Nearly a decade ago, the outdoorsy, liberal enclave of Boulder, Colo., sued two oil companies over their role in climate change. Now, the Supreme Court will consider whether the groundbreaking lawsuit can ever go to trial.

Its decision will resonate far beyond the Rockies.

A win for Boulder would likely clear the way for dozens of similar lawsuits nationwide aiming to extract billions of dollars from the fossil fuel industry to fight global warming. But if the court kills Boulder’s case, that could doom the others, handing a major victory to oil companies.

Boulder’s lawsuit says the two oil companies, Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy, should help pay for the damage to the state of Colorado — such as worsening heat waves and wildfires — caused by climate change, which is driven by the burning of fossil fuels. The companies say Boulder’s lawsuit should be thrown out because it was filed under state law, when federal law should have precedence.

“This is very much the case to watch because it’s at the Supreme Court,” said Michael Pappas, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School. “Is this something that state law can answer, or does federal law foreclose the opportunity?”

A small army of business groups, conservative legal theorists, Republican lawmakers and others have lined up to support Exxon and Suncor, and the Trump administration is also expected to argue before the court in support of the companies.

Among their claims: Letting the case proceed under state law would unleash legal chaos by opening the door to countless similar suits. “Every locality in the country could sue essentially anyone in the world for contributing to global climate change,” according to a brief supporting the energy industry filed by lawyers for the Trump administration. The Justice Department declined to comment for this article.

About three dozen similar cases have already been filed by state and local governments to date. None has yet gone to trial, and some have been dismissed, but about two dozen remain active.

“The U.S. Supreme Court must allow our case to continue, not bail out the oil companies before hearing the facts,” said Ashley Stolzmann, county commissioner for Boulder, in a statement.

Boulder’s lawsuit argues that the defendants caused physical harm to Colorado by selling fossil fuels, and covered up what they knew about the dangers of climate change in order to continue those sales. The lawsuit also alleges that the companies paid for campaigns to undermine the scientific consensus that burning oil, gas and coal is heating the planet.

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When he was 12, in 1992, Jacob Ming-Trent walked into the wrong room at school and ended up in a Shakespeare class rather than the math one he was supposed to attend. That’s where he first encountered “the word wizard, the Stratford scribe, the royal rhymer himself.”

That’s how the adult Ming-Trent puts it in his new solo show “How Shakespeare Saved My Life,” calling the playwright a lifelong guide and companion. His mother had just thrown out the boy’s troubled father from their home in Pittsburgh and warned her child that the outside world held no mercy for him. So, you can forgive a young Ming-Trent for being discombobulated when he got to school, and also understand why he might have been more open to new experiences than otherwise had been.

Finding a spiritual kinship with Shakespeare helped the young Jacob deal with hardship, including losing his physical home at 16 when his mother kicked him out as well. As New York theater lovers know, Ming-Trent has become a respected actor with quite a few Shakespeare credits to his name, including Falstaff in “Merry Wives,” Jocelyn Bioh’s 2021 adaptation of “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” at the Delacorte Theater. The New York Times praised his performance for incorporating “into one bigger-than-life portrait your drunk uncle, a horndog Redd Foxx and some would-be Barry White.”

Other actors have also explored their relationships with Shakespeare: There have been investigations of his most dastardly characters from Steven Berkoff (“Shakespeare’s Villains”) and Patrick Page (“All the Devils Are Here”); while Tina Packer surveyed the female ones (“Women of Will”). “How Shakespeare Saved My Life” is closer to Stephan Wolfert’s “Cry Havoc!” and Madeline Sayet’s “Where We Belong,” which explored how one’s life can connect with the playwright’s worlds and words.

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It was April 1912, and Helene Kröller-Müller was on a shopping spree. She wasn’t interested in the latest shoes or fashions. She was on the hunt for Vincent van Gogh’s portrait of Madame Augustine Roulin.

She managed to find “La Berceuse,” as the painting is known, at a Paris gallery, and bought it on the spot. The next day, she went from gallery to gallery, looking for more van Gogh paintings, and took home a great haul: 15 in a single trip.

Kröller-Müller, a German heiress, had made it her life’s goal to establish a great public collection of modern art. She became one of the first major collectors to recognize van Gogh’s genius.

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When Julia Louis-Dreyfus faces down a new character, she asks certain questions: What does this character want? What does she want right now? How is she going to get that?

It is a very nice thing, if you can manage it, to sit across from Louis-Dreyfus, 65, on the sun-flooded patio of a coffee shop in Santa Barbara, Calif., and listen to her talk about desire, about appetite. From “Seinfeld,” which earned Louis-Dreyfus her first Emmy Award, to “Veep,” which earned her several more, and the sitcoms and movies in between, she has excelled at playing hungry women: hungry for recognition, power, love, attention, sex, snacks. (In one “Seinfeld” scene, she absolutely houses a Drake’s coffee cake.)

