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PARIS — Rejecting a “herd-like conformity” with the Biden administration, Marine Le Pen, the French far-right candidate for the presidency, said Wednesday that France would quit NATO’s integrated military command if she were elected and would seek for the alliance “a strategic rapprochement” with Russia.

As Russia’s war in Ukraine rages on, Ms. Le Pen effectively signaled that her election would terminate or at least disrupt President Biden’s united alliance in confronting President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and perhaps create a breach in Western Europe for Mr. Putin to exploit.

Dismissing multilateralism, blasting Germany, criticizing the European Union, relegating climate issues to a low priority, attacking “globalists” and maintaining a near silence on Russia’s brutal assault in Ukraine, Ms. Le Pen gave a taste of a worldview that was at once reminiscent of the Trump presidency and appeared to directly threaten NATO’s attempts to arm Ukraine and defeat Russia.

A lurch to the far right by France, a nuclear power and permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, would realign the world, with unpredictable and disruptive consequences.

In a wide-ranging 75-minute news conference devoted to international relations, and apparently conceived to bolster her credentials on the global stage, Ms. Le Pen said France would remain in NATO and respect its core Article 5, which says an attack on one alliance member is an attack on all.

But, she added, “I would place our troops neither under an integrated NATO command nor under a European command.”

Her position, she said, was “no submission to an American protectorate exercised on European soil under the cover of NATO” — a stance she compared to that taken by Gen. Charles de Gaulle in 1966, when he took France out of NATO’s integrated military command, where it remained until 2009.

Her position, she said, did not signal “submission to Moscow.” But her promise to withdraw France from the command was consistent with the policy of “equidistance” from great powers she said she would pursue if she defeats the incumbent, President Emmanuel Macron, in a runoff vote for the French presidency on April 24.

Polls show Mr. Macron with 53 to 55 percent of the vote, ahead of Ms. Le Pen with 45 to 47 percent. But the political situation is volatile as the president, scurrying around the country, scrambles to make up for a lackluster initial campaign. The French nationalist extreme right is closer to attaining power than at any time since World War II.

The proposed rapprochement with Russia, “once the Russian-Ukrainian war is over and settled by a peace treaty,” would even be in the interest of the United States, Ms. Le Pen suggested, because Washington would not be served by a “close Russian-Chinese union.”

Ms. Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally, formerly the National Front, a fiercely anti-immigrant party, dismissed the Biden administration as “too aggressive toward Beijing,” saying the United States “needs enemies in order to unite its allies under its domination.”

It was one of very few references to the United States, none of them positive, as Ms. Le Pen embarked on a kind of world tour of her preoccupations that also omitted Russia but did include a long exegesis of why France has solemn obligations in Lebanon.

“France is not France without grandeur,” she declared.

Nor is it France without protests. The news conference was briefly disrupted by a protester carrying a heart-shaped image of Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Putin. The protester was wrestled to the ground and dragged out by security guards.

Ms. Le Pen said that the “nonaligned” France she imagined “would threaten enemies of the Western camp in a more effective way because the country would no longer follow an alignment with the United States and so would cause greater, dissuasive uneasiness in the calculations of all adversaries.”

Mr. Macron has attacked Ms. Le Pen as intent on the destruction of the European Union and compared the April 24 vote to a referendum on Europe. Nationalism, he said Tuesday in Strasbourg, leads to “an alliance of nations that want to make war.”

Ms. Le Pen said that a British-style exit from the European Union was not in her plans but that she favored a “European alliance of nations,” rejecting Mr. Macron’s frequent references to “European sovereignty” and “European strategic autonomy.” In practice she favors a series of measures — including favoring French over E.U. citizens for jobs and housing — designed to undermine the 27-member union.

The same objective appeared to lie behind her diatribe against Germany, France’s most important partner in the construction of a united Europe. Franco-German friendship has stood at the heart of postwar Europe, the symbol of the continent’s healing after the devastation of two world wars.

Ms. Le Pen declared that France and Germany confronted “irreconcilable strategic differences.”

