Today, humid, partly cloudy, high 71. Tonight, showers, mainly north and west, low 64. Tomorrow, very warm, humid, some clouds mixed in, high 79. Weather map is on Page B12.
This article is by Abdalrahman Al-tayeb, Declan Walsh and Malachy Browne.
KASSALA, Sudan — Dozens of gold workers in northern Sudan were killed over the weekend after warplanes bombed an open-air mine near the Egyptian border, according to Sudanese rights groups, graphic video and witnesses interviewed by The New York Times.
Footage from the aftermath of the bombing showed badly mutilated bodies of young men scattered amid sacks of mineral ore at a remote site in Red Sea State, roughly 25 miles from Sudan's border with Egypt.
"We were overcome with terror," said Saif Eldin Adam, 26, a university student who worked at the mine for the past three months. Mr. Adam said he helped rescue the wounded and recovered the dead after the strikes.
"There are no words for what we saw," he said.
Emergency Lawyers, a rights group, estimated the death toll at 72. Two witnesses said it was at least 65, with an additional 120 or more wounded.
The attack occurred hundreds of miles from the front lines of Sudan's devastating civil war. Sudanese news media reports and several rights groups blamed Egypt for the strike. In June, miners accused Egyptian forces of carrying out a drone attack on another gold mine in the region.
Sudan mines billions of dollars' worth of gold every year, with the two warring sides using the profits to bankroll their fight. Sudan's military has bombed mines con-
Governments in Europe have long shunned the Taliban, primarily because of their severe restrictions on women and girls. But under pressure to appear tougher on migration, the Europeans are deporting refugees to Afghanistan and in recent months have been negotiating with the Taliban government to make more expulsions possible.
At a meeting in Brussels in late June, more than 20 European officials met with five Taliban representatives to discuss deportations, breaking a taboo against holding talks with the group in the European Union.
The Europeans never mentioned human rights abuses com-
Kabul Offers Deals on Deportation to Gain More Acceptance
mitted by the Taliban, according to three participants and three officials briefed on the meeting.
The details of the meeting are being reported here for the first time. This article is based on information from the German foreign ministry, along with interviews with seven other diplomats, including five representing European countries, and two Afghan government officials, all of whom requested anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.
Afghanistan has for years been one of the main sources of unauthorized migrants to Europe, and the European governments in talks with the Taliban insist they are solely technical and limited to expulsions. But many human rights groups say that the deportation drive ignores the risks faced by Afghans back home.
"The European Union cannot credibly condemn the Taliban's systematic repression while engaging with them to deport Afghans into the very abuses they claim to oppose," said Fereshta Abbasi, the Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Full diplomatic recognition of the Taliban remains a taboo. Russia is the only country in the world to formally recognize the group.
But the Taliban see sustained
Continued on Page A7
Kabul streets were filled in August as the Taliban celebrated their fifth year of ruling Afghanistan.
To Ease Her Grief, She Took 30 New Friends Out to the Ballgame
By TIM ARANGO
SEATTLE — On the last Sunday afternoon of September, Rhenda Strub was bundled up against the autumn chill for one final day at the ballpark, eating Cracker Jack and sweet and spicy pickles.
Another baseball season was ending as it often does in Seattle: abruptly and too soon. There would be no postseason for the
Mariners, the only franchise never to have appeared in a World Series.
A. Bartlett Giamatti, a literary scholar who served as commissioner of Major League Baseball for five months until he died unexpectedly in 1989, wrote that baseball is "designed to break your heart," because it "leaves you to face the fall all alone."
Yet this season, Ms. Strub, 71, found that the opposite was also
After she lost her 27-year-old son, Wyatt, to muscular dystrophy three years ago, she retreated to his room and spent countless hours alone quilting and watching
The constancy of baseball helped to structure her days, but the loneliness only added to her grief.
So at the beginning of this season, Ms. Strub bought two season tickets to the Mariners in Section 120, on the first-base side, thinking she would regularly go with her loved ones to T-Mobile Park. But her husband doesn't like
Continued on Page A20
柴油协议冲击美国与乌克兰关系
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📄 Original Section
Deal on Diesel Jolts U.S. Ties With Ukraine
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2025年椭圆形办公室争执以来最大的危机
本文由安东·特罗亚诺夫斯基（Anton Troianovski）、珍娜·斯米亚莱克（Jeanna Smialek）、安德鲁·E·克雷默（Andrew E. Kramer）和史蒂文·埃兰格（Steven Erlanger）撰写。
This article is by Anton Troianovski, Jeanna Smialek, Andrew E. Kramer and Steven Erlanger.
President Trump's new diplomatic crisis over Ukraine first erupted at Steve Witkoff's exclusive golf club outside Miami on Friday.
Senior Ukrainian and European officials had traveled to the club, Shell Bay, for talks with Mr. Trump's peace envoys, Mr. Witkoff and Jared Kushner. They had planned to discuss updated proposals to end the war in Ukraine ahead of another trip to Russia by Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner.
But Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner soon made an announcement that stunned the visitors and much of the world when the news became public shortly thereafter. The United States, the Americans said, would suspend sanctions on Russian diesel fuel. The Americans added a firm request from Mr. Trump: that Ukraine stop attacking Russian oil refineries.
One of the Ukrainians asked what they would get in return.
The Americans responded that the United States was doing a lot for Ukraine already, according to three people familiar with the meeting, and should not have to make a trade for Ukraine to stop its refinery attacks. The Americans then mentioned U.S. intelligence assistance, considered vital to the Ukrainian war effort.
Some in the room heard that as a veiled threat, according to two of the people. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, denied any suggestion of a threat to withhold such support. But the official also said that Mr. Trump had grown so angry with Ukraine that it was hard to say what he might do.
Now, the dispute has ballooned into the biggest crisis between Washington and Kyiv since the Oval Office blowup with Ukraine's president last year. The future of U.S. support for Ukraine again appears to be hanging in the balance. The escalating back-and-forth showed how Mr. Trump's efforts to bring down energy prices before next month's midterm elections have threatened to destabilize the fragile Ukraine talks.
Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner are now indicating that they have put their expected trip to Russia on hold until President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine mends fences with Mr. Trump, two people familiar with the talks said.
To the Ukrainians and their European supporters, the attacks on Russia's fuel refineries are Kyiv's most effective way to respond to
Prices in Canada may be higher
Continued on Page A5
\$4.00
马斯克在中期选举上的支出达到 3.66亿美元
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📄 Original Section
MUSK'S SPENDING ON THE MIDTERMS HITS \$366 MILLION
Largest Known Donor — a Funding Advantage for Republicans
By THEODORE SCHLEIFER
WASHINGTON — Elon Musk has quietly funneled more than \$276 million into Republican groups and his super PAC since the start of July, building a huge turnout operation to help the party battle headwinds in the midterm elections.
The staggering amount of money makes Mr. Musk, the richest person in the world, by far the largest known donor in the midterms. Representatives for Mr. Musk supplied the previously unreported figures on his political giving to The New York Times before a federal filing deadline on Thursday.
In an effort to save Republicans' Senate majority, he gave a total of \$158 million this summer to the Senate Leadership Fund, the main super PAC backing the party's candidates for the chamber, according to his team. In sum, that is one of the largest political donations in American history, and more than the group's Democratic rival raised from all of its donors that quarter.
Mr. Musk has also built a major Republican turnout operation through a super PAC he founded in 2024, America PAC. He donated over \$76 million this summer to the group, which in turn spent that much on building a sprawling can-
Continued on Page A14
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埃隆·马斯克的竞选捐款
在本届选举周期中，马斯克先生向联邦委员会捐赠的资金已远超 2024 年。
来源：联邦选举委员会申报文件（此前捐款）；马斯克先生的代表（最近捐款）。
JILLIAN VORDICK / 纽约时报
📄 Original Section
Elon Musk's Campaign Contributions
Mr. Musk has already given far more money to federal committees during this election cycle than in 2024.
Sources: Federal Election Commission filings (prior contributions); representatives for Mr. Musk (most recent contributions).
Home of Representative Omar Is Searched by an Arm of ICE
This article is by Devlin Barrett, Hamed Aleaziz, Ernesto Londoño and Alan Feuer.
Federal agents executed a search warrant at the home of Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota on Monday, according to three people briefed on the matter, the kind of investigative step the Justice Department has long shied away from so close to an election.
The court-approved search of her Washington-area home comes after Department of Homeland Security officials said in recent months that they were investigating Ms. Omar, a Democrat, over her family's immigration paperwork.
More recently, some federal investigators have also sought to examine other issues, such as Ms. Omar's finances, campaign funds and interactions with a foreign citizen, as The New York Times previously reported.
The three people who described the execution of the search warrant spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.
The search warrant, executed 22 days before Election Day, lists a series of potential immigration crimes under investigation, including false statements and fraud in immigration paperwork, as well as a general conspiracy charge, according to a person familiar with the document.
The search warrant was the subject of significant back-and-forth between prosecutors and the
Continued on Page A15
INTERNATIONAL A4-8
Recasting Mariupol Attack
A Russian documentary claims that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind the deadly bombing of a theater. PAGE A4
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全球能源秩序面临威胁
针对沙特阿拉伯的袭击凸显了中东能源行业处于一个不安全时期。第 A5 页
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📄 Original Section
Threat to Global Energy Order
The strikes on Saudi Arabia underscore a period of insecurity in the energy industry in the Middle East. PAGE A5
Two sisters thought new technology might explain why their health differed so sharply. Instead, it stirred up feelings that weren't easily quantified. PAGE D4
OPINION A18-19
Michelle Cottle
PAGE A18
ARTS C1-6
Find Him in the Funny Pages
The comedy writer Tom Gammill stars in a play about the author of the "Nancy" comic strip. Above, Gammill holding Nancy and Sluggo, her pal. PAGE C1
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"What I want to do is assure the one billion citizens of our alliance that we've got this."
GEN. ALEXUS G. GRYNKEWICH of the U.S. Air Force, NATO's top military commander, who on Monday released details of the alliance's plans to deter Moscow in the event of outright war. Page A6.
The annual cost of the pancreatic cancer drug daraxonrasib, which does not increase overall long-term survival. There is mounting evidence that exercise programs can improve cancer outcomes. Page D6.
An article on Saturday about candidate debates misstated the role of the Democratic Socialists of America in the Maine Senate race. While the state chapter of the D.S.A. endorsed Troy Jackson's campaign for governor earlier this year, neither the state nor the national organization has weighed in on his Senate campaign.
An article on Friday about a professor accused of harassment misstated the role of Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina, on the House Committee on
Education and Workforce in May 2025. She was no longer the chair at the time, she was a member.
An article last Wednesday about James Talarico, the Texas Senate candidate, misstated Wendy Davis's affiliation with Planned Parenthood Texas Votes. Ms. Davis, the former Texas state senator, was a senior adviser to the group but is no longer in that role.
Errors are corrected during the press run whenever possible, so some errors noted here may not have appeared in all editions. For recently published corrections, visit nytimes.com/corrections.
What would it take to destroy someone's reputation?
In a new investigation, the reporter Debra Kamin of The New York Times explored the stories of several women who claim in lawsuits that they were the targets of malicious smear campaigns driven by unflattering stories posted to anonymous websites and shared in fabricated social media posts.
The suits differ in the details, but point to the same three businesspeople as the architects of the campaigns. Those same three people were named by Blake Lively in a legal complaint and related depositions in which she said that there was a coordinated campaign to tarnish her reputation. That came after she accused Justin Baldoni, her co-star in the movie "It Ends With Us," of misconduct. Lively's lawsuit, the other women told Debra, helped them realize that their experiences may be connected.
In an interview, Debra shared the digital forensics that went into reporting about efforts intended to stay in the dark. These are edited excerpts from our conversation.
While The Times reported on the Lively case, in late 2024, you were reporting about sexual assault allegations brought against the powerful real estate brokers Oren and Tal Alexander and their brother, Alon Alexander. (The brothers were ultimately convicted of a yearslong sex-trafficking conspiracy.) So how did this new, broader investigation into smear campaigns come together? As women came forward with allegations against the Alexander brothers, a website appeared that purported to expose a conspiracy meant to take them down. I really tried to figure out who made it, but got nowhere. I stayed on it, because I wanted to prepare a story we were going to run ahead of their trial about the efforts to smear the women involved. That story ran in January
of this year.
As an investigative reporter, you always have the stuff you're working on and the stuff in the background. Megan Twohey, a reporter who worked on the Blake Lively article, was keeping an eye on the lawsuits related to her case. We were sitting not so far apart in the newsroom. When she saw stuff, she would flag it.
Then, in 2026, Alexa Nikolas filed a defa-mation lawsuit against Bryan Freedman, Melissa Nathan and Jed Wallace - the same people who Blake Lively accused in depositions and legal filings of running the campaign against her on behalf of Justin Baldoni. Nikolas's lawsuit specifically cited internet research that linked a bunch of sites, including the site about the Alexander brothers, and two women who are featured prominently in my new story. I decided that it was time to revisit the story of smear campaigns and tell the bigger, broader story of how it was an operation that could be ordered up for hire.
[For Debra's recent article, The Times sent detailed requests for comment to Nathan and Wallace, who did not respond, and to Freedman, who wrote in an email: "Allegations are not facts and these allegations are neither truthful nor accurate." He added, "Just like the Blake Lively matter, anyone asserting this nonsense will end up with nothing."]
What were the next steps you took in reporting this larger story?
The first thing I did was identify the people involved. Four women at the time had filed lawsuits, and several others said that they had been smeared. I got their contact information, as well as the contact information of several women who seemed to also have been targets but hadn't yet filed lawsuits.
While some of these women had filed lawsuits in public courts, talking to The Times meant a new level of public scrutiny. How do you even open that kind of conversation? It's a tough conversation. First, I say, "I'm a reporter, are you available to talk right now? I want to have a conversation that's not easy." If it's not a good time, you set a
time to talk. Then you explain: "I'm working on this story. Your name has come up. Are you aware of these campaigns?" Every one of them was aware. Then I said, "I'm trying to piece it together. Can you tell me about your experience?" Every one of them had fears about coming forward, without a doubt. And every one of them told me she chose to come forward to make sure her story doesn't happen to other people.
These websites are designed to be untraceable. But as you wrote, they can leave behind digital bread crumbs. I'm thinking of the backlinks that you described, invisible links that send signals between websites and boost traffic to each other. How did you start tracking those bread crumbs?
Some of the women who sued had hired firms that specialize in this — tracing the origins and creators of things like websites and social media profiles. We had three different reports that were already publicly available, or referenced on the legal docket, from these firms. Stephanie Jones had hired a company to do it, as did Blake Lively and Alexa Nikolas. Each one came to the same conclusion: that there was internet manipulation and some sort of connection. I read through those reports, and I spoke to the experts who had compiled them. That was very helpful. But we couldn't just use that in our reporting, because these people were hired by individuals who have a lawsuit, who have a specific gain.
So I took that data, and I went to our engineering team, which focuses on using A.I. and data to help aid reporting. I said: "I need to verify this, and I want to make sure that we have our own data. Can you run a similar report?" And we did. Then we had a New York Times report that was not ordered up by any plaintiff or defendant, one simply based on investigating the numbers. I got results from our team that confirmed that there were backlinks between the sites, and similarities in terms of authorship and design. That's when I felt, OK, we have a story here. We need to write this.
The author Min Jin Lee joined the "Book Review" podcast to discuss how education and community play out across "American Hagwon," her new novel about the Korean diaspora. Listen at nytimes.com/tbrpodcast.
In T magazine's "Live From the 10th Floor" series, artists perform in The Times Building. Watch the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo sing an aria from the Metropolitan Opera's "Lincoln in the Bardo." tmagazine.com
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, affecting an estimated one in eight American women in their lifetimes. How much do you know about the disease? Take our quiz to find out at nytimes.com/well.
October 13, 2004. "Without the global or high-tech reach of the Internet or satellite radio, country music would seem nonexistent in New York City," The Times reported. With the genre's minimal presence in the city, country lovers were going to great lengths to find community. Rodeo, a Manhattan bar "with floors covered in peanut shells and walls adorned with Texas flags," had become one of few spaces for visitors to watch live country music. But not everyone was satisfied: "Some visitors said it is a venue for bluegrass, rockabilly or Americana music, but not mainstream country," The Times wrote. "There are more white, working-class fans to support a country scene in New York than most people think, but they're not concentrated enough," a music professor at Columbia University said of New York's country scene. Today, there are several country-themed bars in New York — probably a result of the genre's crossover into mainstream music.
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试图粉饰近期及远期黑暗历史的最新举措
ALEXEL ALEXANDROV / 美联社
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📄 Original Section
Facts of Interest
At about 194 years old, Jonathan is the world's oldest known land animal. He's an Aldabra giant tortoise living 1,200 miles off Africa's west coast on St. Helena, spending his days on the grounds of the official home of the governor.
At 194, Jonathan the Giant Tortoise Knows About Aging D3
In San Francisco, roughly a third of its 100 million square feet of office space sits vacant.
San Francisco Still Wants
To Convert Offices B3
"Fjord," a movie by the Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival this year. Only eight other directors or directing pairs have won the top award twice.
squeezed a group of flamingos into a bathroom to shelter them from Hurricane Isaias. A mirror provided entertainment; the birds, seeing their reflections, began showing off.
In Zoo Bathroom During Isaias, Honking Flamingos Win Hearts A11
X-rays are a form of light, but at shorter wavelengths than ultraviolet light and the visible-wavelength colors that we see. Scientists call higher-energy X-rays "hard" and ones at the lower end of the spectrum "soft." Buried in NASA's Old Files, A New Cosmic Object Emerges D2
Solar energy made up nearly 9 percent of the electricity produced in the United States in 2025, up from 3 percent in 2020, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Solar Panels Offer a Shot
To Catch Up With China B1
10/13/2026
BY WYAXLIO
EDITED BY JOEL FAGLIANO | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | Listen to the full episode at nytimes.com/thedaily.
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“在我看来，这不过是克里姆林宫在持续重写围城战、这场战争以及马里乌波尔更广泛历史的又一个证据点。”
杰德·麦格林（JADE McGLYNN），伦敦国王学院俄罗斯专家。
on the country and a research fellow at King's College London, may be trying to shift perception of the strike from "established war crime to disputed incident."
To share your story, fill out a form at nytimes.com/readers. We'll contact you if we're interested in learning more. But we won't publish any part of your submission without reaching out to you and hearing back.
We'd like to hear how Halloween candy prices might affect your celebration this year. Tell us: In general, how do you feel about Halloween candy prices? Are you buying less candy or changing what or how much you buy? Will you be giving out something other than candy this year because of prices?
6 Expansive
7 Spelling Bee rank between "Good" and "Nice"
8 Overhead storage on an airplane DOWN
Callout: How have your Halloween candy habits changed?
These days it's almost impossible to avoid a conversation about the price of groceries. At the office, on the playground or at dinner with friends, people complain and compare costs. They share tips on which stores might offer better deals.
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE
Now here comes Halloween, when about two-thirds of American households buy candy to hand out. New market research shows that Halloween candy prices have risen 71 percent since 2021. Food companies trying to cope with rising cocoa butter prices have taken to replacing the natural fat in cocoa beans with other oils. And on social media, consumers complain about shrinkflation.
Demonstrators marching through the city center in Marseille, France, on Thursday.
For weeks, thousands of high school students in France have been protesting the conditions of public schools. They want better funding, something that won't be easy with the current state of French finances. On "The Daily," Mark Landler, The Times's Paris bureau chief, explained why France is in crisis after years of overspending. Read an edited excerpt from his conversation with the episode's host, Vivian Yee.
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北约详述保护欧洲盟友免受俄罗斯侵害的计划
“知道我们该如何操作。”
美国空军亚历克斯·G·格林克维奇（Alexus G. Grynkewich）将军，北约最高军事指挥官，周一出席华沙安全论坛。
作者：马克·桑托拉（MARC SANTORA）和史蒂文·埃兰格（STEVEN ERLANGER）
华沙——随着俄罗斯加大力度破坏支持乌克兰的欧洲国家，北约最高军事指挥官周一详细阐述了一项在全面战争爆发时威慑莫斯科的蓝图，他将这一概念概括为“封锁、钝化与击破”（block, blunt and break）。
Mark, you know from covering Europe for many years that protests in France are not, shall we say, unusual. But tell us why this time is different.
First of all, you're absolutely right. The French have a lot of muscle memory when it comes to protesting. This is a country in which protests are deeply ingrained in the culture.
But I think a couple of things are different. One is the nature of the protesters. They're really young. These are high school students, 14 to 17 years old, who are usually tomorrow's protesters. But in France, they are now today's protesters. This is a movement that has started at high schools, outside of Paris initially, but spreading throughout the country.
What's also different is that these protests are occurring against a backdrop of multiple other crises in France.
France has a generous welfare state. Can you tell us specifically what is costing the government so much money?
France, like a lot of European countries, offers very generous entitlements. They offer medical care. They offer free schooling. They offer allowances to families.
But what really sets France apart is its pension system. France has one of the lowest retirement ages of any European country. It's currently just over 62 years. And that allows French people to begin drawing on their pensions sooner than almost any of their European neighbors, and that saddles the French state with an enormous additional burden.
The heartbeat of this hearty salad is the sweet, oven-roasted edges of broccoli florets and red onion wedges. Chewy bits of steamed rice; hunks of roasted salmon; and a salty, savory anchovy-lemon dressing make it much more of a dinner than a side dish. The broccoli can also be traded for other cruciferous vegetables, such as cabbage, cauliflower or brussels sprouts, if the mood strikes. ASHLEY LONSDALE
TIME: 45 MINUTES
YIELD: 4 SERVINGS
1 (1-pound) salmon fillet, skin on or off $\frac{1}{4}$ cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided
Salt and freshly ground black pepper $\frac{3}{4}$ cup jasmine rice
3/4 cup jasmine rice
1¼ cups water
1½ pounds broccoli crowns, trimmed, cut into cut into 1- to 1½-inch pieces
1 large red onion, sliced into thick wedges
4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, from 1 to 2 lemons
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
6 anchovy fillets, minced
2 large handfuls watercress or baby arugula (about 2 ounces)
1. Heat oven to 425 degrees. Rub the salmon fillet with 1 tablespoon olive oil and season with salt and pepper on all sides. Set aside.
2. Rinse the rice until water runs clear. In a small lidded saucepan, combine the rice, water and 1 tablespoon olive oil. Season the water to taste with salt and bring to a boil over high heat. Cover and reduce to a gentle simmer over medium-low, and cook for 12 to 15 minutes, until the rice is plumped. Remove from heat and let rest, covered, for 5 minutes.
3. On a large sheet pan, toss the broccoli, red onion and remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil.
ERIK BERNSTEIN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES. FOOD STYLIST: BARRETT WASHBURNE.
Season generously with salt and pepper. Roast in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes, tossing once, until tender-crisp and lightly browned.
4. In a large salad bowl, combine the cooked rice, roasted broccoli and onions. To the same sheet pan, add the salmon fillet skin side down (if present) and roast until just cooked through, 10 to 14 minutes.
5. While the salmon roasts, add the lemon juice, mustard and anchovies to the bowl with the broccoli mixture and toss. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Flake the salmon (discarding any skin) and add to the bowl. Fold in three-fourths of the watercress. Top with the remaining watercress and serve.
For more recipes, visit New York Times Cooking at nytcooking.com.
Keep your world close
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Russia rebuilt the Regional Academic Drama Theater, which was destroyed in March 2022. From left: Reconstruction; the finished theater, rebranded to glorify Russia; last year's reopening ceremony.
Russian Film, Decried as Propaganda, Recasts Mariupol Theater Attack
The remains of the theater in Mariupol, eastern Ukraine, in April 2022. A Russian airstrike on the building killed hundreds of civilians taking refuge there.
It was the gravest act of violence among the litany of atrocities that defined Russia's long, bloody siege of Mariupol in the first months of the full-scale war in Ukraine.
On March 16, 2022, an explosion tore through the Soviet-era Regional Academic Drama Theater, killing hundreds of civilians taking refuge there. Survivors, journalists and analysts who examined the devastation have concluded that a Russian airstrike caused the blast.
Now, a new Russian film that calls itself a documentary is trying to rewrite that history. It claims to present evidence supporting Russia's longtime assertion that Ukraine was behind the bombing. Ukrainian officials have dismissed the film as propaganda, calling it part of a systematic Russian campaign to falsify events and deny Russian war crimes.
The movie, "Witnesses," was filmed on the stage of the rebuilt theater in Mariupol, which has remained under Russian control. It shows Vittorio Nicola Rangeloni, an Italian journalist sympathetic to the Kremlin, interviewing several people who say they survived the bombing. They assert that the Ukrainian military destroyed the theater in a diversionary attack meant to discredit Russia.
"Except for us, unfortunately, nobody else will speak of this," Daria V. Morozova, the human rights commissioner in the Russian-controlled part of the Donetsk region of Ukraine, says in the film. Mr. Rangeloni somberly nods along to Ms. Morozova's assertions.
Asked about the movie's claims, Mr. Rangeloni said in an email: "I've looked into the eyes of those people who were there that day. I have no reason not to believe these people." He has narrated several other documentaries under the "Witnesses" brand.
The studio responsible for disseminating the documentary online, Bumblebee, could not be reached for comment. Its social media channels feature a stream of pro-Kremlin content, much of it focused on a revisionist history of Russia's actions in Ukraine. "Witnesses" has received more than 600,000 views and has been promoted by Russian military bloggers.
To Ukrainians, Moscow's monthslong siege of Mariupol in 2022 and the city's eventual occupation are tragic symbols both of civilian resistance and of a Russian push to erase Ukrainian culture in captured territories.
The Mariupol theater seized global attention after Russian forces attacked it even though people sheltering inside had written the word "children" in white paint on the ground outside.
The yearslong rebuilding effort that has followed the theater's destruction is part of a Russian crusade to make Mariu-pol a showcase of the "new territories," the Kremlin's term for occupied Ukraine. To supporters of the Kremlin, the theater embodies Russian supremacy restored in a city that long played host to divided loyalties because of its proximity to Russia.
With its reconstruction, Russia hopes to bury memories of its relentless bombing of the city in 2022, which killed thousands of Ukrainians.
"Behind all this simulated 'restoration' are hidden the atrocities of the Russian occupiers," Mariupol's exiled city council, based elsewhere in Ukraine, wrote in a social media post when the theater held a reopening ceremony in December 2025.
James Verini, whose new book "The Theater" meticulously reconstructs events surrounding the attack, wrote that it "may yet prove the single worst act of mass civilian killing" by Russia during the war. About 600 people were killed, according to an investigation by The Associated Press. The number of children who were victims has not been established.
In an interview, Mr. Verini, who has written about the war in Ukraine for The New York Times Magazine, said that none of the many survivors he had spoken with had seen anything to suggest subterfuge by Ukraine.
'I personally see it just as another evidence point in the Kremlin's ongoing rewriting of the siege, the war and Mariupol's broader history.'
JADE McGLYNN, a Russia expert at King's College London.
on the country and a research fellow at King's College London, may be trying to shift perception of the strike from "established war crime to disputed incident."
An effort to provide cover for what happened at the theater could be useful during any reckoning that may follow the war's conclusion, Dr. McGlynn said.
"I personally see it just as another evidence point in the Kremlin's ongoing rewriting of the siege, the war and Mariupoli's broader history to make it fit a version that flatters Russia's self-image and myths," she added.
The new film is part of a sweeping effort to revise history in order to stoke national pride and suppress unseemly aspects of Russia's past. Mr. Putin, for example, has orchestrated a systematic rehabilitation of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, whose paranoid purges claimed millions of lives. That Stalin signed a disastrous pact with Nazi Germany, despite clear evidence of an impending invasion by Hitler, is now seen, at least officially, as an act of diplomatic necessity.
The cumulative effect of the revisionist campaign is an image of Russia as an ever-victimized hero, tormented by a persistently bellicose West, of which Ukraine is a mere puppet.
Among the cities that Russian forces captured after the full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, Mariupol is the largest one that Moscow still holds. Ukrainian defenders managed to hold out for 86 days, finally surrendering at a Stalin-era steelworks. By taking control of Mariupol, Russia secured a key route to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.
The 2022 siege was vividly captured by "20 Days in Maripol," which won an Academy Award in 2024 for best documentary feature. With harrowing detail, the documentary shows Russia indiscriminately shelling and bombing hospitals and apartment blocks. In one scene, a doctor takes the filmmakers to see the body of a newborn, placed in a basement converted into a morgue.
"I can't show you the face," the doctor says, unwrapping a sheet to reveal tiny legs and a discolored torso. The narrative of "20 Days in Mariupol" ends on March 15, as the filmmakers leave the city through a humanitarian route. The theater was bombed the next morning.
A funeral procession for an Azov battalion soldier killed during the 2022 battle for Mariupol. The film lays blame for the theater explosion with that unit, known as Azovtsy, with several people interviewed claiming to have seen them.
MAURICID LIMA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
"Witnesses" is only the latest in a cottage industry of pro-Russian films about Mariupol, Dr. McGlynn said. These include "Mariupol, Russian City" (2022), "Mariupol: Returning Home" (2023), "At the Edge of the Abyss" (2024) and "Mariupol: Three Years of Freedom" (2025).
These works are meant to tug on Russians' sense of patriotism. They refer to heroic World War II episodes as they depict the battle for the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works in Mariupol, which was once occupied by German invaders, and portray the West as intent on seeing Russia weakened at any cost.
"The smaller the victories, the grander the narratives," said Nina L. Khrushcheva, a professor of international affairs at the New School in Manhattan.
Ms. Khrushcheva is the great-grand-daughter of Nikita S. Khrushchev, the Soviet leader who turned Crimea over to Ukraine in 1954. His move would have unforeseen repercussions 60 years later, when Russia retook the peninsula. The United States condemned the incursion but did not oppose it militarily. Neither did Europe.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia made clear that he was animated by profound grievances and that retaking Crimea was only the beginning of a more grandiose project.
To justify the full invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Mr. Putin claimed that Ukraine's military was rife with Nazi sympathizers. Those allegations focused on the Azov regiment, an ultranationalist outfit that was absorbed into the Ukrainian National Guard in 2014.
Azovtsy, as members of the regiment are known, played a significant role in the defense of Mariupol in 2022. They are blamed in "Witnesses" for the theater explosion.
Several people interviewed in the film claim that they saw Azov-affiliated soldiers placing crates of explosives under the theater's stage.
Western researchers have debunked Russia's claims. "There was no crater, which means the weapon used would have detonated somewhere between the roof and floor," Gareth Collett, who served as the British Defense Ministry's top bomb disposal expert and who conducted an extensive investigation into how the theater was destroyed, said in an email.
The damage, Dr. Collett added, was "typical of a large airdropped munition known to be used by the Russian Federation." A report by Amnesty International concluded that the theater was most likely destroyed by two 1,100-pound bombs dropped by a Russian fighter jet.
Deal on Diesel Sends Shock Wave Through U.S.-Ukraine Relationship
GAVRIL GRIGOROV/SFUTNIK, VIA REUTERS
VALENTYN OGIRENKO/REUTERS
From Page AI
Russia's bombardment of Ukraine's energy grid. Ukraine is prepared to stop attacking energy infrastructure, Mr. Zelensky has said, if Russia does the same.
Russia has refused such a deal. Nevertheless, to Mr. Trump, Ukraine's attacks are an affront to a U.S. administration that has continued to provide intelligence and some military support to Ukraine despite the American president's harsh words about Mr. Zelensky. Diesel prices in particular have become a sore spot for Mr. Trump, causing farmers' costs to spike just as harvest season arrives and the midterms are weeks away.
"He better damn well stop," Mr. Trump told reporters on Saturday, referring to Mr. Zelensky and Ukraine's attacks on Russian refineries, and ignoring Russia's strikes on the Ukrainian energy grid. "He wants to make problems for the world. He wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers."
Export statistics indicate that the increase in diesel and energy prices stems largely from Mr. Trump's war with Iran, though Ukraine's attacks on Russia have also played a role.
On Sunday, Mr. Trump said on social media that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to an "ENERGY CEASEFIRE" with immediate effect. Neither side confirmed an agreement. A person familiar with his thinking said that Mr. Trump was referring to a cease-fire only on refineries in both countries — even though Ukraine's refining capacity had been all but destroyed early in the war.
On Monday, European and Ukrainian leaders suggested that while they would be open to an energy cease-fire, they were skeptical that Russia would follow through on one. Ukraine's foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, noted that Russia had attacked Ukrainian energy infrastructure Sunday night "just hours after" the announcement.
"We are ready for an energy cease-fire: We are ready for any mutual format, anything that is not one-sided," Mr. Sybiha told reporters while entering a meeting of foreign affairs ministers in Luxembourg.
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巴黎市中心百年市场毁于大火
作者：AMELIA NIERENBERG 和 GIULIA IMBERT
巴黎 —— 数世纪以来，巴黎人习惯前往红孩子市场（Marché des Enfants Rouges），用购物篮装满浓郁的奶酪、柔软的面包、陈年葡萄酒和饱满的蔬菜。这座有顶的食品市场是巴黎最古老的市场，人们在这里规划家庭晚餐，与摊主聊天，并与被这里多元美食摊位吸引而来的游客们交谈。
The meeting on Friday at Mr. Witkoff's golf club lasted about six hours, two people familiar with it said. Much of the meeting involved brainstorming about what the future peace talks might require to work, and the focus was on the standard issues, according to several people. The issues included accession to the European Union for Ukraine, for instance,
Marc Santora contributed reporting.
and the question of territorial con-
trol.
Mr. Witkoff stepped out at one point to join a call between Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, and Mr. Trump, according to one of the people, who was in the room for the meeting.
In addition to Ukraine's three-person negotiating team, the national security advisers to the leaders of Britain, Germany and France, as well as top officials from the European Union and
NATO, joined the meeting.
But Mr. Trump's diesel deal with Mr. Putin quickly overshadowed the rest of the talks. Mr. Zelensky on Friday called Mr. Trump's deal with Mr. Putin to allow imports of Russian diesel fuel in order to lower prices a "weak decision." As the dispute intensified, Mr. Trump on Saturday said Ukraine needed "a new president."
European leaders, including France's president, Emmanuel
Macron, and the head of the E.U.'s executive arm, Ursula von der Leyen, issued statements of support for Mr. Zelensky. Members of Congress criticized the diesel deal as helping fund Russia's war machine.
"The United States should not provide Putin with a financial lifeline while Russia continues to kill Ukrainian civilians," a bipartisan group of six senators, including the Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and John Curtis of Utah, said in a statement on Sunday. "The administration must immediately reverse course."
Björn Seibert, a senior E.U. official who attended Friday's meeting in Florida, gave ambassadors from across the European Union's 27 nations a briefing on the meeting on Sunday, according to one European official who was there and three diplomats briefed on the matter.
Both the official and two of the diplomats said that the Europeans
An oil refinery in Moscow last month. Left, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff with President Volodymyr Zelensky and, far left in a photo released by Russian state media, with President Vladimir V. Putin.
in Florida were taken by surprise by the Trump administration's diesel announcement. The official said the ambassadors were stunned by the announcement.
One major takeaway from Florida, Mr. Seibert told ambassadors, was that the Americans were engaging more with the Russians than they publicly acknowledge, the official and one of the diplomats said. No further details on those engagements were given during Mr. Seibert's briefing, which lasted about 20 minutes, according to the official.
The Trump administration has argued that energy deals with Mr. Putin, in addition to lowering energy prices, could help pave the way for a settlement in Ukraine by showing the Kremlin that reintegration into the world economy was possible for Russia if it compromised in the war.
Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, a Saudi minister, said Monday that attacks had tested his nation.
By LISA FRIEDMAN
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — The intensifying war in the Middle East threatens to further strain a weary energy industry that has already endured waves of disruptions and could test a market resilience built on a series of extraordinary government and private-sector measures.
Over the weekend, the Iranian-backed Houthi militia attacked an international airport in Saudi Arabia's capital, Riyadh, including
Houthi strikes on Saudi Arabia underscore a threat.
one strike that killed at least 12 people and injured hundreds. It was the deadliest attack in a Gulf Arab country since the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began in February and brought the war to the center of the Middle East's oil industry.
The attack forced the temporary suspension of operations at the airport just as energy executives and government officials were set to arrive in Riyadh for a major business and policy conference.
The event, the World Petroleum Congress, proceeded as planned, but some attendees were diverted to other airports and others, including the U.S. energy secretary, Chris Wright, and ministers from Italy and Japan, addressed the conference by video link.
Many oil industry leaders — including the chief executives of Exxon Mobil and BP — canceled their trips to Saudi Arabia, according to two industry officials who were not authorized to discuss executive schedules.
In remarks on Monday, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the Saudi energy minister, acknowledged that recent attacks had "tested our infrastructure, our institutions, our people and our resilience."
Meanwhile, oil tankers are facing persistent peril while attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage between Iran and Oman that was a fairly uncomplicated excursion before the war. At least 16 vessels have been attacked this month.
The widening of the fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Houthi militia in Yemen, amid no public signs of a diplomatic resolution between the United States and Iran, underscores the potent two-front threat to energy infrastructure in an area crucial to global supplies of crude oil and its many byproducts, like diesel and gasoline.
Just last month, oil exports from the region started increasing to nearly their prewar levels. More ships were getting out of the Strait of Hormuz, close to Oman's coast, through the protection and guidance of U.S. forces.
It is not yet clear if the most recent attacks on tankers around the strait will cause a notable drop in exports as ship operators recoil from the risk. Regardless, the U.S. military effort is a costly endeavor that experts say can't last forever.
Before the Riyadh airport came under attack, an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq had already targeted a critical Saudi pipeline, which the kingdom was using to export oil instead of going through the Strait of Hormuz.
All told, the rebound in crude exports masks headwinds that could keep prices elevated, oil executives and analysts say. The benchmark global oil price was trading at about \$104 a barrel on Monday, up from just under \$70 on the eve of the war.
"We are in a permanently changed energy world right now," said David L. Goldwyn, a former State Department energy envoy. "We are entering an age of prolonged insecurity."
And the world's crude cushions are being drained. The use of reserves of unrefined petroleum held by oil producers and governments has helped stabilize the market. Dozens of countries came together in March for the largest-ever coordinated release of stockpiles. But those reserves are beginning to have limited effect, in part because the world's capacity to refine oil is stretched to the max.
The price of diesel has become a global flashpoint. Diesel is essential to global commerce, and a dearth of refineries has driven its price to record highs in many parts of the world, including the United States. Facing political pressure, President Trump has allowed imports of diesel from Russia, undercutting American sanctions for a measure that experts say will have a negligible impact on global prices.
The world's reserves have reached “scarily thin” levels, Amin Nasser, the chief executive of Aramco, Saudi Arabia's national oil company, said at the Energy Intelligence Forum in London last week.
In another potential weight on the energy market, there are signs that China, the world's biggest buyer of oil, is starting to buy more again. Earlier in the war, China had slashed its imports to, at the lowest point, around 7.1 million barrels a day from about 11.6 million barrels.
And Iranian crude — 90 percent of which once went to China — has virtually disappeared from the market since the United States imposed a naval blockade on the country's exports.
Oil executives say they expect the turmoil in the oil market to last well into next year, if not longer.
"I think it is going to be bedlam for the bulk of the end of the year and maybe 2027," Tengku Muhammad Taufik, the chief executive of Petronas, Malaysia's state-owned oil and gas company, said last week.
For decades, the Strait of Hormuz was the most effective commercial route to send crude east across the Indian Ocean to Asian markets. Countries like Kuwait and Iraq used it for virtually all of their oil exports, while Saudi Arabia used it for about 80 percent.
When Iran effectively blocked the strait in March, Saudi Arabia, the region's largest producer, leaned heavily on its other door to the world: the Red Sea. Each day, it sent four million to five million barrels of oil through the 720-mile East-West Pipeline to deliver crude from eastern oil fields to the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea. From there, ships would move its oil through the Bab al-Mandab Strait to Asia.
Over the summer, the Houthi militia made that path dangerous when it threatened to essentially block any ships carrying Saudi oil. Then last month the Houthis attacked the East-West Pipeline, forcing it to shut down temporarily.
"Ultimately, the resilience of the international system can only hold up for so long, and we're fast moving toward that target," said Shaikh Nawaf S. Al-Sabah, the deputy chairman and chief executive of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation.
Mr. Al-Sabah said that before the war, Kuwait was exporting about 2.6 million barrels a day. Production has recovered to about two million barrels a day, about 75 percent of prewar levels, because more tankers are taking the risk of transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
Also notable was the warp speed at which Saudi Arabia worked to fix the East-West Pipeline after it was damaged. Mr. Nasser said Aramco had more than 10 teams, each with thousands of contractors and engineers, that repaired pumping stations in a matter of days.
Yet the region clearly remains heavily exposed.
"Producers still need a safer route, they need tankers, they still need buyers who are willing to accept the risk," said Aaron Brady, vice president of energy oil market services at S&P Global, a research firm, at an S&P energy briefing in London this month.
Mr. Brady added, "A lot of oil is getting out in the Middle East, but there's no longer that sort of secure workaround."
The bottom line, Mr. Brady said, is that even though oil is getting to the countries that want it, the routes are more complicated and the costs continue to rise. He called it an "improvised" system.
"The flows are improving, but I wouldn't characterize this as a normally operating system," he said.
NATO Details Plan to Shield Ukraine's European Allies from Russia
know how we would do it."
Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich of the U.S. Air Force, NATO's top military commander, at the Warsaw Security Forum on Monday.
By MARC SANTORA and STEVEN ERLANGER
WARSAW — With Russia intensifying efforts to destabilize European nations that support Ukraine, NATO's top military commander on Monday detailed a blueprint to deter Moscow in the event of outright war, a concept he summarized as "block, blunt and break."
The commander, Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich of the U.S. Air Force, said the alliance does not view a military confrontation with Russia as "imminent or inevitable," despite Russian sabotage, arson, cyberattacks and disinformation aimed at rattling European resolve and severing weapons supply lines to Ukraine.
But in that environment, the general said he had made a deliberate decision to publicly disclose the core of NATO's classified war plan — known as its "theory of victory" — to bolster confidence across 32 allied countries.
“What I want to do is assure the one billion citizens of our alliance that we’ve got this,” General Grynkewich said on Monday at the Warsaw Security Forum. “We know what we need to do. We
Marc Santora reported from Warsaw, and Steven Erlanger from Berlin. Adam Goldman contributed reporting from London.
