as well as the head of the European Union, Ursula von der Leyen, were among the dignitaries who traveled to Kyiv in a show of solidarity. While many analysts at the outbreak of the war believed that European nations would go wobbly in their support of Ukraine in a prolonged struggle, these countries are now stepping up, trying to help fill the void left by the U.S., where Republicans in Congress have for months blocked any new military assistance to Kyiv.

With Ukraine’s allies by his side outside the wrecked hangar that once housed a gigantic Mriya cargo plane, President Volodymyr Zelensky presented awards to soldiers at Hostomel Airport, where a pivotal early battle played out two years ago.

“When our soldiers destroyed the Russian killers’ landing and didn’t allow Russia to create its foothold here, the world saw the most important thing,” he said. “It saw that any evil can be defeated, and Russian aggression is no exception.”

However, Ukrainians needed no reminders about why they are fighting or the cost of a defeat.

In Bucha — where a massacre of civilians, one of the first widely documented atrocities of the war, has became emblematic of Russia’s brutal occupation — residents gathered at a memorial where a mass grave holding the remains of 117 people was discovered. Some of the victims had been burned to death. Others had been shot. Many showed signs of torture.

“Two years of fear, two years of Russia mocking us,” Oleksandr Hrytsynenko, 77, said as he paid his respects to his fallen neighbors. “We need to arm ourselves with infinite patience.”

As people gathered outside, Vira Katanenko was inside the church preparing to bury her son, Andrii, 39. He was killed along with two other soldiers this week by a Russian missile in a village outside Avdiivka, a stronghold of Ukrainian defenses that fell last week to Russian troops.

“The Russians killed my son,” she said. “Will America help us get rid of the Russians?”

That is a question on the minds of many. But as Kyiv waits for an answer, the Ukrainian military pointed to the sky on Saturday as evidence that it can still cause Moscow pain.

Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleshchuk said on Saturday that a Russian A-50 early warning and control aircraft had been shot down by Ukrainian forces near Yeysk in Russia, some 250 miles from the Ukrainian border.

The claim could not be independently confirmed, but the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research group, confirmed that a plane had crashed in the region, saying, “Footage posted on February 23 shows a fixed-winged aircraft falling, and geolocated footage shows a significant fire with secondary detonations.”

The A-50, with its distinct circular radar arrays rising from the fuselage, is critical in coordinating aerial Russian bombardments of Ukrainian positions on the front, where its forces have used powerful guided bombs to devastating effect. The loss of two A-50s in recent weeks, military analysts said, would be a significant blow that could help temporarily relieve pressure on the troops at the front.

General Syrsky, who has conceded that Russia has the initiative across the front, said Ukrainian attacks on planes reflected a broader effort to use asymmetric tactics against a far larger enemy.

As part of that campaign, the Ukrainians have also vowed to take the fight to inside Russia itself.

Two years after the Kremlin directed missiles and rockets at cities across Ukraine, Ukrainian intelligence officials said on Saturday they orchestrated a drone assault on one of Russia’s largest steel plants, one that provided raw materials for Russian companies involved in the production of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

Igor Artamonov, the governor of Russia’s Lipetsk region, confirmed that there was a fire at the main plant of Russian metallurgy company, Novolipetsk Steel, and said preliminary reports indicated it was caused by a drone, according to a statement he released on Telegram.

Ukraine’s claims could not be independently confirmed.

The Ukrainian military has said such strikes are a central part of its effort to degrade the Kremlin’s military-industrial complex, undermine key industries that finance its war effort and make Russians feel the cost of the war on their territory. But Russia has shown an ability to overcome the effects of sanctions to boost its armaments production.

The Ukrainian drones targeted installations at the plant designed for the primary cooling of raw coke gas, in an effort to halt production at the plant for a prolonged period, according to Ukrainian security officials speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive military operations.

For the Ukrainian soldiers fighting on the front, anything that can degrade the Russian war machine is welcome, but they are under no illusions. The road ahead will be as long as it is likely to be deadly.

“Every anniversary comes with the thought that it should finish,” said Shaman, 40, a battalion commander fighting in eastern Ukraine. “Every year that goes by is another year stolen from us. The time is spent away from your wife and children. All life is on hold.”

Lana Chupryna, 15, has lived most of her life in the shadow of war. On Saturday, she joined other schoolchildren under a bridge in Irpin that was blown up by Ukrainian soldiers desperate to slow the Russian advance on Kyiv in the opening days of the war.

“Feb. 24 was just an ordinary day,” she said of the start of Russia’s invasion. “I was supposed to go to school, but at five in the morning, shelling began. I went to my mom, and she said that war had started.”

She still struggles to understand how her life had been turned upside down, but the memories of those first days, she said, “will remain in my soul, I think, forever.”

Wrapped in a Ukrainian flag, she sang a heartbreaking song written by her mother to the crowd gathered as the river flowed past the wreckage of war all around her.

“My land will never become the land of the strangers,” she sang. “Together with you, I will pass through cannons and smoke.”

Liubov Sholudko contributed reporting from Kyiv, Bucha and Irpin and Carlotta Gall contributed reporting from eastern Ukraine.