She said she would stop all cooperation with Germany on the development of new military equipment in order to pursue national programs. She denounced the “discreet and clever hegemony over Europe” orchestrated by Angela Merkel, the former German chancellor. She suggested that Germany has embarked on a surreptitious plan to subvert France’s centralized model with a German federal model or even the creation of “big border-crossing regions.”

Germany would not be allowed to “destroy the French nuclear industry,” Ms. Le Pen vowed. She insisted that Germany’s interests diverged from France’s in that Germany “considers NATO as the natural pillar of its security, yesterday and today, which leads it to buy American.”

Driving home her point, Ms. Le Pen said, “Germany thus represents the polar opposite of France’s strategic identity.” Nevertheless, she said, “I want to underline that I have no hostility to the German nation.”

The overall message was clear enough. Dismissive of French-German cooperation, hostile or suspicious toward the United States and NATO, seeking rapprochement with Russia and a softer approach to China, Ms. Le Pen would take France in a direction that, for the Biden administration, would severely test one of America’s oldest alliances at a time of war in Europe.

The actor Frank Langella was fired from his leading role in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” a Netflix mini-series based on Edgar Allan Poe works, after a misconduct investigation.

His firing was reported by Deadline. Netflix declined to comment, but a person familiar with the matter, who was granted anonymity because she was not authorized to discuss the investigation, confirmed the account on Thursday.

Langella was removed from the series, which is in the middle of production, after officials determined that the actor had been involved in unacceptable conduct on set, Deadline reported. The production plans to recast Langella’s role as Roderick, the reclusive patriarch of the Usher family, and reshoot the scenes in which he had already appeared. The series also stars Carla Gugino, Mary McDonnell and Mark Hamill, among others.

A spokeswoman for Langella and the show’s creator, Mike Flanagan, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Langella, 84, known for his performances both onscreen and onstage, shot to fame in the title role of the 1979 film “Dracula” after starring in a Broadway production as the count. He also played President Nixon in both the stage and screen versions of “Frost/Nixon,” earning an Oscar nomination as well as a Tony Award for best actor in a play in 2007. Recently, Langella appeared as the judge in the Netflix film “The Trial of the Chicago 7.”

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A federal jury on Thursday convicted a British militant accused of being a member of the brutal Islamic State cell known as the Beatles in the abduction, abuse and deaths of four Americans, a major victory for U.S. prosecutors and the families of victims who sought to bring him to justice.

The jury took less than a day to convict El Shafee Elsheikh, 33, on four counts of hostage-taking and four conspiracy counts related to the deaths of three American men and a young woman who were captured during the Islamic State’s rampage through Syria in 2012 and 2013.

Mr. Elsheikh is the most prominent member of the Islamic State to be brought to trial in the United States. He was captured in Syria by a Kurdish-backed militia in 2018, along with Alexanda Kotey, as they tried to flee to Turkey. Mr. Kotey, 38, who was part of the Beatles, said last fall that he had played a critical role in the kidnapping, detention and hostage negotiations of American prisoners and pleaded guilty to multiple charges.

The verdict capped a two-week trial that featured the testimony of 35 witnesses, including 12 former captives who detailed relentless beatings, sexual abuse, waterboarding and murder perpetrated by a cell of four radicalized young Britons, nicknamed the Beatles for their accents and sarcastic banter.

Prosecutors have argued that the polite, bespectacled defendant was a central figure in the Islamic State hostage conspiracy, responsible for drafting ransom emails and mistreating prisoners. Among those captives, they say, were Kayla Mueller and three American men — James Foley, Steven J. Sotloff and Peter Kassig — who were later beheaded by one of Mr. Elsheikh’s close associates.

Mr. Elsheikh did not deny fighting for the Islamic State, but in rebutting the charges, his defense team argued that he was not a member of the Beatles and his purported involvement in the kidnappings was a case of mistaken identity.