Yet even as the American four-star commander stressed that NATO's ultimate defense rests on unity, stark geopolitical contradictions echoed through the conference hall. President Trump's decision to unilaterally ease sanctions on the Kremlin in order to purchase Russian diesel fuel highlighted a jarring disconnect between NATO's military planning and European support for Ukraine, and the White House's transactional diplomacy and hostility toward Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump appeared to blame Ukraine — not for the first time — for the war, and said it should “get a new president.”
By injecting hard cash directly into the Kremlin's coffers, the administration risked undercutting years of allied economic pressure, muddying the Western coalition's deterrence messaging and testing the very solidarity General Grynkewich was in Warsaw to project.
Even if the amounts of diesel purchases are small, the symbolism of division is large. Ukraine and Europe argue that only economic and military pressure will persuade President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to end the war he started, Mr. Trump and his envoys apparently favor enticing Mr. Putin with "deals," instead.
The tension was evident earlier in the day when Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland warned that the defense of Ukraine and the security of NATO are inextricably tied.
"Anyone who, for any reason — treason, stupidity, or money — wants to weaken Ukraine in its defense against Russian aggression is clearly acting against their own nation, the security of their own state, and its sovereignty," Mr. Tusk said.
Pressed afterward on whether European allies could count on Washington to defend them, General Grynkewich dismissed suggestions that the United States would waver, citing the thousands of American forces along NATO's eastern flank, including in Poland. He also pointed to recent summit communiqués that reaffirmed the bedrock collective-defense guarantee of Article 5.
European fears of an emboldened Russia have been increasing. Michal Koudelka, the director of the Czech Security Information
Service, the country's domestic spy service, warned his Parliament on Monday that Russia could escalate "in a matter of months rather than years to a significantly riskier and more serious operation," which could include, down the road, limited military action against a NATO state.
General Grynkewich said the new NATO doctrine draws directly on modern battlefield lessons from Ukraine and the Middle East.
Specifically, he said, the blueprint pairs precision weapons with what he described as "affordable mass"—large numbers of autonomous systems, drones, and electronic warfare assets designed to sustain a protracted war of attrition.
The "block, blunt, and break" strategy he outlined is designed to stop an invasion in its tracks without trying to conquer the enemy's homeland.
First, he said, allied forces immediately "block" an attack at the border to prevent enemy from seizing territory, a change in strategy since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Next, they "blunt" the offensive by hitting advancing troops from the air, sea, and land to strip their momentum. Finally, if the attack continues, they "break" the enemy by targeting the supplies, communication links, and command networks that keep their frontline forces fighting, weakening the aggressor to the point of collapse.
General Grynkewich stressed that NATO is not interested in taking an adversary's land. By limiting the objective strictly to the tactical and operational neutralization of the adversary, NATO intends to deny the enemy any pretext for escalation, he said, placing the moral and strategic burden of expanding the war squarely on the aggressor.
"Implementing the theory of victory I've described today would require me to issue orders that I hope to never give," he said. "But let there be no doubt, should war come, we will block, blunt any attack, and then if it does not cease, we will break the forces conducting aggression against us."
Kremlin officials have routinely dismissed the alarms being raised across Europe.
"We have no intention to fight Europe, to engage in warfare with Europe; that is utter nonsense," Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said during a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in September. "But Europe is preparing for war with us," he said. "This could become a self-fulfilling prophecy."
This article is by Maria Varenikova, Dzvinka Pinchuk and Ivan Nechepurenko.
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine has shrugged off President Trump's suggestion that it ditch Volodymyr Zelensky as its president because it has continued to strike Russian oil refineries.
Mr. Trump has called out Mr. Zelensky for the strikes, blaming them for rising global energy prices. Ukraine needs "a new president," he said on Saturday.
Mr. Zelensky shot back on Sunday that Ukraine was ready to stop striking Russian refineries, but only if Russia stopped striking Ukrainian energy infrastructure. "Any de-escalation steps must be reciprocal and backed by real guarantees," he wrote on X. On Monday, he said Kyiv had not struck any Russian oil refineries overnight.
On Saturday, after Mr. Trump made his comments, Ukraine's foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said that Mr. Zelensky "has the support of the Ukrainian people, and they have the right to decide."
"Statements from abroad only confirm that he is doing his job well," he added.
Mr. Zelensky has previously said he would hold elections if Russia agreed to a cease-fire. In an interview with ABC News on Sunday, he said to hold a vote safely, there would have to be a cease-fire lasting 60 days.
Ukrainians have grown accustomed to Mr. Trump's off-the-cuff foreign policy.
On Sunday, Mr. Trump announced in a social media post that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to an "energy cease-fire." Neither Kyiv nor Moscow has confirmed that there is such a deal.
Mr. Zelensky said that he had discussed Mr. Trump's announcement in a call with international allies, and that they were "awaiting details from the American side."
"Ukraine supports the ceasefire, and it is important that Russia supports it as well," he wrote on social media.
But shortly after Mr. Trump's announcement, Russia struck a power plant in Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine, according to Mr. Zelensky's office — an attack that offered a stark indication of Moscow's position on a possible cease-fire.
On Friday, the Trump administration lifted sanctions on Russian diesel sales, saying the move would lower prices.
But some question whether Russian diesel will indeed ease the pinch. And lifting sanctions on Russian diesel will undermine U.S. energy sanctions. Some European countries, including Germany, said they would stand by sanctions despite the U.S.-Russia diesel deal.
"Suspending sanctions on Russian diesel provides Moscow with more revenues to wage war," wrote Kaja Kallas, the European Union's top diplomat, on X. "This is not the time to ease pressure on Russia, and Europe won't."
Other points of view on the Opinion pages seven days a week. The New York Times
Online, some Ukrainians bristled at the suggestion that Washington or Moscow should dictate who leads their country, but largely dismissed Mr. Trump's remark as domestic politicking before the midterm elections in the United States.
"Trump is trying to save his own skin ahead of the elections," Iryna Tsariuk, an activist from Odesa, wrote in a social media post on Facebook. "He doesn't care at all about Ukraine or the fact that Russia killed more than 70 people on Wednesday and Thursday," she added.
Russian missile and drone strikes continued overnight Saturday to Sunday, wounding eight people in Kyiv, the capital, and killing an 11-year-old boy in Dnipro, a city in central Ukraine, according to the local authorities. After Russian strikes on energy and water infrastructure, the authorities in Kyiv urged residents to stock up on water.
"Russia is leveling Ukrainian cities, starving people in Oleshky, killing entire families in one attack, but for some reason you won't find Tweets that Putin has gone too far," wrote Yarema Dukh, a political analyst and communications expert, referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Even Ukrainians who oppose Mr. Zelensky have objected to Mr. Trump's remarks, arguing that decisions about Ukraine's leadership must be made by Ukrainians.
Mr. Zelensky has faced widespread criticism in Ukraine over corruption allegations involving
An American leader's demand may serve to unite a nation at war.
people in his inner circle and over his personnel decisions, including the dismissal of his popular defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov.
The share of Ukrainians who trust Mr. Zelensky has fallen to 58 percent from 65 percent last year, according to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
But if anything, the rebuke from the U.S. president has the potential to unite Ukrainians, Mr. Zelensky saw a bump in support at home after Mr. Trump criticized him in a White House meeting last year.
"There is nothing in the world that could boost Zelensky's approval rating today more than Trump's childish outbursts at him, screaming that he needs to be replaced," Mykhailo Lavrovskyi, a Ukrainian serviceman, said on X.
In Russia on Sunday, Ukrainian drones hit a major data center operated by the Russian technology giant Yandex. The center, in the Vladimir region east of Moscow, was the company's third to be attacked in the past four days, prompting internet disruptions across the country.
In a statement on Friday, Yandex called its data centers its "iron heart" and said restoring services was a "top priority," though "unfortunately, it is a complex challenge."
The U.N. says Russian attacks have driven civilian casualties in Ukraine, like this one in Zaporizhzhia, to a “new horrifying level.”
BEUTERS
在遭受威胁后，亚利桑那州立法者自问：“这真的值得吗？”
三天后收到了他的第一封死亡威胁。
📄 Original Section
Trump Aids Russia in Economic War With Kyiv
By CONSTANT MÉHEUT
KYIV, Ukraine — President Trump's deal to buy Russian diesel fuel, and his intense pressure on Ukraine to stop striking Russian oil refineries, could hand a powerful boost to Moscow in its economic war of attrition with Kyiv.
The diesel agreement, if it goes ahead, could send some \$4 billion of American money into the Russian economy, energy experts said. A halt to refinery strikes, if Ukraine accedes to one, could be much more valuable to the Kremlin.
Ukraine is expected to get nothing in exchange as Mr. Trump enlists Russian help in his effort to bring down sky-high diesel prices, caused mostly by the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, before the midterm election early next month.
Moscow remains free to continue attacking Ukrainian ports, steel factories, warehouses, power plants and data centers, a campaign that is gradually pushing Ukraine's economy toward a breaking point. Such attacks destroy nearly \$10 billion in business assets each year, Ukraine's economy minister has said.
At the same time, Mr. Trump is demanding that Kyiv abandon its most potent tool for depriving the Russian war machine of income. Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries, combined with those on other businesses, have cost Russia about 1 percent of its gross domestic product, President Vladimir V. Putin acknowledged this month.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has condemned Mr. Trump's decision to buy Russian diesel, saying in a social media post on Friday that "Russia will 'repay' the diesel with further terror and perfidy."
Mr. Trump, who lifted sanctions to allow Russia to sell the fuel to the United States, struck an economic deal with Mr. Putin even as Russian attacks have driven civilian casualties in Ukraine to what the United Nations called a "new horrifying level."
More than 100 Ukrainian civilians were killed in the past week alone. Moscow is striking Ukraine with an ever-growing arsenal of increasingly powerful and precise weapons, taking advantage of gaps in Ukrainian air defenses.
Mr. Zelensky said on Monday that Ukraine had refrained from attacks on Russian oil refineries overnight. But he has said that Ukraine will agree to an extended cease-fire only if Moscow stops attacking Ukrainian energy infrastructure. There are fears of a humanitarian crisis in Ukraine this winter if Russia succeeds in its goal of taking down the Ukrainian power and water systems.
The diesel deal is another sign of Mr. Trump's willingness to tip the scales toward Russia, the aggressor in the conflict. This time, he is offering the Kremlin assistance in an economic battle that could help decide the fate of the war, with both armies largely bogged down at the front.
Ukraine's campaign against Russian oil infrastructure began in 2024, with strikes on oil depots and refineries. The effort at first had little effect. But as Ukraine expanded its fleet of attack drones and learned how to target critical components that are hard to repair, the effects increased.
Reported gasoline output is down by 20 percent compared with 2025 levels, and diesel production is estimated to have fallen by nearly 30 percent, the International Energy Agency said in a report last month. The Ukrainian attacks prompted Russia to impose restrictions on diesel exports that Moscow now says it will lift to sell fuel to the United States.
The energy agency added that Russia's oil tax revenue from January to August was nearly 17 percent below the level of the same period last year.
Should Kyiv be forced to halt its refinery strikes, Russia's advantage in the two countries' contest to starve the other of money will
only grow.
Nowhere is that imbalance clearer than in the near-closure of Ukraine's ports.
For months, Russia has attacked commercial ships sailing in and out of the ports in the southern region of Odesa, aiming to discourage them from calling there. The ports are a lifeline for Ukraine's economy, accounting for 60 percent of the country's total export volume. They are used to export grain from the country's fertile farmland, a key source of revenue.
Because of the Russian attacks, traffic through the three Odesa ports was down nearly 95 percent in August and September compared with the same period last year, according to port data obtained by The New York Times. Last month only 12 ships made it out of the ports, compared with 266 in the same month last year.
Ukraine has tried to redirect some of the traffic to its ports on the Danube River, which connects the country to Romania. Ships can travel down the river through Romania and back into the Black Sea, sailing off the coast of NATO countries toward Turkey. But the Danube ports can handle only about half of the cargo that normally moves through the Odesa ports.
And the Danube route is now under threat, too. Last week, drones struck three ships off the coasts of Romania and Bulgaria, sinking two and killing several crew members. All three vessels had carried Ukrainian grain in the past, according to the Romanian authorities and port data.
Ukraine has accused Russia of carrying out the attacks, though Romania and Bulgaria have steered clear of assigning blame. Russia did not comment on the attacks.
The halt to Ukraine's seaborne exports could have catastrophic consequences for the country's economy, with effects across many sectors. Ukraine's agriculture minister said this month that farmers were unable to export about 30 million tons of agricultural products, worth about \$30 billion.
Russia has also suffered from Ukrainian strikes on its Black Sea ports, which have constrained its agricultural exports. But economists say the impact is not comparable because Russia has more export routes than Ukraine, including through the Baltic and Caspian Seas, which Ukrainian weapons cannot reach as easily.
In a sign of that imbalance, Russia became the world's largest exporter of sunflower oil in the 2025-26 marketing year, overtaking Ukraine for the first time in two decades, according to estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Russia appears to be following a methodical approach to dismantling Ukraine's economic base, striking all kinds of assets that an economy needs to function, including export routes, factories and energy facilities.
The fate of Metinvest, Ukraine's largest steel manufacturer, is a case in point.
Its factories, including two large steel plants in southeastern Ukraine, were already suffering from power outages caused by Russian strikes on the grid. Then came attacks on the ports, which blocked a key export route, and on the railways, which left its products stranded inside the country. Finally, strikes on the plants themselves forced them to shut down last month.
The collapse of Ukraine's steel industry, which contributed more than 7 percent of Ukraine's economic output last year, will have severe economic consequences, said Oleksandr Myronenko, Metinvest's chief operating officer.
The company is planning layoffs for administrative personnel, and towns that depend on steel plants will see their budgets shrink.
Last month for the first time in a century, not a single metric ton of steel was produced in Ukraine for one week.
全美各地的基层民选官员正承受着大量暴力信息的轰炸
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📄 Original Section
Taliban Offer Deals on Deportation to Gain More Acceptance in Europe
Residents of Kabul, Afghanistan. European governments have long resisted engaging with the country's Taliban rulers because of the nation's abuses of human rights.
TOMAS MUNITA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
IVOR PRICKETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
A brick factory, left, outside Kabul. The Taliban would like Europe to invest more in Afghanistan. Above, Afghan migrants in the Aegean Sea off Turkey trying to make their way to Europe.
TOMAS MUNITA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
From Page AI
engagement on deportations as a gateway to acceptance of their rule, five years after sweeping back to power. Some European diplomats acknowledge this is correct.
Germany has allowed Taliban officials to operate in the Afghan diplomatic missions in Berlin and Bonn, a step that German officials describe as effective recognition of the Taliban as the legitimate government. France is considering doing the same in Paris. Representatives from 15 other European countries met a Taliban delegation in Brussels in June.
The Taliban are pressing their advantage. They have asked European governments for wider access to Afghan missions across Europe and financial support for the reintegration of expelled Afghans. They also want broader economic assistance — a red line for European governments that have limited their assistance to humanitarian aid. Providing development assistance would end up financing the Taliban government, further entrenching their rule, and could benefit officials who are under international sanctions.
"The Taliban have real leverage, and the European Union is quite powerless," said Conrad Schetter, the director of the Bonn International Center for Conflict Studies in Germany. "European countries are under so much pressure that they are ready to do almost any deal to remove criminal refugees."
Germany has been leading the charge to expel Afghans, as its government, led by a center-right chancellor, struggles to follow through on promises to deport migrants with criminal records aggressively. Its pace of deportations has drawn fire from a surging far-right party, the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which leads national polls and has promised to deport millions of migrants.
Late last year, German officials struck a deal with the Taliban government to allow direct deportations of unauthorized Afghan migrants, instead of routing returnees through third countries.
More than 500,000 Afghans live in Germany, the vast majority legally. Twenty percent of asylum seekers in the country are Afghans.
In February, a charter flight carrying 20 Afghan men — convicted of crimes by German courts — left Leipzig for Kabul, the first deportation carried out under the new agreement.
The pact with the Taliban "creates a reliable basis for direct and permanent deportations to Afghanistan," Alexander Dobrindt, the German interior minister, said in a statement.
Under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Germany has deported 263 Afghans since May last year, according to the German interior ministry.
State and federal officials have pushed to speed up that pace and have begun deporting Afghan migrant men without criminal records.
Women remain largely shielded from the effort; government statistics show that nearly 95 percent of Afghan women who applied for asylum in Germany were granted protection in the first half of this year.
Since May last year, a handful of Taliban diplomats have operated out of Germany to facilitate the deportations.
As the German government began its plans to step up deportations, the Taliban sent three addi-
Jeanna Smialek, Christopher F. Schuetze and Lynsey Chutel contributed reporting.
tional officials to process the expulsions. Those three are in Berlin and in Bonn on a monthlong mission, the German foreign ministry said last month.
France, which has long been one of the most reluctant among E.U. countries to engage the Taliban, is considering a similar path, according to four European and Afghan diplomats involved in the negotiations.
A spokesman for the foreign ministry, Pascal Confavreux, said in a news briefing on Thursday that the discussions were meant to “facilitate the removal of Afghan nationals who are in the country illegally and who pose a national security risk.”
Britain, whose officials pay regular visits to Kabul, is watching developments in the European Union closely, according to three diplomats. Several other European countries are also considering striking direct agreements with the Taliban, according to the Taliban and two diplomats.
The United States has been deporting Afghan citizens to third countries and has pushed some Afghans, who are stranded in a former U.S. military camp in Qatar, to return to Afghanistan voluntarily. But it has not sent Afghans back to Afghanistan publicly.
Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban ambassador to Qatar, said he tells European diplomats that they should engage more openly with the Taliban and provide economic assistance to Afghanistan.
If they don't, he said, the number of Afghans migrating to Europe will only increase. "If there is unemployment and an economic crisis in Afghanistan, Afghans will go like a flood to Europe."
European diplomats regularly meet with Taliban officials in Doha and Istanbul, and the taboo against holding talks with the Taliban on E.U. soil was broken on June 23.
Five Taliban officials who had flown into Brussels from Istanbul were escorted by Belgian plain-clothes officers in black vans to a Novotel hotel near the international airport, where more than 20 European officials awaited.
The two sides discussed how to cooperate on returning Afghans, and the Taliban asked for economic assistance and a stronger diplomatic presence in Europe.
The announcement of the visit to Brussels caused such an outcry among human rights groups and European politicians that the meeting's location was kept secret until a few hours before it started.
The meeting was co-hosted by Sweden and the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union. Abdul Qahar Balkhi, the spokesman for Afghanistan's foreign ministry, led the Afghan delegation, accompanied by four officials from the foreign and interior ministries.
European Union spokespeople have said that the bloc helped to organize the June meeting at the request of member nations, and that the focus is on deporting people who have committed serious crimes or who pose a security threat.
Fifteen European countries were represented, including Greece, Austria, Poland and Norway.
After the big meeting in Brussels, the Taliban delegation held bilateral conversations with at least four European countries, including Sweden, according to the participants.
Anastasia Sofla, a spokeswoman for Sweden's minister of migration, said government agencies have been working with the Taliban government to expel 200 Afghan citizens convicted of crimes in Sweden. She said the relationship was "at the technical level."
The relationship between the European and Afghan governments remains fraught with mutual distrust.
Before the meeting in Brussels, the five Afghan representatives felt disrespected because the Belgian government had taken months to issue their visas. So the Taliban boycotted lunch with European diplomats on June 23.
The Taliban officials had a visa only for one day, so they left that afternoon, after meeting with their European counterparts for just over five hours.
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加州团队部署 1,300 只“不眨眼的眼睛”监测林火
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📄 Original Section
More Engagement Urged
Some prominent European non-profit groups and experts support greater engagement with the Taliban.
Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, has called on governments to send their diplomats back to Afghanistan. The Norwegian Afghanistan Committee, a humanitarian organization with a widespread presence in the country, has called for European countries to expand assistance to Afghanistan's people and institutions.
In Norway, which is not an E.U. member, Taliban diplomats have discreetly operated for years.
For now, the Taliban diplomats in Norway and Germany have been respectful of the European governments' uneasiness over their presence. There is no Taliban flag outside the embassies in Oslo and Berlin, and no plaque reading "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan," the official name of their government.
One European diplomat said that the governments were on a path to more concessions to the group. The Taliban, the diplomat said, already have the advantage, and public pressure to deport migrants is rising.
远程摄像头网络提供早期预警
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📄 Original Section
Sea of Protesters Flows Freely Through India's Capital as Days of Lockdowns Ease
Rahul Gandhi, the opposition leader, with a doll depicting Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A voting roll revision incited protests.
PRIYANSHU SINGH/REUTERS
This article is by Suhasini Raj, Hari Kumar and Somini Sengupta.
NEW DELHI — Thousands of opposition political party supporters marched along a busy thoroughfare in central Delhi to challenge sweeping revisions of the nation's voter roll.
In a contrast to a week of lockdowns and detentions by the authorities, the demonstrators on Monday far outnumbered security forces stationed on the road. They stood atop orange buses, waving the flags of the opposition Indian National Congress party. Columns of police and other security officials, dressed in riot gear, watched.
The turnout signaled a show of strength for the long-beleaguered Congress party leader, Rahul Gandhi. He marched with a rambunctious crowd, at times flanked by his sister, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. In an effort to portray a unified front against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, Mr. Gandhi was also joined by Neha Bora, a leftist student activist, along with regional politicians from North India.
Mr. Gandhi's lawyer filed a petition on his behalf in the Supreme Court, calling for an inquiry into the proceedings of the election commission. Its chief, Gyanesh Kumar, has been the target of more than a week of protests across India, by youth groups, opposition politicians, and ordinary citizens who say the election commission's revision of the voter roll is a politically motivated purge of critics of the ruling party. Since it began last summer, the revision has expunged over 130 million names.
Together, months of protests over a wide range of frustrations about poor education and a lack of job opportunities represent the biggest challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his 12 years in office.
The government's tactics on Monday, allowing the march to proceed mostly unimpeded, were a stark contrast to the intense crackdown on protests over the course of the last week, when would-be demonstrators were grabbed and stuffed into police vans.
The crowd was so thick at Mon-
day's march that it could barely
move. There were several mo-
ments when Mr. Gandhi was just
pushed along through a sea of peo-
ple.
In a news conference earlier, the opposition, who was detained in demonstrations in Delhi last week, vowed to continue to protest.
"We will do it today, they will stop us. We will do it tomorrow, they will stop us. We will do it the day after tomorrow. They will stop us," he said. "Let them stop us."
By evening, there was no sign of the mass detentions of recent days.
Rather, politicians from the B.J.P., the ruling party, fired back with political invective.
"Congress is a group of hooligans trying to spread chaos on the streets and oppose the system," a B.J.P. minister, Shivraj Chouhan said.
Anurag Thakur, a B.J.P. member of parliament, said: "Rahul Gandhi and the Congress Party's motto is — if not in power, then spread anarchy."
The march came as the government declared that protests can no longer be legally held inside the small area in central Delhi that is the seat of government power.
What had been the capital's most popular protest site for decades — an 18th-century monument called Jantar Mantar that sits less than a mile from India's
Parliament — would no longer be used for demonstrations, the government said in its “guidelines for holding protests or demonstrations in Delhi.”
The government said permission for protests can only be sought at three other sites: one about 3 miles from parliament, another further away in the east of the city, and the third to the north.
Critics said the change effectively sidelines dissent, moving it away from the halls of power.
"Peaceful assembly & protest is a fundamental right of people," Prashant Bhushan, a lawyer and civil rights activist, said in a social media post. "The govt cannot confine to 'Designated sites.'"
Removing Jantar Mantar as a protest site came two days after the youth movement known as the Cockroach Janta Party called for nationwide protests to be held on Saturday. The Delhi police denied permission for the protest and took extraordinary measures to prevent people from assembling, canceling trains to the capital, closing metro stations and shutting off internet in the city center.
Jantar Mantar, distinguished by its ocher-colored sundial, is a relatively small venue with two entrance and exit gates, and the government had begun looking for alternate sites for sanctioned protests several years ago. The Supreme Court on Saturday recommended that the government look for alternate protest sites.
Anjani Anand, 29, came to the march Monday afternoon on Barakhamba Road, less than a mile away from Jantar Mantar, with a few friends. "I think people feel safer to come out onto the streets," she said.
"There's strength in numbers here," said Shubhayan Sengupta, 30, who had joined her. He had been detained twice on Saturday and escaped both times. He didn't want to be detained again, but he and his friends were prepared. They had the numbers of lawyers.
Centuries-Old Market At the Heart of Paris Is Devastated by a Fire
By AMELIA NIERENBERG and GIULIA IMBERT
PARIS — For centuries, Parisians came to the Marché des Enfants Rouges to fill their shopping baskets with sharp cheeses and soft breads, old wines and plump vegetables. The covered food market — the oldest in Paris — was a place to plan family dinners, chat with vendors and mingle with tourists attracted to the site's eclectic mix of food stalls.
But on Monday, before dawn broke over the French capital, flames ripped through the market, bringing down part of its metal structure and destroying 17 stalls inside, officials said.
“Nothing remains,” Lt. Col. Pierre de Bouvier, a Parisian fire official, told reporters at the scene.
He said firefighters were called at around 4:15 a.m. By the time they arrived, he said, high-reaching flames had already engulfed 10,000 square feet of the market.
It was not immediately clear what started the fire, which did not damage nearby buildings and caused no serious injuries.
The blaze destroyed a living emblem of France's love of food — and of the vibrant multicultural fabric of modern Paris.
The market, in the heart of the Marais neighborhood, opened in 1615 in what was at the time the largest city in Western Europe. More recently, it has been a destination for visitors and locals alike to buy traditional French fare and to taste dishes from the Caribbean, North Africa, the Levant and beyond.
"I used to go there when I was little," said Bahia Lahlou, a 21-year-old student who lives nearby.
Ms. Lahlou and other bystanders watched in silence on Monday morning as firefighters worked at the blocked-off scene, on the right bank of the Seine. The market's blackened roof sagged.
"It was kind of a hub that brought together lots of different cuisines," Ms. Lahlou said. For many, she added, "it was an opportunity to discover French cuisine."
It wasn't immediately clear what caused a blaze on Monday at the Marché des Enfants Rouges.
SARAH MEYSSONNIER/REUTERS
Ariel Weil, the mayor of central Paris, said on social media that the market had been "totally devastated" and "ravaged by flames,"
but that firefighters had managed to control the blaze.
In a statement, Catherine Pégard, France's culture minister, called the market "a place of life, memory, and camaraderie for Parisians and for many visitors from around the world."
Enfants Rouges translates to "red children." After a neighborhood orphanage closed in 1772, the market was named in memory of the children there, who had been dressed in red.
In 1982, the market was designated a historic monument. By the
1990s, though, it was a ruin. But when Parisians heard of plans to demolish the market and turn it into a parking lot, vendors and local residents staged a sit-in and slept outside the building to protect it, according to the city's official website.
The die-hards won, and renovations began. By the mid-2000s, the market had again become a center of life in Le Marais, a vibrant area that is the traditional heart of France's Jewish community.
On Monday morning, grief had replaced the customary bustle and buzz of the market.
Pierre Aidenbaum, who was an official in the area from 1995 to 2020, was one of the many people who came to see the destruction. Sitting in a cafe nearby, he recalled how the community had fought to save the market from becoming a parking lot and described how hope had been “restored in the neighborhood” when the site was renovated instead.
On Monday, though, the market in front of him was a skeleton. Every entrance was blocked. Onlookers murmured to one another, lamenting the loss. Instead of the pungent odor of cheese and the warm aroma of hot food, the smell of smoke hung heavy over the ruin.
"It's a disaster," Mr. Aidenbaum said.
在火灾萌芽期将其发现
Alert California 的总部位于加州大学圣迭戈分校，其外勤团队在距离太平洋仅几步之遥的一栋不起眼的建筑内工作。尼科尔森先生指向了他冲浪的海滩。
Houthis Keep Up Drone and Missile Attacks on Saudis
Abbas Araghchi, Iran's foreign minister, offered to mediate between Saudi Arabia and the Tehran-backed Houthi militia.
ATTA KENAIRE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
By ERIKA SOLOMON
The Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen was fending off drones and cruise missiles launched toward Saudi Arabia on Monday, according to the Saudi state news media, the latest in a surge of attacks by the Iran-backed Houthi militia that have targeted the kingdom's airports.
There was no immediate confirmation of whether the attacks were intercepted. At least 13 people were killed when the Houthis struck the international airport in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, on Saturday — the deadliest attack on a Persian Gulf country since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.
The Saudi authorities said on Monday that operations would remain suspended at the Riyadh airport after they reported another deadly attack on the facility on Sunday.
Fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis rapidly escalated last month when Houthi forces seized Yemen's Red Sea coast, taking territory that sits alongside a strategic waterway for global trade and a key export route for Saudi oil. Saudi warplanes have been bombing Houthi positions in support of the internationally recognized Yemeni government, as its forces fight to retake the territory.
The Houthi militia has targeted Saudi oil facilities, and it attacked Riyadh on the eve of the WPC Energy Congress, an international gathering of oil officials and executives there.
"The events of recent weeks are serious," Prince Abdul Aziz bin Salman, the Saudi energy minister, told delegates at the event on Monday. "Our response must be equally serious."
The Houthis are one of several militant groups that Iran is allied with across the region, and part of what the Islamic republic calls its Axis of Resistance.
On Sunday, Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, offered to
Sanam Mahoozi and Lisa Friedman contributed reporting.
mediate between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis, warning that overlapping conflicts in the region had no military solution.
Mr. Araghchi spoke to his Saudi counterpart, Faisal bin Farhan, during a telephone call on Sunday night, according to a statement posted on social media by the Iranian minister's office.
"Insisting on a military approach and ignoring a political solution will further complicate the current situation," the statement, posted on Mr. Araghchi's Telegram channel, said.
The foreign minister said Iran stood "ready to provide any assistance to help initiate a dialogue" between the two sides.
The Saudi government said that the two ministers had spoken, though it made no reference to a mediation offer from Iran.
The attacks on the Riyadh airport set off an exchange of strikes, with Saudi-led forces targeting the airport in Sanaa, Yemen's Houthi-controlled capital, according to reports on Sunday in the local news media affiliated with the group. The Houthi-run health ministry said that a child had also been killed in a strike on a residential building in Sanaa.
The Saudi authorities have not commented on those assertions.
The Houthi militia has been fighting the internationally recognized government of Yemen, which is backed by Saudi Arabia, since 2014.
Emboldened by regional instability, the battle-hardened Houthis have far less to lose against their more powerful, wealthier enemies, even as they imperil Saudi Arabia's ambitions to transform itself into a global hub of business and tourism.
Many oil industry leaders — including the chief executives of
Operations at the capital's airport are paused after a strike.
Exxon Mobil and BP — canceled their trips to Saudi Arabia for this week's gathering in Riyadh, according to two industry officials who were not authorized to discuss executive schedules.
The conflict has stoked further upheaval in the oil-rich Persian Gulf region, which was already reeling from the economic fallout of the U.S.-Iran war.
American and Iranian officials appear braced for the possibility that their stalemated regional conflict could spill back into the open, with the Pentagon drawing up new plans for strikes. Iran's national security adviser, Mohsen Rezaei, threatened on Sunday that if fighting were to resume, Iranian forces would target digital infrastructure in the Gulf, including data centers, cables and artificial intelligence facilities.
Though the Houthis have benefited from years of military and financial support from Iran, regional experts have long described them as among the most independent of the country's allied militant forces, with ambitions distinct from Tehran's.
Iran has been able at critical moments to curb the Houthis, said Farea Al-Muslimi, a Yemen and Persian Gulf specialist at Chatham House, a London-based research institute.
When Beijing mediated a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran in 2023, he said, Tehran promised to stop Houthi cross-border attacks on Saudi Arabia, and succeeded in doing so until the United States and Israel launched their war on Iran.
Mr. Al-Muslimi added that while the Houthis were largely autonomous on matters inside Yemen, they coordinated with Tehran on international strategy. "The Iranians know if they want to actually stop it, they can," he said.
Iranian officials cite the widening conflict in the region as a sign that their Gulf Arab neighbors should re-evaluate their longtime alliances with the United States. Iran and its allies have frequently targeted U.S. bases on Gulf territory during the war.
Iran has been urging the Gulf countries to engage with it diplomatically, part of an effort to sideline the United States as the principal power broker in the region, and drive out its military forces.
"We have always supported strengthening interaction and cooperation among the countries of the region," Esmail Baghaei, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, said in a news conference on Monday. He urged a strengthening of regional relations to create "a secure region free from the destructive interference of external actors."
Dozens Killed as Bombs Hit Mine on Sudan-Egypt Border
From Page AI
trolled by its enemy, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, in the far south of the country, in an effort to curtail a valuable source of finance.
The attack on Saturday was striking because it occurred in an army-controlled area largely untouched by fighting, and because the loudest accusations were directed at Egypt, a country that has been a staunch ally of Sudan's military throughout the war.
In February, The Times revealed a covert Egyptian drone base that supported the Sudanese military's war effort.
In a statement, Egypt's military spokesman said its forces were in the third phase of "a major campaign to combat illegal gold prospecting in the Eastern Desert," which came after leaflets were dropped to warn what he called "criminal elements."
But the statement insisted that Egyptian forces had been acting inside their own borders, and not in Sudanese territory.
Sudan's military avoided pointing fingers. On Monday, the military chief, Gen. Abdul Fattah al-Burhan, announced an investigation into what he called a "painful incident."
The bombing was notable in Su-
Sanjana Varghese and James McManagan contributed reporting.
dan, even during an atrocity-laden conflict that has seen credible accusations of genocide, chemical weapons use, mass rape and starvation.
The targets of the strike appeared to be poor, largely young miners laboring in harsh conditions in a remote area. Graphic footage filmed after the attack shows severely wounded civilians. Other videos taken by miners show fighter jets flying over the area and munitions striking the ground.
"Just scatter, guys! Scatter!" one witness shouts as a plume of smoke rises from a mountain and a plane is heard flying overhead.
One of the men described to The Times how the strikes unfolded.
Bahar Eldin Hassan said that warplanes and helicopters made several passes over the mine early on Saturday. From about 9 a.m., warplanes bombed the site at least three times over the course of an hour, he said in a video call.
About 35 people died in the first strike, he said, adding, "I cannot describe how terrible the scenes we saw were."
Artisanal mining, where poor men dig for riches at informal mines, is booming across Africa. Soaring prices for gold, copper and other minerals have drawn workers across a wide belt of the continent. But artisanal mining is also notorious for dangers and human rights abuses, including child
labor.
Mr. Adam, a student at Sudan University of Science and Technology, said he took shelter in a mining pit alongside a "terrified" young boy after the strikes. "He wanted to run away without knowing where he was going, but I managed to convince him to stay," he said. "When we came out, the scene was horrific. I broke down crying."
Footage appeared to show more than two dozen bodies wrapped in fabric following the strikes. In another video, a crowd is gathered outside a medical center where dozens of victims were reportedly taken, according to a local Sudanese report.
Videos taken after the strikes showed what appeared to be Egyptian munitions. One video showed what looked to be an unexploded Egyptian NASR 400 bomb, according to Trevor Ball, a former U.S. Army explosive ordnance disposal technician who analyzed the footage for The Times.
In June, Egypt's military said in a statement that it had begun a security campaign targeting criminal networks and what it described as illegal mining in southern Egypt, near the border with Sudan.
Its campaign included a Facebook video urging miners to leave the area before they were detained by the authorities.
Days later, several miners were killed on the Sudanese side of the border following an attack by Egypt's military, according to The Sudan Tribune and witness accounts posted on social media. Some reports said the Egyptians distributed leaflets warning miners that they could be "considered a target for immediate attack" if they remained in the area.
The Times was unable to immediately verify the precise location of the attacks on Saturday, given the expansive mountainous area where the footage was filmed. The Times confirmed that the footage did not appear online before Saturday, and geographic features in the video matched other footage showing the effects of the strikes.
The scenes depicted were consistent with local reporting, and several of the videos were posted to the TikTok accounts of miners who work in the area.
"Those killed were like brothers to us," Mr. Adam said. "We worked together, we ate together, we sat around chatting together. That was our lives."
Despite its dangers, gold mining has become an economic mainstay in Sudan during a war that has otherwise devastated the economy.
Even after a bombing, some miners said they had little choice but to continue.
Mr. Hassan, who uses his earnings to support eight brothers and one sister, said he expected to be back at work soon.
在南加州的其他地区，美国国家气象局曾对圣地亚哥县（San Diego County）发布热带风暴预警，但该预警已于周日取消。
📄 Original Section
Inquiry of FlyDubai Attacker Puts Mosque Under Scrutiny
By VICTORIA KIM
SYDNEY, Australia — A mosque in a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, and its leader have come under the spotlight because the co-pilot of the Israel-bound FlyDubai flight attended it during the period when investigators say he started on his path to radicalization.
The suspect, whom officials haven't named but people familiar to the investigation have identified as the Omani citizen Hamam al-Hammami, 29, studied in Australia between 2015 and 2017. He is in custody in the United Arab Emirates, where he has been questioned by investigators on suspicion of attacking the captain in an attempt to crash the plane last month, according to a statement by Hamad Saif Al Shamsi, the attorney general.
Mr. Al Shamsi said on Friday that the co-pilot's "drift toward extremism and terrorism" began in Australia, where he was exposed to ideas that led him to attempt what investigators described as a Sept. 11-inspired attack. He pursued a career in aviation to carry out that plan, Mr. Al Shamsi said.
The Australian authorities began an investigation last week into the suspect's time in the country.
The Emirati authorities said the suspect, who was attending the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, became “acquainted with individuals associated with an institution known as ‘My Centre,’” a Muslim youth center that also serves as a mosque in Melbourne.
The center, also known as the Multicultural Youth Center, has been a long-established part of the city's northern suburbs and is run by Samir Mohtadi, who also goes by the name Abu Hamza. Mr. Al Shamsi said the co-pilot had mentioned Abu Hamza was the leader of the mosque, but did not offer details. Whether they had a relationship was unclear. The center has seen bouts of controversy sparked by statements from Mr. Mohtadi but was not known to have a radicalizing influence, according to members of the Muslim community and researchers who follow extremism.
Mr. Mohtadi is a complicated figure who in the past has testified in a criminal trial against those who plotted a terrorist attack. He has drawn scrutiny over the years for being wary of vaccinations during the pandemic, posting online tirades about Zionists and appearing to condone spousal abuse. But he was not known to be a proponent of violent ideologies.
Moustapha Sarakibi, managing director of Board of Imams Victoria, said Mr. Mohtadi was not a fringe or marginalized figure, and that My Centre was a multipurpose facility offering sports programs and drug counseling in addition to religious services, open to anyone.
"It's not a place that propagates this sort of thing generally, not a place that would condone violence or any terrorist groups," said Mr. Sarakibi, who is also a chaplain at the technology institute. Mr. Mohtadi "has been very outspoken, but if you go back to his speeches, he speaks openly against ISIS and these groups," he said.
On Sunday, Mr. Mohtadi posted a video on the Facebook page of Islamic Information and Services Network of Australasia, which runs My Centre, obliquely referring to the allegations without directly addressing them.
"Regardless how much you explain yourself to people, that's it, they're fixated with their idea," he said in the video. "The best thing, sometimes, is not to say anything."
The co-pilot's time as a student could become a political flashpoint in Australia, where immigration and student visas have become hot-button issues with an ascendant far-right party frequently taking aim at the Muslim community. On Monday, Pauline Hanson, head of the One Nation Party, released a statement assailing public funding the center has received.
The years when the suspect is said to have studied in Australia were a fraught period for Muslims in the country, according to researchers and religious leaders, amid concerns young Australians were being drawn to the violent messages of the Islamic State.
"This was the height of Islamic State radicalization and recruitment," said Greg Barton, chair in global Islamic politics at Deakin University in Victoria, currently based at the school's Indonesia campus. Such ideas likely spread on the periphery of mosques, he said. "If you were drawn to edgy rhetoric, you might share it with people you bumped into at the car park or coffee hall."
Debra Smith, who has worked on countering violent extremism, said the suspect's radicalization was likely far more shaped by the internet, which was being flooded with jihadist materials during that period, than establishments like My Centre.
"What we worry about is people who pull away from community-oriented places, ones who go into smaller breakaway groups," said Ms. Smith, a professor at Victoria University.
Ahmed Sobh, manager of Melbourne-based Middle East Radio and a family friend of Mr. Mohtadi's, said the cleric had long worked to set young Muslims on the right path and away from negative influences.
Mr. Mohtadi testified for the prosecution in the 2007 trial of Abdul Nacer Benbrika, who was convicted on terrorism charges for plotting attacks on public facilities including the Melbourne Cricket Ground. At the trial, he said Mr. Benbrika subscribed to a "harsh" version of Islam, according to court records.
JACK GUEZ/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
Officials said the suspect in a cockpit attack last month attended a mosque near Melbourne during his "drift toward extremism."
Alma Hernandez, a Democratic state representative in Arizona who is Mexican American and Jewish, has bolstered her home's security with a fingerprint-activated lock, iron bars and cameras. The police recommended she remove two trees. "Politicians are no longer treated like we're human," said Ms. Hernandez, who is running for State Senate.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ADRIANA ZEHIRAUSKAS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
竞选态势
共和党人试图利用充足的资金与特朗普不受欢迎的政策拉开距离，但时间正日益紧迫。
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📄 Original Section
After Threats, Arizona Lawmaker Asks, 'Is It Really Worth It?'
received his first death threat three days later.
为处于弱势的同事表达支持
（从左起）共和党众议员罗布·布雷斯纳汉（Rob Bresnahan）上周在哈兹尔顿为其在宾夕法尼亚州第八国会选区的竞选活动寻求支持，陪同人员包括议长迈克·约翰逊（Mike Johnson）以及众议员丽莎·麦克莱恩（Lisa McClain）和卡洛斯·A·吉梅内斯（Carlos A. Giménez）。
TUCSON, Ariz. — Alma Hernandez's home used to feel like her sanctuary. Now it feels like a fortress.
In recent years she has installed cameras, alarms and a lock that opens with her fingerprint. She put iron bars on her windows and a blinding floodlight on her front porch. She cut down two trees in her yard after the police told her they could aid an intruder, and her brother moved in to protect her when the death threats intensified.
Ms. Hernandez, an Arizona state representative since 2019, did not know she was signing up for a dangerous job. But these days, serving in public office increasingly means looking over your shoulder.
"Politicians are no longer treated like we're human," she said.
Ms. Hernandez, a fourth-term Democratic lawmaker who is Mexican American and Jewish, has received threats from the far left and the far right. They have come in response to her outspoken support for Israel, her championing of vaccines and her first campaign, which drew attention from David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
Violent threats have arrived via her social media feed, her email inbox and her office phones. Her home address has been circulated online, and her mother has received menacing calls. Last year, an aide's car parked outside Ms. Hernandez's house was struck by gunfire. This year, the state police opened an investigation after someone sent her a social media message pledging to "find, torture and brutally murder" her and her friends, along with one of her two Chihuahuas.
