First Run News

Denis Johnson, a National Book Award winner whose novels and short stories about the fallen — junkies, down-and-out travelers, drifters and violent men in the United States and abroad — emerged in ecstatic, hallucinatory and sometimes minimalist prose, died on Wednesday at his home in Gualala, Calif. He was 67. The cause was liver cancer, his literary agent Nicole Aragi said. Mr. Johnson came to his down-on-their-luck characters through personal experience.

In one of the rare interviews he did, the fiction writer and poet Denis Johnson — who died on Wednesday at 67 — was asked about his craft, and he quoted these lines from Joseph Conrad: “My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see.

FORT BENNING, Ga.

Summer television has improved more than that of any other season, but it’s still a time for escapist pleasures — they’re just smarter and better made than they used to be. Here are 13 choices for summer fun (on American television or streaming services) that won’t starve your brain of oxygen. All premiere dates are subject to change. Season 1, Comedy Central, June 6 The Australian comedian Jim Jefferies takes on John Oliver and Samantha Bee on their own turf, the weekly, topical, host-centric late-night (10:30 p.m.) show. Mr.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the hawkish strategic theorist who was national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter in the tumultuous years of the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1970s, died on Friday at a hospital in Virginia. He was 89. His death, at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, was announced on Friday by his daughter, Mika Brzezinski, a co-host of the MSNBC program “Morning Joe.” Like his predecessor Henry A. Kissinger, Mr. Brzezinski was a foreign-born scholar (he in Poland, Mr.

Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s New York office have been investigating an attempt by international hackers to break into computers at the Trump Organization, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. Early this month, at a meeting at the bureau’s offices in Lower Manhattan, some of the agents briefed President Trump’s two grown sons, Donald J. Trump Jr., about the attempted intrusion, the people said.

WASHINGTON — Despite repeated efforts by President Trump to curtail refugee resettlements, the State Department this week quietly lifted the department’s restriction on the number of refugees allowed to enter the United States. The result could be a near doubling of refugees entering the country, from about 830 people a week in the first three weeks of this month to well over 1,500 people per week by next month, according to refugee advocates.

WASHINGTON — Shortly after President Trump took office, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, met privately with his colleagues to discuss the Republican agenda. Repealing the Affordable Care Act was at the top, he said. But replacing it would be really hard. Mr.

WASHINGTON — Shortly after President Trump took office, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, met privately with his colleagues to discuss the Republican agenda. Repealing the Affordable Care Act was at the top, he said. But replacing it would be really hard. Mr.

BOZEMAN, Mont.