In his closing remarks on Wednesday, the first assistant U.S. attorney, Raj Parekh, asked jurors to pay particular attention to the suffering endured by Ms. Mueller, 24. She was not only physically abused like the other American captives, but treated as a slave in the months leading up to her death, under mysterious circumstances, in early 2015.

Mr. Elsheikh has not been directly implicated in the killings, but his participation in — and knowledge about — numerous kidnapping, ransom and murder plots is enough to secure a conviction under the law, prosecutors have argued.

The British extremists repeatedly beat the hostages they kept imprisoned in Raqqa, Syria, which the Islamic State claimed as its capital at the time, according to prosecutors. They subjected their hostages to abuses including waterboarding, mock executions, painful stress positions, food deprivation, chokeholds that caused blackouts, electric shocks and beatings that lasted 20 minutes or longer. They also forced the prisoners to fight one another and to witness killings, court papers said.

During the trial, the government introduced testimony from freed hostages who detailed the sadism of the cell members. But the hostages were often blindfolded, and their captors were careful to always wear masks, making definitive physical identification difficult.

The prosecution team relied heavily on Mr. Elsheikh’s public comments about his actions. He gave at least seven news interviews after being captured by Kurdish forces and turned over to the U.S. military in 2018, disclosing knowledge of key operational details and his own role in seeking to extract millions in ransom payments for Western hostages.

Mr. Elsheikh’s appearance in an American courtroom is a result of intense political and legal wrangling. In August 2020, William P. Barr, the attorney general at the time, agreed to waive the death penalty against Mr. Elsheikh and Mr. Kotey in exchange for cooperation from British prosecutors — seen as a key element in obtaining a conviction.

As part of the plea deal, if Mr. Kotey fulfills his cooperation requirements, he could be sent to Britain after 15 years to complete the remainder of a mandatory life sentence.

Frank R. James entered a Brooklyn subway station early Tuesday morning with an “entirely premeditated” plan to unleash a barrage of bullets into a car of commuters, an attack that federal prosecutors said in a Thursday court filing could have ended in a slaughter.

Mr. James, 62, is expected to appear in federal court in Brooklyn on Thursday, the first major step in a case that has shocked New Yorkers, a bloody shooting on a subway train that prosecutors said injured at least 30 people as smoke filled the car, gunfire broke out and chaos erupted.

The shooting represented the worst crime on New York’s public-transit system in nearly four decades. And it appeared that Mr. James was well prepared to evade capture, the filing said. He arrived at the subway station in the Sunset Park neighborhood in a disguise: a yellow hard hat and orange workman’s jacket with reflective tape, according to the court papers.

On the train, he fired “approximately 33 rounds in cold blood at terrified passengers who had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide,” federal prosecutors wrote. “Numerous passengers could have been killed.”

Mr. James is charged with carrying out a terrorist attack on a mass transit system, and faces up to life in prison if convicted. A court-appointed lawyer for Mr. James did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Thursday’s filing asks a magistrate judge to detain Mr. James pending trial, citing his “severe and ongoing risk to the community.” Federal prosecutors said that while Mr. James’s lengthy arrest record — nearly a dozen low-level offenses, including reckless endangerment, larceny, and trespassing — might seem “unremarkable,” it paints “a picture of a person with a penchant for defying authority and who is unable or unwilling to conform his conduct to law.”

The court papers offered clues about how the government planned to address the attack; the gunman’s motive remains an unanswered question, though Mr. James posted many videos on social media recording his furious complaints on a wide variety of topics.

It also remained unclear why a train line that cuts through immigrant-heavy neighborhoods in Brooklyn, like Sunset Park, a home to immigrants from many Asian and Latin American countries, became the target of a brutal shooting. And it was uncertain what Mr. James was or what he did between the time of the attack and his capture the next day.

In the hours after the shooting, the police discovered a collection of belongings on the train, including a Glock 9-millimeter handgun, three ammunition magazines and a credit card with Mr. James’s name on it. They also found ammunition and other weapons in a storage unit and apartment rented by Mr. James, prosecutors noted.