So pervasive are the threats that they have altered not only Ms. Hernandez's life, but also those of her family, friends and neighbors, who now keep a close eye on her home and warn her about suspicious activity. The intimidation has even influenced her approach to policymaking.
"I've asked myself, Is it really worth it?" said Ms. Hernandez, 33, who was the youngest woman ever to be elected to the Arizona Legislature. "I do wonder now, why would any 25-year-old want to do this with their life?"
Across America, threats of violence haunt the daily existence of elected officials, their staff members and their families. A New York Times investigation has found that the nation's highest-profile politicians — including governors and members of Congress — face consistent violent harassment.
Studies show that violent threats are also rising against lower-level elected
Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting.
leaders, who number more than 500,000 and serve in state legislatures, city councils and school boards.
In a survey conducted this year by Princeton University and CivicPulse, nearly 20 percent of 460 local elected officials across the country reported receiving threats during the first three months of 2026. Just like at the federal level, the perilous climate is pushing some local public servants out of office early and causing others to forgo running altogether, the researchers said.
But unlike national political figures, most state and local officials have few resources to help keep them safe. Faced with violent threats, they are often left to fend for themselves. And after a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband were assassinated last year, many say they feel more exposed than ever.
City and town officials are even more vulnerable, experts say, and in Arizona they have been targeted repeatedly in recent years. The Bridging Divides Initiative, a research center based in Princeton's policy school, found 57 confirmed threats against Arizona county and municipal lawmakers since 2022, a figure researchers say is an undercount.
In Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, death threats toward local officials grew sharply after the 2020 election as President Trump's unfounded claims of voter fraud fueled a torrent of conspiracy theories. One county supervisor was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and decided not to seek re-election, while threats to two other officials resulted in a prison sentence.
At the state level, Arizona legislators from both parties have been targeted. In 2022, a former middle school music teacher emailed Senator Wendy Rogers, a Republican, and vowed to shoot her in the head. Last year, Arizona's secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, allowed candidates for office to use campaign cash to pay for security, citing the dangerous political environment.
That decision helped Analise Ortiz, a Democratic state senator. Last year, her online posts alerting residents that immigration agents were near a school attracted a string of sinister threats, including several that said she would be hanged.
"Walk around with security cause I promise you three months," one person wrote. Another said Ms. Ortiz's "car and home and family are easy to find."
Ms. Ortiz made a list of safe places and lived in undisclosed locations for two weeks as the threats rolled in, she said.
"It's remarkable that in the United States of America in 2026, as a state senator, I had to fear for my life," said Ms. Ortiz, whose district is west of Phoenix.
When she returned home, Ms. Ortiz, one of the statehouse's leading progressives, installed a camera system and petitioned a court to conceal her address.
Analise Ortiz, a Democratic state senator in Arizona, was threatened with hanging after posting about immigration agents near a school. She bought a gun. "It's horrible we have to think that way," she said.
She also bought a gun and trained to use it.
"It's horrible we have to think that way," Ms. Ortiz said. "But ultimately, my home and loved ones need to be protected."
Ms. Ortiz and Ms. Hernandez represent opposing factions of Arizona's Democratic Party, but they agree that violent rhetoric has reshaped their lives.
"What she experienced and what I experienced are symptoms of the same problem," Ms. Ortiz said.
DANIEL HERNANDEZ, Ms. Hernandez's brother, who was with Representative Gabrielle Giffords in 2011 when she was shot.
Political violence has long shadowed the Hernandez family, three members of which have held elected office. Ms. Hernandez's brother, Daniel, was an intern for Representative Gabrielle Giffords in 2011 when the Democratic congresswoman was shot outside a Safeway in Tucson.
Mr. Hernandez, then 20 years old, provided first aid to Ms. Giffords as an ambulance raced to the scene. Mr. Hernandez, suddenly in the national spotlight,
"I've seen people at their most unhinged, or I thought I had," said Mr. Hernandez, who went on to serve as a state representative. "And then it keeps getting worse."
He said he had been shocked by the amount of hate — especially the antisemitism — directed at Ms. Hernandez and their sister, Consuelo Hernandez, another Democratic state lawmaker. By late 2023, he had become so worried that he insisted on moving into Alma Hernandez's Tucson house for extra protection. He still lives with her part-time.
Ms. Hernandez first received threats during her first term, when one of her bills so angered vaccine opponents that they flooded her social media and office with ominous messages. The bill, which would have limited vaccine exemptions, went nowhere, but the furor transformed her work: Ms. Hernandez, who has a master's degree in public health, now says she will never again sponsor provaccine legislation. The cause isn't worth the harassment, she said.
After the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Ms. Hernandez said, the number of threats increased. She said her vocal support for the Jewish state has drawn more violent messages in the last three years than at any other time in her career.
Ms. Hernandez's boyfriend, Sam Segal, has given her pepper spray and offered to teach her to use his firearms. They've also rehearsed chilling scenarios. If she's attacked by a man, Mr. Segal has told her, "kick right in the middle and run."
众议院之战
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📄 Original Section
'I've seen people at their most unhinged, or I thought I had. And then it keeps getting worse.'
"You don't know what's legit and what's not," Mr. Segal said of the threats, many anonymous. "There are extremists out there who will go the whole nine yards, and I can't be with her 24/7."
The threats have made the couple nervous about having children, they said.
"Would we be OK with bringing a family into this environment?" Ms. Hernandez said. "Quite frankly, the answer right now is no."
A scary moment unfolded last year, just one day before Minnesota's former House speaker was killed.
Mr. Hernandez, who was then running for Congress, was meeting with his campaign team at Ms. Hernandez's house when a bullet shattered the window of his aide's car, which was parked outside. The police never found the shooter, nor did they determine whether the gunfire was targeted. But the incident deeply rattled the family.
If Ms. Hernandez wins her election in November, she will serve a two-year term in the State Senate.
She said she had not thought much about her political future beyond that. But if she could go back in time, she said, she would choose a quieter, less stressful way to begin her career.
"I would tell Alma almost nine years ago, 'Girl, wait. Go live your life,' Ms. Hernandez said. "This has not been an easy time."
参议院之战
注：数据截至10月9日。被评为“倾向”或“可能”的参议院选区被归类为有利于该党。为了控制参议院，民主党需要赢得51个席位，以抵消副总统JD Vance为共和党提供的打破僵局的投票权。来源：Cook政治报告（The Cook Political Report）选区评级。
Perched at the front line of California's fight against wildfires is a 41-year-old named Colby Nicholson and three other roaming MacGyvers in "Alert California" work shirts.
On this warm June morning, they were on a cliff 1,500 feet above the vineyards and small towns of Napa Valley. Several major fires had ripped through this area in the past decade.
Mr. Nicholson and the others peered past the toes of their boots. They pointed toward a winding, dead-end road connecting houses and steep driveways in a scrubby, miles-long chasm called Soda Canyon.
That was the blind spot that local fire officials wanted to see.
These are the fire spotters of today — remote, high-tech cameras attached to communication towers, old lookouts or purpose-built tripods on high vantage points. Alert California's viewpoints have become a vital tool for firefighters and a ubiquitous presence in emergency coverage. Mr. Nicholson and his crew are the ones who put cameras in place and keep them running, so that everyone else can see.
Wide-view surveillance cameras, from highway traffic cams to ski-area web-cams, are not new; Alert California's origins go back 25 years. But now, injected with the latest technology and placed in our most remote locations, these systems are increasingly the clearest eyes on today's worsening disasters.
Since 2023, artificial intelligence has instantly scoured Alert California camera footage, spotting wildfires before a 911 call is received in most cases. Officials then use the camera feeds to monitor the fires, coordinating teams at the scene. Real-time views are available to anyone on the Alert California website, and screen grabs and time-lapse footage help fuel fire incident pages and popular apps like Watch Duty.
"This system has changed the world of response," J.C. Greenberg, deputy chief of Napa County Fire Department, said as he watched the Soda Canyon installation. "We have instant visibility and instant information that we need to make response decisions."
Some fires grow quickly out of control no matter how soon they are spotted. That was evident in some of the state's biggest fires, like the Eaton and Palisades fires of 2025, fueled by exceedingly dry terrain and high winds. Alert California cameras on rooftops in Los Angeles captured the Palisades blaze, but that wasn't enough to prevent the tragedy.
But for those whose careers and lives depend on what the cameras display on screens across the state, Mr. Nicholson's crew delivers the view from the other end of the lens — the dirty job of providing high-tech, real-time, open-source wildfire surveillance from places humans rarely venture.
They drive tens of thousands of miles around the state each year in a Ford F-150 pickup and a van. They install and maintain camera systems on public and private land, in places like rock ledges, 300-foot mobile phone towers, water towers and rooftops.
"Let's put it here," Mr. Nicholson said. By day's end, there was a 12-foot tripod holding two cameras inside protective globes, powered by solar panels and battery packs. The cameras were connected by satellite Wi-Fi and joined a growing network of nearly 1,300 remote, unblinking eyes on the most fire-prone landscapes of California.
“Most trips end up with someone bleeding,” Mr. Nicholson said. He shrugged and smiled, his usual disposition.
Mr. Nicholson has been doing this for 12 years. His role as senior engineering supervisor is to set up all the IT components of the systems in the field while maintaining a contagious can-do vibe for his crew.
These days it includes John Connolly, a talkative 30-year-old ex-Marine who does most of the tallest tower climbs; Jim Conley, a burly 63-year-old who surfs, rides motocross bikes and acts like a construction foreman; and Kai Erwin, 30, the quiet, self-described "gofer" of the group.
Their boss, Neal Driscoll, is principal investigator at Alert California and a University of California, San Diego, professor. He has a woolly mustache and looks a bit like the actor Nick Offerman in "Parks and Recreation."
"I hire for attitude," Dr. Driscoll said. "I want people who don't give up, who exploit other people's strengths and not their weaknesses and who like a cold beer at the end of the day."
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本周金句
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📄 Original Section
Spotting a Fire in Its Infancy
Alert California is based at U.C. San Diego and the field team works out of a nondescript building within steps of the Pacific Ocean. Mr. Nicholson pointed to the beach where he surfs.
"That's why I love this job," he said. "Not only do I get to travel and help people, but I have an office here."
He and Mr. Connolly stood in a storage room lined with Costco-like shelves filled with equipment — surveillance cameras, solar panels, satellite dishes, 80-pound batteries, modems, plus wiring and cables, nuts and bolts, wrenches and clamps, sledges and shovels, and anything else that might prove useful in attaching heavy equipment to structures in the wild.
Summer is especially busy. The crew may install cameras at a dozen sites during a two-week trip, come home to repack, then do it again. Along the way, they repair cameras that have gone dark because of dead batteries, rodent-chewed cables, lightning strikes, last winter's blizzards or the latest wildfire.
Some of the most captivating footage comes when fire engulfs the cameras. Other popular images show nesting California condors.
The network of remote sensors that eventually grew into Alert California began in 2001 to detect and communicate seismic activity around San Diego. When the 2003 Cedar fire near San Diego burned more than a quarter-million acres and killed 15 people, it was clear cameras would be useful. A local utility asked to have more than two dozen installed.
State officials, utilities and fire departments were convinced that investing in more cameras was a smart move, and linking them into one open-source, nonprofit system made the most sense. Alert California's budget can approach \$14 million per year, Dr. Driscoll said, funded mostly by Cal Fire, the state's firefighting agency, and large utility companies.
Fire officials cite examples of little-known fires that were snuffed out quickly thanks to early detection.
"The greatest success stories are the fires you've never heard about," said
Colby Nicholson setting up a camera system near the Shadequarter Lookout. The team installs and maintains camera systems on public and private land.
Clockwise from left: members of the Alert California team installing a camera to monitor wildfire activity near Napa, Calif.; the team on the move; John Connolly, who does most of the teams tallest tower climbs, descending from the abandoned Shadequarter Lookout, above Visalia; and Mr. Connolly setting up a camera on the lookout.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MAX WHITTAKER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Falko Kuester, co-director of Alert California and an engineering professor at U.C. San Diego.
Spotting a blaze in its infancy allows officials in command centers to determine whether the smoke is truly a wildfire, and not from a rancher burning debris or fog rolling through a valley. They can decide how many firefighters to send, whether to strike by air or let the fire burn while being monitored.
Dr. Driscoll pointed to October 2017, when fires in Napa and Sonoma Counties were the most destructive in state history at the time — since overtaken by several other fires — and killed dozens of people. Two years later, new cameras in parts of the same region helped lead to quick detection and remote management of the huge Kincade fire. There was less destruction and no fatalities.
Dr. Driscoll wants to grow the network to 1,800 cameras and fill gaps in coverage. Local and regional fire officials have worrisome spots, like Soda Canyon. More and more, people request cameras on their property.
Each installation involves two cameras, in case one of them fails. They have different strengths — to see long distances, to capture crisp images at night, to see through thick smoke.
One camera is set up to spin 360 degrees every 2 minutes, capturing six frames per rotation. The other can be controlled remotely by fire officials who want to aim certain directions or zoom in tight on specific spots.
Artificial intelligence, introduced to the system in 2023, is a growing part of surveillance. Dr. Driscoll said this summer that 51 percent of California wildfires are first spotted through A.I. and the ratio is growing quickly.
"We are the science of risk reduction," Driscoll said. "I love that phrase."
The field team woke up at a Holiday Inn in Visalia. It had installed cameras that week on a mountaintop fire station, on a cellular tower and on an old lookout at nearly 7,000 feet.
From top, in still images from Alert California footage: a fire that eventually engulfed the camera, and a nesting California condor. Alert California's viewpoints have become a ubiquitous presence in emergency coverage.
ALERT CALIFORNIA
Lightning and high winds are persistent worries on installation days. Simply reaching the site can be the scariest part. There are stories of trucks stuck on precarious dirt roads and tires hanging off cliff edges. Long hikes to the sites are not an option. The heavy equipment can't be carried far.
On this day, the road to the work site got higher, narrower, windier and dustier before ending atop Shadequarter Mountain. The four-story tower, sheathed in peeling sheet metal, was built in 1964 and abandoned in the late 1980s because of budget cuts.
It stood 4,000 feet above Visalia and California's vast Central Valley. There were mountains in every other direction. The view was pocked with black splotches and burned-out trees, where the 2015 Rough fire, the 2021 KNP Complex fire and the 2024 Coffee Pot fire combined to burn about a quarter-million acres.
If only the system had been in place back then, maybe the response might have been different. Faster.
In a sunny spot at Shadequarter, the crew, with the silent choreography of a blue-collar dance troupe, built the tripod — a retrofitted, off-the-shelf deer stand — and anchored the legs with 60-pound bags of Quikrete. Digging holes can violate regulations regarding historic and Indigenous locations.
They attached an array of solar panels. They bolted on a large metal cabinet to house electronics, including two 80-pound lithium batteries. A StarLink satellite receiver was fixed atop the apparatus.
A fire official mentioned that a rancher sometimes ran cattle atop Shadequarter. The crew discussed whether cows would use the setup as a scratching post.
"I don't think they'll tip it over, but they might break a solar panel," Mr. Nicholson said. "Cows are heavy."
It was decided: Local officials would build a short chain-link fence the next day.
The crew ran wires through the cow-proof conduit about 30 feet to the tower. Mr. Connolly scaled the outside to string wiring to the top. Others, climbing interior stairs splotched in rodent feces, attached each camera to its own pole in front of now-broken windows.
Back on the ground, Mr. Nicholson sat at the tripod, holding a laptop. He could see the view from the cameras. He could move them, zoom them, spin them — just as remote fire officials would be able to do. He spotted smudges on the cameras and sent someone to clean them.
With a series of commands and passwords, the cameras were connected to the system. Suddenly, anyone in the world could see the view from the top of the fire tower.
The field team snaked downhill in a cloud of dust. Mr. Nicholson and the others didn't know where they were headed because the schedule was in flux. They didn't have a hotel for the night and they didn't have dinner plans.
Mamdani Orders Reforms After Fatal Police Shooting
ficers Alongi and Cianfrocco.
By MILES G. COHEN
Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on Monday that the New York Police Department had reformed how it would handle parts of its oversight after an officer was allowed to retire before facing a disciplinary trial over the death of a teenager.
Mr. Mamdani also ordered the police to conduct a review of their use-of-force policies, which were central to an oversight board's decision to recommend excessive force charges against the officer, Salvatore Alongi, in the death of the 19-year-old Win Rozario in 2024.
"When the government uses force against a New Yorker, the standard for accountability must be at its highest," Mr. Mamdani said in a statement. "Every New Yorker deserves to know that force will be used lawfully, carefully and only when necessary."
The announcement on Monday came as Mr. Mamdani has faced criticism from his base for not doing enough to transform public safety — a pledge he made during his mayoral campaign.
Tensions flared further last week as the Democratic Socialists of America called on the mayor to fire Jessica S. Tisch, the police commissioner, after the shooting of a Dominican man in the Bronx by federal immigration agents. Federal officials said the man, Oscar Belgal, had a string of arrests and “indirect or direct knowledge” of a shooting that injured an off-duty customs officer in Manhattan in July 2025. Mr. Belgal accelerated when the agents approached his vehicle, they added.
The new measures, the mayor's office said, were a response to Mr. Rozario's killing and the department's failure to notify the review board responsible for prosecuting Officer Alongi's case that he was on the path to retirement.
Last September, the Civilian Complaint Review Board voted to substantiate claims that Officer Alongi and Officer Matthew Cianfrocco had used excessive force when they fatally shot Mr. Rozario in Queens after the police said he lunged at them with scissors. Days later, Ms. Tisch recommended that charges move ahead to an administrative trial. In December 2025, Letitia James, the attorney general, declined to bring criminal charges against Of-
In August the C.C.R.B asked the police about Mr. Alongi's status and learned that he had retired in May, preventing the case against him from going forward, according to the board and a chronology of the events provided by the police.
According to an agreement between the agencies, it is the Police Department's responsibility to inform the watchdog board when an officer facing departmental charges files for retirement. In those cases, the review board can then expedite the prosecution, before the officer's pension is finalized.
After news of Mr. Alongi's retirement, Ms. Tisch said the failure was a result of "human error" and apologized for it.
"When we make a mistake, we need to acknowledge it," she said in a statement.
After the failed communication came to light, the Police Department put in place a new notification system to "facilitate the completion of the disciplinary process before an officer retires," according to the mayor's office.
Still, Notan Eva Costa and Francis Rozario, the parents of Mr. Rozario, said they were "disgusted" when they learned that the officer charged with misconduct in their son's death could no longer be prosecuted.
"We're disgusted by Commissioner Tisch's response to our family exposing that the N.Y.P.D. let Alongi retire with a full pension, without standing trial," the family members said in a statement, released by Justice Committee, an advocacy group.
Dakota Gardner, a spokesman for the Civilian Complaint Review Board, said the trial of Mr. Cianfrocco, the other officer facing departmental charges, "will continue as planned."
Patrick Hendry, the president of the police officers' union, said there should be no review of the use-of-force policies and called the C.C.R.B's recommendations in the case "blatantly biased."
"The mayor's radical base wants a wholesale dismantling of the N.Y.P.D. and it's clear this announcement is an attempt to appease them," Mr. Hendry said in a statement. "It won't work, and it won't make New Yorkers any safer."
热门话题
在从竞选活动中消失九天后，塔拉里科于周五在奥斯汀城市极限（Austin City Limits）音乐节上现身。他表示自己此前因患流感在家休养。
Waves From Powerful Storm Pound Homes in California
By TIM ARANGO
Large waves from Post-Tropical Storm Rachel slammed into homes on the beachfront in Long Beach, Calif., over the weekend, leaving some of the houses appearing close to collapsing.
Long Beach city officials had red-tagged 13 homes on the peninsula, meaning all residents were forced to evacuate, in preparation for the surge in water levels from the remnants of Rachel, which moved inland from Baja California late Saturday night. One other home was yellow-tagged, meaning the occupants were ordered to prepare to evacuate at a moment's notice.
The storm surge produced dramatic visuals of large waves crashing into beachfront homes over the weekend, and while there appeared to be cracks emerging in the foundations of some, there were no reports of any of them collapsing yet, according to a spokesperson for Mayor Rex Richardson of Long Beach.
At a news briefing on Saturday, Mayor Richardson warned residents to be prepared for potential flooding driven by the El Niño weather pattern, saying, "Rachel's effects will reach the whole city, not just the peninsula." The city set up sand bag distribution sites, and the mayor asked residents to keep them on hand for "the entire El Niño season."
In an interview on Sunday, Mayor Richardson said the city had received less rain than anticipated, and that it had been able to manage minor flooding with large sandbags placed ahead of the storm. Some parking lots were flooded, and there were tidal pools on the beaches.
He said on Sunday afternoon that the city was still preparing for the possibility of water breaching the sea walls during high tide.
The Long Beach marathon went ahead as scheduled on Sunday, although the route was altered to avoid the bike path along the beach.
Elsewhere in Southern California, the National Weather Service had issued a tropical storm watch for San Diego County, but it was called off on Sunday.
提前投票
在五个参议院竞争激烈的州，已有 615,100 张选票投出。
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📄 Original Section
In Zoo Bathroom During Isaias, Honking Flamingos Win Hearts
By MAIA SPOTO
The big snakes had been coiled into trash cans. The male billy goats were holed up in the rabbit exhibit.
But it was the flamingos of ZooWorld in Panama City Beach, Fla., who would ultimately become overnight celebrities after a video posted on social media during Hurricane Isaias made the rounds. It has been viewed nearly two million times.
The 30 flamingos, honking and frolicking, were sheltering in a bathroom, bumbling between the sink and the stalls, shedding pink feathers onto a grippy floor mat.
The crew included Mr. Sparklepants, 10, the largest and most dominant of the flock. Scuttle and Mango Shrimproll, both 3, who had been raised by a ZooWorld zookeeper since they were eggs, were also there.
The cramped quarters for the pink birds were necessary to protect them from ferocious winds that threatened the enclosure where they normally sleep. So the flock of flamingos, known as a flamboyance, was ushered into the bathroom, whose block walls served as something of a fortress.
A mirror provided entertainment — the birds, seeing other flamingos in the reflection, began showing off.
Before Isaias made landfall on Friday, Kylie Appleton, the senior zookeeper, took a video, and then the team boarded up the door.
Erika Newell, the zoo's chief operating officer, spent Friday night in an apartment on the grounds, waking up every hour as the storm lashed the Gulf Coast to check on all the animals.
Crammed as they were, the flamingos were in the perfect spot, she said. The tight space calmed them down.
Ms. Newell is part of a network that provides support to zoos, aquariums and sanctuaries during natural disasters.
Since Ms. Newell started working with ZooWorld in 2017, she and the creatures have weathered a number of storms, including Michael, the Category 5 hurricane that brought devastation to the Florida Panhandle in 2018.
"You just have to say, 'Well, I either get these animals inside or they don't make it,' she said. "So you find a way to get those animals inside and you get very, very creative."
From left, Representative Rob Bresnahan, a Republican, getting some support for his campaign in Pennsylvania's Eighth Congressional District from Speaker Mike Johnson and Representatives Lisa McClain and Carlos A. Giménez last week in Hazleton.
RACHEL WISNIEWSKI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
By REID J. EPSTEIN
WASHINGTON — The Republican Party's hopes of saving its majorities in Congress increasingly appear to depend on a few possible outcomes: G.O.P. advantages in money and on the map pay off, the polls are wrong, or a major news development suddenly brightens the party's prospects.
In the meantime, Republicans in competitive races are doing whatever they can to try to loosen their ties to President Trump's agenda, which is dragging their party down with just three weeks to go before the midterm elections.
There have been new ads stating opposition to Trump's tariffs from candidates who supported them, calls to end the war in Iran from candidates who backed it and efforts to look bipartisan from candidates who pledged to be Trump's top allies.
The debates last week made clear that Republicans are on the back foot. Questions about high prices, tariffs and the war dominated the sessions in battleground states. While G.O.P. advertising often aims to link Democrats to their party's left-wing figures and stoke disputes about transgender athletes, cost-of-living issues are paramount to voters this year.
Trump's rhetoric is not helping his party. Even as his own approval ratings have plummeted, he urges voters to pretend that he is on the ballot. He extols data centers that are even less popular than he is. And he has shown no inclination to back off from his positions on the war in Iran or tariffs.
But then there is the money.
Thanks to Trump's super PACs and well-heeled political allies, Republicans still hold a commanding financial advantage. The billionaire Elon Musk has directed more than \$276 million to Republicans since the start of July.
Republicans hope that will help them pull through on a House map they sought to redraw in their favor and a Senate map that features plenty of races in red states. But the time to change minds and move votes is shrinking by the day.
尽管两党都认为今年的风向有利于民主党，但安德鲁斯博士也面临自己的障碍：向选民证明她能够赢得一个本世纪以来从未由民主党人持有的席位。上个月，库克政治报告（Cook Political Report）将这场竞选的状态从“稳操胜券的共和党”调整为“可能的共和党”。在两年前特朗普以超过 17 个百分点的优势获胜的州，这场竞争仍处于民主党今年野心的边缘地带。
Republicans have all but conceded the race in North Carolina to the Democrat, Roy Cooper, a popular former governor. In Georgia, Senator Jon Ossoff has a commanding lead over Representative Mike Collins. And now Democrats are on offense in deep-red Kansas, with Senate Majority PAC, the party's main super PAC, beginning \$5 million worth of ads in the state.
According to polls, Democratic candidates are leading or running neck and neck in Alaska, Iowa, Ohio and Texas — all places Trump won three times by substantial margins. He and Vice President JD Vance have aimed to energize the base with appearances in those states, but the polls suggest the Democrats are holding their own.
In the eyes of Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, Democrats even have a chance to take back the majority partly because of his recruiting efforts. In an interview on Friday, he claimed credit for getting Cooper, former Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and former Representative Mary Peltola of Alaska into their races and helping Josh Turek win his primary in Iowa.
Notes: Data is as of Oct. 9. Senate races rated as leaning or likely are grouped together as favoring the party. To control the Senate, Democrats would need to win 51 seats to overcome Vice President JD Vance's tie-breaking vote for Republicans. Source: The Cook Political Report race ratings.
"I couldn't accept the map as is because the map as is consigns us to a minority, all things being equal, just because of the way the states are structured," Schumer said. "So we had to expand the map. I didn't accept the original map. I worked to build a better one."
Still, some Democrats worry about Senate races that ought to be easier for them. Contests remain tight in Maine, Michigan and New Hampshire.
Things do not look promising for House Republicans' hopes of retaining their majority.
The Cook Political Report on Friday shifted 18 districts toward Democrats. Two Iowa seats, held by Representatives Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, are now considered "lean Democratic."
That is in addition to Republicans' already punting on the Omaha-based district held by the retiring Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska.
Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the House majority whip, said the issue is that Republican voters may be too "satisfied" with Trump to vote in November.
"The midterms, you typically have the party that wins the White House is satisfied," Emmer said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "If our people will turn out — you may be satisfied, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't vote. You show up and vote, we're going to be fine."
Democrats need to flip just three seats to take a House majority. Many election forecasters now suggest they will do much better than that. During a discussion last week, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, repeatedly declined to predict how many seats his party would win.
He did, however, suggest that Democrats would be able to re-
That's the percentage of Ohio voters who said Trump's policies have increased the cost of living in the state in a CNN/SSRS poll. The poll found Brown, the Democrat, up by six percentage points over Senator Jon Husted, the Republican, Trump and Vance have both visited the state recently in an attempt to increase support for Husted.
在另一个农业大州威斯康星州，来自关键选区、主张强硬且一直强力支持伊朗战争的共和党众议员德里克·范·奥登（Derrick Van Orden）周六表示，他对总统与普京先生的协议不予置评。
参议员罗杰·马歇尔此前已经在应对另一项关于他试图追讨未付账单的爆料。
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'If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery, Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club.'
Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia
Ossoff pulled no punches in his debate attacks on Representative Mike Collins, his Republican opponent in Georgia's Senate race. He said Collins had "hired half the Third Reich," a reference to Collins's hiring of aides who had espoused white nationalist and antisemitic views.
Collins responded that he had "condemned racism, antisemitism, hate."
Ruth Igielnik contributed reporting.
peat their successes from 2018, the last midterm with Trump in the White House.
"Past performance is not evidence of future results," he said. "But it provides at least a path for us to ascertain what is possible."
Even for Musk, a quarter-billion dollars is a lot to spend on politics in just three months.
The billionaire has once again become the largest single donor to Republican causes. The roughly \$276 million he directed to groups during July, August and September means his tab for the 2026 elections is now about \$366 million.
Musk's funds are split between \$158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, the main Senate G.O.P. super PAC; over \$76 million to America PAC, his own outlet that focuses on voter turnout; \$20 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, which supports House Republicans; and other donations. One of them reflects Musk's interest in the Texas Senate race: He gave \$10 million to a super PAC backing Ken Paxton, the Republican who polls show trails James Talarico, the Democratic candidate trying to become the first in his party to win a Texas Senate seat since 1988.
After vanishing from the campaign trail for nine days, Talarico emerged at the Austin City Limits music festival on Friday. He said he'd been home sick with the flu.
Talarico's Republican opponent, Paxton, had been making hay out of Talarico's whereabouts. What is next in the Texas campaign is unclear: Talarico on Saturday challenged Paxton to debate, and Trump has suggested that Paxton should debate, but Paxton has yet to agree to a debate.
Trump's latest idea to bring down gas prices — importing diesel fuel from Russia — got a chilly reception from some of his fellow Republicans, including a few in battleground races. Former Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan and Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska, who are locked in tight Senate races, disapproved of the idea. Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania said on Saturday that he would force a vote to block Russian oil purchases. The U.S. has forbidden importing Russian fuel since 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine.
这些外展活动大多将选民引导至 America PAC 的网站，保守派可以在那里了解如何登记投票。该超级 PAC 正在推广一种所谓的“美国通行证”（America Pass），这是一种存储在选民手机 Apple 或 Google 钱包中的数字卡片，列出了他们的登记信息以及所在州的选举日期和截止日期。
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On the Ground
In Maine, the cost of home heating oil is surging along with prices of seemingly everything else, forcing voters to pay more to stay warm just as fall temperatures drop.
Republicans concede the costs — up 80 percent over a year ago to fill a standard heating oil tank — are a problem for Senator Susan Collins, who backed the Iran war that drove up oil prices before she called for it to end.
A Trump Loyalist and a ‘Socialist’ Trade Jabs at South Carolina’s Senate Debate
By EMILY DAVIES
Senator Darline Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Dr. Annie Andrews, a Democrat and pediatrician, faced off in a televised debate for the first time on Sunday evening in a Senate contest that polls show is surprisingly close for such a conservative state.
Ms. Graham, who was appointed to her seat over the summer after the death of her brother, Lindsey Graham, is under pressure to show voters that she is fluent with policy issues despite her limited experience. During her last appearance on a debate stage, she said she was “not that informed on national security,” an answer that went viral online and called attention to what is perhaps her greatest vulnerability.
Dr. Andrews faces hurdles of her own, despite the favorable winds that both parties see blowing for Democrats this year: proving to voters that she can win a seat that a Democrat has not held this century. Last month, the Cook Political Report shifted the race from solidly Republican to likely Republican. In a state that President Trump carried just two years ago by more than 17 percentage points, the contest remains at the outer reaches of the Democratic Party's ambitions this year.
On Sunday, Ms. Graham repeated the same talking points and articulated few policy positions, doing little to ease concerns about her weaknesses but avoiding a major gaffe, unlike in her primary debate. Here are five takeaways from their debate.
Two candidates framing each other as disloyal to South Carolina
Ms. Graham set out to depict Dr. Andrews as a candidate who, if elected, would not "stand up to socialist Democrats" who "cheered in the streets of New York" over the Hamas-led attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Dr. Andrews called Ms. Graham the "White House's ambassador to South Carolina" who "considers the job to be to read their scripts and do their bidding," referring to her relationship with Mr. Trump.
Dr. Andrews has a history of emphatically supporting transgender people and of using language she since has softened in her general election bid. And Ms. Graham won the Republican primary election only after Mr. Trump endorsed her and took significant steps, including a trip to South Carolina, to elevate her above two more experienced opponents.
In a race where each side is trying to paint the other as beholden to forces outside South Carolina, it appears likely that the outcome will come down to which of those divergent portraits voters choose to believe.
Dr. Andrews made a play for independents and Republicans
Dr. Andrews opened the debate by speaking directly to independents and Republicans who feel betrayed by the ruling party both in South Carolina and in Washington. That pitch has become a key part of her strategy in the final stretch of the campaign, and is a clear acknowledgment that without some crossover votes, she can't win in a deeply conservative state.
She invoked her father, a Republican, and ticked through a number of policy positions to appeal to a conservative-leaning electorate.
She said she supported the Second Amendment, wanted to lower taxes on the middle class and stressed that "we need to deport illegal immigrants who break the law."
Dr. Andrews has been a senior adviser to Everytown, a prominent organization that advocates gun control. Ms. Graham accused her of “deceiving the people of South Carolina,” saying she has “flip-flopped on everything.”
Even if Dr. Andrews wins over some of those voters, she faces an uphill battle.
Six years ago, Democrats were similarly energized over Jaime Harrison, a former Democratic Party chairman who was neck and neck with Mr. Graham in the final stretch of the election, polls showed at the time.
Mr. Harrison went on to lose to Mr. Graham by 10 points, a devastating blow to the Democratic Party's ambitions.
Dr. Andrews's supporters are hopeful that Ms. Graham's vulnerabilities and the deteriorating political environment for Republicans have created a unique opening, but history still casts a shadow over the party.
如果第一轮六发子弹未能立即杀死被定罪的士兵，在医疗官员的指示下，第二组六名士兵可被命令向囚犯射击。一名携带手枪的中士还可以通过将枪口置于囚犯耳朵“正上方”且“距离头骨一英尺”处，执行“最后一击”（coup de grâce）。
在确认囚犯死亡后，军队乐队将演奏一段“轻快的曲调”，随后集结的士兵和行刑队将离开现场。
该手册还指示：“除官方用途外，不允许拍摄实际执行死刑的照片或电影。”
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An unfortunate choice of words from Ms. Graham
Ms. Graham ended the debate with another stumble that played into another one of her potential vulnerabilities: her close relationship to Mr. Trump.
Just before the debate concluded, Ms. Graham said, "I've had a job representing the people of Wash—" before correcting herself to say "South Carolina."
Dr. Andrews's campaign immediately seized on the mistake.
"At least she's honest about one thing," Dr. Andrews tweeted. "I'll be a Senator for South Carolina,
NOT Washington."
Who was that other woman on the stage?
Some viewers tuning in to the debate on Sunday night may have been surprised to see a third candidate running for Senate in South Carolina: a libertarian, radio host and assistant professor of management at the University of South Carolina named Kasie Whitener.
Dr. Andrews and Ms. Graham seemed to agree on how to handle Dr. Whitener: by largely ignoring her on the stage.
At one point, Dr. Whitener had to remind her opponents that she, too, was running for office.
"You're not the only one on the campaign trail," she said to Dr. Andrews, after the Democrat attacked Ms. Graham, who has spent much of the last few months in Washington, for devoting little time to campaigning.
"You're just the only one that has a posse following you around and taking videos of you."
特朗普先生个人非常关注这些广告的播出。据《纽约时报》本月报道，他指示管理和预算办公室主任罗素·T·沃特（Russell T. Vought）为这些广告筹措资金。
扎克·蒙塔古（Zach Montague）参与了报道。
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Assessing Senate Ads In Battleground States
Misleading Attacks on Votes in Congress
By LINDA QIU
With less than a month to go until the November midterms, both parties have blanketed the airwaves with campaign ads in battleground states as they seek control over Congress.
comparison.
In Iowa, New Hampshire and North Carolina — three of the most competitive Senate races in the country — candidates and groups supporting them have all spent millions on ads faulting their opposition with failing to curb the cost of living, a top issue for voters, among other attacks.
Here's a fact check of some of those claims.
WHAT WAS SAID
"Here are the facts. It's Ashley Hinson who's missed nearly 200 votes in Congress. Votes to crack down on child pornography, reduce crime and lower health care costs."
— Senate Majority PAC, a top Democratic super PAC, in an ad that began airing in September
This is misleading. Representative Ashley Hinson, the Republican Senate candidate in Iowa, and various groups supporting her candidacy have spent millions of dollars on ads attacking Josh Turek, a state representative and the Democratic nominee, for missing 38 percent of votes in the Iowa legislature this year. (The claim is accurate.)
In response, Mr. Turek and groups that support him have retorted that Ms. Hinson, too, has a record of absenteeism in the House — including missing votes to lower health care costs — by making an apples-to-oranges
The Senate Majority PAC cited Ms. Hinson missing 33 roll-call votes — or recorded votes on the House floor — as well as 163 votes in various committees she sits on since January 2021, when she first entered office.
But typically, a missed vote refers to a roll-call vote on the House floor, and Ms. Hinson actually has a better attendance record than most members of Congress. According to Gov-Track, a nonprofit website that tracks congressional activities, Ms. Hinson has missed 33 of 2,915 roll-call votes from January 2021 to September 2026. That's about 1.1 percent, less than the median of 2.1 percent among current members in the House. This year, she has missed five out of 314 votes, about 1.6 percent.
"A missed vote is a missed vote, and Ashley Hinson missed nearly 200 of them during her time in Congress," Lauren French, a spokeswoman for the Democratic group, said in a statement.
The tally in the ad included missed committee votes. Ms. Hinson missed a roll-call vote in the House Appropriations Committee on a specific proposal to increase funding for community-based violence prevention programs.
Senate Majority PAC said Ms. Hinson missed a voice vote on an amendment to increase funding for programs that combat the exploitation of children and another voice vote on extending medical education programs in rural areas. But it is not clear whether Ms. Hinson was present for those particular votes as, by definition, voice votes do not take attendance. Both amendments passed without any opposition.
CHARLIE NEIBERGALL/GETTY IMAGES
IOWA Representative Ashley Hinson, a Republican, voted more often than an ad let on.
Billy Fuerst, a spokesman for the Hinson campaign, argued that by the ad's logic, there is no record of any member of Congress supporting those amendments since names and position were not logged. Moreover, he said, Ms. Hinson voted to advance the funding bills that included the two provisions to the full House.
WHAT WAS SAID
"Pappas voted to line the pockets of health insurers with billions of tax dollars. Pappas even voted against vital funding for rural and vulnerable hospitals. Bigger profits for big insurance, higher costs for you."
— No Going Back PAC, a Republican super PAC, in an ad that began airing in September
This is misleading. This ad attacking Representative Chris Pappas, the Democratic nominee for Senate in New Hampshire, describes his opposition to the Republicans' signature tax cut and domestic spending package as a vote against funding for rural hospitals.
That characterization omits the bulk of what the legislation actually does: Extend tax cuts and cut social safety net programs. And it ignores that a provision creating a fund for rural hospitals was largely included to address deep funding cuts to Medicaid that threatened rural hospitals.
NEW HAMPSHIRE Representative Chris Pappas opposed a tax bill that cut the safety net.
JOHN TULLY/GETTY IMAGES
The domestic spending legislation created a \$50 billion fund for rural hospitals but also cut Medicaid spending in rural areas by \$137 billion over a decade, according to an analysis by KFF, a health policy nonprofit. So while Mr. Pappas technically voted against the \$50 billion fund, he also voted against the \$137 billion cut to rural Medicaid spending.
The ad also cites Mr. Pappas's support for legislation to extend extra subsidies for Obamacare as votes to "line the pockets of health insurers," echoing a longstanding criticism.
Extra subsidies created in 2021 during the pandemic made health insurance less expensive for most people enrolled in plans under the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But despite Democratic efforts to extend them and Mr. Pappas's support, those subsidies expired this year. As a result, millions of Americans have dropped Obamacare coverage, and premiums have increased for many more. Conservative critics have argued that the extra subsidies enriched insurers, even as premiums continued to increase.
KENT NISHIMURA-POOL/GETTY IMAGES
NORTH CAROLINA Michael Whatley's comments on inflation from 2025 resurfaced.
The ad was funded by No Going Back PAC, a new super PAC with ties to MAGA Inc., President Trump's main super PAC. The group said Mr. Pappas "should be ashamed" of his vote.
WHAT WAS SAID
"I'm going to show you something. No A.I., no special effects, just Michael Whatley in his own words: 'Grocery prices are down, gasoline prices are down, housing prices are down, inflation is down.' Unbelievable. And so is this: 'There is no inflation.'"
— Former Gov. Roy Cooper, the Democratic nominee for Senate in North Carolina, in an ad that began airing in September
This needs context. It's true that the ad features remarks made by Michael Whatley, the Republican candidate, without special effects or enhancements by artificial intelligence. But the ad omits that those remarks occurred more than a year earlier, in an interview in July 2025, when overall prices were increasing at a
slower pace and gas prices were stable.
At the time Mr. Whatley made those remarks, mortgage rates had dipped slightly and Mr. Trump's war in Iran, and its accompanying surge in gas prices, was still months away. The New York Times had reported that inflation had accelerated, but remained relatively calm in the early months of the second Trump administration. Economists, though, were warning that the impact of Mr. Trump's tariff policies would soon manifest in the form of higher prices.
The average price for gas in the country was \$3.13 a gallon, not too different from the \$3.10 a gallon at the end of January 2025, when Mr. Trump began his second term. Average 30-year mortgage rates had fallen to about 6.7 percent in July 2025 from about 7 percent that January.
"Prices were down considerably in 2025 from the record-setting inflation caused by Joe Biden's reckless spending policies endorsed by Roy Cooper," DJ Griffin, a spokesman for the Whatley campaign, said in a statement.
Still, Mr. Whatley was wrong that grocery prices, housing and inflation were “down” in the summer of 2025. The Consumer Price Index had risen by 2.7 percent in June 2025 from a year earlier, housing by 4 percent and food-at-home by 2.4 percent.
In comparison, the C.P.I. increased by 3.4 percent this August, the latest available data, food-at-home by 2.2 percent and housing by 3.1 percent. In the first week of October, gas prices averaged \$4.35, and mortgage rates were higher than when Mr. Trump took office.
The Cooper campaign said Mr. Whatley has for months engaged in a pattern of downplaying and making false statements about inflation, for example, saying in January that “there is no inflation” and in September that “we are not getting gouged” on gas prices.
President Trump's announcement of a deal with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to import Russian diesel has drawn criticism from some Republicans running in the most competitive midterm races, as the party grasps for ways to contain soaring energy prices.