She loves these appetitive women, preferring them to the better behaved ones. “They’re more fun,” she said. “There’s more grit there, pushing against the norms, the rules.” That afternoon, she arrived in a swingy navy linen dress and lavish jewelry — a ruby ring, a gold watch, a gold bracelet, overlapping necklaces of gold, jade, lapis lazuli and ivory. She wore that excess lightly. She is more elegant than most of her characters, certainly more poised. But that valentine face, that slightly feral smile, eyes that go glittery when she talks about what thrills her, these features are shared.

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Peter Max, whose trippy posters of Day-Glo flowers, butterflies, rainbows, stars and planets sold by the millions and expressed the blissed-out exuberance of the countercultural 1960s, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 88.

The death, at a hospital, was confirmed by his son, Adam Max. He had long suffered from dementia.

Mr. Max, a vegetarian and a teetotaler who expanded his consciousness through yoga, not drugs, was one of the most visible and successful artists of his time, selling posters in the millions.

His simple graphic images, brightly colored and infectiously happy, lent themselves to a long list of licensed commercial products, from sheets and glassware and shower curtains to airplanes and, on one occasion, a stamp for the Postal Service.

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In the last few years, there’s been a cultural push for women in midlife to build strong bones.

Menopause influencers and medical organizations alike have focused on the message that women’s risk for fractures increases dramatically after menopause, and that they should think about their bone density much earlier than their mothers might have.

The American Medical Association recommends that women get their first DEXA scan — a low-dose X-ray that is the gold standard test for determining bone density — at 65 or older, unless they have a risk factor for osteoporosis.

But a growing number of doctors and bone health experts now recommend earlier scans. They argue that if women wait until 65, they may miss a critical window to prevent osteoporosis.

“For years, osteoporosis has been thought of as something that we identify and treat, not something we prevent,” said Dr. Jocelyn Wittstein, an associate professor of orthopedic surgery at Duke University School of Medicine. As researchers have learned more about prevention, that mind-set has begun to shift, she said.

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Jalen Brunson, who is still riding high after carrying the New York Knicks to the team’s first N.B.A. championship in more than a half-century, is about to reach another major New York milestone: hosting “Saturday Night Live.”

The point guard who was named most valuable player of this year’s N.B.A. finals — and nicknamed “the king of New York” — will host the first episode of Season 52 of the long-running sketch show on Sept. 26, NBC announced.

Katseye, the Grammy-nominated pop girl group, will be the musical guest.

The week after Brunson hosts, the actress Dakota Johnson will return to lead the show, the same weekend her romantic thriller “Verity” hits theaters. It will be Johnson’s third time hosting, after episodes in 2015 and 2024. The rock band Turnstile will be the musical guest.

On Oct. 10, the comedian Shane Gillis will also host for the third time. Gillis was abruptly fired from “S.N.L.” in 2019, just after being named to the cast, when offensive comments he’d made surfaced, but he returned in 2024 and 2025 as host. Rosalía, fresh off her Lux Tour, will perform, her second time as the show’s musical guest.

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Looking out at a sea of empty red-velvet seats at the Paris Opera’s opulent Palais Garnier theater, the American composer and performer Tyshawn Sorey was pondering the upcoming premiere of his piece “Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine.”

“There’s a bit of anxiety in the air for me with this,” Sorey said, “because the audience in France, while they are very much knowledgeable about Josephine Baker — I mean, this is literally her home — they have a different relationship to her than those in the States.”

The Missouri-born Baker is mostly known in her native country as a sensual, charismatic Jazz Age diva. She is also seen that way in France, where she moved in the mid-1920s and eventually became a citizen — but she is also famous here for her activities in the Resistance during World War II and her antiracist activism. In 2021, almost half a century after her death, she became the first Black woman to be inducted into the Panthéon, the Paris monument where France’s national heroes are honored.

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"I have an odd place that I like to visit when I’m unsettled: the Stop & Shop grocery store in my town.

The whole experience calms me — the ’80s tunes, the holiday décor (always on display two holidays in advance) and the new flavors of potato chips.

My loved ones are aware of my little quirk. Sometimes when I call my best friend after a bad day, she’ll say, “You know where you need to go.”

There are lots of ways to deal with the ups and downs of daily life, Marc Brackett, the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, told me. He’s developed a framework called RULER — recognize, understand, label, express and regulate — and it’s used in over 5,000 schools nationwide."

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It was 5:48 a.m. on Tuesday when a security alarm started blaring in a charming stone villa surrounded by olive trees in Cagnes-Sur-Mer, a town in southern France.

When the police arrived five minutes later, the authorities said, they narrowly missed two thieves who had broken into the building, a former home of the Impressionist artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir that has since become a museum.

The thieves fled the museum with four paintings, the authorities said, but as they scrambled to escape through the garden, they left two of the works behind.

It was the latest high-profile art theft in Europe as the continent’s cultural sites struggle to keep their precious objects safe.