He was captured by the authorities on Wednesday afternoon, near a McDonald’s in the East Village, about 29 hours into an expansive manhunt that featured several federal and state agencies and hundreds of officers.

The arrest took place without a struggle as a rush of calls, videos and tweets poured in from New Yorkers saying they had helped identify him or had spotted him before his arrest. Mr. James, too, may have called a police tip line to report himself, according to at least two law enforcement officials with knowledge of the investigation.

The shooting arrived at a tense moment for New Yorkers, as the city attempts to contain a spate of violent crimes and a rebuild civic life reordered by the pandemic. Other high-profile attacks in the subways present a daunting obstacle to restoring former ridership levels on a system that is key to the city’s economy.

Two people were killed in a large springtime wildfire in New Mexico that has burned more than 5,000 acres in the Sierra Blanca mountain range, the authorities said on Wednesday.

The victims, an older couple, were found Wednesday in a burned home in Ruidoso, in southern New Mexico, according to the New Mexico Department of Public Safety. They were recorded as the first fatalities of the blaze, known as the McBride fire, as it burned into a third day.

The Ruidoso police found the victims after receiving “information about an elderly couple who attempted to evacuate the McBride fire but were unaccounted for by family members,” the safety department said in a statement on Wednesday.

The New Mexico State Police are working with the Office of the Medical Investigator to identify the victims and determine the cause and manner of their death. Officials said they would release the victims’ names once their identification had been made by the medical examiner and their next of kin notified.

The McBride fire began Tuesday afternoon in Ruidoso, a village in the Sierra Blanca mountain range, according to New Mexico Fire Information, a state website.

As of Thursday morning, the fire had scorched more than 5,700 acres of grass, brush and timber and was 0 percent contained. It was not clear what sparked the fire.

The blaze has destroyed or damaged at least 200 structures and houses and has caused power and gas outages, officials said.

As the fire spread, evacuations were ordered in the village.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico called the deaths in Ruidoso “absolutely heartbreaking” on Twitter.

The fire is one of at least five blazes burning in New Mexico. The fires, known as Hermits Peak, Overflow, Big Hole and Nogal Canyon, have burned more than 13,000 acres of land in the state, according to InciWeb, a site that tracks fires around the country.

The largest fire, Hermits Peak, is in Santa Fe National Forest in northern New Mexico, and had burned more than 6,200 acres and was 10 percent contained as of Wednesday, according to New Mexico fire officials.

Strong winds were driving the fire, according to the San Miguel County Sheriff’s Office, which estimated sustained winds of 50 to 60 miles per hour with gusts up to 70 m.p.h. The office said it had issued several evacuation orders.

The National Weather Service in Albuquerque said that wind speeds would continue to decrease on Thursday, but that “gusty conditions remain likely across” eastern New Mexico and “exceptionally dry conditions continue.”

Wildfires are increasing in size and intensity in the Western United States, and wildfire seasons are growing longer. Recent research has suggested that heat and dryness associated with global warming are major reasons for the increase in bigger and stronger fires.

Days of abnormally high temperatures have contributed to the intensity of fires by making vegetation drier and more likely to ignite. Analyses have shown that climate change has increased the likelihood of such extreme heat waves.

If you’re a student, an educator or a parent, I’m sorry. The pandemic has been an ordeal for schools.

While exam time has always been tough on students, remote test-taking now often involves a new kind of pressure: special monitoring software that watches eye movements, listens for whispers and tracks online activity to ensure that students, alone with their computers, aren’t cheating. Schools want to ensure that everyone is treated fairly, and that no one is gaining an unfair advantage, but turning students’ own computers into cheat-detectors — with services such as ProctorU, Honorlock and Proctorio — is a strange and potentially distressing new normal.

Sometimes the software gets it wrong. Some students who say they were mistakenly deemed cheaters have banded together and fought back. But what happens when it is just one student? The New York Times is working on an article about how schools are handling automated reports of “suspicious” student behavior during a test. We would like to hear about your experience.

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