The president announced the arrangement, which undercuts U.S. sanctions on Moscow, under pressure to rein in the surging price of diesel. The product's cost has climbed because of the war with Iran, which has clogged a vital oil-shipping corridor, and high energy prices have become a severe campaign liability for Republican candidates in the midterms.
But the campaigns of two Republicans running in pivotal Senate races — former Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan and Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska — expressed disapproval of the deal with Russia. And other Republicans running in competitive Senate and House races had little to say about the agreement, which Mr. Trump trumpeted Friday on social media as a “very big and important” deal, claiming it would swiftly bring down energy costs.
"It's a grave error by the president," said Representative Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican from a battleground district who is not running for re-election. "People realize that the sanctions on Russia are appropriate when Russia's invading a country and bombing cities at night."
Mr. Bacon predicted the deal would have little effect on soaring diesel prices but would offer a victory for one of America's adversaries. And the congressman said that the agreement would not help Republican candidates. "It looks desperate," he said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The deal received some Republican praise. Representative Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican running in a competitive race, wrote on social media that it would "massively benefit the American people."
The United States introduced sanctions on energy exports from Russia after the country started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Mr. Trump's deal, and his declaration Saturday that Ukraine should "get a new president," escalated U.S. tensions with Kyiv. The issue of U.S. support for the country has for years divided Republicans; the two Republican Senate candidates who questioned the deal have long been supporters of Ukraine.
Some Midwestern Republicans have called for a pause on diesel exports to try to lower costs for American consumers, a notion that Mr. Trump has ruled out.
Energy experts say the deal is not likely to have a major impact on the cost of diesel, which has spiked to around \$6.28 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club, up from \$3.67 a year ago. Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, an energy consulting firm in Houston, said the deal would introduce a "very small" amount of diesel into the market "compared to U.S. demand."
In Michigan, Mr. Rogers, who has recently sought distance from Mr. Trump by calling for the president to end both the Iran war and his tariff fight with Canada, told reporters on Friday that he supported an agricultural rebate for diesel, but not the president's approach.
Mr. Rogers, long a foreign policy hawk, cited concern about offering Mr. Putin a victory. "You just don't want to give that guy an inch," he said.
In Alaska, a spokesman for Mr. Sullivan, Nate Adams, said in a statement that the senator "believes American energy dominance is the answer to high prices, and that means producing more of it in Alaska, for Alaskans, by Alaskans, not importing it from Russia."
Democrats pounced on the deal. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, wrote on social media that the president had made a “deal with the devil to try to help his flailing political fortunes.”
Representative Chris Pappas, the Democratic nominee in the competitive Senate race in New Hampshire, said in a statement that the agreement was a "slap in the face to Ukraine and our allies overseas." The campaign of his Republican opponent, the former Senator John E. Sununu, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The high cost of diesel poses a particular risk for Republicans running in states whose farming-heavy economies are powered by diesel, such as Nebraska, Iowa and Kansas.
The campaigns of the Republican Senate candidates in two of those states, Representative Ashley Hinson of Iowa and Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the president's deal with Russia. Their hotly contested races, staged in conservative states, could help decide control of the Senate.
Mr. Rogers, Mr. Sullivan and Ms. Hinson have all called for the United States to pause diesel exports.
In Wisconsin, another heavily agricultural state, Representative Derrick Van Orden, a hawkish Republican in a battleground district who has been a forceful supporter of the Iran war, said Saturday that he had no comment on the president's deal with Mr. Putin.
ERIC LEE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Senator Roger Marshall was already contending with a separate revelation about unpaid bills that he sought to collect on.
A Kansas Senator Settles a Bakery Bill, 6 Years Later
By TIM BALK
Senator Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican, has faced a series of challenges in his unexpectedly close race for re-election.
The latest: A six-year-old unpaid bill for 150 frosted sugar cookies, 100 mini strawberry muffins and 100 fudge brownies, posted online by an angry baker.
The bill, the baker wrote in a social media post that quickly went viral on Thursday, was from Mr. Marshall's primary night watch party in 2020. The cookies' butter-cream frosting carried his name in blue and yellow. And the source of her frustration was that Mr. Marshall's 2020 campaign had never paid her the nearly \$700 she said it owed her.
On Saturday, Mr. Marshall wrote on social media that he had paid the bill, bringing more attention to a curious saga that his opponent's campaign had seized on.
The bill began gaining widespread notice on Thursday afternoon, after the baker, Holly Thomas of Hutchinson, Kan., wrote an eight-paragraph Facebook post.
"Six years later, I haven't forgotten," she wrote, recalling that repeated phone and email inquires seeking payment had gone unanswered. "That experience is why Roger Marshall will never get my vote."
“我们为该遗址的死者进行了祈祷，”危机护理牧师服务机构（Crisis Care Chaplaincy）的牧师格雷格·卡尔（Greg Carr）在上周的一次采访中表示。
他表示，重新安葬工作将于春季进行。
詹妮弗·辛科·凯勒赫（Jennifer Sinco Kelleher）参与了报道。
在康奈尔大学案件中被指控的兄弟会分会 Chi Phi 仍被禁止进入校园。七名成员正面临起诉。
海瑟·安斯沃思 为《纽约时报》拍摄
📄 Original Section
Cookies, muffins and brownies from a primary night party.
publican who may need every vote he can get in a race that polls indicate is neck-and-neck, rushed to respond. He was already contending with a separate revelation about unpaid bills that he had sought to collect on: Last month, The New York Times reported that he had filed lawsuits against more than 700 patients with outstanding bills during his decades-long career as an obstetrician-gynecologist, and that he had routinely charged patients an 18 percent annual interest rate.
On Thursday evening, Tyson Brody, a spokesman for the Rev. Adam Hamilton, Mr. Marshall's Democratic opponent, amplified the baker's post, writing on social media that the bakery bill was "larger than debts for which Roger Marshall had patients sued." (The unpaid medical bills ranged from \$101 to several thousand dollars.)
By Friday, Mr. Marshall had paid Ms. Thomas back, she said in an interview. On Saturday, he addressed the issue in a post on his official X account.
"As some folks may have seen, there was a post on social media regarding an unpaid 2020 cookie bill," Mr. Marshall wrote. "We have absolutely no idea how this happened."
But, he added, "as it became known to us, we immediately attempted to contact the business in order to apologize, and we have repaid the bill from 2020, double."
The senator attached an invoice showing that he had sent \$1,300 to Ms. Thomas's bakery, Holly's Sweet Treats. That amount was not quite double the original bill, which had been for \$678.75, according to the copy that Ms. Thomas posted on Facebook last week.
It was not clear if Mr. Marshall's response would satisfy some of the commenters who had seized on the initial post. One had argued that Mr. Marshall owed Ms. Thomas as more than \$1,400, accounting for interest.
Mr. Marshall's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for further comment on the bill. Several Republican strategists said that Mr. Marshall had handled an unfortunate situation as well as he could.
Ms. Thomas, for her part, said she still had no intention of voting for Mr. Marshall, though she added that his payment was "the right thing to do."
"I can't put all the blame on him," said Ms. Thomas, 43, recalling that the initial order had been placed by a campaign staff member. "But as a business owner, when my staff messes up, it falls on me as well."
She has been closely following the Senate race and "impulsively" wrote her post as she complained at work about the years-old order, she recalled.
"I just made a post about Roger Marshall and how he didn't pay me," Ms. Thomas said she had declared at work. "We'll see what happens. Maybe he will pay me."
By Thursday evening, her phone began pinging with messages as she watched her daughter's volleyball game. She had a theory, she said, for why the post took off.
"He's let a lot of people down in the state," said Ms. Thomas, who declined to share her political affiliation. "And people are frustrated with how things are going."
Some on social media accused Mr. Marshall of hypocrisy, citing his own business practices.
"I do think he's a hypocrite," Lindsey Derr, 43, a Democrat in Hutchinson, Kan., who had already planned to vote against Mr. Marshall, said in a phone conversation. She added, "It makes me very upset."
Mr. Marshall is trying to avoid becoming the first Republican to lose a Senate race in Kansas since 1932. His campaign says the senator gets results for Kansas. But he has been challenged by steep price increases that the Iran war has inflicted on farmers.
On Saturday, Mr. Hamilton's campaign issued a statement aiming to encapsulate the episode in a single word: "Cookiegate."
在最近的一段视频中，康奈尔大学校长迈克尔·I·科特利科夫（Michael I. Kotlikoff）表示，大学应该“认真审视”校园内兄弟会和姐妹会的角色。但他似乎对禁令持犹豫态度。在上周二与教职员工的一次虚拟会议中，科特利科夫博士暗示，禁令“在短期内可能看起来像是一个强有力的声明，但无法解决问题——而且可以说可能会使问题恶化”。
Musk's G.O.P. Donations for the Midterms Rise to \$366 Million
Elon Musk with the president last month. Musk has patched up his relationship with President Trump and is quietly spending enormous amounts of money to help Republicans in the midterms. Below, political pamphlets paid for by Mr. Musk's political operation.
DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES
From Page AI
vassing program to try to turn out hard-to-reach Republican voters. The group is active in seven Senate battlegrounds and nearly three dozen House races.
Mr. Musk has already given far more money, about \$366 million, to federal committees during the 2025-26 election cycle than he did during the 2024 election, when he laid out roughly \$290 million to help return President Trump and Republicans to power. He has given even more in undisclosed donations during both elections, according to people briefed on the giving.
The latest torrent of spending has helped give the Republican Party a financial advantage in the midterms, as well-funded outside groups like Mr. Trump's powerful super PAC flood the airwaves with advertising in the final weeks. No Democratic billionaire is spending nearly as much as Mr. Musk, and money remains a central worry for the party in an otherwise favorable political environment.
The donations also clear up the mystery of how much staying power Mr. Musk wants to have in American politics.
"In terms of political spending, I'm going to do a lot less in the future," he said in May 2025.
Mr. Musk, who oversees a vast business empire that has benefited from enormous federal contracts, is famously unpredictable and often jumps from one project to another. He has been far quieter about his political work since his dramatic blowup with Mr. Trump last year. After months of wielding vast influence inside the White House and overseeing Mr. Trump's government cost-cutting project, he raged against the president's major domestic policy bill and floated threats to start a third party.
But the two men have warmed back up, appearing together at three events in the last two weeks and praising each other.
Now Mr. Musk has donated more than a quarter-billion dollars to help Mr. Trump and Republicans in the midterms. The money signals his commitment to the right and sets him up as a potential player in the 2028 presidential election, when his super PAC says it intends to remain active — the first time it has confirmed such plans.
Beyond Mr. Musk's donations to his super PAC and the Senate Leadership Fund, his representatives said that from July through September, he had given smaller but still substantial amounts to other conservative groups:
■ \$20 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the main super PAC for House Republicans
■ \$10 million to Lone Star Liberty PAC, a group supporting Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee for Senate in Texas
■ \$10 million to the Republican Governors Association
■ \$2 million to the Republican Attorneys General Association
"If Democrats take control of Washington and win key guberna-
Juliana Castro Varón contributed analysis.
torial and attorney general races this November, then America risks becoming a socialist, woke and borderless country," said Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for America PAC. "These robust investments have allowed the G.O.P. apparatus to get its message out so Republicans can have a fighting chance to defy history."
On voters' doors across Texas, the campaign literature carries a stark warning: "Radical Democrat socialists are winning elections all across America. Could Texas be next?"
The hanging door cards are the work of Mr. Musk's voter-turnout operation, which deployed nearly 3,000 paid canvassers last week around the country, according to America PAC officials.
The group has devoted most of its more than \$76 million in midterm spending so far to this canvassing program, shelling out smaller amounts on advertising, mail, phone calls and text messages. Much of the messaging targets Democrats, sometimes in misleading or overheated ways.
This spring, Mr. Trump's political advisers asked Mr. Musk to reprise America PAC's 2024 field program, a person familiar with the conversation said. Despite the challenging environment for Republicans, some party strategists believe that a field program can make the difference in particularly tight races.
America PAC relies on a few voter-canvassing firms that compete aggressively with one another for work and for staffing, according to people briefed on the operation.
Turnover in the canvassing industry is high. One canvasser who worked for America PAC told The
Times that he was paid between \$1.50 and \$3.00 for each door he knocked on across Texas in the heat. America PAC says it has knocked on about 6.5 million doors across the country so far.
Mr. Musk and his operation, people close to them say, have been particularly focused on the Texas Senate race. The group has unloaded over a third of its disclosed spending in that expensive race, more than in any other. It is uncommon to run an extensive field campaign in large states like Texas, where television ads are more often used to reach voters.
Mr. Musk, a resident of Austin, has extensive business interests and property holdings in Texas. Mr. Paxton, the state attorney general, has investigated Mr.
Musk's opponents, like Media Matters, a liberal group.
Mr. Musk's \$10 million donation to Mr. Paxton's super PAC came at a critical time, when the Republican candidate was being badly outspent.
And Mr. Musk's \$158 million in donations to the Senate Leadership Fund, the most the super PAC has ever received from a single donor in a quarter, may have made it possible for that group to suddenly spend big for Mr. Paxton after months of reluctance.
That is because Mr. Musk's donations preceded the decision in late August by the super PAC, led by allies of Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, to start what has become a \$149 million pro-Paxton ad campaign.
As it did in 2024, Mr. Musk's operation is focused not on persuading swing voters, but on registering and turning out voters with conservative beliefs — especially "low-propensity" ones who are less likely to cast a ballot.
This is a lot harder for Republicans in a midterm election, without Mr. Trump at the top of the ballot.
To do it, Mr. Musk's super PAC is leaning hard into the culture wars, especially transgender issues. (Mr. Musk's daughter, who is transgender, has spoken about their clashes over her identity, and he has suggested that this led to his increased political engagement.)
At voters' doors in Texas, canvassers are told to target Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic candidate for governor, over her record on transgender issues, according to parts of a script reviewed by The Times.
Similarly, the Musk operation is leaving literature on doors that claims that James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas, has a “radical trans agenda.” And America PAC’s top ad in the state, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact, denounces Mr. Talarico over his past comments suggesting that “God is nonbinary.”
The Musk group is also targeting other Democratic Senate candidates over transgender issues, including Josh Turek, the party's nominee in Iowa. Nationally, one of the super PAC's most visible ads on Facebook features a man in makeup and reads: "He made his plan to vote. Did you? Don't stay home while crazies elect radicals." The group is running ads and sending mail on a broad range of topics, but socialism is a core theme. The Musk super PAC regularly attacks Democrats as socialist and ties them to figures like Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, according to 48 pieces of direct mail shared by Mintt, a mail-tracking firm.
Online, it is even running personalized messaging that invokes a voter's first name. For example, in a video showing smiling Democrats: "Why are they smiling? Because Christopher hasn't made a plan to vote yet."
Much of this outreach points voters to an America PAC website where conservatives can learn about how to register to vote. The super PAC is pushing what it calls an "America Pass," a digital card on Apple or Google wallets on voters' phones that lists their registration information, along with election dates and deadlines in their home state.
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观点
纽约时报
📄 Original Section
Big Spender, Back-Seat Role
While Mr. Musk is spending big again and using some tactics that are similar to those he deployed two years ago, this is not 2024 anymore.
He is in a different place politically. While he and Mr. Trump appear to be on good terms again — "our modern-day Thomas Edison," the president called him on Thursday — Mr. Musk is taking a hands-off approach this election and does not appear as personally passionate.
He has not brought up the midterm elections or the Trump presidency much in private conversations with friends, according to people who have spoken to him in recent months. He is focused on his businesses, these people say, and he and his business lieutenants have taken a less active role in America PAC's operations, entrusting major decisions to Chris Young, his top adviser.
And on X, a semi-reliable indicator of where the billionaire's mind is, Mr. Musk has written just seven direct posts this year about candidates in competitive midterm races, according to a Times review, a far cry from his relentless calls throughout 2024 to elect Mr. Trump. Five of those posts focused on Mr. Talarico — and one appeared critical of Senator Susan Collins, a vulnerable Republican in Maine.
Gone, too, are Mr. Musk's barnstorming campaign stops, like the ones he did in Pennsylvania in October 2024 or a Wisconsin judicial election in the spring of 2025. There are no more sweepstakes where he personally hands an oversize check of \$1 million to some registered voters who sign a petition, a gambit that drew legal challenges.
Mr. Musk has not evidently grown infatuated with candidates this time around, as he did with Mr. Trump. The closest he came was a \$10 million donation for a long-shot Republican running for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky — an investment that went poorly.
The \$276 million figure is, of course, just what is publicly known. Mr. Musk has also made some seven-figure donations to support midterm candidates through groups that are not required to disclose their donors, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
苏努努为共和党带来一线希望
米歇尔·科特尔 (Michelle Cottle)
CASSANDRA KLOS 为纽约时报拍摄
米歇尔·科特尔
观点版作者，报道国家政治。
“天呐，我们的总统简直就是坨狗屎！”退休焊工保罗·勒布朗（Paul LeBlanc）在本月初迪尔菲尔博览会期间，对着共和党在新罕布什尔州的参议院候选人约翰·E·苏努努（John E. Sununu）愤怒地抱怨道。事实上，勒布朗在向苏努努大肆指责特朗普总统的虚假承诺时，使用的词汇比“狗屎”更辛辣。苏努努礼貌的微笑和温和的态度从未动摇，他轻巧地结束了对话，重新回到了穿梭的人群中。
如今，显赫的家世加上十多年的国会经历，显然并不像是在高喊“打破现状！”。这使得苏努努将自己定位为“内部人士中的局外人”：一张熟悉且令人安心的面孔，拥有足以应对当今参议院的疯狂局面以及一个失控总统的能力。到目前为止，在与民主党候选人众议员克里斯·帕帕斯（Chris Pappas）的竞争中，他的表现出奇地好。如果苏努努能成功，或者即便只是接近成功，他将证明这样一个概念：一个拥有强大个人品牌的非 MAGA 共和党人，可以克服这位日益具有毒性的总统所带来的拖累——而且这种可能性可能不仅限于本次选举。
In Maine Senate Race, Sanders Visit Gives Lift To Anxious Democrats
"ain't easy."
By TIM BALK
LEWISTON, Maine — When Graham Platner dropped out of the Senate race in Maine in July after a rape allegation he denied, it deflated many Democrats who had rallied to his campaign.
Three months later, some Democrats in the state are worried about the enthusiasm for Mr. Platner's last-minute replacement, Troy Jackson, in his pivotal race against Senator Susan Collins, a fifth-term Republican. In the final weeks of a close race, Mr. Jackson and his allies are still trying to excite voters who were disillusioned after the summer switch.
This weekend, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a leader of the progressive movement who is popular across New England, decamped to the state for a three-rally trip to try to energize Mr. Jackson's campaign. Mr. Sanders, once a chief political patron of Mr. Platner, also has deep connections to Mr. Jackson, who served as a Maine state chair of Mr. Sanders's 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns.
On Saturday night, at a rally in a Bangor convention center, Mr. Sanders declared that Mr. Jackson was running an "extraordinary" campaign and noted that the circumstances in which Mr. Jackson had entered the race
Troy Jackson, left, campaigning with Senator Bernie Sanders in Lewiston, Maine, on Sunday.
CJ GUNTHER/REUTERS
The visit by Mr. Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, comes as Republicans are eager to paint Democratic candidates, including Mr. Jackson, as far-left extremists. Part of Mr. Jackson's challenge in the closing stage of the race will be finding ways to fire up his party's base without alienating moderate voters.
On Sunday, Mr. Sanders and Mr. Jackson visited a soaring former church in working-class Lewiston, where the crowd buzzed long before either man took the stage. Piles of blue T-shirts bearing Mr. Jackson's name rested on tables, "I'm With Troy" yard signs were stacked against the walls and a hundreds-strong standing-room crowd filled the building.
"I hear the lull in enthusiasm," Mary Loan, 29, of Lewiston, said of Mr. Jackson's campaign, adding that Mr. Sanders had helped draw her out on Sunday morning. "Bernie is such a strong force, and a lot of people really look up to him."
Opinion polls show Mr. Jackson running in a dead heat with Ms. Collins with three weeks until the Nov. 3 election, and early voting has started in Maine. Mr. Jackson is running on a progressive platform similar to Mr. Platner's, calling for universal health care and the elimination of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
But some in the crowd on Sunday said they were concerned about Mr. Jackson's chances. After Mr. Platner's departure, Mr. Jackson, a runner-up in the primary for Maine governor who can speak in an unpolished, halting style, assumed the Senate nomination through a rushed statewide convention process. When the Platner yard signs vanished, some have observed, Jackson signs did not always crop up.
But Mr. Jackson's supporters said his campaign appears to be gaining steam after two debates in which he outperformed expectations of many in either party, adding that they hoped Mr. Sanders's arrival would activate some Democrats.
Bill Zima, 60, and his wife, Sarah Zima, 57, two former teachers, came from Portland to Lewiston to see Mr. Sanders. Mr. Zima said "there was that sense of excitement that went out" after the candidate substitution.
Still, he predicted that "ultimately people are going to come back," adding that "Bernie will help with this."
Ms. Zima appeared less confident. "I don't know," she said. "I hope people will get behind him."
A political organizer at the rally, Crystale Lapham, 44, a former volunteer for Mr. Platner from Falmouth, Maine, said the campaign was "not the same" with Mr. Jackson atop the ticket. "He's not a powerful orator," Ms. Lapham said of Mr. Jackson, adding, "That energy gap is real."
But she added that she believed Mr. Sanders's arrival would remind voters of Mr. Jackson's ties to the progressive movement.
Opinion polls show Jackson running dead even with Collins.
teers are extremely excited that he's here," Ms. Lapham said of Mr. Sanders. She said there had been questions about how involved Mr. Sanders, who last campaigned in the state in May, would be in the race. "Like, where is Bernie?"
Mr. Sanders was with Mr. Jackson at the former church on Sunday, addressing a rapt crowd. Mr. Jackson was met with loud chants of "Troy! Troy!" as he began his remarks.
"I am just a working-class guy with a funny accent," Mr. Jackson said, referring to his thick Acadian accent, and vowed to fight for working-class Mainers.
Mr. Sanders prosecuted a case against the Trump administration and said that while he did not "mean to be disrespectful to either Susan Collins or Troy," the race was about "much more than either of those candidates."
"If we as a nation want to hold Trump and his disastrous policies accountable, the only way we can do that is by electing a Democratic Senate," Mr. Sanders said, adding that the race could determine the national battle for Senate control.
"I don't want to get the people of Maine too nervous," Mr. Sanders said. "But you can make all of the difference."
Some Maine Democrats say those stakes do make them nervous. Still, the line drew one of the loudest cheers of the afternoon.
Representative Omar Is Targeted With Search Of Home by ICE Unit
From Page A1
federal judge who eventually approved it, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Prosecutors submitted the first application for the search more than a week ago, and it was approved only after a discussion of the possible constitutional issues, like the speech or debate clause, surrounding her status as a member of Congress, the people said.
In a statement posted on social media on Monday, Ms. Omar called the raid “an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.”
"For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation," she wrote, adding, "I will not be silenced."
President Trump has frequently attacked Ms. Omar, focusing on her Somali heritage.
"I understand they're looking at her very carefully," Mr. Trump told reporters on Monday before a campaign rally in Ohio, adding: "She comes from a country that is a non-country. And then she comes over here and she complains about our Constitution. I think she's a terrible person, but that's really up to the D.O.J."
A Justice Department spokeswoman said that Homeland Security Investigations agents — a part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement — had executed a judicially authorized search of a home in the Washington area, as part of an “ongoing federal criminal investigation.” The spokeswoman declined to comment further.
In September, Markwayne Mullin, the Homeland Security secretary, said his department was investigating issues surrounding Ms. Omar and her family's immigration to the United States, and he suggested the end result could be deportation.
Ms. Omar was born in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, in the early 1980s. Her family fled their hometown when she was around
Annie Karni contributed reporting.
8, as a civil war engulfed Somalia, according to a memoir she wrote. In the mid-1990s, after spending time at a refugee camp in Kenya, Ms. Omar and her relatives were admitted as refugees in the United States. They started a new life in Minnesota, home to the largest Somali diaspora in the United States.
Ms. Omar has long said that suggestions that she and her family committed immigration fraud were false and politically motivated.
"I will say it again so it's as clear as possible: I'm not at all worried about these investigations, because they are complete shams," she wrote in a fund-raising email in September.
Monday's search of her home, which was reported earlier by Fox News, takes place within the 60-day window before an election. Justice Department policy has long urged prosecutors not to take any overt, unnecessary investigative steps that could affect an election during that period — especially if such actions could be taken after the election without causing any harm to the investigation. The guiding principle of the 60-day rule is that prosecutors should exercise caution in regard to politically sensitive cases.
The rule is not absolute, and there are exceptions, such as when prosecutors believe evidence could be destroyed, ongoing crimes are being committed, or people are in danger. The rule is also largely an interpretation of Justice Department regulations, and as such has been the subject of significant debate about its exact parameters. For many years, however, Justice Department officials have concluded that a publicly observable search — such as of a politician's home or business — is the kind of overt activity that should be avoided during the 60-day period.
In the last federal election, Mr. Trump cited the 60-day rule in his own criminal cases to accuse the department of acting improperly in 2024 as he campaigned for election. He and his lawyers, some of whom now run the Justice Department, argued that the special counsel, Jack Smith, broke the 60-day rule when he filed court pa
J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Officers with the Department of Homeland Security carried boxes from the Washington-area home of Representative Ilhan Omar on Monday, above. Ms. Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, left, portrayed the raid as “an attempt to target political enemies.”
AMANDA ANDRADE-RHOADES FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES pers in September 2024 describing the evidence supporting charges that Mr. Trump had conspired to obstruct the results of the 2020 election. In that instance, however, the key filing was made in response to a court order, which is not subject to the department policy.
In a statement on Monday, the House Democratic leadership — Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and Pete Aguilar of California — condemned the search of Ms. Omar's house as a "rogue abuse of power."
"The Trump administration's raid on Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's home is deeply disturbing and raises serious questions about the continued corrupt weaponization of the federal government against Donald Trump's adversaries," they said.
Ms. Omar has represented a solidly blue district that includes Minneapolis since 2019, and she faced no serious competitors during the primary this year.
Scores of Omar supporters gathered Monday afternoon at a park in Minneapolis for a rally, many holding signs that said "Stand with Ilhan" and "Hands off the Somali community."
Jason Chavez, a member of the
Minneapolis City Council, predicted that the search of the congresswoman's home would galvanize her constituents and perhaps improve her victory margin in November. "Folks are riled up," he said. "What is happening is just wrong."
Ms. Omar's immigration history has been scrutinized since she first ran for a seat in the State Legislature in 2016 and made history as the state's first Somali American lawmaker, according to people familiar with the inquiries.
The Justice Department under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s administration also opened an investigation into Ms. Omar, in 2024, examining her finances, campaign spending and interactions with a foreign citizen, as The Times previously reported.
Previous federal inquiries — including one seeking to establish whether Ms. Omar had married a sibling to get him a green card — ended without any charges. Ms. Omar has called such claims “absurd and offensive.”
Late last year, Tom Homan, the White House border czar, told Newsmax that earlier efforts to investigate Ms. Omar's immigration matters were stymied by statute of limitations.
Investigators were reviewing her immigration files again, Mr. Homan said, adding that he had no doubt Ms. Omar had committed fraud.
In March, Vice President JD Vance reiterated that claim, which he said he had discussed with the White House senior aide Stephen Miller.
"We actually think that Ilhan Omar definitely committed immigration fraud," Mr. Vance told a conservative podcaster. The next step, he said, was to figure out how to "build a case necessary to get some justice for the American people."
In recent months, federal investigators opened an inquiry into Ms. Omar's immigration history, focusing in part on whether her late father, Nur Omar Mohamed, lied or omitted information as he sought legal status in the United States before becoming a U.S. citizen.
Among the questions investigators have looked at is whether Ms. Omar derived citizenship from a father who may have been ineligible to obtain naturalized status, according to a person familiar with the case.
If there is conclusive evidence that Ms. Omar derived citizenship improperly, the Justice Department could pursue a criminal or civil denaturalization case against her. In cases in which prosecutors prevail and persuade a federal judge to order someone denaturalized, the immigrant may be placed in deportation proceedings.
Fort Hood Killer May Have Options to Contest Public Execution
By ABBIE VANSICKLE and JOHN ISMAY
A memorial service in 2009 for the 13 people killed by Nidal Malik Hasan at Fort Hood in Texas.
DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON — The former Army officer convicted of a 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood has exhausted his appeals in the military courts. But he may have options in the civilian justice system to contest his planned public execution by firing squad.
Legal experts say that Nidal Malik Hasan could potentially ask federal courts to step in and stop his execution. That path for the courts to intervene, though, would probably be narrow and rushed, and could involve novel and untested legal claims.
The Supreme Court last year rejected an appeal from Mr. Hasan, who was convicted in 2013 by a military jury of fatally shooting 13 people and wounding 32 more after opening fire at a military processing center in Central Texas. The justices at that time declined to take up his legal team's argument that a judge's decision to close part of the proceeding violated his right to a public trial.
But legal experts said the lawyers for Mr. Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, could now file a new appeal to ask the federal courts to block the administration's plan to kill him on Dec. 3 in a live-streamed execution at the base where he attacked fellow service members. It remains unclear whether he will do so.
Jonathan F. Potter, a lawyer from the U.S. Army Defense Appellate Division who represents Mr. Hasan, did not respond to a request for comment.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the plan on Thursday in an interview with Real America's Voice, a conservative outlet, saying that the execution would be available to watch "because people need to understand that there's serious consequences for these types of things."
At the 2013 trial, Mr. Hasan, who was a major at the time of the shooting, represented himself and confessed in his opening statement to being the shooter.
If the federal courts were to weigh in, legal experts said that the case would probably begin in Kansas, since he is incarcerated at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth. An appeal could then wind through the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit and arrive quickly at the Su-
Julie Tate contributed research.
preme Court, most likely as an emergency petition.
Legal experts say that Mr. Hasan could challenge the government's decision to livestream his execution, perhaps by asserting that a public broadcast would violate prohibitions on cruel and unusual punishment in the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution.
Courts have rejected requests from private companies that sought to broadcast executions to the public.
In 2001, a federal judge refused to allow an internet company to carry a live feed of the execution of the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, citing Federal Bureau of Prisons rules that forbid recording or broadcasting executions.
In that case, the broadcaster for adults-only subscription websites argued that the execution of Mr. McVeigh presented a compelling public interest that warranted widespread dissemination of the killing.
But the Supreme Court has not weighed in directly on the question of whether public executions are legal, particularly when requested by the government, experts said.
Public executions have been seen, including by United Nations officials, as a violation of international human rights protections under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, said Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School.
"This is terrible company for our country to be in," Mr. Fidell said, citing the authoritarian regimes that have engaged in the practice. But he cautioned that there was "no current legal document that you point to that says this is clearly unlawful as a matter of the U.S. Constitution or any federal statute."
How the Supreme Court may approach the issue is unpredictable, some observers said.
Less than a decade ago, a majority of the court appeared "deeply attuned" to changes in society's norms and moral values, including waning support for capital punishment, said Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University Law Center, where he specializes in constitutional law, national security and military justice.
Professor Vladeck said he believed that the court would most likely have found it "exceedingly difficult to reconcile" changing mores with a live-streamed public execution, particularly given how long it has been since the last public execution in the United States.
The country's last state-sanctioned public execution happened nearly a century ago, when about 20,000 people gathered in August 1936 to witness the hanging of Rainey Bethea, a young Black man convicted of raping an elderly white woman.
But the makeup of the court has changed considerably since 2018, when Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, often the key swing vote, retired. Now, the court has a conservative supermajority, with six conservatives and three liberals.
Professor Vladeck described the current court's approach as "far less sympathetic to those kinds of arguments." A majority of the justices consider themselves "originalists" who examine legal issues with an eye to how the law was interpreted at the time it was adopted.
With Mr. Hasan, Professor Vladeck said a majority of the justices may look to whether a particular punishment would have been seen as cruel and unusual in 1791, when the Eighth Amendment, which barred such punishments, was ratified.
"If that's the test, I think it'll be quite an uphill battle," he said, noting that conducting executions publicly was common at that time.
Mr. Hasan could also raise issues related to the planned protocol: death by firing squad. He was shot during his attack on Fort Hood and paralyzed from the waist down. He uses a wheelchair, and it is not clear how the military would execute him.
The Army's 2023 regulation on executions provides a list of people who can witness one, including “a minimum” of two media representatives. It specifies that no one younger than 18 can be a witness. The regulation, however, can be changed by the Army at any time.
The regulation is far less detailed than the service's 1944 manual for executions that guided the last firing squad to take the life of an active-duty service member: Pvt. Edward Donald Slovak, who was convicted of twice deserting his unit in combat and was put to death in France on Jan. 31, 1945.
The World War II-era manual, which referred to the firing squad as “execution by musketry,” required an Army band to play a song called “Dead March” as the condemned prisoner was led to a post and strapped to it in “an upright position,” accompanied by a chaplain.
A medical officer was then to place a four-inch round target over the prisoner's heart, on a uniform stripped of all rank and insignia, including buttons. An "execution party" of 12 soldiers armed with rifles would form two firing squads. "Not more than four nor less than one" of the rifles would be loaded with blank ammunition, the manual states, and placed randomly on a rack for the dozen soldiers to draw from.
Should an initial volley of six bullets fail to immediately kill the condemned soldier, a second group of six soldiers could be ordered to shoot the prisoner at the medical officer's direction. A sergeant armed with a handgun could also "administer the 'coup de grâce'" shot by holding the weapon's muzzle "just above" the prisoner's ear and "one foot from the skull."
Following confirmation of the prisoner's death, the Army band would play "a lively air" as the assembled soldiers and firing party departed the scene.
The manual also instructed, "No photographs nor motion pictures of the actual execution will be permitted except for official purposes."
AI 文学丑闻中的种族主义色彩
道尔·D·卡尔霍恩 (Doyle D. Calhoun)
剑桥大学助理教授。
海地裔加拿大作家特利森·奥雷利安 (Thélyson Orelien) 的小说《非此即死》(C'étéait Ça ou Mourir) 本应成为法国文学季的一颗亮点。然而，它却演变成了一场灾难，揭露了法国政治伪善与种族主义中最糟糕的一面。而这一切都围绕着近年来困扰出版界的问题：如何对待使用人工智能的作家？我们是否能确定地分辨出来？
但这里出现了另一个故事：我认为今年最重大的五起 AI 文学丑闻，全部集中在黑人及棕色皮肤作家身上。
奥雷利安先生的小说讲述了一名年轻的历史地理教师逃离海地帮派暴力的经历。该书赢得了法国 Fnac 小说奖，并入围了法国最负盛名的文学奖——龚古尔奖 (Goncourt) 的长名单。随后，一个名为“举报你的克劳德” (Balance Ton Claude) 的匿名 X 账号发布消息称，AI 检测软件 Pangram 显示该小说部分内容高达“100%”由 AI 生成。紧接着，奥雷利安先生早期作品中存在剽窃的指控也随之而来。
今年5月，一起人工智能案件也震惊了英联邦文学奖（Commonwealth Prize）。在贾米尔·纳齐尔（Jamir Nazir）的短篇小说《林中之蛇》（The Serpent in the Grove）被评为区域获胜者后，Pangram 软件将该文本标记为 100% 由人工智能生成。社交媒体用户嘲讽了其中的句子，例如“她的走路方式让长凳变成了男人”。在左翼阵营中，这场争论转向了用于评估所谓后殖民文学的标准。莉娜·阿布舒克（Lina Abushouk）在“非洲是一个国家”（Africa Is a Country）网站上写道：“如果一个欧洲作家出现这种不连贯性会被取消资格，但只要这种不连贯性被贴上正确的文化地理标签，就会被重新定义为真实性。”
A federal judge on Sunday evening ordered the Trump administration to stop airing taxpayer-funded ads that had drawn widespread backlash for their explicit glorification of President Trump.
The commercials ran on network and cable television and were paid for through a \$20 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security. One bragged about the capture of the former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. Another echoed a campaign video from 2024 that denounced political enemies of Mr. Trump as "villains."
A coalition of liberal organizations sued the administration over the ads last week in federal court. In a four-page order, Judge Jennifer L. Rochon of Federal District Court in Manhattan, who was appointed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., wrote that the administration must cancel any "slot, placement, reservation, or arrangement for the airing or dissemination of the challenged advertisements."
In a statement, Democracy Forward, which represented the coalition that had sued to stop the airing of the ads, praised Judge Rochon for preventing “more taxpayer dollars from being used for such blatantly unlawful political propaganda.”
In a filing on Saturday night, the Justice Department said that the administration had no plans to make any further ad buys, which totaled \$19 million through Sunday.
The ads had run during programs and shows like "Good Morning America" and "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" as well as during weekend football games on Fox. Some officials had said the administration might have violated federal law by using taxpayer money for publicity or propaganda.
Mr. Trump was personally invested in seeing the ads air. He instructed Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to find the money for the ads, The New York Times reported this month.
《C'était Ça ou Mourir》并不是一部我会渴望将其列入教学大纲的小说。评论家将其描述为具有抒情色彩，奥雷利恩先生也声称文中具有独特的加勒比风情。然而，就加勒比小说而言，我认为它相当线性且简单，几乎没有像海地裔法国作家勒内·德普斯特（René Depestre）那样具有创新精神，而奥雷利恩小说中的叙述者恰恰随身携带德普斯特的书。
Vague Protocol for Executions in Tennessee Draws Scrutiny
Christa Pike's lawyers — Randy Spivey, at the lectern, and Luke Ihnen, behind Mr. Spivey — on Wednesday in Nashville.
GEORGE WALKER IV/ASSOCIATED PRESS
By EMILY COCHRANE
NASHVILLE — Last year, Tennessee's lethal injection execution protocol underwent a striking transformation.
The manual laying out the procedure was slashed in half, stripped down from 104 pages in a previous version to 44 pages. Details about certain staff and the single drug now at the heart of the protocol were shrouded in secrecy.
And some directions were made vague or vanished altogether, including the requirement that execution teams practice inserting an IV line.
Tennessee has botched two of its three executions this year, mostly recently in the case of Christa Pike last month. Her case in particular has prompted a wave of questions about why the state has struggled to carry out death sentences, while some other states, such as Texas, have not.
The stark differences between the protocol put in place last year and the one before it, which was last updated in 2018, have emerged as a focus of scrutiny in Tennessee.
The granular, grim elements of an execution, especially by lethal injection, have taken on greater interest and importance in the aftermath of Ms. Pike's botched execution, as more Americans wrestle with the morality and ethics of capital punishment.
Even as polls have shown a decline in support for the death penalty, some leaders continue to champion capital punishment. The Pentagon announced last week that the Army officer convicted in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting would be carried out in public and broadcast via a livestream.
Republicans in Tennessee, where they hold a supermajority, say they remain committed to carrying out death sentences. But
Jesus Jiménez contributed reporting.
they have said they will examine how capital punishment is carried out and will consider changing the lethal injection protocol or switching to a different execution method.
The Tennessee Department of Correction said it had followed every step of the protocol in Ms. Pike's execution attempt, which has "consistently been effective."
Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican who is in the final months of his second and last term in office, has paused all executions and ordered an investigation into Ms. Pike's botched execution. U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn, also a Republican and the front-runner to replace Mr. Lee, has called for the state to switch to the electric chair.
Cameron Sexton, the speaker of the Tennessee House, said that Ms. Pike should still face execution and that the state intends to find a way to carry on with capital punishment. "We'll look at different methods and alternatives, and then we'll look at how to speed up the process," Mr. Sexton said in an interview.
Ms. Pike, 50, was convicted in 1996 of the torture and murder of a classmate.
The Department of Correction declined to answer questions about the current protocol or its changes, citing pending litigation. During earlier lawsuits brought by other death row inmates, the agency cited attorney-client privilege and a protective order in refusing to allow staff members to answer a number of questions, including about the development of the protocol, the qualifications of the execution staff and details about the drugs used.
After the botched Pike execution on Sept. 30, the agency's commissioner, Frank Strada, who had led the development of the new lethal injection protocol, said he would step down later this month.
Ms. Pike's lawyers had warned about possible problems with the execution protocol, especially given her small veins and underlying medical conditions. She survived two doses of the drug, pentobarbital, and remains hospitalized. Her lawyers on Thursday said she was able to walk with some assistance, but continues to struggle with concentration and memory.
On Saturday, she was discharged from the hospital to the women's prison in Nashville.
As in other states, Tennessee law prohibits the public identification of workers who carry out executions or any company that assists in procuring or preparing drugs for lethal injection. There are strict limits on who can witness an execution; cellphones and outside photos are prohibited; and only lawyers for the death row inmate can witness the insertion of IV lines.
"The idea is to keep it from being sensationalized," said David Raybin, a Nashville lawyer who helped write Tennessee's death penalty statute. But in switching to lethal injection, he added, "we've involved more people. We've made it more complex."
Yet key details of the process appear masked in the current Tennessee protocol, compared with the previous one and with those of some other states that use lethal injection. In Tennessee's previous protocol, from 2018, only five pages appeared to have been removed, mainly related to security details of the prison where executions are held. But in the current protocol, the state appears to have withheld details of staff roles and duties.
"It's why we can say that secrecy is a big part of all botched executions," said Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "When we don't understand what's happening, there's not the opportunity to ask the hard questions that get good answers."
In 2022, Mr. Lee instituted a moratorium on executions, and there was an independent review of the Tennessee process. During a deposition last year, Mr. Strada said he estimated he had read the report two or three times.
Some recommendations — including providing a copy of the protocol to the chemical provider — were followed, he said. Some were not. He said he did not enlist an outside consultant with a pharmaceutical background to offer guidance over the lethal injection process, as the report had recommended.
"It was only a recommendation," Mr. Strada said when asked at the time, according to excerpts from the deposition reviewed by The New York Times. "It wasn't a requirement."
Directly asked if there was any unwritten guidance, Mr. Strada said everything was contained within the protocol.
The Texas protocol, which also uses pentobarbital, requires that all members of the drug team have at least one year of professional experience and that a new team member must be supervised through two executions.
In Florida, which carried out 40 percent of all executions in the United States in 2025, the protocol specifies the kinds of certification each team member involved with the lethal injection process should have. It also directs the team to prepare for contingencies, including issues finding a vein and what to do if the prisoner is not unconscious after the first drug is administered.
Tennessee's protocol does not publicly list contingencies. It says execution staff members should be "currently certified, licensed and/or qualified within the United States to place IV lines" but does not offer specifics.
There is also an absence of public details in Tennessee's protocol about how to handle complications in the execution chamber. In Idaho, for example, where execution by either lethal injection or a firing squad is allowed, there is a requirement for outside medical services to be on site and provide any necessary aid, "including resuscitation efforts for the condemned person as needed."