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Super-agers are a diverse bunch; they don’t share a magic diet, exercise regimen or medication. But the one thing that does unite them is “how they view the importance of social relationships,” said Sandra Weintraub, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine, who has been involved in the research since the start. “And personality wise, they tend to be on the extroverted side.”

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Understand what goes into balance.

“I think probably the biggest misconception about balance is that there’s a magic bullet — do a few exercises and you’ll be good to go,” said Laurie King, a neurology professor at Oregon Health & Science University and co-director of the Balance Disorders Laboratory. “Think of those few exercises as a starting point, learn about the systems that help control balance, and choose activities that target those areas.”

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Gloria Steinem, the feminist crusader who galvanized the modern women’s movement, helping millions of women develop a sense of self-worth and gain a measure of equality at home, at work and in society at large, died on Wednesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 92.

Her death was announced in a post on social media, which did not give a cause.

Calling herself “an entrepreneur of social change,” Ms. Steinem helped usher in sweeping cultural transformations across virtually every facet of American life, from the boardroom to the courtroom to the bedroom.

For more than half a century, she personified the women’s movement and became its most enduring symbol; her tinted aviator glasses and curtain of streaked-blond hair parted in the center made her one of the most recognizable women in the world.

She was an unlikely revolutionary. Growing up a transient in the Midwest, she was 10 when her parents divorced and she was left to mother her mentally anguished mother — a formative experience that reverberated throughout her life. She had scant formal education until sixth grade; her big dream, as a budding tap dancer, was to become a Rockette.

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Cassandra Wilson, a Grammy Award-winning jazz singer and songwriter rooted in the blues tradition of her native Mississippi who became one of the most distinctive voices of her generation, died on Wednesday in Jackson, Miss. She was 70.

Jeramiah Howard, the coroner for Hinds County, which includes Jackson, confirmed the death. No cause was provided.

One of the major jazz acts of the 1980s and ’90s — she opened for Miles Davis and toured with Wynton Marsalis — Ms. Wilson was a top-selling recording artist who preferred to call herself a musician, as opposed to being categorized solely as a jazz singer.

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On Monday, Dale Sanders was about 1,000 feet from the end of the Appalachian Trail when he lost his balance.

The 91-year-old, who is known by the trail name “Grey Beard,” was headed to the summit of Mount Katahdin, the highest peak in Maine and the trail’s northern terminus. The weather on the mountain is too harsh for much besides lichen to grow, and he fell heavily onto sharp granite.

He lay on the ground and prayed. After a few minutes, he was able to get to his feet. Soon, he was standing on the summit, having reclaimed his record as the oldest person to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. It was a final reminder of a lesson he said the trail had taught him repeatedly over the previous year. “When it hurts, keep going,” he said. “It’ll probably go away.”

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When the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia first opened the doors of its museum, John Quincy Adams was president.

Twenty-four states had been admitted to the union.

And the first skeletal remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex were decades away from being discovered.

But just two years shy of its bicentennial, the venerated museum, which has been affiliated with Drexel University since 2011, is going the way of the dinosaurs.

At the end of September, the facility known for its Dinosaur Hall and its extensive collection of fossils and other specimens will permanently close, a casualty of struggling attendance and rising costs, the academy and the university said in a joint message on Tuesday.

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After a devastating flash flood swept through a popular hiking area in Grand Canyon National Park over the weekend, large swaths of Arizona, Utah and Colorado remain under risk of flooding through Monday evening.

Two people are confirmed dead and more than a dozen people remain missing as search efforts continue along Bright Angel Creek, which runs from near the North Rim of the canyon down to the Colorado River. This watershed is one of several that burned during the Dragon Bravo Fire in July and August, causing an increased risk of flash floods and debris flows from heavy rain events, according to park officials.

As the monsoon season continues through Sept. 30, here’s what hikers and campers should know about the risk of flooding.

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Facing an intense backlash, the influential fashion designer John Galliano has taken the unprecedented step of withdrawing from a planned exhibition in his honor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“After much reflection and discussion with all those involved, I have decided, with great sadness, that it is best for the exhibition not to take place at this time,” Galliano wrote in a statement posted to his Instagram page.

He also expressed “profound and enduring” gratitude to the museum’s leadership, and acknowledged the pain his past words had caused.

“I do not want the debate surrounding me to place the Met in a difficult position or distract from the remarkable work of the Costume Institute,” he wrote. “I also recognize and respect that an exhibition honoring my work would be painful for some.”

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The Jamaican writer Marlon James’s new novel, “The Disappearers,” at 600-plus pages, is a maximalist’s banquet: It is humane, blood-flecked, disturbing and sustaining. It takes James 90 pages to say hello. It’s another 70 pages before his story settles into your guts and begins to twist them. It’s yet another 150 before you fully comprehend his loping authority and the scale of his ambitions. Booster rockets fall away. Disparate coordinates begin to converge.

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