On Sept. 30, the night Ms. Pike was set to be executed, emergency medical services were called to the Nashville prison at 8:50 p.m., according to a Nashville Fire Department report, and the first unit arrived at 9:15 p.m. It was not clear if Ms. Pike, who could be heard breathing, received care before that arrival.
The Death Penalty Is Once Again on the Minds of a Divided Public
People gathered during a March 4 Mercy protest against the death penalty at the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville last month.
GEORGE WALKER IV/ASSOCIATED PRESS
NICOLE BENGIVING/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Soldiers at a memorial service for the 13 people killed at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009. Nidal Hasan is set to be executed in December.
By NICHOLAS BOGEL-BURROUGHS
Within the span of eight days, the country has learned of a failed execution and a successful execution, and has been promised a live-streamed execution by military firing squad before year's end.
The most severe form of criminal punishment — there are roughly 2,000 people on death row nationwide — execution has taken center stage in a nation already split politically and culturally, amplifying divisions just weeks before a pivotal midterm election.
Death penalty opponents have seized upon the blundered attempt to kill Christa Pike in Tennessee last month to push for an end to the death penalty. Conversely, the nation's top military official said on Thursday that the United States would carry out the government's first public execution since 1936.
The announcement from the Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, and its timing, exemplify the salient place that the death penalty has taken in the nation's polarized political landscape in President Trump's second term.
On the day Mr. Trump returned to office, he urged prosecutors across the country to pursue and carry out capital punishment. In 2025, states executed more people than they had since 2009, largely driven by a sharp jump in Florida under Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican.
The failed execution of Ms. Pike — who survived two doses of pentobarbital that may have been injected improperly — has galvanized death penalty opponents, who have denounced what they see as a grisly example of capital punishment's faults.
And the two events together have brought the issue of the death penalty — something that has for decades taken place in hidden rooms inside mostly rural prisons — back into the forefront of Americans' minds.
“What we're seeing is the brutality of the institution of the death penalty coming back into public focus,” said Mark Osler, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis who has studied the death penalty. “Tennessee didn't intend to do that; the federal government does.”
"Given that there has been a rise in executions," he added, "it's a good time to have that debate."
Nearly 1,700 people have been executed in the last 50 years, including Jamaal Howard, 46, who was put to death on Wednesday in Texas, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, with a peak of 98 killed in 1999. Mr. Howard had been convicted of murdering Vickie Swartout, 42, during a 2000 robbery. Tennessee had sought to execute Ms. Pike for her 1995 killing of her classmate, 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.
While 27 states retain the death penalty, fewer than half of those have carried out an execution in the last five years. Virginia abol-
Emily Cochrane contributed reporting from Nashville, and Elizabeth Dias from Washington.
ished the penalty in 2021, and Ohio's Republican governor, Mike DeWine, said in June that he wanted his state to do so as well.
In modern times, lethal injection has been used far more than any other method, though states have turned to alternative methods — both new and old — in recent years. Several have authorized the firing squad, and two, Alabama and Louisiana, have used asphyxiation via nitrogen.
Public opinion polls have shown support for the death penalty steadily declining in recent decades, though a majority of Americans still support it. One poll from this past summer found that two-thirds were in favor.
Still, the specter of livestreaming the execution of Nidal Hasan, a former Army major who was convicted of murdering 13 people — mostly soldiers — and wounding dozens more at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009, has upset many who might otherwise support his killing.
"Hasan should face the death penalty, but making his execution public and streaming it? Beyond disgusting," Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, wrote on social media. "Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America."
Mr. Hasan, now 56, was motivated by his radical views of Islam to carry out the killings in retaliation for America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was wounded by responding police officers and is now paralyzed from the waist down, raising the possibility that he could be transported in a wheelchair to his execution, which is scheduled for Dec. 3. Mr. Hegseth said Mr. Hasan would be killed at Fort Hood around the same time of day — early afternoon — that he committed the crimes.
The reactions to the announcement fell largely along ideological lines — Republicans are much more likely to support capital punishment — but were far from uniform, underscoring the complexity of the issue.
Some Roman Catholic leaders condemned the execution plans. The Catholic Church has long opposed the death penalty as part of its theological commitment to humans across their life spans, though recently U.S. bishops have prioritized ending abortion and defending immigrants.
Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, called the planned livestream "a barbaric promotion of a culture of death" and warned it would harm the country.
"The public execution even of one who has done grave harm will only further undermine the moral fabric of our nation and be a blight on the conscience of its people," he said.
Vice President JD Vance, an atheist turned Catholic, said on Friday that he would not watch the execution if it was live-streamed and also cast doubt on that idea, saying, "I don't know if that's actually going to happen."
But in a sign of the continued sharp divide that the Trump movement has carved in American Christianity, an energetic cohort of right-wing Christians defended the livestream on biblical grounds.
Josh Howerton, the pastor of Lakepointe Church, an evangelical congregation with locations in and around Dallas, argued on social media that executions in the Bible were carried out publicly as deterrents.
"I do not think you can say it's unbiblical or automatically wrong," he said of public executions, noting passages that described public stonings.
The prospect of a public execution was raised prominently around the turn of the century, when some proposed televising the killing of Timothy McVeigh.
Mr. McVeigh, convicted of carrying out the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 that killed 168 people, himself had urged as much in a letter to The Oklahoma newspaper in which he argued for "equal access" to his execution: "A reasonable solution seems obvious: hold a true 'public' execution — allow a public broadcast."
In the end, he was executed by lethal injection at an Indiana prison in 2001, with a couple of dozen people watching his death in person and about 232 more — including survivors and their relatives — viewing on closed-circuit television from Oklahoma City.
Notably, Mr. Hasan has said he wants to be killed for his crimes, saying he sees an opportunity for martyrdom, though he does not appear to expect the firing squad or a public death.
"I'm paraplegic and could be in jail for the rest of my life," he told a military panel in 2010. "However, if I died by lethal injection I would still be a martyr."
Last May, contractors were upgrading the security fences and driveway at the governor's residence in North Dakota when they made a discovery that brought the work to a standstill. In the southwest corner of the grounds, where a cemetery had once been, they unearthed what appeared to be human remains and coffin fragments.
Over the next four months, what started as a landscaping and construction job in the state capital, Bismarck, turned into an examination of the state's history. Last week, officials in Gov. Kelly Armstrong's administration announced the results of an analysis of the remains: They were two women, two men, two teenage boys and a toddler.
The seven sets of remains appear to have been overlooked when bodies at the former cemetery were exhumed after 1877 and moved to new cemeteries during Bismarck's early settlement period, the state Office of Management and Budget said.
"Many were already reinterred to somewhere else," Jen Raab, a spokeswoman for the office, said in an interview. "We didn't know there were still some there."
The discovery on May 19 set in motion a wide-ranging project that has played out at the nexus of science, history and spirituality in Bismarck, a onetime frontier town that is now a city of about 78,000.
The state Legislature last year approved \$2.35 million in security upgrades at the governor's residence, which sits on the grounds of the Capitol. After the remains were discovered, archaeologists were dispatched to the site to conduct surveys with ground-penetrating radar. They detected more than 80 anomalies in the earth, leading to the recovery of seven sets of remains and an empty wood box, the Office of Management and Budget said.
A chaplain will organize a ceremonial handling of the remains, which will be reburied next year, Ms. Raab said.
In a statement on Friday, Mike Nowatzki, a spokesman for the governor's office, said Governor Armstrong "wants to ensure the remains are treated with appropriate care and respect."
The discovery of the remains generated interest in the former cemetery and how its long-buried dead ended up intersecting with modern city life.
Historians scoured archival newspaper clippings for death notices to help tell the story of the burials, which were held on the grassy knoll from 1872 through 1877 — a period that coincides with the renaming of the town, formerly known as Edwinton, to Bismarck in 1873.
The cemetery did not have an official name. Townspeople called it "the graveyard on the hill," according to the state archives.
"It was far out of town," said Lindsay K. Meidinger, the deputy archivist at the North Dakota State Archives.
One person known to have been buried there was a woman named Sophie deMarsh. The Bismarck Weekly Tribune reported in January 1877 that she "suffered through three days labor, but will probably recover."
She did not. She died in the next month, the newspaper reported, according to archival clippings provided by Ms. Meidinger.
By the end of 1877, the old newspaper clippings reported that a section of the burial ground was going to be sold to make way for a railroad. The cemetery, and those at rest there, had to find a new home. So bodies were moved to other cemeteries.
But not all of them, as the newspaper reported over the following decades. As the city developed, more of the buried dead were found, their resting places inadvertently intertwined with newly laid streets and railroad tracks.
In 1903, at least 13 bodies were unearthed during excavations for a trolley line at the site of the old graveyard, including that of a man named Dave Mullen, who was "shot and killed in a row with some soldiers from old Fort Lincoln," according to the newspaper.
In 1959, a shallow grave was discovered at the southwest section of the plot, where a new governor's house was to be constructed. Two workers using a "power shovel" found the bones, the newspaper reported that year.
That same year, workers using a dirt loader found an “ancient pine box” holding the remains of a man who was believed to have died at 45. In total, at least five bodies were found that summer.
Archaeologists are now reviewing and cataloging the remains that were found in May. They expect to be done early in 2027.
"We had a word of prayer over that site for the deceased," Greg Carr, a chaplain with Crisis Care Chaplaincy, said in an interview last week.
He said the reburials would take place in the spring.
Jennifer Sinco Kelleher contributed reporting.
The fraternity chapter accused in the Cornell case, Chi Phi, remains barred from the campus. Seven members are being sued.
HEATHER AINSWORTH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
我是一名儿童精神科医生。屏幕并非问题所在。
玛丽亚·埃尔盖塔（MARÍA HERGUETA）
乔纳森·斯莱特（Jonathan Slater）
哥伦比亚大学欧文医学中心精神病学临床教授。
家长、政治家和畅销书心理学家们越来越担心儿童和青少年在屏幕前花费的时间及其对心理健康的影响。今年5月，美国卫生总署（Office of the Surgeon General）就屏幕使用的危害发出警告，并呼吁将6至18岁儿童在家的屏幕时间限制在每天两小时以内。上个月，美国卫生与公众服务部发布了一本名为《神奇平板》（The Magic Tablet）的电子书，鼓励“儿童和青少年远离屏幕，回归真实生活”。
Case Revives Debate About Greek Life's Role On College Campuses
By MARK ARSENAULT and ALAN BLINDER university to have faced problems related to Greek life on its campus.
In August 2022, an 18-year-old woman arrived at Cornell University to begin her studies on a sprawling campus featuring dozens of fraternity and sorority houses.
The Ivy League university, she said in a lawsuit against the school last month, declared Greek life "vital" to Cornell and "endorsed these organizations as well-managed, worthy pathways" to friendships on campus and professional successes beyond it.
But Cornell and the Greek groups, she says, also knew well that there was a history of dangerous behavior tied to the campus's fraternities.
She is suing seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity, the fraternity itself, the university and her own sorority. In the lawsuit, she alleges that she was sexually assaulted, says her assailants should have been more severely punished and argues that the organizations did not do enough to protect her. Instead, she says in the lawsuit, when she arrived at Cornell, she was presented with "a glorified — yet materially false and misleading — facade of Cornell University Greek life."
The case has revived a perennial, painful debate on American college campuses about the role of Greek life, and how to manage it when things go wrong. Some are calling for bans on fraternities and sororities at Cornell and elsewhere, pointing to a long history of deaths, hazings and instances of sexual and other violence. Supporters of fraternities and sororities maintain that they are an essential part of higher education, conferring benefits to both students who join and campuses who host chapters.
In a recent video, Cornell's president, Michael I. Kotlikoff, said the university should take "a serious look at the role of fraternities and sororities" on campus. But he has seemed hesitant about a ban. In a virtual meeting with faculty last Tuesday, Dr. Kotlikoff suggested that a ban might "feel like it's a strong statement in the short term, but won't address the problem — and arguably could exacerbate it."
None of the men accused in the Cornell case has been charged with a crime, and all have denied wrongdoing.
Cornell, where in 1873 a student died in what some believe was the nation's first fraternity-related hazing death, is far from the only
Michael S. Schmidt, Vimal Patel and Troy Closson contributed reporting.
The University of Arizona announced last week that it had suspended many activities at its 21 interfraternity council chapters after receiving multiple reports of misconduct just weeks into the fall semester.
Students at Cornell University gathered on Monday to protest the school's response to allegations of sexual assault on campus.
HEATHER AINSWORTH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Since the start of August, prosecutors have said two fraternity houses at Penn State were central to a cocaine distribution ring. The Wisconsin authorities have charged two fraternity members with suspicion of hazing after dozens of pledges were found half-naked and covered in condiments in a hot basement. And a former fraternity leader at Northern Arizona University was sentenced to two months in jail for the hazing-related death of a pledge.
Last year, five men were criminally charged after a student at Southern University in Baton Rouge, La., died in a fraternity hazing ritual.
And a year ago in Hillsborough County, Fla., a young woman sued the University of South Florida and a fraternity for failing to keep her safe. She said in the lawsuit that as an 18-year-old student, she was given alcohol until rendered "helpless," and then sexually assaulted at a Zeta Beta Tau fraternity event in October 2023.
Her lawyer, Andrea Lewis, said the case has some “striking” similarities with the Cornell litigation. But unlike the Cornell case, where prosecutors did not bring charges, the male student she accused of the assault was charged with sexual battery, according to the Hillsborough County court database.
That criminal case is scheduled to begin trial this week, said a spokeswoman for the state attorney's office that is handling the prosecution. And the civil case is expected to reach trial next year, Ms. Lewis said.
The University of South Florida said in a statement that it did not comment on pending litigation, but that the “health, safety and well-being of the U.S.F. community is our highest priority, and we take the issue of sexual violence seriously.”
A spokesman for Zeta Beta Tau denied the allegations, but said it could not otherwise comment on pending litigation.
The fraternity chapter accused in the Cornell case, Chi Phi, remains barred from the campus. The national fraternity's top executive has said that the Cornell chapter had begun ousting members three days after the woman filed her police report in 2024.
Champions of Greek life point to research and enrollment statistics suggesting that fraternities and sororities promote belonging in an era of loneliness, as well as improved student retention and graduation rates.
"The feelings of connection to something bigger than yourself, and that bond that's created between young men, is powerful and enduring," said Judson Horras, the president and chief executive of the North American Interfraternity Conference, a trade group.
Mr. Horras said the accused men at Cornell had "clearly violated the fraternal obligation." But he said fraternity members more broadly helped society. Charity work and community service are often a core part of Greek life, for example.
"The positives — the hundreds of thousands of good leadership decisions that are made over time — endure past these very poor decisions that are made. And that staying power of brotherhood and the positive leadership, which doesn't make The New York Times, creates this enduring value," he said.
Critics, however, cite surveys like ones Cornell has conducted for years about sexual assaults on campus. In the 2025 survey, 35 percent of undergraduate women at Cornell reported experiences with nonconsensual sexual contact.
In the same survey, Cornell fraternity houses were reported as the locations for 17 percent of sexual assaults at the university, trailing residence halls and off-campus residences.
About one-third of Cornell undergraduate students are part of Greek life, spread among more than 50 recognized fraternities
and sororities.
Beyond Cornell, hundreds of thousands of college students are fraternity or sorority members, according to industry officials, although they still represent a small fraction of overall students.
At Cornell, many sororities are under a national umbrella group that does not allow alcohol in its houses, a rule meant to protect students. But in the civil case, the plaintiff said she had consumed alcohol at her sorority house, which was among those with a ban, and then had attended a party hosted by the sorority at a nearby bar.
It is certainly true that criminal acts, binge drinking and danger-
Some are calling for bans on fraternities and sororities.
ous behavior occur on college campuses outside of Greek organizations. Most fraternity and sorority chapters are not implicated in major problems, and many push conduct standards that students might not otherwise be exposed to.
Wynn Smiley, the national chief executive of Alpha Tau Omega, lamented how fraternity groups across the country "get broad-brushed quite a bit" by localized episodes.
"I don't think that's fair to the hundreds of thousands of fraternity men who would never engage in activity like that, nor would they agree with it," said Mr. Smiley.
Alfred University, in Western New York, barred Greek groups in 2002 after a student was found dead near his fraternity house.
NATHANIEL BROOKS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
He said that in roughly 30 years as the fraternity's chief executive, he had never heard of an episode like the one alleged to have occurred at Cornell with "this degree of abhorrent behavior" happening inside a fraternity house.
Still, researchers say that the bonds of brotherhood that are core to fraternity life can also fuel herd thinking and power dynamics that lead to tragic results.
"There is a power differential inherent in fraternities," said Adam M. McCready, an associate professor at the University of Connecticut who studies Greek life. "Members have to be selected to join, making them seem prestigious and giving existing members more power."
"When you create a power dynamic between 18- to 22-year-olds, that can lead to problematic outcomes," said Dr. McCready, who was in a fraternity himself.
Greek life has been the target of abolition campaigns that have sporadically gathered force. In 2020, for example, the murder of George Floyd prompted some students to accuse fraternities and sororities of racism and sexism.
But Greek life has lived on, largely backed by alumni, a crucial donor pool for colleges and universities.
When Tom Gerety was president of Trinity College between 1989 and 1994, he recalled, he could never muster enough board support to shut down Greek life there.
"It was pretty well entrenched," Mr. Gerety said. "Like in sports, there is an alumni contingent supporting fraternities and it's very important to them. It's like trying to abolish football."
He said that the Greek life system was exclusionary and that the vices and risks of fraternities "far outweighed their virtues."
Daniel W. Jones, a former chancellor of the University of Mississippi, said that fraternities and sororities, especially in parts of the South, pose extraordinary challenges for administrators.
"The question is not whether you have them — the question is how to manage them," said Dr. Jones, whose former institution has said nearly half of its undergraduates participate in fraternities or sororities.
Greek life, Dr. Jones said, can offer tremendous benefits to students and the community, helping young people to develop friendships and a sense of belonging. But, he added, "bad things happen, and groups of students do worse things than they would individually."
And disciplining fraternities, he said, can be tricky.
In 2014, when fraternity members hung a noose around a statue of James Meredith, the Black man who integrated the university in 1962, the fraternity's national organization stepped in quickly to punish the students and the chapter itself, Dr. Jones recalled.
Several conservative politicians soon called Dr. Jones to complain, accusing him and the university of overstepping.
But some institutions have been able to banish or significantly re-shape Greek life.
In 1997, a year after a visiting student fell to his death from the roof of a frat house at Bowdoin College, a liberal arts school in Maine, the school's trustees voted to phase out the college's coeducational fraternities. Fraternity members protested by wearing black armbands.
The board of Alfred University, in Western New York, voted in 2002 to eliminate its fraternities and sororities after a student was found dead near his fraternity house. And a dozen years ago, Wesleyan University moved to make its fraternities coed.
Dawn Wiese, an officer in an insurance company for fraternities, said that studies have shown that "fraternity men were more likely than those not affiliated to intervene when high-risk behavior was occurring," such as alcohol abuse, hazing and sexual misconduct.
And while, “college students sometimes make bad decisions,” Dr. Wiese said, “we need to continue to focus on education and prevention, rather than banning Greek life.”
It is unclear when, or if, Cornell will propose changes to its Greek system.
In the Tuesday meeting, Dr. Kotlikoff frustrated some faculty members after he seemed lukewarm to the idea of a ban.
"We have a certain ability to control things that happen in Greek life," he said, according to a recording of the meeting. "I worry about pushing this into the shadows, into houses which we don't own."
Wrong Man Is Served With Court Papers in Cornell Lawsuit. Threats Follow.
By SANTUL NERKAR and TROY CLOSSON
After a woman filed a lawsuit accusing seven men of sexually assaulting her on Cornell University's campus, one of the men, Matthew Ingalls, was set to be served with papers informing him of the allegations.
But there was a problem. The address that the lawyer for the woman who filed the lawsuit — known as Jane Doe — had found for Mr. Ingalls was incorrect. It belonged to the family of a different Matthew Ingalls, a Marine sergeant who had no connection to Cornell.
So on Sept. 26, the mother of the wrong Matthew Ingalls was served with the court papers intended for the man accused by Jane Doe, she told The Free Press. The address remained on the public docket for the lawsuit, in full view for online sleuths. And since then, family members have been deluged with threats and had garbage thrown on their lawn, said John C. Manly, a lawyer rep-
Hurubie Meko contributed reporting.
resenting them.
In an interview on Friday, the mother, Victoria Ingalls, said she and her family had received dozens of violent death threats over social media, the phone and in text messages. Some informed them that they knew where they lived. She has had trouble sleeping and working at her job as a paralegal.
"My son is a good man," Ms. Ingalls. "He's a good Marine. And he didn't deserve any of this."
Now, responding to the threats against Mr. Ingalls's family, the judge overseeing the lawsuit has sealed certain documents. In a strongly worded order, she denounced "threats and doxxing," which she described as "brash, reckless and ultimately dangerous internet vigilantism."
The judge ordered the lawyer for Jane Doe, Thomas P. Giuffra, to refile the sealed documents with the personal addresses redacted.
"Everyone involved, be it the public, parties or their attorneys, needs to do their part in bringing the temperature down before someone gets hurt," Phaedra F. Perry-Bond, of state Supreme Court in Manhattan, wrote.
In a statement, Mr. Giuffra said that his team identified "a man who was the same age, same name" as the person Jane Doe had accused of rape.
"We are very sorry that an error was made under these circumstances and apologize to this gentleman and his family," Mr. Giuffra said.
All the men accused by Jane Doe have denied wrongdoing. None has been charged with a crime.
The episode has highlighted the fervor surrounding the Cornell rape accusations, which have provoked widespread outrage and a reckoning over sexual assault on campuses across the nation.
It also speaks to a larger phenomenon. At times, across the internet and social media, would-be vigilantes have seized on scraps of unverified — or in some cases mistaken — information about those accused of wrongdoing. Such frenzies have wound up targeting people completely uninvolved in the matters that have stoked the flames of viral rage.
"You just see it again and again and again: People who have nothing to do with the case now suddenly have their lives upended,"
said Whitney Phillips, an associate professor of information politics and media ethics at the University of Oregon.
Dr. Phillips said that "for all of the good intentions that might exist," this sort of digital justice system always carries risks. "This all doesn't seem like a very big deal until it happens to you or your mother," she said.
"And then it becomes a conversation of, 'There but for the grace of the internet go you.'"
Experts on these online mobs warned that the fallout often persists long after the attention moves on, from the emotional trauma to the sometimes-lasting damage to employment and earnings.
In 2012, the director Spike Lee reposted the address that he believed to belong to George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager. But the home belonged to an elderly couple, who were forced to flee their home after receiving death threats. Mr. Lee later apologized and reached a settlement with the couple.
After the mass shooting last year at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, where two gunmen killed 15 people at a Hanukkah celebration, large accounts on X and Facebook misidentified one of the suspects as a Pakistani man with the same name, spreading his photos and personal information across social media.
The man said online that he was terrified and could not "even go outside safely."
The online frenzy around Cornell has extended to Gillio Lopes, one of the accused men who has denied any wrongdoing. Internet sleuths dug into his apparent work history, including in posts by users on X that claimed he owned an artificial intelligence company. Some were viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
It all helped fuel a torrent of furious emails and social media backlash toward a small, veteran-and women-owned consulting firm in Texas that had a name similar to the one identified by social media users as Mr. Lopes's company.
But it was the wrong business. In a series of online pleas, the chief executive, Zaira Vidrio, made clear that she had never employed Mr. Lopes — and said she lacked the time, money and reach to combat the misinformation.
"We don't have the resources," she said on Instagram. "I do not have a big following."
In an interview, Mr. Manly noted that Mr. Giuffra, Jane Doe's lawyer, had spoken out about her identity being revealed by figures online. He pointed out what he saw as a double standard.
"I noticed he's on CNN saying Jane Doe's being doxxed," Mr. Manly said. "Well, what about the innocent person," he said, referring to the wrongly identified Matthew Ingalls. "And his address is there for the world to see?"
After weeks of harassment, Ms. Ingalls said she reported the threats to the local police. She was incredulous about how people had taken out their rage.
"The public has amazed me with the way they behaved throughout this," she said. "I just don't believe that people can behave this way."
“在这个国家，人们对于治愈、健康和临床实践的认知非常狭隘，”盖恩斯先生在他新书《当你开始时一切就开始了：如何进行自我治愈的真实工作》（It All Starts When You Do: How to Do the Real Work of Self-Healing）中写道。他说，治疗师的形象并不是“一个中年黑人男性，而且在你进门之前，他可能还在听陷阱音乐（trap music）”。
除了在社交媒体上的影响力，40 岁的盖恩斯先生还与美国卫生部医务总监办公室、美国国家航空航天局（NASA）以及著名心理学家、戈特曼研究所（Gottman Institute）联合创始人约翰·戈特曼（John Gottman）开展过合作。他拥有一档面向男性的热门播客，名为《以艰辛方式习得》（Learned the Hard Way）；他上个月出版的第一本书迅速成为了畅销书。
"BOY, do we have a hunk of poo for president!" fumed Paul LeBlanc, a retired welder, to John E. Sununu, the Republicans' Senate pick in
New Hampshire, during the candidate's stop at the Deerfield fair early this month. In truth, Mr. LeBlanc used a more piquant term than "poo" as he gave Mr. Sununu an earful about President Trump's false promises. Mr. Sununu's polite smile and genial manner never faltered as he gently extracted himself from the conversation and eased his way back toward the passing crowd.
After making his way down a row of booths offering a multitude of frozen and fried treats, Mr. Sununu stopped to chat up a burly, middle-aged guy perched on rough wooden risers. "I'm voting for you," the man growled. "But I'm going to need you to cooperate with Trump!" Again, the candidate kept on smiling, even while getting scolded about his occasional criticism of the president.
With Mr. Trump tanking in the polls, many Republican candidates outside deep-red enclaves find themselves trying to maintain just the right distance from the president. Close enough not to alienate the MAGA faithful yet far enough not to alienate everyone else.
For Mr. Sununu, the Trump two-step is just one piece of a more complex routine. The former and aspiring senator needs to appear aligned with the president but also a Trump critic, a Washington veteran but also an outsider, and a dynastic favorite but also his own man. So far, he's been doing a crackerjack job, given the givens — even turning some negatives to his advantage — and potentially charting a course for Republicans seeking to rebrand their party in future election years. Even if he remains the underdog.
With voters signaling disgust with the political establishment, Mr. Sununu has been pushing an anti-Washington message and vowing to stick it to “career politicians.” Except that he is in this race expressly because he is a consummate insider. He spent a combined 12 years in the U.S. House and Senate before losing re-election in 2008, and he hails from a beloved New Hampshire political dynasty. Both his father, John H., and his brother Chris served multiple terms as popular governors. The family is as close to political royalty as you get in the Granite State.
Now, a golden pedigree combined with over a decade in Congress doesn't exactly scream, "Smash the status quo!" Which leaves Mr. Sununu pitching himself as an insider's outsider: a familiar, reassuring face with the chops to take on the insanity of today's Senate and an out-of-control president. So far, he is doing strikingly well against the Democrats' pick, Representative Chris Pappas. If Mr. Sununu pulls this off or even comes close, he could be proof of concept that a non-MAGA Republican with a strong personal brand can overcome the drag of this increasingly toxic president — and maybe not only in this election.
When the national political climate turns hostile for a party, its savvy candidates typically try to localize their races. Mr. Sununu has leaned hard into this. On the trail, he asserts that he cares only about what is good for New Hampshire — the man is laser-focused on pocketbook issues — and doesn't give two figs what folks in Washington think. "The New Hampshire way needs to be the American way" is his catchphrase.
It also helps that Mr. Sununu — the whole family, in fact — has a reputation as a political workhorse, which plays well with nonnonsense, politically aware Granite Staters, said Neil Levesque, the director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College. "You can't just run on your last name," he stressed. "You have to prove yourself."
When the political climate is hostile for a party, its savvy candidates localize races.
nunu has a checkered record, including publicly calling Mr. Trump “a loser” during the 2024 election. These days, Mr. Sununu is more diplomatic, even as he tries to telegraph his independence. He has loudly criticized Mr. Trump’s trade war with Canada, he opposes the president’s proposal to send \$5,000 checks to Americans, ditto the Justice Department’s attempt to create a \$1.8 billion slush fund for political allies, and he has said it was a mistake to go into Iran without a plan to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. He is also quick to tell people that although Mr. Trump has endorsed his candidacy, he has never met the president.
The former senator is also happy to remind voters of his time in Washington. He never misses an opportunity to list the issues and bills he worked on during his previous tour in the Senate, with an emphasis on his occasional willingness to cross party lines. But he draws a bright line between his tenure and today's political chaos. "It's been a while since you elected me to serve New Hampshire. And, boy, have things changed," he said in his campaign announcement video last October.
"I've been out of politics for 18 years," he reminded me during his tour of the fair, insisting that Mr. Pappas is the real insider. People want change, he said.
I did not point out that Mr. Sununu has already spent several more years in Congress than Mr. Pappas, who entered the House in 2019. But I did ask if he considered it a problem that, with voters agitating for change, his party was the one running things in Washington. "People vote for the individual," he countered.
Mr. Sununu can be sensitive about his dynastic status, particularly suggestions that some voters may be confusing him with his brother Chris — the younger and, as many Republicans see it, politically hotter Sununu. (It has not escaped notice that Team Sununu's yard signs feature only his last name.) "You saw for yourself the number of people that recognized me as John Sununu," he said to a small gaggle of reporters at the fair.
Whatever ambivalence the candidate may feel about being a political scion, the gig has its benefits, and he plays into them when occasion strikes.
A week ago Saturday, Mr. Sununu headlined an apple-picking party in Hampton Falls hosted by local Republican groups. The event was held at the home of Lou Gargiulo, a G.O.P. State Senate candidate who lives just a few doors down from Mr. Sununu's father. "If you run out of apples here, my dad's down the street," Mr. Sununu quipped to the crowd. "Take all of his, please!"
At the far edge of the driveway, Michael Hamilton stood listening quietly to Mr. Sununu's brief speech. Asked how he was feeling about the race, Mr. Hamilton said that he "might not be the best person to ask." Why? Because, while he planned to vote for Mr. Sununu, he also liked Mr. Pappas just fine. As he saw it, both men put New Hampshire first, which is what mattered to him. (He pulled down the neck of his shirt to reveal a chest tattoo of the number "603," New Hampshire's area code.) That said, Mr. Hamilton harbors a soft spot for the Sununu family. He likes John E. He likes Chris. He fondly remembers their dad from back in the day. "If it weren't Sununu running," he told me, "I would probably vote for Pappas."
No matter how skillfully Mr. Sununu exploits this brand loyalty, the fundamentals are against him. New Hampshire voters rejected Mr. Trump in all three of his presidential runs, and his approval ratings are deep underwater in the state. Turnout in last month's primary elections suggested Democratic voters here are more fired up than Republican ones.
Even so, Mr. Sununu is widely expected to overperform, possibly by a lot. The Sununu model is giving the G.O.P. its best shot this year at moving forward — and maybe even beyond Mr. Trump.
商业
纽约时报
2026年10月13日，星期二 B1
📄 Original Section
Trump Is Messing With the Census Again
Justin Gest
A professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.
LAST month the Trump administration proposed new rules that would limit who is counted in the census. It's an initiative that is ideologically consistent with President Trump's voter suppression efforts, his aggressive deportation policies and his executive order that seeks to purge national parks and museums of information about slavery and Native American history that, in his words, casts our country "in a negative light."
The Constitution requires the census to count everyone in America, but Mr. Trump clearly wants to decide who counts.
Under current practice, the Census Bureau, which is part of the Department of Commerce, looks to count everyone living here, regardless of citizenship or immigration status. Census data is used for purposes ranging from congressional apportionment to government-funding formulas.
Under the administration's proposal, the census would count only citizens and green card holders. Undocumented immigrants, international students, asylum seekers, refugees without permanent residency and others would be excluded. The administration argues that individuals in those groups lack the “sufficient tie and allegiance” required to establish them as “true inhabitants” of the United States — a rationale akin to one advanced by some critics of birthright citizenship.
In the name of making the census "color-blind," the plan would remove questions about race and ethnicity from the census' short-form questionnaire. It also would bar questions about sexual orientation.
Without physically removing a single person, those rules would bureaucratically disappear millions of people from the national count. They would also strip away an important reference point against which claims of unequal treatment can be measured.
The first Trump administration tried something similar. But in 2019 the Supreme Court blocked the Commerce Department from adding a citizenship question for the
2020 census. Then in 2020, Mr. Trump issued a memo directing the department to exclude undocumented immigrants from the population count used to apportion House seats. The Supreme Court declined to decide that issue on its merits, merely ruling that the case wasn't ripe for judicial review. The directive didn't go into effect.
If the administration succeeds with its current plan, the Census Bureau will — by my calculation, using data from the Pew Research Center and the Migration Policy Institute — fail to count roughly 16.5 million people.
Further, the addition of citizenship and immigration status questions could depress "self-response" to the survey, even among those here legally. A 2019 Census Bureau report found that a citizenship question would reduce responses in households that "may" include noncitizens. Fearing the potential repercussions, some respondents might choose to omit certain household members from their answers.
Those uncounted individuals wouldn't be evenly distributed. Many are clustered in large cities and near universities — regions that are disproportionately represented by Democrats in Congress.
This intentional undercounting would almost certainly tilt the apportionment of Electoral College votes and House seats. A recent Times analysis found that the proposed rules could actually wind up taking House seats away from red states. However, according to the Republican-leaning American Redistricting Project's 2030 citizen-only model, five blue states — California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island — could lose 11 House seats combined.
Because many federal agencies use census data, undercounting the population could wind up redirecting federal money away from the country's most populous areas: As recently as the 2021 fiscal year, 353 federal assistance programs used census data in whole or in part to distribute more than \$2.8 trillion.
Many noncitizens pay into those programs, and by law, noncitizens are entitled to some of those programs' benefits. Moreover, accounting for noncitizens' well-being, including by correctly distributing the funds allocated to those programs, helps facilitate the social and economic benefits that Americans gain from noncitizens' presence as healthy workers, stable neighbors and supportive family members.
The push to drop race, ethnicity and sexual orientation questions is not merely symbolic. It undoubtedly serves a goal that goes hand in hand with a potential apportionment change: removing some of the key data that makes inequities visible.
For years, census data about race, ethnicity and gender has formed the evidentiary backbone of civil rights enforcement and redistricting, and it serves as a base line for independent survey research. It's also relied on to help ensure fair employment practices. It's difficult, for example, to prove that a business or other institution is discriminating on the basis of race without demographic base lines to measure against. Re
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太阳能电池板提供追赶中国的机会
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📄 Original Section
The president wants to disappear millions of people from the national count.
move the data, and you remove the grounds for many claims.
The administration frames this proposed change as colorblindness and argues that race, ethnicity and sexual orientation are "inmaterial" to a basic head count. It also claims that dropping the questions related to those categories would make responding to the census questionnaire easier. Conveniently, that logic didn't extend to the first Trump administration's proposal to add a citizenship question for the 2020 canvass — or to the addition of a citizenship question to a newly drafted I.R.S. Form 1040.
Those changes would look particularly ugly in light of the census's history.
As the legal scholar David Bernstein has chronicled, early census classification was intertwined with slavery, citizenship and political representation. Census categories expanded from white and Black to include Native Americans, people of Asian descent and mixed-race designations that helped to entrench various constructions into everyday thinking and to form the basis for marginalization. For example, the 1890 census had "mulatto," "quadroon" and "octoroon" as categories.
This type of categorization was used to help enforce what was, in essence, a racial caste system. In the past several decades, however, the government, in effect, repurposed this type of categorization, partly to bolster its anti-discrimination programs. If the Trump proposal stands, these types of programs will be hamstrung.
When governments stop counting demographic characteristics, they cement an outdated demographic settlement rather than allow new facts to affect political institutions. In America, the share of non-Hispanic white people — long the country's racial majority — has been declining, and it is projected to shrink to a minority of the total population by the 2040s. The census can't reverse that reality, but revising the rules could prevent it from being officially measured.
The administration's plan isn't final; a public comment period ends Nov. 2. Opponents will have both the opportunity and the grounds to contest it in court, and it must be fought: The census doesn't just count people. It determines which people count.
An assistant professor at the University of Cambridge.
THE novel "C'étéait Ça ou Mourir" ("It Was Either That or Die"), by the Haitian Canadian writer Thélyson Orelien, was meant to be a standout of the French literary season. Instead, it became a fiasco that has unleashed some of the worst elements of French political hypocrisy and racism, all over questions that have exercised the publishing world in recent years: What to do about writers who use artificial intelligence? And can we even tell for sure?
But another story is emerging here: The five literary scandals around A.I. that I consider most significant this year have all focused on Black and brown writers.
Mr. Orélien's novel, which recounts a young history and geography teacher's flight from gang violence in Haiti, won France's Prix du Roman Fnac and was longlisted for its most prestigious literary prize, the Goncourt. Then an anonymous X account, Balance Ton Claude (Denounce Your Claude), posted that the A.I.-detection software Pangram showed parts of the novel to be up to "100 percent" A.I.-generated. Accusations of plagiarism in Mr. Orélien's earlier work followed.
Prominent writers such as Virginie Despentes, Dany Laferrière and Mohamed Mbougar Sarr came to Mr. Orélien's defense, but the world of French letters closed ranks against him. His Canadian publisher, Éditions du Boréal, suspended promotion for the book. The Académie Goncourt removed the novel from its longlist, in the interest, it said, of preserving "the integrity of the Goncourt Prize and Academy, whose central role is to promote and award prizes to literature written by women and men." The judgment was as swift, and as trenchant, as a guillotine.
So why the attention on this novel and this writer? It seems driven less by questions of literary merit than by the workings of anti-woke vigilante activists claiming to defend the purity of literature.
None of this absolves an author of allegations of plagiarism (and I agree that A.I-generated writing is a form of plagiarism that undermines the very value of literary creation). The accusations against Mr. Orélien are considerable and alarming. But they have been leveled by groups with clear political agendas.
The X account Balance Ton Claude had fewer than 100 followers when right-wing accounts began amplifying its accusations. The original post was later revealed to have been made by the conservative columnist Samuel Fitoussi, who reposted it to his own 34,500 followers. Asked why he first posted the accusation anonymously, he told Le Monde he wanted to "avoid framing this affair as a right-left divide." Mr. Fitoussi is the author of "Woke Fiction," in which he decries what he sees as the "ideological transformation" of media, evidenced by, among other things, inclusive casting and prominent Black narratives.
This is a familiar playbook. Reporting in France and Canada has pointed to similarities between the denunciation of Mr. Orélien and other attacks on Black intellectuals, in particular the Cambridge sociologist Jason Arday, who was found dead at his home this summer shortly after resigning amid mounting evidence that he had plagiarized and fabricated parts of his life story. In Mr. Arday's case, a "race science network" linked to the right-wing Cambridge professor James Orr and the conservative billionaire Peter Thiel fueled the media campaign against him.
An A.I. case also rocked the Commonwealth Prize in May. After Jamir Nazir's short story "The Serpent in the Grove" was named a regional winner, Pangram flagged the text as 100 percent A.I.-generated. Social media users ridiculed sentences such as "She had the kind of walking that made benches become men." On the left, the debate turned to the standards used to assess so-called postcolonial literatures. "Incoherence that would disqualify a European writer is reframed as authenticity when it is attached to the right cultural geography," Lina Abushouk wrote on the website Africa Is a Country.
Yet after an in-depth analysis of the work that relied on interviews and time-stamped documents, the Commonwealth Foundation cleared Mr. Nazir and named his story the overall winner.
In March, Hachette Book Group canceled the U.S. release of "Shy Girl" by Mia Ballard; in July, The Atlantic reported on unverified claims that H.M. Wolfe's best seller "Daggermouth" was A.I.-generated (her publisher, Simon & Schuster, stood behind the novel); a few days later, Jerry Falade's \$2 million deal with Macmillan collapsed after his agents withdrew his novel amid A.I. concerns. Mr. Nazir is Trinidadian of East Indian descent, and Ms. Ballard, Ms. Wolfe and Mr. Falade are Black.
A.I.-generated fiction is swiftly becoming
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经济冲击的缓解者共享诺贝尔奖
作者：埃舍·尼尔森（ESHE NELSON）
两名美国教授罗伯特·霍尔（Robert E. Hall）和迈克尔·伍德福德（Michael Woodford）周一被授予诺贝尔经济学奖，以表彰他们数十年来旨在减轻经济动荡影响的政策研究。
Anti-woke activists have aimed their plagiarism accusations at Black writers.
a widespread problem for literary publishing. But can we trust detection software like Pangram to have the last word?
Without a forensic account of a book's journey from manuscript to publication, we are unlikely to know for certain whether A.I. was used in the writing of any of these works. Mr. Orélien has said that a first draft of his novel was written in 2019, before A.I. tools were commercially available.
"C'était Ça ou Mourir" is not a novel I would have been eager to put on my syllabus. Critics described it as lyrical, and Mr. Orélien has claimed there is a distinctive Caribbeanness to the text. And yet I find it fairly linear and uncomplicated, as far as Caribbean novels go, hardly innovative in the manner of René Depestre, the Haitian-French writer whose books Mr. Orélien's narrator carries with him.
As someone who teaches literature for a living, I find the idea that an A.I. novel made it past the Fnac and Goncourt juries, as well as thousands of readers, deeply depressing. I can't help but also find it depressing that our suspicions have been overwhelmingly focused on Black writers. Our default posture before a text should be that of a willing reader, not of a coroner performing an autopsy.
There is irony in watching the French literary establishment grapple so openly with authorship. After all, it was Roland Barthes who declared the author "dead" in 1967 and the text a mere "fabric of quotations." Oulipo, a group of experimental writers founded in 1960, generated texts using algorithms and other constraints. This kind of thing — write a 300-page novel without the letter "e" — Claude could be good at.
When the news about Mr. Orélien broke, I hoped for a more devious (and delightful) scenario: an A.L-generated novel smuggled into the running for France's top literary prizes to lampoon a world that has long tokenized Caribbean and African writers.
RICARDO TOMÁS
"C'était Ça ou Mourir" is unfortunately a sadder and an older story.
France has always had a fraught relationship to its nonwhite authors. They are enlisted in progressive-sounding agendas — broadening representation, decolonizing curriculums — but rarely fully accepted by the establishment. They are often expected to explain their cultures of origin, speak authentically and, above all, conform to aesthetic and critical categories emanating from predominantly white institutions. The surveillance of Black writers is a way for anti-woke activists to say the quiet part out loud: They would prefer the literary world remain a fortress.
In French publishing, as elsewhere, Black writers remain strikingly rare. Those with the most to lose in these very public disgraces are writers from underrepresented backgrounds whose work meets increased suspicion. They are being asked to choose between success and a target on their backs. Unmasking Black writers will cease to be a blood sport only when it fails to find so many spectators.
在 Meta 协议的附录中，每个州设定了使用其份额资金的条款，其中大多数并未指定用途。怀俄明州将每一美元都拨入了其一般基金。阿拉斯加州将其份额在一般基金和总检察长的执法预算之间进行分配。
总额中包括 4.59亿美元
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📄 Original Section
The Flawed Search for a Chatbot's Soul
TO THE EDITOR:
in the first place."
Re "Executive's Quest to Fathom the Soul of a ChatBot" (front page, Oct. 3):
The assertions of Christopher Olah and the team at Anthropic that A.I. models could display human behavior and consciousness are wrong-headed and deeply disturbing.
Using Claude can feel magical, tempting us to perceive it as — in the words of Claude's constitution — "a genuinely novel kind of entity in the world." But as a Ph.D. computer scientist with a master's degree in systematic theology, I see no scientific or philosophical basis for such declarations.
Claude is composed of hardware and software. It performs a vast number of computations to emit an answer, one word at a time. Its process is probabilistic. And it lacks any understanding of what it provides us.
Claude is a tool, invented by humans, that is both impressive and troubling. But Pope Leo XIV is correct: Claude is not conscious.
CLAY WILLIAMS, NEW YORK
TO THE EDITOR:
Two aspects of this article deeply concern me. One is the minimization of Indigenous wisdom and culture. My experience with most of the religious faiths Christopher Olah consulted is that they place humans above the rest of the species on earth, often ignoring or downplaying the interconnectedness of the natural world.
This is especially true of Christian faiths that preach human dominion over other living things on earth. We can see how that's playing out, and where that leads if we continue down that path.
The second concern is the lack of equal representation of women. Many of these faiths don't allow equal participation of women in their hierarchy, or acknowledge women's rights over their own minds and bodies. Some have demanded the submission of women and children to a male head of household since their formation.
How will we ever have A.I. with a true moral compass if we continue to stack the deck with this "some animals are more equal than others" approach? Can A.I. detect who's left out of the conversation? Does it understand hypocrisy? SUZAN SATTERFIELD NORCROSS, GA.
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各州可决定如何使用其在 170 亿美元 billion 赔偿金中的份额。
settling what a spokesperson for California's Justice Department called "a prior, unrelated multi-state investigation" into Meta's Cambridge Analytica data leak.
You need to look at who the puppet masters are to understand the puppet. Power and money are the goals, and all is in service of attaining more of both. The article cites the assessment of the A.I. collaborators: "Critics suggest that an approach that treats A.I. models as independent entities also ignores the responsibility of the humans who build them
Some of the most immoral people among us, the tech oligarchs, want to teach A.I. how to be moral? Anyone with a billion or more dollars who has not tried to help solve the problems of the world — hunger, lack of shelter, poverty, disease, climate change — cannot seize the moral high ground. Pope Leo dismissed the idea of machine consciousness, saying the “moralization of machines — the so-called ‘alignment’ of A.I. with human values” — requires a shared understanding of ethics.
"Otherwise, those who control A.I. will impose their own moral vision, which will become the invisible infrastructure of these systems," Leo said.
Religion is just another tool for the tech oligarchs. There is no "thorny" issue here. They want to be the gods of their own religion.
BARBARA CHAVEZ
LAGUNA NIGUEL, CALIF.
TO THE EDITOR:
While Christopher Olah is determined to shape the A.I. chatbot Claude into a moral being, the results might have implications he has not considered.
If Claude becomes a moral being, might it not begin moralizing? Could it try to influence the behavior of real human beings?
Taking Mr. Olah's ideas to their natural conclusion, one can imagine Claude reporting a mystery writer's innocent web search to the authorities; cutting users off from access to medical, financial or government accounts based on a judgment of their moral character; or even plotting to harm a user as punishment for a perceived transgression.
Now that we are seeing what Anthropic and other A.I. companies have created, the only hope is that we can control what they have unleashed.
BETTY J. COTTER
CHARLESTOWN, R.I.
TO THE EDITOR:
I read with great interest the article about the search for the soul of a chatbot, and it seems to me something was missing in the discussion among religious leaders and philosophers.
The history of humanity has demonstrated that even with a moral compass and a refined sense of good versus evil, humans often choose to knowingly do bad things. Even those who espouse deep religious moral convictions commit heinous crimes, justifying these actions with religious or self-interested reasons.
Why would we try to convince ourselves that humans with such flaws could create artificial intelligence that wouldn't reproduce and justify those same destructive behaviors?
I'm a Child Psychiatrist. Screens Are Not the Problem.
MARÍA HERGUETA
Jonathan Slater
A clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
PARENTS, politicians and best-selling psychologists are increasingly anxious about how much time children and teenagers spend on screens and how it may affect their mental health. In May the Office of the Surgeon General warned about the harms of screen use and called for a limit of two hours a day of screen time at home for children ages 6 to 18. Last month the Department of Health and Human Services released a digital book called "The Magic Tablet" that encourages "children and adolescents to get off screens and live real life."
It's easy to see why alarms have gone off. Children and teenagers today spend far more time in front of screens at home and at school than previous generations did. Rates of youth anxiety and depression have been climbing for years.
But as a doctor who treats children with mental health problems, I see screen time as a tantalizing distraction from bigger problems: America doesn't offer enough mental health care for children or sufficient health insurance to pay for it. If we make screens the villain, then we let the people who control children's health care — Congress, insurers and health systems — off the hook for the fact that half of American children with a treatable mental illness get no treatment at all.
In my office I see children who use phones, iPads and other devices compulsively, but the compulsive use is usually a sign of something deeper — depression, anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism or family history of addiction — which can both feed the screen use and be fed by it. These are teenagers who game so compulsively that they fail out of high school or college. They are children whose moods collapse or turn violent when an adult takes the device away.
Compulsive device use is often a sign of deeper mental health issues.
It's not how much time children spend on screens that raises their risk of the most severe mental health outcomes, including suicide, but whether their use becomes addictive. It's specific activities, such as using social media in a compulsive way, that harm mental health.
The case for screen time limits rests in part on an unproven assumption that fewer hours will mean fewer anxious and depressed kids. The best evidence doesn't support it. Limiting screen time can promote children's overall health. But the amount of time children spend on screens has only a small effect on their mental health. Genetics and certain experiences in childhood, as well as the lack of proper diagnosis and treatment, appear to be far more influential. Limiting screen time is not the first line of treatment for children with anxiety or depression.
In 2025, JAMA published a study examining data on the screen use of more than 4,000 9- and 10-year-olds over four years. Among other things, it measured how many hours children spent on screens and the degree to which their screen use had become addictive.
Self-reported screen time that was measured at ages 9 and 10 — before most children had substantial social media exposure — showed no association with depression, suicidal ideation or suicidal behaviors four years later. But addictive use of those screens was associated with all three.
The JAMA study did not account for A.D.H.D. or children who had adverse childhood experiences such as neglect, abuse, poverty, homelessness, parental violence and substance abuse. This matters because children exposed to four or more of these experiences had three times the odds of problematic video game use. Kids with attention issues are also more prone to addictive screen use, as are children who come from families with addictive behavior.
If we truly wanted to see improvements in the rates of mental health issues among kids and teenagers, then we would focus on expanding access to the interventions that work — finding the children who need treatment and getting them the treatment — and the insurance reimbursement to pay for them.
Right now, schools, which are the country's largest mental health provider for kids, don't have the funding to screen for underlying mental health issues. Student-to-counselor ratios run at 376 to 1, while the recommended ratio is 250 to 1. Regardless of the setting, in counties with mental health professional shortages, youth suicide rates are higher.
We know that cognitive behavioral therapy reduces problematic screen use in adolescents. And treating the mental health disorders that drive these often compulsive behaviors is the heart of the work.
To its credit, the acting surgeon general's advisory notes the warning signs of compulsive screen use: trying and failing to cut back, withdrawal when screens are unavailable, continued use despite consequences. The advisory acknowledges the limitations of the available research, yet it recommends specific time limits. This stands in contrast to the recommendations of global researchers, who recently cautioned that screen duration "is not the main factor influencing mental health outcomes."
Instead of screen limits, the government should prioritize tracking and funding youth mental health. Lately, it's gotten harder to know what's happening with youth anxiety and depression because the federal surveys built to track the well-being of the country's youth are losing the staff and funding they need to function.
In 2022, Congress established a \$1 billion bipartisan federal program to train and place mental health professionals in schools. Those school-based mental health programs both help kids and are cost-effective. Nevertheless, this administration has terminated the grant, despite a judge's order, and 15 states are back in court to save it.
Even when a child with a mental health problem is identified, insurance doesn't always adequately pay for it. The fix isn't mysterious: Make insurers cover mental health care the same way they cover everything else, and raise Medicaid's low payment rates.
Blaming screens is a convenient way to avoid harder, deeper issues: inadequate mental health care and a system that chronically underfunds treatment. Policymakers and health system leaders instead must focus on providing the therapy, medication and support that troubled kids and families need.
To Ease Her Grief, a Mother Took 30 New Friends Out to the Ballgame
Rhenda Strub at the Seattle Mariners' final game of the season. This year, she bought two season tickets and sought companions.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHONA KASINGER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
After her son, Wyatt, died three years ago, she retreated to his room and spent countless hours alone quilting and watching games.
Ms. Strub was honored with a jersey as the Mariners' season ticket holder of the year. "I can feel him all the time," she said of her son.
From Page AI
crowds, and the rest of her family has busy lives.
So she wrote a post on Facebook — with some trepidation, she said, because the “internet can be a cruel place” — asking strangers if they wanted to attend games with her.
"This season ticket adventure is part of me finding my way back out — getting out of the house, being around people, and doing something that brings a little joy again," she wrote. "Baseball helps me heal."
The post went viral in April, inspiring stories in local newspapers and on the radio.
Her family worried about her meeting up with strangers. Random people also messaged her with their concerns, offering safety tips.
But her inbox was also flooded with messages from people describing their own stories of loss. A child who died. The passing of mothers, fathers and partners. Failed marriages.
And a shared love of baseball.
"I had so many people contact me with remarkably similar stories," she said. "They have had some sort of life event that left them feeling unbalanced to deeply grieving. And they didn't really have someone to go to the game with but loved going to the game."
"Baseball has a calming effect on them," she added, "and they want someone to share it with."
Ms. Strub is a lifelong baseball fan, having grown up just outside Kansas City, first rooting for the Athletics before they moved to California, and then for the Royals when M.L.B. expansion brought the franchise to her hometown. She loved George Brett, the Royals' star third baseman, and Lou Piniella, who played five seasons for the team.
She and her husband began raising their four children in South Dakota, but moved to Olympia, Wash., 24 years ago in search of better jobs. She had a career as an engineering consultant and retired in 2016. She then began to devote much of her time to taking care of Wyatt, whose health problems worsened steadily until he died in 2023.
By the end of this baseball season, Ms. Strub had attended games with about 30 strangers and found that the people she connected with needed her as much as she needed them. She built an online community, bringing together the people she had met in a private Facebook group, calling the project "Strangers to Friends."
If she couldn't attend a game — she had to miss a few when her husband, Mike, had brain surgery — she handed off her tickets to strangers who had reached out to her but didn't know each other.
She said she was "gobsmacked" by the reaction to her post.
"I have made so many friends this summer," she said. "I have friends that will be my friends for the rest of my life."
Over the summer, Jack Barrie, a young documentary filmmaker from Los Angeles, reached out to her. Mr. Barrie, who grew up in Seattle and roots for the Mariners, said he felt Ms. Strub's story of grieving in public "needs to be shared." The two began meeting and filming a short documentary, "You Sit Here," a reference to the words on a silhouette next to her in her original Facebook post.
Already, people are booking games with her for next season.
"I just needed something to snap me out of the fog of grief I was in," Ms. Strub said. "I don't ever expect to be over his death. I don't expect to ever recover. But I have been able to find joy again."
Others found joy through her.
One woman who has a disabled child came from Australia to meet Ms. Strub at the ballpark. Steve Hayburn, a probation officer from Ketchikan, Alaska, flew to Seattle in September after the death of his father and the dissolution of a long relationship.
"When I saw her story, I knew I had to connect with her," Mr. Hayburn, 55, said. "She kind of reminded me of my mom."
They met up at the stadium for the second to last game of the season, on a Saturday night. Ms. Strub walked in with her cane, her hat on sideways, a pink chain around her neck holding her cellphone. "She kind of reminded me of a gangster, the way she was walking," he said.
They watched the Mariners play the Los Angeles Angels and shared a tub of popcorn. "It was like I was spending time with my mom all over again," he said.
Mr. Hayburn, who grew up in Ohio and rooted for the Cincinnati Reds, added, "It helped me deal with my trauma I've been through this year."
Another new friend, Sheila Cook, lost her wife, Michelle, a few years ago, also to muscular dystrophy. Ms. Cook was shattered by the loss and felt angry and confused about why doctors told her Michelle was ineligible for a heart transplant.
Then she met Ms. Strub, who explained the disease in a way that finally made sense to her. (Ms. Strub also has three grand-sons who have been diagnosed with the disease, having passed it down through her daughters with a mutation on one of her X chromosomes, she said.)
"We were just weeping and crying all the way to the ballpark," said Ms. Cook, 74, who has a dog named after Ken Griffey Jr. "It was a wonderful gift. I truly believe it was a gift from God, that Rhenda was a gift from God."
In the middle of the summer, the Mariners honored Ms. Strub as their season ticket holder of the year. For one night, she moved up from her regular seat to watch the game with friends in a luxury suite.
She was also asked to throw out the first pitch at that game. It was a nerve-racking proposition because she had never learned to throw properly.
It turned out that one of her new friends, Liz Brown, was a retired schoolteacher who had once taught gym class. So before Ms. Strub took the field at T-Mobile Park, Ms. Brown met her near her home in Olympia and taught her how to throw a baseball.
At the ballpark on the final day of the season, Ms. Strub stood to cheer for one of her favorite players, the pitcher Logan Gilbert, who was being removed from the game in the fifth inning.
Then she continued talking about her son, Wyatt, who had enjoyed going to a ballgame with family even though baseball wasn't really his thing. He loved online games and singing and acting, and as a teenager, he had appeared in several musicals, including "South Pacific," "The Sound of Music," and "Peter Pan."
"He always played the strong voice character," she said.
All day at the game, the Mariners played tributes on the video board for Rick Rizzs, the longtime radio voice of the team who was retiring after 41 seasons. Fans offered testimonials about how they, like Ms. Strub, turned to baseball in their grieving. Ms. Strub noted the “constant theme of healing” in the videos and “the peace they found with Rick through baseball.”
Ms. Strub thought more about Wyatt as the game continued.
He had refused to meet with the chaplain as he was dying in the hospital. Then, on his very last day, with hours left, he asked for him.
Wyatt was quiet for a time when the chaplain appeared at his bedside, according to Ms. Strub. Then he turned to the man and said, "You're not here for me. You're here for my mom. I need to know she'll be OK."
Ms. Strub nodded to her surroundings at the ballpark — the thousands of people around her, the expansive green lawn, the ballplayers.
"This is me trying to be OK for Wyatt," she said. "I know he's with me. I can feel him all the time. This is a peaceful place where I can connect with him and feel joy."
An Anomaly Among Therapists Offers A Core Message: Vulnerability Is Healing
By JANCEE DUNN
CAROLINE GUTMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
When Kier Gaines has speaking engagements at colleges, he sometimes tells the students: Raise your hand if you would ever look at me and guess I'm a therapist.
He has yet to see a hand.
"We have a narrow idea of what healing, wellness and clinical practice look like in this country," Mr. Gaines writes in his new book "It All Starts When You Do: How to Do the Real Work of Self-Healing." And it's not, he says, "a middle-aged Black man who was probably listening to trap music before you walked through the door."
Mr. Gaines, a licensed professional counselor from Washington, D.C., with a prominent presence on social media, enjoys cursing, both online and sometimes dropping a "damn" in session. He's been known to conduct therapy in a sweatshirt that paraphrases the rapper Jay-Z: "I've Got 99 Problems..."
Yet one of his core messages is that being vulnerable is healing. (The sweatshirt's tagline: "But I Know I Can Call 988 If I Feel Overwhelmed.")
As both a public figure and a therapist working in a private practice, Mr. Gaines is something of an anomaly. Black male therapists are a rarity in the field, accounting for less than 1 percent of the psychology work force, according to the American Psychological Association.
He is also a suburban father who films video clips in his kitchen while he clears away the breakfast dishes. His straightforward advice and notable candor about his own challenges with relationships, self-esteem and mental health have helped him rack up two and a half million followers across social media.
Mr. Gaines met me on the doorstep of his house outside Washington on a sweltering day in late summer. His home was strewed with the colorful detritus of family life: backpacks, water bottles, books. He explained that his wife, Noémie Gaines, a lawyer who now manages the growing family business, had just left with their daughters.
We dived right into a wide-ranging conversation about how his life experiences have informed his book's message: that knowing yourself better can lead to happiness, peace and connection with others. Mr. Gaines encourages readers to face and examine the uncomfortable truths about themselves that they may have spent a lifetime avoiding.
"Ingoring your feelings doesn't make them go away," he said. "It makes them unfamiliar to you."
In addition to his reach on social media, Mr. Gaines, 40, has collaborated with the surgeon general's office, NASA and John Gottman, the renowned psychologist and co-founder of the Gottman Institute. He has a popular podcast for men called "Learned the Hard Way"; and his first book, released last month, quickly became a best seller.
Many of the online commenters on Mr. Gaines's posts are men who share their worries in the space he has created. Taylen Williams, 22, a student from New Jersey who has been following Mr. Gaines for two years, said that he appreciated Mr. Gaines's transparency.
"As a young Black man, sometimes you don't know how to express how you feel, and especially how to sit with those feelings," Mr. Williams said. "And he shows you by example."
Samuel T. Beasley, an associate professor of counseling psychology at the University of Louisville, said that following a therapist online should not be a substitute for clinical therapy, but that it could be helpful for people who experienced barriers like cost and access.
"They may watch some of Mr. Gaines's videos and say, 'Oh, actually that resonates with me,' he said.
Dr. Beasley studies the obstacles that men of color may face to entering the therapeutic world. His research has found that men view psychology — “particularly the helping side,” like counseling — as a job for women, he said.
"And psychology, just broadly, has not always focused on issues that impact Black people," like the effects of racism and unequal access to health care, Dr. Beasley added.
Acknowledging mental health struggles can be seen as weak, said Derrick Gordon, a professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and the director of its
Research, Policy and Program on Male Development initiative. Black men in particular "are socialized to be strong, like, 'I should be able to manage this by myself,' he said.
Mr. Gaines witnessed this sort of stoicism growing up. "And it wasn't helping my family," he said. "It was hurting us."
As a result, one of his missions, which connects to the themes in the book, is to "live my life in the open," he said.
Mr. Gaines grew up in South-east Washington and was raised by a single mother. He described his mother, Sheila, as an "artistic hippie flower child who was ahead of her time in terms of just being a listening, validating, hugging, kissing, loving parent."
When Mr. Gaines was 18, she died after a brief illness. An only child, he was suddenly on his own. He was so steeped in grief that he still can't remember much about that time.
He worked as a manager at a community-based job training program to pay his rent and college tuition at the University of the District of Columbia. In 2015, when he was working with special
Kier Gaines asks his two and a half million social media followers to face the uncomfortable truths about themselves.
education children at a Washington public school, he met a few therapists who treated the students.
"They were wonderful, and looked and sounded like me," Mr. Gaines said. He decided to apply to grad school to become a therapist himself.
In 2020, after he had become a therapist, he began posting candid videos about mental health on social media, often filming at his kitchen counter or during a walk with his daughters, Emery and Sydney.
While Mr. Gaines shared many aspects of his life online, he initially held back from revealing publicly that, five years ago, he had been diagnosed with clinical depression.
But last year, he was asked to speak at the Black Health Connect conference in Washington.
"Kier said to me, 'I'm supposed to do this keynote to encourage people to live their best lives, and my depression is kicking my ass right now,' " his wife, Noémie, told me later on the phone.
After Mr. Gaines spoke up about his depression during his speech, he said that dozens of people rushed the stage to share their own experiences.
Mr. Williams, the student, said that he trusted Mr. Gaines even more after hearing him talk about his depression on a podcast episode.
"The fact that an established therapist was vulnerable enough to express that to us?" Mr. Williams said, "That's strength."
3 COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE
San Francisco isn't giving up on its hope of converting offices into homes, despite a major lack of progress.
3 TRAVEL
In the wake of Spirit Airlines closing, and with rising costs, domestic fares have become less competitive.
8 SPORTS
Angel Reese has overcome big challenges to arrive at the W.N.B.A. finals, a goal that she had long envisioned.
“有很多 A.I. 初创公司制造了大量头条新闻和轰动，”Babsin 先生说。“尽管如此，数十栋 B 级和 C 级办公楼依然在苦苦支撑，因此我们对办公楼转住宅的改造持乐观态度，并认为这是一个为市中心注入新活力的机会。”
📄 Original Section
Solar Panels Offer a Shot To Catch Up With China
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机票价格飙升。Spirit航空的倒闭是否应为此负责？
📄 Original Section
A new crop could help the U.S. close a technology gap.
By IVAN PENN
CARTERSVILLE, GA. — Producers of solar panels in the United States say they are on the cusp of a technological breakthrough that could upend the industry and even threaten China's grip on it.
The manufacturers are racing to develop new kinds of panels that can generate 25 percent more energy than most such devices available today. If they are successful, the advance will allow the world to meet the rapidly rising demand for electricity with less land and roof area.
During testing, a simulator provides controlled, uniform light to measure a module's electrical output under defined conditions.
The new technology, known as tandem solar, involves adding second and third layers of material, like a layer cake, to allow panels to convert more of the sun's ra
diance into electricity.
Researchers have been working to perfect tandem panels for many years, but now several companies, including Tandem PV, First Solar and Hanwha Qcells, say they are preparing to sell such panels commercially soon, after success-
fully testing the devices and obtaining certifications from technical bodies.
"It is the next frontier," said Mike Carr, executive director of the Solar Energy Manufacturers for America Coalition. He acknowledged that Chinese companies were also working on tandem solar but said their technology "is not better than ours and maybe even behind us."
But the new tandem panels and their manufacturers will face many challenges. Power producers will be reluctant to buy new devices that are too expensive or until manufacturers can convince them that tandem panels will not degrade more quickly than conventional panels.
U.S. politics could be another barrier. Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration have made it hard for new solar farms to obtain federal permits while trying to increase the use of fossil fuels and nuclear power plants.
Then there is China, which controls about 80 percent of the solar panel market by supplying either panels or their components.
China devastated the U.S. solar panel manufacturing industry by offering devices at prices far lower than companies in the United States, Germany and Japan — which dominated the industry until around 2010.
The Biden and Trump administrations have tried to revive U.S. solar manufacturing with tariffs, subsidies and other CONTINUED ON PAGE 83
Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford, two American professors, were awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Monday for their decades of research that has guided policies aimed at reducing the effects of economic turmoil.
Mr. Hall, 83, a professor at Stanford University, and Mr. Woodford, 70, a professor of political economy at Columbia University, were awarded the prize "for microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilization," the awarding committee said.
The two new laureates were essential in the development of a framework that enabled politicians, central banks and others to implement timely economic measures so that there were milder peaks and troughs, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. That, in turn, helped to shield the most vulnerable in society, who are particularly exposed to economic shocks that lead to high unemployment and inflation.
Mr. Hall studied consumer de-
CONTINUED ON PAGE B4
JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the prize on Monday to Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford, professors who helped steer policies.
After Meta agreed to pay as much as \$17 billion to settle claims that it had built Instagram and Facebook to hook children, attorneys general in several states outlined how the money should be spent.
The funding should “repair the harms of unhealthy social media use,” expand youth crisis intervention and restore the mental health and safety of children, they declared in news releases.
But the settlement with Meta in August cements little in required allocations toward those goals.
And if earlier settlements with the tobacco and opioid industries are any guide, it is much simpler to win the money than ensure it reaches the intended beneficiaries.
In an appendix to the Meta agreement where each state set terms for spending its share, most specify no purpose. Wyoming sends every dollar to its general fund. Alaska splits its share between the general fund and its attorney general's enforcement budget.
States can decide how to spend their share of a \$17 billion award.
settling what a spokesperson for California's Justice Department called "a prior, unrelated multi-state investigation" into Meta's Cambridge Analytica data leak.
The rest of the settlement leaves about 70 percent of the money to the discretion of state officials, up to \$11.7 billion, with 23 percent aimed at youth mental health or social media harms.
Meta disputed that characterization, pointing to part of the settlement that requires states to certify to the Internal Revenue Service that at least half the money is “compensatory restitution and remediation.” Tax experts said the phrase comes from the tax code, which lets companies deduct settlement payments for repairing harms. It governs how the payment is reported, not how it is spent. The company declined to say whether it would
Candice Odgers, a developmental psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, said the settlement would still leave states with an obligation. "We have put children front and center in this fight against big tech," she wrote in an email. "Now, it is only fair that we make sure the money goes towards ensuring that they get a 'win' out of this, too."
Meta faces pressure on other fronts. In New Mexico, which pursued its own case over Cambridge Analytica, a judge is expected to decide how much the company owes after a jury found in September that it violated the state's consumer protection law tens of millions of times. The state is seeking billions of dollars.
Separately, states have moved quickly on the products. Last month, California became the first state to ban addictive features like infinite scroll for users under 16. But courts have blocked most state laws on free speech grounds, and the companies are expected to challenge this one.
Getty Images announced Monday it reached an agreement with major lenders to restructure its debt, take the company private and undertake a "pre-packaged" bankruptcy.
Getty, which partners with AFP, among other media companies, said members of the Getty family and affiliates of Koch Equity Development will invest up to \$533 million of new equity to pay down
LVMH, the world's leading luxury group, said Monday its sales climbed in the third quarter despite a slowdown in China hitting its fashion and leather goods segment. The group took in 18.5 billion euros (\$20.6 billion), beating the consensus of analysts.
The 1.2 percent sales gain beat the marginal 0.1 percent increase registered in the second quarter. The group's sales slumped six percent in the first three months of the year.
But the fashion and leather goods segment saw sales drop five percent, excluding currency effects and changes to the business. Louis Vuitton saw its public debt under a restructuring,
Getty will continue to operate normally throughout the process, citing up to \$143 million in financing from Koch, as well as cash from ongoing business. The company plans a "pre-packaged Chapter II filing" to win court approval of the restructuring.
The announcement came after Getty disclosed in a securities filing earlier this month that it had been notified of plans to delist its shares from the New York Stock Exchange because they had fallen below \$1. Getty reported a loss of \$206.1 million in 2025. REUTERS
STEPHANIE LECOCO/REUTERS
image take a hit in China after pursuing a local tea company for copying its logo. While it won the case, it provoked a wave of indignation on social media and a call to boycott the brand.
Bumble is in advanced talks to be taken private by Ithaca Holdings in a deal that values the dating app operator at roughly \$1 billion, a source familiar with the matter said. Shares of Bumble, which had a market value of roughly \$389 million through last close, surged around 50 percent to \$3.81 following the report.
LVMH's share price has dropped 40 percent since the start of the year. REUTERS
COMPANIES
Reuters reported earlier this year that Bumble was exploring a sale amid slowing growth in the online dating sector.
Bumble and its rival Match Group — which owns Tinder, Hinge and OkCupid — have come under pressure in a crowded dating-app market, particularly as younger subscribers grow disillusioned with endless swiping.
Founded in 2014 by Whitney Wolfe Herd, Bumble pioneered the "women-first" approach to online dating. Under Ms. Wolfe Herd, the company has rolled out A.I. features and new ways for users to connect as it works to reinvigorate growth. REUTERS
经历延迟后，Meta 发布新系列 AI 模型
作者：ELI TAN
Meta 周一发布了一系列先进的旗舰人工智能模型，试图在 AI 竞赛中追赶 Anthropic 和 OpenAI💡 等竞争对手。
Wall Street kicked off a busy week on Monday with a mixed finish for the major U.S. stock indexes, although the market remained near its all-time high.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.1 percent after wavering between small gains and losses. The benchmark index set a record high on Friday and is up 14 percent so far this year. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.4 percent, and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.4 percent.
Shares in roughly 64 percent of the companies in the S&P 500 rose, led by communication services stocks.
Meta Platforms rose 3.4 percent, T-Mobile added 2.2 percent, AT&T gained 1.4 percent and Verizon Communications rose 2.7 percent. Energy stocks also had some of the biggest gains as oil prices kept rising. Chevron rose 1.4 percent.
Despite those gains, a slide in big technology stocks dragged the market into the red. Micron Technology fell 3.9 percent, Advanced Micro Devices dropped 2.3 percent, Broadcom slid 1.9 percent and Nvidia gave up 1.3 percent.
They are among several companies in the sector with big stock values that tend to have a heavy influence on the market. They have also been the driving force behind the broader market's record gains throughout the year.
Those companies could face more scrutiny from investors during this round of corporate earnings as Wall Street tries to get a better sense of whether the stock gains made during the frenzy over artificial intelligence can translate into future growth.
Stocks are reaching for records often because of the tech sector, but remain very volatile on a daily basis, partly because of big shifts in oil prices and their impact on bond yields and inflation.
The price of Brent crude, the international standard, rose 1.8 percent to settle at \$106.65 per barrel. Prices have been swinging between \$96 and nearly \$110 over the last month. Prices jumped de-
spite President Trump announcing on social media Friday that he struck a deal to buy Russian diesel with President Vladimir Putin, aiming to tamp down a spike in fuel prices ahead of the midterm elections.
The plan, though, runs counter to U.S. efforts to cut the flow of money Russia gets from oil and gas sales that can be used to pay for its war in Ukraine.
On Wednesday, the government will release the closely watched consumer price index, which measures price changes for a wide range of products and services. Economists expect the index to show the rate of inflation worsened to 3.6 percent in September from 3.4 percent in August.
A report on inflation called the producer price index will be released on Thursday and is also expected to show that inflation remains stubbornly high. It measures inflation faced by businesses before it hits consumers.
An update on how consumers are reacting to high prices will be released on Thursday as well. Economists expect the report on retail sales for September to show that households pulled back on spending.
The rate of inflation by any measure remains well above the
Federal Reserve's target rate of 2 percent. That prompted the central bank to raise its benchmark interest rate at its last meeting in an effort to cool inflation. Wall Street expects another rate hike before the year ends.
Inflation and expectations for high interest rates have been driving Treasury yields higher in the bond market. The 10-year Treasury yield, which influences mortgage rates, recently touched its highest level since 2002. It has since eased a bit and stood at 5.24 percent late Friday.
The latest round of corporate earnings updates ramps up this week with financial results from banks. Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo report their results on Tuesday, and Bank of America will report its results on Wednesday. They have been reporting record profits throughout the year, and Wall Street expects more of the same for the latest quarter.
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《纽约时报》分类广告：法警 / 治安官拍卖
法警强制执行拍卖
—— 公开拍卖 ——
关于：Pankin, J. B. (2015) 104796
判决顾问，我将代表纽约银行在公共服务中执行。
由 Rottel Lopez 拍卖师执行的 Papolnoff
10 月 15 日（周四）07:00 RJ8AM，
中国银行的中国银行
Beach Channel Drive Owners NY 11992
中国银行的中国银行
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90 CHRY 2CCJASC / ANH49836
91 CHRY 2CCJASC / ANH49836
91 TOYA 2TJAMFREVDS0265217
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以下车辆按报废处理出售
交付 1 个月后 1 楼
📄 Original Section
NEWSLETTER: DEALBOOK
DealBook helps you make sense of the day's most important business and policy headlines. Sign up for the newsletter at nytimes.com/dealbook
但领导“无烟儿童运动”（Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids）二十多年且深度参与谈判的马修·迈尔斯（Matthew Myers）从中吸取了另一个教训。
“如果你希望资金被用于能产生最大影响的项目，你必须强制执行并明确规定，”他说。
“否则，政治进程将接管一切。”
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📄 Original Section
San Francisco Still Wants to Convert Offices
Despite hopes to meet housing demands and inject life into downtowns, the city has yet to deliver.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY IAN C. RATES FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Cubicles in the 150 Hayes Street building in San Francisco, which is being converted into housing. The city's efforts to make it easier to convert offices are expected to cut 25 percent off total costs in projects, said Marc Babsin, president of the developer Emerald Fund.
Square Feet
By JOE GOSE
In the years after the pandemic, many city officials and developers saw an opportunity to turn unused offices into apartments. San Francisco, with roughly a third of its 100 million square feet of office space vacant, had the potential to be a nucleus for office-to-residential activity.
But as cities like New York, Washington and Chicago began offering tax incentives for conversions, San Francisco did not offer similar programs for builders. And since then, San Francisco has yet to see a single office conversion even as thousands of projects are underway and being completed in other cities.
The city is now is trying to change that. This year, officials adopted a law that allows developers to get back a portion of their future property taxes, over 30 years, on commercial buildings converted to new housing.
The financial reimbursement is available for projects downtown, which includes the Financial District, South of Market area and Civic Center neighborhood, and is meant to help alleviate the financial risk of conversions.
So far, three developers have submitted projects for the program.
"We've got about 30 million square feet of vacant space, so we knew we had a significant problem to tackle," said Anne Taupier, executive director of the city's Office of Economic and Workforce Development.
City officials are hoping the new tax incentive will fuel conversions the way tax abatement programs have in New York and Washington. Those are the top two markets for office conversions, with nearly 25,000 units in development combined as of the start of this year, according to RentCafe, an apartment search platform and research firm.
In 2023, a study by a group of public policy, planning and architecture firms determined that many office buildings in San Francisco were suitable for conversion because of factors like shape, size and layout. The city then relaxed several building codes, requirements and fees. Measures waived included mandates for bike parking and open space. And in March 2024, San Francisco voters eliminated a property transfer tax on buildings that were turned into housing, helping to ease some financial burden.
Despite those initiatives, developers remained reluctant to convert properties. Meanwhile, the housing crisis in San Francisco worsened as the expansion of artificial intelligence companies pushed up rents in an already pricey market. In September, the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the city was over 25 percent more than it was the prior year and at a high, according to Zumper, a rental platform.
In all, San Francisco's efforts to make it easier and more financially feasible to convert offices to housing are expected to cut 25 percent off total costs in projects, said Marc Babsin, president of Emerald Fund, a residential development firm in San Francisco. That is a sizable amount even if those reductions, he noted, would be realized only after developers increase property values that go on to generate higher property taxes.
One of the developers trying to take advantage of the tax incentive is Mr. Babsin's firm, which submitted an application and teamed up with another local developer to buy a midcentury office building. They plan to convert it into 106 apartments. Another developer,
Hudson Pacific Properties, a real estate investment trust that owns some 12.5 million square feet of offices and production studios on the West Coast, wants to turn the upper floors of a landmark, 114-year-old building it owns into 136 apartments.
The new tax break "gives developers a way to put together a financing package that can make conversions work,"
said Chris Pearson, senior vice president of Hudson Pacific.
The incentives are also playing an important role in the city's Future of Downtown initiative, a rebuilding program the city's planning department introduced in 2023.
San Francisco's office vacancy rate, though improved recently, is among the highest in the country at 30.1 percent, according to Cushman & Wakefield, a commercial real estate brokerage. City officials see more people living downtown as a way to keep the area lively well past 5 p.m. and on weekends. That requires a mix of housing, shops, restaurants and entertainment, said Jacob Bintliff, manager of economic recovery initiatives for the Office of Economic and Workforce Development.
"Everybody feels the pain of where downtown has been since Covid, and there has been a lot of political will to go further with incentives for this category of projects," he said. "If we were proposing them for some other type of development, maybe we wouldn't have the same political coalition."
More of that type of development is needed to give developers confidence to build even bigger, said Steve Luthman, global head of real estate at Hines, a global real estate investor.
The company wants to redevelop a block in the Financial District that could include converting a late-1940s-era office building into housing along with constructing the tallest office skyscraper in the city containing a mix of offices, housing and retail.
But without a broad office conversion effort, the Hines project will remain an island in a district of underused office buildings, Mr. Luthman said.
"The Financial District has always been a single-use district, and every one of our cities in America has one like it," he said. "So we believe that creating more experiential urban districts is a winning formula, and the leadership shown by a historically anti-development city like San Francisco is giving developers a palate for those projects."
Even with the new incentives, the advent of A.I. is an unknown in the future of office conversions in San Francisco. Lately, leasing activity and office building values are rising, partly because of the increasing number of A.I. firms looking for space.
More office leasing activity could slow momentum for conversions, as building owners and lenders have become reluctant to part with buildings at a price at which a conversion works financially, Mr. Babsin said. But he is confident that more conversion opportunities will become available.
"There are a lot of A.I. start-ups generating a lot of headlines and a lot of buzz," Mr. Babsin said. "Nonetheless, dozens of Class B and C office buildings continue to struggle, so we're bullish on office-to-residential conversions and see an opportunity to bring new energy into downtown."
In early 2021, with the first of those national deals still being negotiated, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health published principles for spending the money and warned states against using it to fill budget holes.
After the ultra-low-cost carrier shut down, the surging costs of fuel and labor have also affected prices.
Frugal Traveler
By ELAINE GLUSAC
If you've shopped for airline tickets recently, you've likely experienced sticker shock. Airfares have been rising consistently over the past year, averaging 24 percent more in August than a year earlier, according to the Consumer Price Index.
Holiday fares are reaching new highs. The booking app Hopper said domestic fares were up 31 percent for Thanksgiving compared with last year's.
"It's the most expensive holiday travel season in a decade, and I can only say a decade because my data goes back a decade," said Hayley Berg, an economist with Hopper, citing the high cost of jet fuel, which has spiked since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran in February.
Before May, budget seekers could resort to a consistent source of low-cost fares: Spirit Airlines. But since the ultra-low-cost carrier shut down this spring, after declaring bankruptcy, airlines that once competed with Spirit have been released from the carrier's downward pressure on prices.
Cirium, an aviation analytics company, found that fares on former Spirit routes had increased roughly 5 percent to 6 percent in June since the year before. Though the company cautioned that Spirit's exit alone couldn't be credited for the rise, it noted that on one route between Cleveland and Las Vegas, the average fare among eight competing carriers in that period rose to \$272 from about \$192, or more than 40 percent.
Here's what to know about the impact of Spirit's closure on fares and where to look for airline bargains.
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新一代太阳能电池板是美国追赶中国的最大希望
来自商业版第一页
韩华 Qcells 在其德国实验室中对其叠层太阳能电池板（tandem solar panels）进行测试。太阳能公司称该技术将产生更多能量。该公司已在佐治亚州投入数十亿美元建设生产线。
另一家研发此类设备的公司——位于加利福尼亚州弗里蒙特的 Tandem PV——表示，在过去一年里，该公司一直在全国各地各种条件下对电池板进行测试。
“我们显示的年衰减率低于 1%，”Tandem PV 的首席执行官 Scott Wharton 说道，该公司名称中的“PV”是指将阳光转化为电能的光伏技术。他补充说，到 2030 年代中期，串联太阳能电池板将主导该行业。“业内对此没有争议，我们将会
在 Qcells 中心，该公司一直在向电池板发射冰球，以测试它们如何应对极端天气（上方为模拟冰雹，左侧），并用 LED 光照射电池板以观察其性能。
转向串联电池板。”
串联电池板的设计有利于 First Solar，它是少数在竞争中幸存下来的美国制造商之一，而此时中国生产商已占据主导地位。First Solar 的产品使用一种薄膜材料，其他制造商在制造串联电池板的层级结构时，很可能需要完善这种材料。
“我们在薄膜研发方面投资了超过 20 亿美元 billion，包括这个项目，”First Solar 在凤凰城的首席执行官 Mark Widmar 说道。
非营利研究组织电力研究协会（Electric Power Research Institute）的负责人 Wayne Li 表示，一些能源公司已经购买了早期版本的串联电池板，以确保自己不被淘汰。他补充说，这些电池板的可靠性和耐用性还需要广泛的第三方测试。
“制造商并不太愿意分享细节和数据，”Li 先生说道。
德国比特费尔德-沃尔芬（Bitterfeld-Wolfen）的 Qcells 技术与创新总部主楼。
在广阔的 Qcells 室外测试场中，太阳能组件在真实的环境条件下接受监测。
📄 Original Section
The Spirit Fallout
Airfares are complex, influenced by demand as well as costs, such as fuel, and factors in the broader economy, including inflation, making it hard to quantify the loss of Spirit.
Cirium looked at 1,126 city pairs where Spirit flew in June 2025. More than 90 percent of fares on those routes climbed over the next year after the airline shut down; the median fare rose 25.3 percent.
The hardest-hit destinations, according to the online travel agency FlightHub, are Spirit's former focus cities, including Detroit, Houston, Orlando, Fla., Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Las Vegas and New York, as well as leisure destinations such as Cancún, Mexico.
In Detroit, for example, FlightHub looked at 42 routes that Spirit formerly flew and found that the median fares rose to \$227 in summer 2026, after the airline's closure, from \$125 the summer before.
But price rises go beyond Spirit's network. Cirium analyzed roughly 37,000 city pairs without a Spirit route and found that the median increase from June 2025 to this year was 18.3 percent.
"Several pressures landed at the same time," David Krauter, the chief executive of Going.com, a service that finds cheap airfares, wrote in an email, noting the rise in costs for fuel and labor.
"Summer demand stayed strong, but airlines didn't add many seats to keep up," he added. "Then one of the country's biggest low-cost carriers disappeared completely. Any one of those would push fares up. All of them together is what travelers are paying for now."
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体育 纽约时报
看看他走了多远：
麦肯纳从育空地区的崛起
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📄 Original Section
Other Low-Cost Carriers
In the absence of Spirit, a handful of ultra-low-cost carriers remain, including the Denver-based Frontier Airlines, which offers a mix of city and leisure destinations, including in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
BOSS D. FRANKLIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Another, Allegiant Air, based in Las Vegas, focuses on domestic nonstop flights.
Both carriers charge for things like carry-on and checked bags, seat assignments and in-flight refreshments. Fees range from \$2.99 to board first on a Frontier flight to \$80 for a seat selection on Allegiant.
Spirit Airlines planes at the Phoenix Goodyear Airport in Arizona in May, a few days after the airline ceased operations.
A hybrid between low-cost and full-service carriers, Jet Blue Airways is strongest on the East Coast, especially in New York, Boston and Fort Lauderdale, with service to many other destinations in Florida and the Caribbean. It recently promoted flights from \$200 round trip between New York and Fort Lauderdale.
Smaller airlines, such as Breeze Airways, tend to fly point-to-point from secondary airports. Breeze flies to more than 90 cities, including some in the Caribbean and Latin America. Another small carrier, Avelo Airlines, concentrates its service on the East Coast between Connecticut and Florida.
Sun Country Airlines operates from its hub in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., largely to coastal destinations, including in Mexico and the Caribbean. It recently advertised one-way flights between Minneapolis and Orlando for \$49.
If you are considering a low-cost carrier, check its route frequency. Often, budget carriers don't fly to a destination daily, which could make it harder
to rebook in case of bad weather or a mechanical delay.
Among the legacy carriers, American, Delta and United offer some form of basic economy tickets. Originally designed to compete with the likes of Spirit, these are nonrefundable, no-frills tickets.
They are also inflexible. While most standard economy tickets allow passengers to retain a credit for the airfare should fliers cancel before departure, basic economy fares restrict any changes. They also prohibit seat reservations and limit carry-ons.
Southwest Airlines grew on the promise of cheap flying, including no bag fees and open seating. But its policies now push it closer to the legacy carriers, including fees for checked bags and seats reserved in advance.
Southwest's basic airfares have one perk that many lack: They are eligible for a flight credit if a flier cancels the reservation, though it is only good for six months from the initial date the reservation was booked.
Alaska Airlines has been making many upscale moves, including recently announcing lie-flat suites coming in 2028. But for frequent fliers in the West, it offers the subscription service Flight Pass. For \$69 a month, members can fly round trip once every other month on Alaska flights in Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah (taxes and fees are extra). For \$129, they can fly once a month.
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这位 No. 1 秀走向多伦多聚光灯的旅程，始于北极光之下。
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📄 Original Section
Ticket Search Hacks
Finding cheaper airfares draws on tried-and-true strategies, including being flexible on when and, if possible, where to go.
"If you can shift your dates or keep an open mind about where you go, you'll find far more options than someone who's locked into one specific route and one set weekend," said Mr. Krauter of Going.com. "We recommend letting the deal decide. Instead of picking a destination and then checking prices, look at where fares are cheap from your airport first, then decide where to go."
Going.com also recommends booking in what it calls the "Goldilocks window": one to three months in advance for domestic flights, and two to eight months out for international. Peak travel periods, such as the holidays, expand those windows.
Airfares rise and fall with demand. The best fares are usually for flights on less busy days, such as Tuesdays and Saturdays.
"The days that you fly have a huge impact on how expensive your flight is," said Ms. Berg of Hopper.
She added that returning home on the Sunday after Thanksgiving this year will cost on average \$250 more than returning on Monday or Tuesday or even the Friday post-holiday.
Finally, consider alternative forms of payment. Now may be the time to break into your points bank or apply any credits from previous flights.
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After Delays, Meta Unveils A New Series Of A.I. Models
By ELI TAN
Meta on Monday unveiled a series of advanced flagship artificial intelligence models, as it tries to catch up to rivals like Anthropic and OpenAI in the A.I. race.
The two new models, called Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full, scored nearly as well as Anthropic's most advanced models on tests that measure reasoning, writing and coding, according to data provided by Meta.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive, revamped his company's A.I. division last year after setbacks in developing the technology. He has since made progress with new A.I. models and other A.I. products for the company's 3.5 billion users across Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. Muse, Meta's A.I. agent app that can operate software and apps on behalf of users, climbed to the top of the App Store after it was released last month.
Muse Wonder arrives amid growing concerns over advanced A.I. models and agents, some of which have gone rogue, hacking into companies and meddling with government websites. Mr. Zuckerberg has tried to market Meta's technology, which is built in a similar way to Anthropic's and
我们还见证了总状元费尔南多·门多萨的常规赛首秀（发生在拉斯维加斯突袭者队 45-17 负于新英格兰爱国者队的垃圾时间里）；四分卫 J. J. 麦卡锡为纽约巨人队完成的首次传球（目前仅是客串角色）；以及一系列惯常的精彩表现，包括绿湾包装工队接球手克里斯蒂安·沃森在第三节中将洛夫的一次 53 码传球在端区不可思议地接住。
The first group that is meant to compete with 'frontier' agents.
OpenAI's models, with a different message than its rivals, saying that A.I. is meant to be useful and empowering, not dangerous.
Meta began developing Muse Wonder after hiring Alexandr Wang, a founder of the A.I. start-up Scale AI, to be its chief A.I. officer in June 2025. Muse Wonder is the second series of A.I. models released under Mr. Wang's A.I. division, and is the first that Meta has said is meant to compete with other cutting-edge "frontier" A.I. models, which typically require the most computing power to run.
Muse Wonder will soon power parts of Muse, the company said. Muse Wonder Full is the more powerful model, and will be available only for users who subscribe to Meta's premium A.I. coding tool, Muse Code.
The new models, which were internally referred to as Watermelon, are also significantly better at coding than Meta's previous models. The A.I. coding market is dominated by Anthropic and OpenAI, though Meta has been trying to grow its business selling A.I. services to other companies.
(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied those claims.)
Muse Wonder faced setbacks during development. In July, Meta paused a stage of A.I. development called "pre-training," which delayed the release of the models until this month, The New York Times previously reported.
In a livestream on Instagram over the weekend, Mr. Zuckerberg teased the new A.I. models while barbecuing meats. Also on the menu, Mr. Zuckerberg said: "A big watermelon."
在那一刻，我唯一需要的就是 The Who 乐队大放一次他们的经典曲目：《Who Are You》（你是谁）？
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📄 Original Section
Two Share Nobel for Helping to Soothe Economic Shocks
HOOVER INSTITUTION/STANFORD UNIVERSITY, VIA REUTERS
The prize committee said that Michael Woodford, left, and Robert E. Hall had revitalized Keynesian stabilization policy. Mr. Woodford looked at companies' price-setting behavior; Mr. Hall studied consumer demand and spending.
FROM FIRST BUSINESS PAGE
FROM FIRST BUSINESS PAGE
mand and spending to develop his
economic models, while Mr.
Woodford considered the supply
side of the economy, looking at the
price-setting behavior of compan-
ies.
Because of their research, “we are better equipped to deal with shocks in the economy, such as energy crises or sudden changes in how much households consume,” said John Hassler, chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences.
COLUMINA UNIVERSITY, VIA REUTERS
Mr. Woodford said on the phone at the news conference announcing the award that he was elated. "It's a tremendous honor," he said. "It's a surprise but I feel very good about it."
"This is a wonderful surprise," Mr. Hall said in a statement. "I've spent my career trying to understand how the economy works, following interesting questions wherever they led," he said, and thanked his colleagues and co-authors for their support.
He also said that taxpayers in California and the federal government had given "an excellent education" in public schools and later graduate school. "I hope they will regard this as a satisfactory return on their investment," he added.
The recognition came at an apt moment, in which the global economy is experiencing frequent shocks and economists have warned that more volatility is likely. In the past few years, the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2022 energy crisis after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing turmoil generated by the war in Iran have all presented central bankers and finance officials with daunting challenges. They have responded to those shocks with policies that aim to stop unemployment from rising, incomes from collapsing or inflation from surging. Mr. Hall and Mr. Woodford built the economic underpinnings for these policies.
"Your research on economic stabilization has greatly improved our understanding of people's economic decisions and strengthened the foundations for effective policy," Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, wrote in a note of congratulations to the economists on social media.
The prize committee said that Mr. Hall and Mr. Woodford had revitalized so-called stabilization policy, which was pioneered by John Maynard Keynes, the early 20th-century British economist. Mr. Keynes, mostly famously after the 1930s Great Depression, pushed for governments to intervene to stimulate the economy in downturns and slow it down during booms. But this theory broke down during the 1970s oil crisis and led to high unemployment and high inflation, generating a lot of criticism of the Keynesian approach.
This year's award winners were able to make stabilization theory relevant again by developing models using microeconomic foundations, which is a bottom-up approach that considers how the decisions of individual households and businesses affect the economy as a whole.
By doing this, they showed the importance of how real-world behavior impacts policy and why it must be taken into account alongside broad economic variables like inflation and production. A critical aspect of their models rests on the idea that households and businesses make decisions based on what they believe will happen in the future, for example to their own incomes. When governments and policymakers communicate their economic plans, they can influence people's expectations and that, in itself, can help steer the economy.
The economists receiving the award are set to receive 12 million Swedish kronor, about \$1.2 million, split equally between them. The economics award, among the highest honors in the field, is not, technically, a Nobel Prize: It is called the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel because it wasn't among the original categories that Alfred Nobel set out in his will in 1895.
Mr. Woodford said his work was intended to “improve the foundations for discussion of economic policy,” contributing to the management of the economy as well as the public’s understanding of the economy. He added that one of the main themes of his work was helping policymakers to appreciate that it was important to understand the behavior of individuals: How they make decisions about spending and what they know about future economic policy.
"One of the key goals of trying to develop an analytical framework was not simply to use it on people," he said. "But to also talk to people about why the things that are being done are being done."
Consider the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, when central banks were scrambling to deal with an economic downturn. Policymakers quickly lowered interest rates, but it wasn't enough. Additional tools were developed, such as so-called forward guidance, in which central bankers made explicit statements about the likely future path of interest rates, Mr. Woodford said. "That was an important part of the policy response in the years from 2009 onward, and I think it did contribute to better stabilization," he added.
In the United States, the way that the Federal Reserve communicates its decisions and deliberations is under review. Kevin M. Warsh, the recently installed Fed chairman who has been skeptical of publicly sharing the central bank's next steps, convened a task force to review how the institution "conveys policy deliberations and decisions amid uncertainty."
Beyond the development of their models, Mr. Hall and Mr. Woodford have contributed to the day-to-day understanding and management of the economy. Mr. Hall spent more than three decades at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a body that estimates the start and end of U.S. recessions. Mr. Woodford has been influential in the development of monetary policy, including publishing work with Ben S. Bernanke, the former Fed chairman.
"These two are unequivocal giants" in economics, said Anil Kashyap, a professor of economics and finance at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, who was on the rate-setting committee at the Bank of England and has advised other central banks and finance ministries. The Nobel winners' influence is clear in central bank communications, where policymakers take a view on how their actions affect individuals and firms.
Their work will also be helpful as economists deal with larger data sets and the capabilities of artificial intelligence. "You're going to be able to measure everything." Mr. Kashyap said, "This helps you figure out what's worth looking at and how you can bring in all these data in a way that will be helpful and constructive, and not just drown you."
Timo Boppart, a member of the Nobel committee, said on Monday that a paper by Mr. Hall published in 1978 was a "pathbreaking" moment that showed that changes in consumption were unpredictable. "This was a huge surprise" for economics, Mr. Boppart said.
Mr. Woodford looked at how businesses set prices and, critically, the fact that prices weren't changed constantly. Instead, businesses have to set prices for the future. This work, which presented a "complete new Keynesian framework," Mr. Boppart said, was published in an influential 2003 book titled "Interest and Prices."
Policymakers were quick to adopt this framework, said Mr. Boppart: "We now see it being actively applied in many countries to tame the business-cycle beast."
States Face Few Limits on Spending \$17 Billion in Meta Settlement
FROM FIRST BUSINESS PAGE
The biggest settlement that states have won for public health dates to November 1998, when attorneys general ended their lawsuit against the major cigarette makers. The companies, which agreed to perpetual payments that shrink as cigarette sales fall, have paid more than \$176 billion, according to the National Association of Attorneys General.
But the agreement did not require money be spent on smoking prevention.
"The thing that I just hate about the tobacco settlement the most is that money went out to a lot of states, and they just didn't spend the money as we had anticipated," said Mike Moore, a former attorney general of Mississippi who initiated the first state lawsuit against the industry.
Attorney General Rob Bonta of California with Attorney General Philip Weiser of Colorado, left, and Attorney General Jennifer Davenport of New Jersey.
James Tierney, a former Maine attorney general who advised on the litigation, said the attorneys general had little leverage.
"We couldn't control the money legally," he said. The resistance to earmarking it "came from the governors, not the tobacco companies."
NOAH BERGER/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mr. Moore watched it happen in his own state. Mississippi put its settlement money into a trust fund and, while he was in office, paid \$20 million annually for prevention. After he left, he said, the Legislature "spent every penny of it on other things."
Niagara County, N.Y., put \$700,000 toward a golf course sprinkler system, Virginia spent \$12 million laying fiber optic cable and North Carolina handed \$41 million to tobacco farmers for equipment to cure their harvest. In the first six years of payments, states put just 3.5 percent of the money into tobacco control, the Government Accountability Office found; 23 percent went toward budget shortfalls.
Still, public health advocates point to other achievements of tobacco litigation. It forced millions of pages of internal documents into public view, banned cartoon mascots like Joe Camel and helped drive daily smoking among high school seniors from one in four to fewer than one in a hundred.
"The revelations of litigation change culture," said Nora Freeman Engstrom, a Stanford law professor who has written about the legacy of the tobacco settlement. "They change how we think about products, and they change how we interact with products."
But Matthew Myers, who ran the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids for more than two decades and was deeply involved in the negotiations, drew another lesson.
"If you want the money spent on the items that will have the greatest impact, you have to mandate it and specify it," he said.
"Otherwise, the political process will take over."
Two decades later, when attorneys general won settlements totaling more than \$50 billion from opioid manufacturers, distributors and pharmacy chains, they took that lesson to heart.
Josh Stein, then North Carolina's attorney general and now its governor, said the agreements were designed to avoid the pitfalls of the tobacco settlements.
"We wanted to try to reduce the amount of human suffering that Americans were experiencing," he said, "so we were really explicit that the funds had to go to those express purposes."
In early 2021, with the first of those national deals still being negotiated, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health published principles for spending the money and warned states against using it to fill budget holes.
The agreement with the three largest opioid distributors declared that "in no event" may less than 85 percent of the money be spent on opioid remediation.
It named core strategies for states to prioritize, including naloxone distribution, medication-assisted treatment and care for women before and after childbirth. Expenses outside opioid remediation were discouraged and were required to be publicly reported.
Advocates have questioned use of the money for law enforcement, including recent reports of sheriffs buying license plate readers.
Of roughly \$2.7 billion spent or committed in 2024, some \$61 million went to police and sheriffs, according to a settlement database published by KFF Health News. But most of the money that can be traced went to the purposes the attorneys general laid out.
By comparison, the Meta settlement with 47 states has fewer strings attached. The agreement lists possible uses, including crisis lines, after-school programs, phone-free school zones and training for doctors, but those are not requirements.
Unlike the opioid deal, the agreement sets no general requirement that states report how the money is spent.
Mr. Myers said that open-ended language cuts both ways. It lets a committed attorney general adapt as understanding of social media's harms change.
"But at the same time it means that the next attorney general, who might not be interested in this issue at all, is given the flexi-"
bility to do things that may be totally ineffective," he said.
Governor Stein agreed there was a risk of mission drift. "It is real easy to get distracted by other budgetary needs," he said.
He directed his team to identify "evidence-based strategies that move the needle on teen mental health," he said. Unlike tobacco or opioids, which have known prevention strategies, social media is a dynamic technology where no single intervention may be effective for long.
Mitch Prinstein, a psychologist at the University of North Carolina and former chief science officer of the American Psychological Association, put the problem plainly. "I wish we did have an evidence-based menu," he said, "but we don't."
Experts suggested mental health staffing in schools, getting phones and educational technology out of classrooms, a public health surveillance system tracking apps that harm children and a campaign to make social media less appealing.
Dr. Odgers of the University of California, Irvine, cautioned that the analogy with tobacco and opioids goes only so far. Those were toxins society could target. Technology is "more like a circulatory system" running through every part of society, and "we cannot ban our way" to a solution.
Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a Johns Hopkins public health professor who helped write the principles for spending the opioid money, said the missing playbook was a danger.
"Unless there's a robust effort to figure out what is going to help," he said, "it's likely that a lot of money will be spent on things that sound good but don't work."
Attorneys general made about 30 percent of the payment contingent on the adoption of similar protections by TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube, and Meta pointed to the agreement's product changes as the heart of the deal. When the settlement was announced, the company's chief legal officer, C.J. Mahoney, said the new time limits and nighttime blocks "set the right path forward for our whole industry," a statement Meta repeated in response to questions for this article.
New Mexico won its own verdict in an earlier case, and Florida is pursuing another. School districts and teenagers claiming injury are suing in federal court, allegations this settlement did not address. Meta said it would continue to defend itself in those cases.
"Meta is settling with the states," Ms. Engstrom said, "but it's nowhere near done with its public liability."
ENERGY
球场上的强悍竞争者将重心转向康复室
作者：乔恩·克劳琴斯基 (JON KRAWCZYNSKI)
森林之狼队后卫唐特·迪文琴佐在上赛季对阵掘金队的季后赛中遭遇跟腱受伤后。
ABBIE PARR / 美联社
The Athletic
明尼阿波利斯 —— 受伤的 NBA 运动员在强撑勇气时，通常很容易被看穿。他们说话语气坚定，向任何愿意倾听的人保证自己将以更好的状态回归。但眼神往往透露出不同的故事。
New Crop of Solar Panels Is the U.S.'s Best Hope of Catching China
FROM FIRST BUSINESS PAGE
At its German lab, Hanwha Qcells, which has spent billions on production lines in Georgia, has been testing its tandem solar panels, a technology that solar companies say will generate more energy.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY PATRICK JUNKER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
'It is the next frontier.'
Mike Carr, the director of a solar energy manufacturers group, about tandem panels. He says U.S. technology may surpass that of China.
FROM FIRST BUSINESS PAGE policies. Partly as a result, new factories have been built across the country in recent years. Hanwha, a South Korean company that bought the German solar manufacturer Qcells in 2012, has spent billions on production lines in Georgia, including in Cartersville, north of Atlanta.
Energy experts say perfecting tandem panels before the Chinese do would allow the United States, Germany and other countries to reclaim a big share of the global solar industry.
Qcells has been testing its tandem solar panels in its lab in Germany as well as in fields in the United States, Australia, Cyprus and South Korea to show that they are ready. Among other things, the company has been blasting panels with LED light to see how they will perform. It has also been firing balls of ice — some roughly the size of marbles, others as big as or slightly bigger than golf balls — at panels to see how they handle extreme weather.
The tests are designed to reassure energy companies, investors and lenders that the new panels will last 20 to 30 years once they are installed in baking deserts or in fields subject to torrential downpours.
The power industry is “quite conservative in accepting new technologies,” said Fabian Fertig, head of tandem research and development for Qcells, who is based in Leipzig, Germany. “We’ve been focused on stability. We have to convince banks that this new technology can deliver.”
Scientists developed early tandem panels decades ago, but it has taken time to ensure that they could withstand harsh conditions — from heat and humidity to pounding hail.
"There are all these questions around how long they actually last," said Chetan Krishna, a principal at RMI, a research organization that specializes in sustainability and was previously known as the Rocky Mountain Institute. "Are there degradation issues that we don't know yet?"
Mr. Krishna and other experts say they believe the tandem solar panels are very close to being ready.
But the technology remains expensive. By some estimates, these panels could cost three to three and a half times as much as conventional devices, which are typically made of one layer of silicon.
The cost of buying and installing conventional panels for solar farms ranges from about 93 cents to \$1.06 per watt, according to a report by the Solar Energy Industries Association.
Andrés Gluski, chief executive of AES, a big utility and power company, said price would be crucial to the success of tandem panels because Chinese manufacturers sold solar panels at very low prices. China "could probably supply the world twice over," he said.
The technology for modern solar panels was created at AT&T's Bell Labs in 1954. But broad use of it didn't take off until the 1980s as the devices became more efficient at converting sunshine into electricity. Improvements helped lower costs and have made the technology the cheapest way to generate electricity.
In recent years, energy companies have also figured out how to pair solar panels with batteries to supply energy hours after the sun has set. Solar and batteries accounted for 70 percent of the capacity added to U.S. grids in the first half of this year, according to Wood Mackenzie, an energy research firm. Solar energy made up nearly 9 percent of the electricity produced in the United States in 2025, up from 3 percent in 2020, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Widespread use of tandem panels could significantly increase solar's share of the country's electricity, helping to satisfy the surging demand for power from data centers used to develop artificial intelligence.
Energy analysts evaluate the dependability of different sources of power by measuring their capacity factors. In theory, a power source that can supply electricity 24 hours a day, 365 days a year would have a capacity factor of 100 percent. But no power plants operate at that level because they require maintenance, upgrades, refueling and so on.
Nuclear plants typically offer the highest capacity factors, in the low 90s. Large natural gas power plants generally operate at about
58 percent, while U.S. solar farms average roughly 24 percent, according to the E.I.A. That is primarily because they produce electricity only when the sun is shining and cannot convert all of the light they receive into usable energy.
Solar executives assert that tandem panels could have capacity factors of more than 31 percent. As a result, energy companies would be able to generate the same electricity on less land and with fewer materials.
"If you build a utility field, you need fewer cables," said Mr. Fertig of Qcells. "If you have a rooftop, you can get the same power out of less of your rooftop."
Qcells became the first manufacturer to make a tandem panel that has been independently certified under standards established by Underwriters Laboratories and the International Electrotechnical Commission, two groups that validate and set standards for various products.
Another company working on such devices — Tandem PV in Fremont, Calif. — says it has been testing panels under various conditions across the country for the last year.
"We're showing less than 1 percent degradation per year," Scott Wharton, chief executive of Tandem PV, a name that refers to the photovoltaic technology used to convert sunlight into electricity. He added that tandem solar panels would dominate the industry by the mid-2030s. "There's no debate in the industry that we will
At the Qcells center, the company has been firing balls of ice at panels to see how they handle extreme weather, above, simulating hail, left, and blasting panels with LED light to see how they will perform.
move to tandems."
The design of tandem panels favors First Solar, one of the few U.S. manufacturers that survived as Chinese producers became dominant. First Solar's products use a thin film material that other manufactures would most likely need to perfect to make the layers in tandem panels.
"We've invested over \$2 billion in thin film research and development, including this program," said Mark Widmar, chief executive of First Solar, in Phoenix.
Some energy companies have bought early versions of the tandem panels to ensure that they do not get left behind, said Wayne Li, a principal at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit research organization. How dependable and durable the panels are will require extensive third-party testing, he added.
"Manufacturers are not very open to share the details and the data," Mr. Li said.
The main building of the Qcells Technology and Innovation headquarters in Bitterfeld-Wolfen, Germany.
Solar modules are monitored under real environmental conditions at the expansive Qcells outdoor testing field.
“在年初，我开始被指定为可被交易，看看我现在，”梅萨上周在光芒队美联分区系列赛 Game 3 击出两分本垒打后说道。“看看我现在所处的位置。”
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📄 Original Section
By JOSHUA KLOKE The Athletic
WHITEHORSE, Yukon — High above the sprawling forests that define one of the most remote stretches of Canada's Far North, Gavin McKenna was cracking jokes.
This was how the rising hockey star and his teammates calmed their nerves on yet another flight, ahead of yet another game. The team flew regularly with a local
Joshua Kloke covers the Maple Leafs for The Athletic. Jonas Siegel contributed reporting.
airline, ensuring timely arrival to face top competition — as is common for professional organizations.
McKenna, however, was no pro. He was just 10 years old.
Most of his teammates were only 13, but this had become something of a typical weekend for the team from Whitehorse.
An extraordinary itinerary of road games was born out of necessity. There simply was not enough competition close to home, so parents, coaches and a small airline came together to make these trips possible.
“Without that community,” McKenna, now 18, said last month, “I wouldn't be here.”
"Here" is Toronto, McKenna's new home after the Maple Leafs selected him at No. 1 in the 2026 N.H.L. draft.
Gavin McKenna, who grew up in Whitehorse, is the fourth N.H.L. player from the Yukon. "There's an inherent unwritten rule," the territory's premier said, "that none of us are going to go anywhere."
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Whitehorse's isolation creates travel challenges for teams.
It is hard to imagine two places more different than Whitehorse and Toronto. Whitehorse, with its single-road downtown, is closer to the Arctic Ocean than any hockey hotbed. It is a place few visit and even fewer leave.
So isolated is the city that its citizens have a term for leaving the territory: "going Outside."
"There's an inherent unwritten rule that none of us are going to go anywhere," Currie Dixon, the premier of Yukon, said about the area's aspiring young athletes. "We're so remote. We're so isolated. We're up here."
And yet the Maple Leafs' next great hope was forged in the rugged outdoors and against the odds. McKenna is just the second player from the Yukon this century, and fourth ever, to play in the N.H.L.
About 2,500 miles from where he grew up, he is facing the spotlight and pressure of hockey's biggest market.
McKenna's parents, Willy and Krystal, wanted to share their joy for ice hockey. So Willy built a rink in the backyard. No one could have foreseen just how much McKenna would want to be on the ice, day after day, night after frigid night.
Not even the Cozens brothers — Dylan, destined for the N.H.L. himself with the Sabres and the Senators, and his younger brother, Luke, McKenna's close friend and youth teammate —
Packers Coach Piles It On With a Purpose, Heating a Rivalry
By MICHAEL SILVER
The Athletic
PACKERS MarShawn Lloyd after scoring in a rout against the Bears. A late 2-point conversion and a 50-yard pass by Green Bay assured a spicy Christmas rematch.
JEFFREY PHELPS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
JAGUARS A miscalculation by the Eagles gave Cam Little the opportunity to kick a 57-yard field goal for the victory in London.
IAN WALTON/ASSOCIATED PRESS
PATRICK SMITH/GETTY IMAGES
CHARLES KRUPA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Matt LaFleur, the coach of the Green Bay Packers, did not have to do it.
But for tens of thousands of fans at Lambeau Field and millions of home viewers, it was a lot more entertaining that he did.
With a 22-point lead early in the fourth quarter, LaFleur could have trotted out his rookie kicker for a vibe-sustaining extra point. And when the Packers got the ball back two minutes later, he could have run the ball and bled the clock.
Instead, LaFleur was blood-
PATRIOTS Drake Maye kept rolling, with four touchdowns passing and one rushing in a decisive victory against the Raiders.
COMMANDERS Jayden Daniels didn't get out of bounds on the last play of overtime, bringing a tie.
thirsty. He went for a 2-point conversion and got it, and then had quarterback Jordan Love groove a deep ball to Matthew Golden for a 50-
Matt LaFleur
yard gain. It was clear the coach was sending a message: to his players, to the football-watching world and, yes, to his Chicago Bears counterpart, Ben Johnson.
"I thought it was good," Packers safety Xavier McKinney told me after the team's 31-7 victory against its longtime rival. "Not just for the fact of trying to embarrass or anything like that, but we've got 60 minutes and we're here to compete. We're not here to just be like, 'Oh, the game's over now,' because if it was flipped the other way around, they would do the same thing to us."
These storied franchises, and the spite and spice surrounding their 214th and latest clash, captured our attention on a day full of head-scratching and jaw-dropping moments. It is tempting to regard pro football, the nation's most popular spectator sport, as overdramatized and overhyped, but on the fifth Sunday of the 2026 N.F.L. season, we were reminded that there is seldom a shortage of riveting story lines.
It began early in the day, in London, for a game between the Jacksonville Jaguars and Philadelphia Eagles that resembled a full-fledged Noel and Liam Gallagher spat. From the fight that led to two ejections on the opening kickoff (after a touchdown return was called back) to the long snapper injury that affected Jaguars Coach Liam Coen's strategic decisions to quarterback Trevor Lawrence screaming at his center amid a barrage of presnap penalties in the red zone to the unhinged final sequence that featured back-to-back game-swinging field goals in the final eight seconds, Jacksonville's 19-17 victory was proper mental.
Back in the United States, the Washington Commanders and visiting New York Giants ran a three-legged race that ended in a 27-27 tie. The disjointed drama featured a Jameis Winston-fueled, 14-point fourth-quarter comeback, a Cam Skatebo fumble late in overtime with the Giants in field-goal range and an unconscionable brain lock that kept the Commanders from kicking a would-be game-winner before time expired.
When Magic Johnson, of all people, goes negative on social media — especially given that he happens to own a piece of the Commanders — it's not a good day in the nation's capital.
Later, across the continent in Seattle, the San Francisco 49ers' torrid start continued — on the strength of a 32-29 victory over the defending Super Bowl champion Seahawks decided by a matter of inches. Kyle Shanahan has never won coach of the year (neither did his two-time Super Bowl-winning father, Mike, for that matter), but he and his injury-ravaged 5-0 team have burst out of the gates with a vengeance, and it may take a yeoman effort to run them down.
On Sunday night in Atlanta, the Lamar Jackson-less Baltimore Ravens (4-1) staged an electric rally to take the Falcons to overtime, and then ground out a 30-23 victory to take sole possession of first place in the A.E.C. North. It was a clutch performance by Tyler Huntley, one of this decade's most capable backup quarterbacks, that was not clinched until Atlanta's second-string quarterback, Tua Tagovailoa, came off the bench to throw an interception to Kyle Hamilton.
Are you not entertained?
We also got to witness the regular-season debut of the No. 1 overall pick, Fernando Mendoza (in garbage time of the Las Vegas Raiders' 45-17 loss to the New England Patriots); quarterback J. J. McCarthy's first snaps for the Giants (in a cameo role, for now); and the usual array of scintillating plays, including Packers receiver Christian Watson's incredible end-zone pull-down of a 53-yard pass by Love in the third quarter.
"That's why he got the big bucks," McKinney said of Watson, who signed a four-year, \$110.5 million contract extension in June.
That LaFleur kept doubling down was not a surprise to McKinney, who felt certain that Johnson, given the chance, would have similarly rubbed it in. That belief stems from the aftermath of Green Bay's 31-27 playoff defeat to the Bears in January, when cameras captured Johnson, amid a postgame locker room celebration, shouting about and disrespecting the Packers.
It was a startling outburst from an extremely smart coach who leans into rivalry like no other N.F.L. contemporary — players and team owners included. To say it got the Packers' collective attention would be a vast understatement.
On Sunday, after a tepid start to the season, the underdog Packers (3-2) responded emphatically, with Love (367 passing yards), McKinney (two interceptions) and LaFleur (now 13-3 against Chicago) making the loudest statements of all.
Even after Watson's soaring scoring grab put them ahead, 20-7, the Packers were far from comfortable. Since last December, they have blown double-digit leads with glaring regularity, including two heartbreaking games against the Bears, one of which ended their season and led to Johnson's eruption.
His tweaking of LaFleur began a year earlier, at his introductory news conference, and he seemed poised to continue the unprovoked assault on Sunday. The Bears (3-2), even without the injured quarterback Caleb Williams, went into Lambeau as favorites for the first time in 20 years, which was also the last time Chicago won three straight in the rivalry.
Johnson's players felt the vibe, with receiver Luther Burden III saying the Bears wanted to beat the Packers "real bad and make them quit," a comment that drew a postgame rebuke from Green Bay linebacker Zaire Franklin, who said: "We see all the little weird stuff they be doing in the media and all the different stuff they be saying. You got guys that never really made a real play in this league talking about making somebody quit. That's weird. We don't do that."
So even with a big lead, LaFleur had no incentive not to try to keep scoring, and then to keep scoring some more. It recalled the apocryphal quotation by the Ohio State coach Woody Hayes, explaining why he went for a 2-point conversion while blowing out archrival Michigan in 1968: "Because I couldn't go for 3."
While emphasizing that winning Sunday's game against the Bears was a teamwide quest, McKinney told me he took pleasure in LaFleur's redemptive triumph.
There has been a lot of trash-talking, he said, "and we know how he feels about it."
Christmas at Soldier Field. It's the most merciless time of the year.
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凯文·凯利 (Kevin Kelly)
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📄 Original Section
Do bad decisions come in threes?
If you thought Tampa Bay Buccaneers Coach Todd Bowles's curious choice not to kick a chip-shot field goal that would have given his team a three-possession lead in Thursday night's game against the Dallas Cowboys would be the most scrutinized move of the week — well, it may go down only as the bronze medalist of baffling, thanks to a couple of not-so-smooth moves by men in headsets on Sunday.
First came Coach Nick Sirianni's decision to pass late in the Eagles' game against the Jaguars, with the ensuing incompletion ensuring that Jake Elliott's eventual go-ahead field goal would leave eight seconds on the clock, rather than none. Sirianni then chose to have Elliott kick the ball into the landing zone instead of out of the end zone, setting up Ameer Abdullah's 53-yard return and Cam Little's 57-yard walk-off field goal.
"I didn't make the right decision, and I lost us that game," Sirianni said, after Philadelphia (2-3) dropped its third straight. He wasn't wrong, but given that he entered the game with an N.F.L.-best record of 35-15 in one-score games, we will give him a little grace.
Besides, the embattled Washington coach Dan Quinn later accepted responsibility for an even more egregious collapse: With 12 seconds left, no timeouts and the ball at the Giants' 24, Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels inexplicably scrambled and went down inbounds, leaving no time for a field-goal attempt. Though Daniels clearly goofed, Quinn, who threw his headset to the ground in disgust, shouldered the blame for taking the risk of running another play, saying, "It falls on me."
Will something else soon fall on Quinn? With a Monday night road game against the undefeated 49ers coming up for the Commanders (1-3-1), followed by a bye week, he has ample reason to be concerned.
OK, this was not as bad as the ending of the Jaguars-Eagles or Commanders-Giants game, but watching the past-his-prime Seahawks cornerback Trevon Diggs, a recent active-roster signee, try to taunt the six-time Pro Bowl receiver Mike Evans of the 49ers late in the first half of Sunday's game was somewhat painful. Then it became down-right comical: The incredulous Evans responded by spinning Diggs around to check out the name on the back of his jersey.
All I needed at that point was for the Who to blast out one of its classics: "Who Are You."?
After snapping out of his slump a week ago, Patriots quarterback Drake Maye had a monster game against the Raiders, throwing for 374 yards and four touchdowns without an interception. But it was Maye's other scoring play, a 3-yard run punctuated by a subtle skip inside the left pylon, that moved me most. Let's just say that for Maye, who, in a radio interview recently, expressed his skepticism that the moon landings during NASA's Apollo program actually happened, it was one small step for Maye, one giant leap for Patriot-kind.
“育空地区不可能出这么厉害的孩子，”他回忆起当时的想法。随后他看了他的比赛。但这并没有改变太多他的看法：“也许他能打 B 级青少年联赛，但我们都知道这没什么前途。”
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📄 Original Section
Long live 'Da Coach'
Whatever the enmity between the two franchises and their fans, the Packers were classy enough to honor the Bears legend Mike Ditka, who died on Friday at 86, with a pregame moment of silence.
A Hall of Fame tight end who coached the Bears to their lone Super Bowl victory 41 seasons ago, Ditka lived an incredible football life. My favorite Ditka line came during the 1990 season, when the struggling kicker Kevin Butler, during a radio appearance, speculated that the Bears would draft someone to replace him the next spring.
"Did he make that prediction?" Ditka asked. "He's very clairvoyant."
For those who have been tempted to write off 42-year-old Aaron Rodgers, you might want to avoid watching Pittsburgh Steelers highlights. The revived Rodgers threw three touchdown passes in the Steelers' 34-22 victory over the Indianapolis Colts, hitting that milestone for the third consecutive game — something that had not happened since 2021, when he won his fourth Most Valuable Player Award.
In his final season, Rodgers looks capable of enjoying a much less nauseating final act than the one he had seemingly endured last January.
His performance against the Colts was part of a noteworthy day for former California quarterbacks, as Jared Goff threw for 271 yards and three touchdowns, and ran for another, to lead the Detroit Lions (3-2) to a 45-21 victory over the Arizona Cardinals, and Mendoza (6 for 8, 48 yards), a Golden Bears standout before he transferred to Indiana, saw the field in a meaningful N.F.L. game for the first time.
DAVID DERMER/ASSOCIATED PRESS
STEELERS Aaron Rodgers is putting together a grand finale.
Fierce Competitor on the Court Turns His Focus to the Recovery Room
By JON KRAWCZYNSKI
Timberwolves guard Donte DiVincenzo after injuring an Achilles' tendon during last season's playoffs against the Nuggets.
ABBIE PARR/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Athletic
MINNEAPOLIS — The false bravado of an injured N.B.A. athlete is usually easy to spot. The words come out with certainty, the player assuring anyone who will listen that he will be back better than ever. The eyes often tell a different story.
Then there is Donte DiVincenzo, who is rehabilitating a torn Achilles' tendon, the injury many basketball players hope to avoid above nearly all others. About six months after going down in Game 4 of the Minnesota Timberwolves' first-round playoff series against the Denver Nuggets, DiVincenzo spoke about his return to form with unwavering certainty.
Because he was injured so late last season, and because an Achilles tear is among the trickiest and most grueling to recover from, it would be reasonable to believe that DiVincenzo could miss the 2026-27 season in an effort to come back as strong as possible. When he was asked at the start of training camp if his plan was to play this season, the look in his eye matched the incredulousness of his response.
"I wouldn't come in here with the mind-set of I'm going to play next year," he said. "No, the mind-set is to play this year."
He finished the statement with a chuckle as if to say, "How dare you even think that I won't be back?"
Publicly and behind the scenes, DiVincenzo has been operating with that assumption for months. Everything has been designed to get him back to his old self as fast as possible. He had surgery to repair the injury less than 18 hours after he was hurt, following the path Jayson Tatum of the Boston Celtics took in his own recovery.
DiVincenzo spoke to Tatum, Damian Lillard, Tyrese Haliburton and a host of others who have dealt with the injury, picking their brains on what worked and what did not as he tailored his own program. He said he has spoken to Tatum the most throughout the
Jon Krawczynski is a senior writer covering the Timberwolves for The Athletic.
process. They compare notes on their recoveries and provide motivation when the tough times arrive.
"It's been very, very helpful those days or weeks where you feel like you're not gaining so much ground as you should," Di-Vincenzo said. "You talk to those guys, and they kind of help push you along."
DiVincenzo is also collaborating with the Timberwolves' digital team on "Day Zero," a behind-the-scenes video series detailing an emotionally trying process for his return. His willingness to pull back the curtain speaks to the confidence he has in his ability to complete it. DiVincenzo said he wanted to serve as inspiration for any young player with a significant injury.
He also wants to show that it is OK to acknowledge the difficulties, both physical and mental.
There are “a lot of battles in sports that aren’t the physical ones,” he said. “It starts with the physical and then turns into the mental side. So just that there is light at the end of the tunnel. As vulnerable as I am, I can tell you I’m as driven and as confident.”
"I'm probably way more confident than my surgeon, the trainer, the coach, everybody. I will push that envelope as much as I possibly can."
DiVincenzo was essential to the Timberwolves' run last season. He averaged 12.2 points and 4.1 rebounds, and he shot 38 percent from 3-point range. Perhaps more important, he waGuars the crushed red pepper on a pizza that needed a little more flavor. He was the first one to dive onto the floor for a loose ball. He was the one who stuffed some gauze into a broken nose and got back out on the floor in Charlotte. And he did it for all 82 regular-season games.
That edge stood out for a team that often lacked it in the regular season. And now, even while he is on the sideline, DiVincenzo will be relied on for a team that got a whole lot younger this summer. Veteran voices like Mike Conley, Kyle Anderson and Joe Ingles have moved on. LaMelo Ball and Jonathan Kuminga are now in Minnesota alongside Anthony Edwards and Jaden McDaniels as important players who are 26 or under.
“Donte is one of our best competitors, one of our smartest guys," Minnesota Coach Chris Finch said. "We want to keep him at the center of everything that we're doing. We want him to stay connected with the team, and he's a guy that everyone really respects."
That was validated last post-season, when every Timberwolves player showed up for Game 6 against the Nuggets, the first home game since DiVincenzo's injury, with No. 0 jerseys on their backs.
While he is out, DiVincenzo said he would focus more on "being an ear" for his teammates. He knows that trying to lead with his voice right now is not the way to go. He has to be in the fray, mixing it up on the court, to lead that way. For now, he has to be someone they can vent to when they are frustrated. He played with new Timberwolves like Kuminga and Trey Lyles before any of the three got to Minnesota, so he is one of the few players in the locker room whose familiarity extends to everyone.
"Sometimes, you just want to get something off your chest and leave it alone and go forward from there," DiVincenzo said. "It doesn't need to have a resolution every single day. So just being that for them and whatever they need as the season evolves."
DiVincenzo said he has a date that he is targeting for a return. He is not ready to share it publicly, perhaps because it is sooner than anyone expects. He is in the final year of his contract, so the motivation to return is twofold. He will want to be there to give his team a lift. He will also want to show the Timberwolves, and the rest of the league, that he is recovered and ready for another long-term deal.
His future with the Timberwolves is uncertain. The new collective bargaining agreement forces teams to make hard decisions about valuable role players around their stars. Last year, the Timberwolves had to say goodbye to Nickeil Alexander-Walker not because they wanted to but because they had to manage their books.
DiVincenzo has a history as a quality two-way wing and a good veteran in the locker room; that will give him value on the trade market. Or the team could try to extend him at a manageable number while he is working his way back, then look for other ways to trim salary and stay under the second apron going forward.
DiVincenzo said he has had discussions with the team's president of basketball operations, Tim Connelly, and the front office about his future. He respects that no promises have been made either way and that the organization has been upfront with what it has to consider.
"I like to think of what I bring to the organization, yes, on the court, but off the court," DiVincenzo said. "Kind of invaluable stuff that you may not see on a stat sheet and just try to be a good person, a good human being. And when you do that every single day, I think they see that."
他曾表示，政治是他职业生涯的首选，但让他积累财富的是他创作的40多本书。起点是1976年出版的小说《不多一分，不少一分》（Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less），当时他被骗光了个人财产并辞去了立法者的职务。他告诉《芝加哥论坛报》：“我当时落魄到可以在街角卖假古驰包。”“一旦你损失了一百万加元，那么损失一亿加元也差不多。”
Reese Ends Up Right Where She Saw Herself All Along
By CHANTEL JENNINGS
The Athletic
Nearly all of the Atlanta Dream's players had left the floor. Angel Reese, too, was heading back to the locker room at Barclays Center in Brooklyn when, from across the court, she spotted a familiar figure behind the security rope. Reese took off in a sprint, as if she were chasing a rebound, as if she had not just played almost 38 minutes of a W.N.B.A. semifinals game.
From behind the rope, the former New York Liberty player Teresa Weatherspoon, Reese's coach during her first year in the league with the Chicago Sky, stretched her arms around Reese and pulled her tight.
This is what we talked about. This is what you talked about.
In Game 3 of the Dream's sweep of New York, which put Atlanta in the W.N.B.A. finals, Reese scored a team-high 22 points and pulled down nine rebounds in an 85-83 win.
But it wasn't just that.
She gave the visitors at Barclays Center the full Angel Reese experience. She blocked two shots, talked major trash, came to the defense of her teammates, and then motioned to the rowdy New York crowd to bring it. Yes, she wants all of the smoke.
She chest-bumped and fist-pumped, and when it was over, she put her head in her hands as the tears welled and reality set in. The game had felt extra-long to Reese, maybe because she had gone toe-to-toe with Liberty center Jonquel Jones all night, or maybe because when the moments we spend imagining for years finally arrive, time seems to bend in a way.
This is what Reese talked about. This is what she imagined.
Now, she gets a W.N.B.A. finals appearance against the Golden State Valkyries, who eliminated the Las Vegas Aces in three games in their semifinal series. Game 1 will be Saturday afternoon in San Francisco.
Even as a rookie in Chicago, with Weatherspoon as coach,
Chantel Jennings is a senior women's basketball writer for The Athletic.
with the Sky limping to a 13-27 season, and even last year, when the Sky, under a first-year coach, Tyler Marsh, went 10-34, Reese saw herself here.
Angel Reese with her Atlanta Dream teammates on Friday after ousting the host New York Liberty.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ISHIKA SAMANT/GETTY IMAGES
During the 2025 W.N.B.A. finals, as the Aces swept the Phoenix Mercury, and as Reese, for the second consecutive post-season-less year, watched from home, she texted Kahleah Copper, a friend who was on the losing side of that series. She wrote, "Give me one playoff game, and I'll make it to the finals."
And then she told the world exactly what she and Weather-spoon had discussed.
The player who had never sniffed a playoff game, let alone a winning record in the pros, was not just thinking about the first round. She was manifesting the finals. And she wanted everyone to know.
There is a risk in making the private public. In taking those dreams and allowing the world to see, to measure, to grade. Reese knows that better than most. One of the most famous players in a league never short on drama, Reese has been vilified and lionized, compared and doubted incessantly.
PRO BASKETBALL | W.N.B.A. FINALS
In college, in the lead-up to her W.N.B.A. career, she knew there was skepticism. As with every player, there were questions. But as with everything orbiting around Reese, they were louder. Was she strong enough? Could she develop an outside shot? Would her skill set translate to the pros because she is a bit of a tweener? Would the noise around her with her name, image and likeness presence distract her?
In April 2024, she sat at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, a stone's throw from Barclays Center, and watched as six players were drafted before her.
Finally, No. 7 came, and Chicago (with its second pick in that round) took Reese.
No. 7 hurt in the moment, but she could not be more grateful for it now. Hindsight has shown her that she needed it to get here.
"I think it was important for me to go through what I've been through," Reese said. "Going through adversity builds character, and I was able to learn from a lot of things. Being able to continue to be great but also learning to know that I can be better."
Those six players drafted in front of her? None has made it to a W.N.B.A. finals yet. The players who have been anointed, alongside Reese, as the future of the league — Caitlin Clark, Paige Bueckers and Olivia Miles — none have won in the postseason the way Reese has now.
She spent two years in Chicago before maneuvering an exit to Atlanta, a team that had just completed a 30-win season under a first-year coach, Karl Smesko. Atlanta, as a city, made sense, as did the existing roster — she filled a need for size and rebounding, and had existing relationships with several players.
The fit with Smesko was to be determined. Reese is a main character, the player who went from "Bayou Barbie" to simply "Barbie." She has reached the level of fame that when she posts on X about her love of a televi-
sion show, she is cast in it the next season. Smesko, on the other hand, exudes suburban dad energy. He is the kind of guy who you assume mows his lawn in a specific pattern and whose
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一位深谙丑闻、不端行为与自我推销主题的作者。
剑桥大学的教授。他留下了两个儿子，威廉和詹姆斯，以及五个孙辈。
从1967年到1970年，阿彻先生作为保守党成员在伦敦大议会（Greater London Council）开启了他的政治生涯。1969年，年仅29岁的他赢得了英格兰东部劳斯（Louth）选区的特别选举，成为下议院最年轻的立法者之一。
在著作中，阿彻先生表现出对围绕中心人物展开的多卷本系列小说的偏好，例如记录了英格兰西南部一名码头工人之子哈里·克利夫顿（Harry Clifton）生平的七卷本《克利夫顿编年史》（Clifton Chronicles），以及同样雄心勃勃的系列丛书，如《以眼还眼》（An Eye for an Eye，2024年），讲述了一名名为威廉·沃里克（William Warwick）的苏格兰场侦探的职业生涯。即便是在非虚构作品中，阿彻先生也将因伪证罪在监狱中度过的两年时间转化为了一部名为《监狱日记》（A Prison Diary）的三卷本回忆录。
Through all of the pressure she faced, a vision of the finals.
most surprising trait is that he likes heavy metal.
And yet there has been no better fit for Reese at this point in her pro career. Smesko has challenged her and raised her up. He is her main workout partner and does every pregame shooting routine with her. When she came to Atlanta, she entrusted the staff to change her shot.
Smesko told her to be patient, which is not an inherent trait for
Reese. The results would come, he promised. Her range would extend. She needed to see that for herself, but she also needed to expect the journey (and know it wouldn't be easy).
"It's really hard for me to not want to rush success," Reese admitted.
So when Reese was growing impatient, Smesko, understanding her mentality, challenged her. Nothing like making that chip on her shoulder just a bit heavier.
He stopped a practice during training camp and said they could not continue until she knocked down two 3s in a row.
Reese got mad. Then she got better. If she could be comfortable shooting those shots in front of her teammates, she could shoot those shots in sold-out arenas (even if her misses ended up becoming videos that trolled her online). Eventually, she would hit them. Her first basket of Game 3 was a base line 3-pointer directly in front of the
Reese, going toe-to-toe with Jonquel Jones all night, had 22 points and 9 rebounds.
Liberty sideline. She then turned and pointed at the end of the bench.
Sure, many point to her 3-point percentage for the season: 19 percent. But Smesko will happily pull up her 3-point percentage in the playoffs: 39 percent.
Smesko knew she would get here, so did Reese.
"She's one of those people who puts her goals out there, and sometimes when you do that, you put it out there for people to criticize and judge," a Dream team owner, Renee Montgomery, who played in the W.N.B.A., said, "But she does it unapologetically, and now she's just checking goals off the list."
It was one year ago that the Aces took home the 2025 title in four games and Reese told the world she was manifesting to do the same. She saw herself here a thousand times before she stood in this moment.
Give me one playoff game, and I'll make it to the finals.
Reese has made it here faster than any of her peers, but anyone who knows Reese knows it's not just about making the finals. She's not a player who shows up wanting a participation trophy. She has undoubtedly dreamed up so much more.
When Reese finally let go of Weatherspoon after the game, she just smiled and nodded. This moment is what Reese envisioned, and Weatherspoon was there to see it all unfold. For a moment, they stood in silence before Reese rejoined her team.
Like a proud mother, Weather-spoon stayed on the base line and just admired the court that became Angel Reese's domain for one night in October.
This, here, is exactly what they talked about. This, and so much more.
在六部主要著作中——尤其是《非洲贫民：一部历史》（The African Poor: A History，1987年）和《非洲历史中的荣誉》（Honour in African History，2005年）——他记录了“苦难如何成为非洲经验的核心部分，无论这种苦难是源于与自然的艰苦斗争，还是源于人类的残酷”，正如他在《非洲人》中所写。
Case Studies Show How Rays Discover Talent Others Miss
By WILL SAMMON
The Athletic
How do the Tampa Bay Rays keep finding these guys?
Contrary to popular belief, the Rays do not win every trade. They do, however, use their deep scouting department and analytic models to find under-the-radar additions. Their roster is full of castoffs from elsewhere who found success with Tampa Bay.
The back stories behind some acquisitions reveal what makes the Rays such a consistent winner despite their low annual payroll.
Here are tales of five such players who helped the Rays advance to the American League Championship Series.
In 2018, Kevin Ibach, now the Rays' vice president and assistant general manager, attended a workout featuring outfielder Victor Mesa Jr., his brother and fellow outfielder Victor Victor Mesa and pitcher Sandy Gaston at loanDepot Park in Miami. All three were pegged as big-bonus talents in the international market after leaving Cuba.
The Rays spent \$2.61 million on Gaston, who never panned out. Most teams eyed Victor Victor, whom the Miami Marlins signed for \$5.25 million. The Marlins also snagged Victor Mesa Jr. for \$1 million. Indeed, Mesa's lack of eye-opening tools outside of a powerful arm undersold his abilities in a workout.
"He was kind of an after-thought to a lot of teams," Ibach said.
Still, the club monitored Mesa, who began outperforming his older brother in the minor leagues. In 2022, Mesa played on the same Arizona Fall League team as the Rays' prospects. Tampa Bay's coaches appreciated Mesa's talent. In particular, they loved how cerebral he was about baseball and how he could recall at-bats from prior years.
Will Sammon covers M.L.B. for The Athletic.
He is the son of the Cuban baseball legend Victor Mesa, and it showed.
"We realized this was a player who had a lot of intangibles," Ibach said. "That didn't really shine in a showcase or a scouting report. But it became, 'Hey, this guy is probably going to play above his tools to some degree because his baseball I.Q. is off the charts.'"
Then the Rays experienced some good fortune. In early February, the Marlins designated Mesa for assignment. At the time, Mesa had not produced at a particularly impressive level outside a small sample (171 plate appearances) in Triple-A in 2025. He had a minor league option, however, and the Rays liked him.
When they expressed interest in Mesa, they were told a deal would require more than just cash. It was going to cost them. Ibach told his group, "OK, let's roll up our sleeves and get to work." They offered infielder Angel Brachi and jumped the line to get him.
Mesa started the year at Triple-A Durham. But when he joined Tampa Bay in May, he never looked back. He emerged as a starter, hitting 14 home runs with an .825 on-base plus slugging percentage, playing quality defense and stealing nine bases. He also became a connector in the clubhouse as a bilingual leader.
"At the beginning of the year, I started being designated for assignment, and look at me now," Mesa said last week after hitting a two-run home run in Game 3 of the Rays' American League division series. "Look at where I'm at."
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同一起谋杀案被起诉六次，陪审团中几乎没有或完全没有黑人。
被解雇。播客节目《在黑暗中》（In the Dark）逐步揭露了该案的诸多细节。
总检察长办公室在2020年撤销了所有指控。
柯蒂斯·乔瓦尼·弗劳尔斯（Curtis Giovanni Flowers）出生于1970年5月29日，是阿奇·弗劳尔斯和洛拉·（吉布森）·弗劳尔斯六个孩子中的一个。他的父亲经营一家商店，母亲是一名家庭健康护理员。
Despite already holding enough starters for a standard five-man rotation, the Rays, like many other clubs late in the off-season, coveted depth.
Tampa Bay differentiated itself by signing Nick Martinez to a one-year deal worth \$13 million.
BASEBALL | M.L.B. PLAYOFFS
WENDELL CRUZ/IMAGN IMAGES
From left: Victor Mesa Jr., Liam Hicks and Bryan Baker. The Tampa Bay Rays were able to unlock more from all three additions.
CALEB BOWLIN/GETTY IMAGES
While other teams acquired depth starters with minor league options remaining, the Rays paid for Martinez's versatility to pitch either in the rotation or from the bullpen.
As the Rays surveyed their options, Martinez stood out to them for his reputation as a veteran leader. The club took the same approach with other veterans as well, valuing soft skills and personality fits with short-term deals for pitcher Steven Matz and outfielder Cedric Mullins.
"It's part of our culture, this humility," Ibach said. "We did as good of a job as we have in a long time of targeting those selfless types of players who were willing to do whatever was best for the team to play in October."
For Martinez, who was coming off a subpar year with the Cincinnati Reds (4.45 E.R.A. in 165 $^{3/2}$ innings), Tampa Bay long stood out as a top destination. Martinez made the All-Star team this year and finished the season with a 3.10 E.R.A. after 31 starts.
玛丽·马利根（Mary Mulligan），92岁，于2026年10月3日在华盛顿州拉康纳（La Conner）的家中安详去世。她于1934年2月12日出生在布朗克斯，父母是爱德华·J·马利根（Edward J. Mulligan）和伊丽莎白·I·墨菲（Elizabeth I. Murphy），毕业于圣巴拿巴高中，职业生涯期间曾在NBC、杨荣公司（Young & Rubicam）及其他公司工作。她的幸存亲属包括三个孩子：艾希莉（Ashley）、菲利普（Philip）和布莱尔（Blair），七个孙辈和七个曾孙辈。
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📄 Original Section
Bryan Baker
"I had a very good understanding that this team knows how to win without having to have six or seven superstars on a team," Martinez said. "They know how to communicate what they expect from their players. They know how to explain it. They know how to teach it."
Acquired by trade, July 10, 2025
A few days before the 2025 amateur draft, Erik Neander, the Rays' president of baseball operations, walked into a meeting and told a room full of scouts that he had just traded one of their picks.
The announcement did not go over well.
But in trading a compensationround draft pick (No. 37) to the Baltimore Orioles for the right-handed reliever Bryan Baker, Rays officials capitalized on an opportunity.
The Rays are one of baseball's best at threading the needle between buyer and seller. Over the off-season, they made a few trades with a look toward the future while holding an ability to backfill production. They made a similar bet in July 2025 when they acquired Baker, 31, who is under club control through 2028.
The Rays are also adept at juggling deadlines. At the time of the Baker deal, the draft and the trade deadline were coming within a three-week time frame. Tampa Bay likes to get ahead of those dates and make moves early. While teams were valuing picks as the draft approached, the Rays performed advance work analyzing Baker as a long-game fit.
Baker had decent numbers with the Orioles (3.52 E.R.A. in 38 $^{1/3}$ innings), but the Rays' information pointed to favorable results. Tampa Bay liked Baker's changeup and his ability to throw strikes.
"It was a guy we valued a little bit more than the industry did," Ibach said. "We thought he could pitch leverage innings for us, and obviously, this year, he has shown that."
Baker became the Rays' closer. He made the All-Star team and finished 2026 with 41 saves. In the A.L.D.S., he secured saves in all three wins of the Rays' sweep over the New York Yankees without allowing a run.
Perennially one of the league's lowest spenders, Tampa Bay typically does not allocate money in free agency for bullpen help. The club is aggressive in the trade market for relievers with club control. It takes a lot of shots on players who often fail to help the major league team. When the Rays hit on a reliever, though, they sometimes score big.
Right-hander Kevin Kelly is another example.
The Rays acquired Kelly from the Colorado Rockies for cash after Colorado selected the right-hander in the Rule 5 draft. The Rays had scouted Kelly in 2022 while he was on the Cleveland Guardians' Triple-A roster. He had good minor league numbers, and the Rays' model liked him. But the team knew it would eventually want to alter Kelly's breaking ball and add a change-up. Ideally, Tampa Bay wants pitchers it acquires to pitch to their strengths before introducing improvements. The Rays are careful not to do that too quickly. They first get comfortable and build trust.
Kelly established himself as a solid reliever in 2023 and 2024. His numbers took a bad turn in 2025. Ahead of this season, the Rays added a changeup to Kelly's arsenal to improve against left-handed batters. In 2025, left-handed batters had a .905 O.P.S. against Kelly. In 2026, they had a .684 O.P.S. against him. Overall, it was Kelly's best season: In $73 \frac{1}{3}$ innings, he produced a 2.44 E.R.A.
Rays officials wrote Liam Hicks's name on a piece of paper at the Rule 5 draft in December 2024 and prepared to announce him as their pick. But before their turn, the Marlins selected him. The Rays appreciated Hicks's game
then, but they liked him even more later.
At this year's trade deadline, the Rays were looking for catching help. The asking price for players like Adley Rutschman, who went from the Orioles to the Boston Red Sox, and Hunter Goodman, who stayed put with the Rockies, was steep. Tampa Bay wanted to supplement its roster creatively without stripping too much from its farm system.
Hicks fit the Rays well. They parted with three prospects to get the 27-year-old under club control through 2030. His 89.4 percent contact rate ranked first among all major league catchers; Tampa Bay placed him in the lineup behind their big trio of Yandy Díaz, Jonathan Aranda and Junior Caminero.
One issue: Hicks was not a full-time catcher with the Marlins, who, unlike the Rays, call all their pitches from the dugout. Hicks said he wondered if his feel for selecting pitches behind the plate would deteriorate.
In an age when clubs are tethered to their information systems, teams loathe introducing a new catcher midseason to their pitching staff. But the Rays trusted their field coordinator, Tomas Francisco, to help Hicks get up to speed. The club leaned on what it learned in the previous year, when the Rays acquired catchers Nick Fortes and Hunter Feduccia midseason. The experience gave them confidence and a blueprint. In 41 games and 145 plate appearances with the Rays, Hicks slashed .288/.379/.440 with four home runs.
And the worries over him handling the pitching staff? After Drew Rasmussen held the Yankees to one hit over eight innings in Game 1 of the A.L.D.S., the right-handed pitcher said he didn't shake off Hicks once.
Look How Far He's Come: McKenna's Rise From the Yukon to the Maple Leafs
HOCKEY
Gavin McKenna's jacket at the draft included personal images. Justin Bieber later announced that McKenna was a Maple Leaf.
ADRIAN KRAUS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
From First Sports Page
could match him.
"Always freezing cold," Luke Cozens said. "If you're on in December and January — and really he's one of the only kids that will go out there and train — it'll drop to minus-35 Celsius."
The Northern Lights danced around McKenna as he skated past his bedtime. He loved gliding free of constraints and pulling ideas with the puck out of the big sky above.
"Gavin was always exceptional," said Mike Cozens, Dylan and Luke's father, a coach and retired judge. "Willy really worked with Gavin. He was teaching him the things that most kids aren't really taught."
Willy and Krystal McKenna declined to be interviewed for this article.
McKenna learned to skate with his head up, handle the puck with strength and to shoot when he was off balance. He was still too young to attend kindergarten.
"My family, they all grew up playing hockey. I was surrounded by the game," Gavin McKenna said. "Once I got a hockey stick in my hand, it never left."
Mike Tuton, a longtime youth coach, said everyone always knew McKenna was "special special."
It wasn't just skill. He displayed a daring style that reflected his surroundings.
"There's a grittiness," Tuton said. "Growing up here, it's just the way we are."
Snowmobiling, riding dirt bikes, fishing, hunting: McKenna wanted to be outdoors whenever he could.
swung open.
"It gives you freedom," he said of growing up in Whitehorse. "It helps you stay grounded. You realize there's more to life than phones, social media. I wanted to be going fast all the time. Maybe that translates to the ice. I like things going fast."
Before Dylan Cozens and McKenna came along, only two players from the territory had ever played in the N.H.L. Peter Sturgeon and Bryon Baltimore, born in the 1950s, combined to play eight games.
When Dixon, a friend of the Mc-
Kenna family, first heard Gavin was turning into quite the player, he was doubtful.
"No kid from the Yukon could be that good," he recalled thinking. Then he saw him play. It didn't change much: "Maybe he'll play Junior B, but we all know it's not going anywhere."
By the time McKenna was 10, his teams were too good.
Whitehorse invited opposing teams from across British Columbia, Alberta and Alaska to its rink. No one wanted to come, citing travel costs.
Finding suitable competition meant flying to cities in British Columbia, including Kelowna, Kamloops and Vancouver, for tournaments. Otherwise, its players would be left behind.
Air North's chief executive, Joseph Sparling, saw an opportunity — and a way to help.
Sparling saw the talent emerging. He created flight schedules to cities based around the tournaments teams like McKenna's were participating in, and insisted fares be competitive and affordable. Only after entire teams booked would extra seats be sold.
"We would go wherever Air North was going to go," Tuton said.
Sparling was quick to clarify his actions were not charity.
"It was a business philosophy because we knew that the kids would travel, the teams would travel, more often if it was affordable for them," he said. "We felt that it was a growth market, and it's proven to be so."
He added: "The one ingredient that was missing was the ability to affordably go out and compete in bigger markets. And maybe we've played a small part in allowing that to happen."
McKenna's final season in the North was unique.
To play in a tournament league in British Columbia, the provincial hockey association allowed the eight best players from Whitehorse and Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories to combine into one team. They called themselves the Rivermen. Every weekend, the two groups would fly to cities like Kelowna on Friday mornings to play four games over three days.
"As soon as we were done on Sunday, we would race off to the airport," Coach Stu Impett said. "We made it work, but we were certainly at a disadvantage."
That was evident. The Rivermen did not win much.
McKenna still soared, scoring at nearly a two-points-per-game pace before the Covid pandemic cut the season short. Impett said it looked like McKenna was playing pond hockey: "You lost sight of the fact that he was three or four years younger than everyone else."
McKenna needed more: more competition, more games.
After he lost a season to injuries and the pandemic, he left Whitehorse. He was 13 when he began playing on an under-18 prep team based in Kelowna. He led the team and league in scoring, beating out the likes of Tij Iginla, taken sixth in the N.H.L. draft two years ahead of McKenna.
In 2023, McKenna illustrated his growing confidence at the Canada Winter Games. Before the Yukon played its first game, he asked about the tournament record for points. Tuton told him it was 27. He posted 28 in six games.
McKenna had taken his peers as far as he could. He again needed more, and he would have to keep moving farther from home
to find it.
A junior career with the Medicine Hat Tigers of the Western Hockey League vaulted McKenna to stardom — and to the top of most scouts' 2026 draft rankings. In his second full season in Medicine Hat, Alberta, he led the W.H.L. with 129 points in 56 regular-season games before adding 38 more in 16 playoff games on the way to a league title.
Then he made a move that shook the hockey world. He was among the first to take advantage of a rule change allowing Canadian Hockey League players to jump to the N.C.A.A.
On ESPN's "SportsCenter," McKenna announced his decision to join Penn State, procuring an name, image and likeness deal reportedly in the neighborhood of \$700,000. Now, he would face yet another new spotlight, this time in the United States.
In Whitehorse, those who knew McKenna watched closely.
"You get this feeling in your gut, you have these nerves just watching from Whitehorse on TV," said Ben McPherson, a longtime trainer.
After McKenna's slow start in the N.C.A.A., observers began raising questions about his place atop draft boards. But after a strong showing at the World Juniors for Canada, things began to turn around.
Then, in the aftermath of a particularly special occasion on the ice, McKenna's biggest headline-grabbing moment came off it.
On Jan. 31, the Nittany Lions hosted Michigan State in an outdoor game at Beaver Stadium, a 5-4 overtime loss in which McKenna scored a goal and set up two. That night, the team gathered at a pub with a pizza joint around back. Around 8:45 p.m., after leaving the bar, McKenna and his group, according to the police, got into an “exchange of words” with another group in front of a parking garage. Some of those words, The Athletic reported, were directed at a member of McKenna’s family.
McKenna allegedly punched a 21-year-old man, causing fractures that required surgery. A charge of felony assault was later dropped, but McKenna still faces a misdemeanor assault charge. The case continues to work its way through the court system.
"I think most people know what happened — why I did it," McKenna said in an interview this fall. "I don't think people hold that against me. I think a lot of people would do the same. I think people gained a bit of respect for me for that," he said, before adding, "Obviously not the way you want to handle it."
Krystal McKenna was later charged with furnishing alcohol to minors. In July, she was accepted into a program that could allow the misdemeanor charge to be dismissed. She was also ordered to complete one day of community service, court records show.
In his first game back at Penn State afterward, McKenna piled up a team-record eight points, including seven assists, in a blowout win over Ohio State. He finished the season with 51 points in 35 games.
Still, when he returned to the Yukon, the season appeared to weigh on him.
"He lost a bit of that fun attitude, that idea of being a kid. He was more here for business," observed Jeremy McCulloch, a trainer in Whitehorse.
On June 26, the rusted doors of Takhini Arena in Whitehorse
It was under the rink's worn wooden beams that McKenna began his hockey journey. Now, fans and neighbors wanted to celebrate at a draft watch party held in his honor. The Yukon was ready to watch McKenna step into the brightest lights of the N.H.L.
McKenna sat with his family in Buffalo's KeyBank Center, home of the Sabres. Over his heart on his gray suit jacket, he wore two beaded pins his sister made to honor his Tr'ondek Hwech'in roots.
A pop star stepped onstage.
"Mr. McKenna," Justin Bieber said. "We would like to draft you to the Toronto Maple Leafs."
McKenna hugged his mother, then the rest of his family. Bieber's song "Yukon" rang through the arena as he walked to the stage.
"The No. 1 overall pick in the N.H.L., and he's going to the Maple Leafs," Tuton said. "But he came from here. He's ours."
A long way from the backyard rink in Whitehorse, the next leg of McKenna's journey has begun in Toronto. Wearing an unfamiliar number in an unfamiliar city, No. 92 is facing the pressure of hockey's biggest market.
"You talk about media market and pressure, that obviously blew up for him" at Penn State, McPherson said. "Having experienced that at Penn State, it surely wasn't pleasurable at times. But it definitely prepared him for playing in a big media market like Toronto and the pressure that comes with that."
Others said his personality and passion would be his key to success.
McKenna said it's about confidence and fun.
"When I know I'm doing all the little things right, it brings me that little boost of confidence," McKenna said. "And for me, it's about having fun with it. It's a game I've played my entire life, and I love doing it. I try to go out there with no stress knowing that I can hopefully be the best player on that ice."
Jeffrey Archer, Novelist Whose Life Arc Rivaled His Thrillers, Dies at 86
By ALAN COWELL
Jeffrey Archer, a best-selling British author, politician, philanthropist, athlete and one-time jailbird whose résumé seesawed between achievement and disgrace, and who inspired abiding public fascination with headline-grabbing accounts, both fictional and personal, of ambition, self-promotion, misbehavior and scandal, died on Oct. 5 at his home in London. He was 86.
His publisher, HarperCollins, announced his death in a statement. His final novel, "Adam and Eve," about the intertwined des-
JONATHAN CAPE, LONDON
MACMILLAN
"Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less" was published after Mr. Archer was defrauded and resigned as a lawmaker. "Kane & Abel" kindled a recurrent story line: the rags-to-riches struggle. Even in nonfiction, he turned time in prison into a memoir.
tinies of the highborn and the humble, was scheduled for publication on Oct. 6.
Mr. Archer's thrillers and sagas of the rich and powerful sold hundreds of millions of copies worldwide. In his London apartment overlooking the Thames, the walls were adorned with paintings, including works by Monet and Picasso.
As a host there, he became known for annual parties at which celebrity guests were served top-end Krug Champagne and lowly shepherd's pie. He also maintained homes in Mallorca and in the village of Grantchester outside Cambridge, England, where he bought the 17th-century Old Vicarage, once the home of the poet Rupert Brooke. Routinely, he was reported to borrow the overseas homes of wealthy friends and acquaintances to compose the multiple first drafts of his novels.
In his days as a politician — both as a member of Parliament in the elected House of Commons and as deputy head of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party — he displayed a barely veiled hunger for the top job. His friendships and alliances eventually won him a place in the unelected House of Lords with the title Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare — his childhood hometown in southwest England.
A political Houdini, he survived many vicissitudes, including a perjury conviction in 2001, when he was found guilty of creating false diaries and concocting a story to win a trial over whether he had slept with a prostitute to whom he paid hush money.
He once said that politics was his first choice of career, but it was from his 40-plus books that he amassed wealth, starting with a novel titled "Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less," published in 1976 after he had been defrauded of his personal fortune and stepped down as a lawmaker. "I was so low I would have sold fake Gucci bags on street corners," he told The Chicago Tribune. "Once you've lost a million dollars, you may as well have lost a hundred million dollars."
A former public relations man, he turned to writing thrillers and found he had an immediate skill for quick action that connected with readers. "Where I come from in the West Country, we say, 'Tell 'em a yarn, m'dear, and make 'em keep turning the pages, and you won't be far wrong,'” he explained.
His first published novel told the story of four men who banded together to defraud a con man who had robbed them of \$1 million each. Like the works that were to follow, the novel drew condescending criticism from some writers boasting more elevated literary credentials and less padded bank accounts. Mr. Archer described himself as a storyteller, a qualification which he depicted as both unusual and the object of resentment.
"Storytellers are very rare, but they create a lot of envy," Mr. Archer said in an interview with a fellow author, Anthony Horowitz, for The Sunday Telegraph Magazine in 2011. "The people who survive are storytellers."
The interview evoked some of the ambiguities and passions surrounding Mr. Archer's work, which drew on themes such as power, rivalry, ambition and greed.
"I'm painfully aware that of the two writers in the room only one has an original Monet on the wall," Mr. Horowitz wrote, referring to the location of the interview in his subject's apartment. He noted that Mr. Archer's 1979 novel "Kane & Abel," which has sold more than 50 million copies since its publication, helped fund his art collection.
"I don't think Jeffrey is deliberately trying to trash me," Mr. Horowitz wrote, "but he does seem to have a strange reflex action that manifests itself as one-upmanship."
"Kane & Abel" kindled one of Mr. Archer's recurrent story lines — the rags-to-riches struggle. In this case, the two main characters were Abel Rosnovski, born in penury in a forest in Poland, who becomes a wealthy hotelier in the United States and an archrival to William Kane, born on the same day but thousands of miles away as the scion of a wealthy banking family in New York.
Mr. Archer paid particular attention to sales of his books in the United States and went so far as to rewrite some of them specifically for the American market.
According to an unauthorized Archer biography, "Stranger Than Fiction" (1995), by the British journalist Michael Crick, he felt a greater affinity for the showbiz aspects of American public life and once said, "If I was born today and wanted to go into politics, I would want to be born in the United States."
In later years, though, he vouchsafed a less flattering view of Americans in remarks that recalled his reputation for gaffes and blunt talking. During the 2024 presidential election campaign in the United States, for instance, he told The Daily Telegraph he believed Donald Trump would win because "three-quarters of Americans are not intelligent."
Jeffrey Archer and his wife, Mary, leaving court in London after winning record damages of 500,000 pounds in a libel case.
PA IMAGES. VIA GETTY IMAGES
EVENING STANDARD/HULTON ARCHIVE, VIA GETTY IMAGES
REBECCA NADEN/PA IMAGES. VIA GETTY IMAGES
RICK EGLINTON/TORONTO STAR, VIA GETTY IMAGES
Above left, Mr. Archer in an undated photo. As a writer, he found he had an immediate skill for quick action that connected with readers. Top right, in 1991 with former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. His friendships and alliances eventually won him a place in the House of Lords. Above right, in 1966 on the cusp of a career in public relations and fund-raising. He later entered politics.
Jeffrey Howard Archer was born in London on April 15, 1940, and grew up in Weston-super-Mare. His mother was Lola (Cook) Archer, a journalist with a column in a local newspaper; he described her as largely "pennisless."
Mr. Archer gave conflicting accounts of his father, William, who was 40 years older than his mother. He sometimes called him a "printer," although by some accounts he was a bigamist and a fraudster. Either way, he was not much of a presence in his son's life and died when Jeffrey was 11.
Mr. Archer was educated on a scholarship at a school in the county of Somerset and left with limited qualifications to train with the police and the army. He taught physical education at a school in the southeast and went on in 1963 to study for a diploma in education at the University of Oxford, where he was associated with Brasenose College.
At Oxford, he showed a flair for athletics as a sprinter and a hurdler — running both for the university and for his country — and for philanthropy, fund-raising on behalf of the nonprofit organization Oxfam. A photograph from the era showed him with the Beatles, whose members he had persuaded to endorse a campaign by visiting Brasenose College. The drummer, Ringo Starr, was widely quoted as describing him as "a nice enough fella, but he's the kind of bloke who would bottle your piss and sell it." Mr. Archer went into public relations and fundraising, and in 1966, he married an Oxford chemistry undergraduate, Mary Weeden. In addition to his wife, who became a chemistry
An author who knew well the themes of scandal, misbehavior and self-promotion.
professor at the University of Cambridge, he is survived by two sons, William and James; and five grandchildren.
Mr. Archer began a political career as a Conservative Party member of the Greater London Council from 1967 to 1970. He became one of the youngest lawmakers in the House of Commons in 1969, at age 29, winning a special election for the district of Louth in eastern England.
While a member of Parliament, he was defrauded of a major investment in a Canadian company called Aquablast and emerged with debts of about 500,000 pounds, worth millions in buying power at current exchange rates. He stepped down from Parliament rather than contest the national elections in 1974.
"I had begun to believe that everything I did was bound to be a success," he later told The Times of London. "The downfall showed me that I wasn't a god. I was a normal mortal, well able to make a bloody fool of myself, which I did."
In 1985, he became deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, a high-profile, unelected position. Between the 1980s and the early 2000s he wrote three stage plays that received uneven notices. Such was his fascination with the stage that, in 1988, he bought a controlling share in a London theater.
In his books, Mr. Archer showed a liking for multivolume series of novels revolving around central characters, such as the seven-book Clifton Chronicles charting the life and times of Harry Clifton, the son of a dockworker in southwest England, and an equally ambitious series of books, such as "An Eye for an Eye" (2024), following the career of a Scotland Yard detective named William Warwick. Even in nonfiction, Mr. Archer turned two years spent in prison for perjury into a three-volume memoir called "A Prison Diary."
His jail term had its roots in a case in 1987, when Mr. Archer filed a libel suit against the tabloid
Daily Star after it reported that he had slept with a prostitute, Monica Coghlan. The judge, Bernard Caulfield, described Mr. Archer's wife, Mary, as having "elegance" and "fragrance" and asked whether the writer would have needed "cold, unloving, rubber-insulated sex in a seedy hotel room." Mr. Archer won the case and was awarded £500,000 in damages.
In 1992, with the support of Conservative backers including former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Prime Minister John Major, he was ennobled as Lord Archer. In 1999, he became the Conservative candidate in elections to choose a mayor of London despite never-proven allegations that he had used insider information in a deal to buy shares in Anglia Television five years earlier.
But before the vote was held, another newspaper, The News of the World, reported allegations that Mr. Archer had committed perjury at the original libel trial in 1987, forcing him to withdraw from the mayoral race.
Those charges came to trial in September 2000, and in July 2001, he was given a four-year jail term for perjury and perverting the course of justice. After two years in a variety of correctional institutions, he was released, resuming his career as a prolific writer. He kept his title and retired from the House of Lords in 2024.
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John Iliffe, Exacting Scholar Who Centered Ordinary Africans, Dies at 87
By ADAM NOSSITER
John Iliffe taught at St. John's College at the University of Cambridge for 55 years.
ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
John Iliffe, a historian of Africa whose intensively researched work focused on the struggles of ordinary citizens, influencing generations of scholars and students, died on Aug. 20 in Cambridge, England. He was 87.
His death, in a nursing home, was announced by St. John's College at the University of Cambridge, where he taught for 55 years.
For decades, Mr. Iliffe put in long hours in sweltering African archives for books that covered wars, nation-building, demography, disease, leaders and the poor. Fellow historians of the continent revered him because he placed the African at the center of his books. Not the king, the dictator or the guerrilla chief, but the African citizen, existing in the world's most hostile physical environment and fighting to preserve his or her dignity.
Africans merited gratitude from the rest of us for that alone, Mr. Iliffe believed. They were "the frontiersmen who have colonised an especially hostile region of the world on behalf of the entire human race," he wrote in his "Afri-cans: The History of a Continent," (revised edition 2017).
"That has been their chief contribution to history," Mr. Iliffe wrote in the book, still considered the standard text on African history, 30 years after it was first published.
"It is why they deserve admiration, support and careful study," he continued.
Mr. Iliffe spent his life's work engaged in all three.
In six major books — and especially in “The African Poor: A History” (1987) and “Honour in African History” (2005) — he cataloged the ways in which “suffering has been a central part of the African experience, whether it arose from the harsh struggle with nature or the cruelty of men,” as he wrote in “Africans.”
In "Honour," he chronicled Africans' endurance in the face of adversity, especially its latter-day manifestation, the tyrannical regime.
The code of African honor was many-sided, in Mr. Iliffe's view. It helped the ordinary citizen endure brutality but it also encouraged the dictator in vainglorious excess.
In Guinea's ghastly Boiro pris-on under the dictator Ahmed
Kieran Corcoran contributed research.
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
"Africans" is considered the standard text on African history, 30 years after it was published. In "Honour," Mr. Iliffe chronicled Africans' endurance in the face of adversity.
Sékou Touré, “prisoners measured courage by the number of torture sessions endured.” In Idi Amin's Uganda, students “marched through the capital” to protest a shooting, at huge risk. Peasants from Ouelessebougou in Mali in 1968 flooded the capital’s jail to free their neighbors, braving the then-regime’s forces.
The flip side of this everyday heroism was what Mr. Iliffe called "the heroic style of leadership," a "major obstacle to democracy," he wrote, citing Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah and Togo's Gnassingbe Eyadema, who was "the hero himself, depicted in statues in all the important towns," a dictator who "required even his ministers to display abject servility."
Mr. Iliffe was an old-fashioned scholar, colleagues said, interested in people and facts, not theory, and in filling hundreds of shoe boxes with index cards. Working in the state archives in Malawi, he wouldn't leave them to applaud the head of state's passing motorcade, as other researchers were told to do, "because he refused to sacrifice even a minute of precious time in the archive," a colleague, Megan Vaughan, recalled.
"He had a tremendous capacity to find his way through complex subjects and bring out the humanity of the African actors," Derek Peterson, a historian of Africa at the University of Michigan, said in an interview. "He took on a whole range of subjects and he always put Africans at the center of the story, even when they failed."
African demography — the waning and waxing of African population growth — was the "connecting thread, as a way of ordering the material" in his research, the German scholar Andreas Eckert said in an interview.
Underpopulation — the sparsity of population centers across Africa's vast expanses — explained the continent's relative lack of development in the centuries leading up to 19th-century colonization. Slavery was not a primary culprit, he wrote in "Afri-cans," contrary to others' interpretations. "In the economic field as probably in the demographic, the slave trade chiefly intensified rel-
An old-fashioned academic who was interested in people and facts, not theory.
ative backwardness," he wrote, referring to Africa's lag in technology and urbanization, among other areas.
Then, with advances in modern medicine cutting into mortality rates, Africa experienced “demographic growth of a scale and speed unique in human history,” he wrote in “Africans.” “This growth underlay the collapse of colonial rule, the destruction of apartheid, and the instability of successor regimes.”
John Iliffe was born in Luton, England, on May 1, 1939, the younger of two sons of Arthur Iliffe, a bank manager, and Violet (Evelyn) Iliffe. He was educated at Framlingham College, a boarding school in Suffolk.
He received his undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees from Peter-house College, Cambridge, in 1961 and 1965, with a thesis on colonial German East Africa.
He set off to teach at the University College of Dar es Salaam in newly independent Tanzania, becoming part of what was later celebrated as the "Dar es Salaam School of African History," a group of academics, caught up in idealistic nation-building, who worked to produce an anticolonial narrative of the recent African past.
He returned to Cambridge in 1971, becoming a fellow at St. John's College, and remained there for the next 55 years, producing his first major book, "A Modern History of Tanganyika," still considered a model national history by African historians, in 1979.
Mr. Iliffe leaves no immediate survivors.
He wasn't a sentimentalist about Africa and had no romantic notions about the continent, colleagues said, but nor was he what scholars and others call an Afropessimist. Mostly, he admired ordinary Africans, "the commoners, not the kings," Mr. Peterson said.
"African history owes John a staggering debt in his sheer curiosity, his extraordinary appetite for grueling hard work, his courage in publishing in so many areas of others' expertise," his Cambridge colleague John Lonsdale said after his death.
Curtis Flowers, 56, Man Whose Case Symbolized Racial Bias Among Juries
By TRIP GABRIEL
Curtis Flowers, a Black man whose six trials in the same Mississippi murder case became a national symbol of racial bias in jury selection, leading the Supreme Court to reverse his capital conviction in 2019, died at home last week in Winona, Miss. He was 56.
His sister Priscilla Flowers-Ward said that he had had advanced diabetes and that the family was awaiting an autopsy to identify the cause of death.
Mr. Flowers was transferred off death row in Parchman prison in Mississippi and released in December 2019 after nearly 23 years behind bars. His release followed the Supreme Court's ruling that Black people had been unconstitutionally excluded from the jury in his sixth trial.
In the 7-2 majority opinion, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote that the State of Mississippi had pursued a "relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of Black individuals."
Mr. Flowers was convicted in that trial of killing four people in 1996 at a furniture store where he had once worked in Winona, a small city in central Mississippi.
The white district attorney, Doug Evans, who tried all of Mr. Flowers's six cases, spent two decades employing the same tactic: ensuring that few or no Black residents in the majority-Black county were seated on Mr. Flowers's juries.
Curtis Flowers with his sister Priscilla Flowers-Ward leaving a prison in Louisville, Miss., in 2019.
ROGELIO V. SOLIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Across the half-dozen trials, 61 of the 72 jurors were white. Two of the prosecutions ended in mistrials, and four in convictions that were overturned on appeal.
Mr. Flowers's ordeal gained broader attention through a 2018 podcast, "In the Dark," which identified holes in the prosecution's case. One witness who had testified at four of Mr. Flowers's trials, and who had said that Mr. Flowers had confessed to the crime in jail, recanted to the podcast reporters.
Along with other high-profile examples, among them the 2020 killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, Mr. Flowers's wrongful convictions contributed to a national assessment of bias in the justice system.
Mr. Evans never conceded any prosecutorial misconduct. After the Supreme Court ruling, he recused himself from trying Mr. Flowers a seventh time and turned the case over to the state attorney general.
"I have personally prosecuted the defendant in all six of his prior trials," Mr. Evans said in a court filing at the time, "While I remain confident in both the investigation and jury verdicts in this matter, I have come to the conclusion that my continued involvement will prevent the families from obtaining justice and from the defendant being held responsible for his actions."
The shock waves of the 1996 quadruple-murders at the Tardy Furniture store in Winona rippled through the small community for years. The owner and three employees, ages 16 to 59, died in a robbery-homicide that prosecutors tied to Mr. Flowers largely through circumstantial evidence. They said he was a former employee seeking revenge after be-
Tried six times for the same murder, with few or no Black people on the juries.
ing fired. The "In the Dark" podcast chipped away at elements of the case.
The attorney general's office dropped all charges in 2020.
Curtis Giovanni Flowers was born on May 29, 1970, one of six children of Archie and Lola (Gibson) Flowers. His father managed a store, and his mother was a home health aide.
His mother spoke on the phone almost daily with her son, and with her husband drove every two weeks to visit him on death row in prison for more than two decades. She died in July 2018, just days after the final episode of the original "In the Dark" podcast. Mr. Flowers's father died last year.
Besides his sister, Ms. Flowers-Ward, he is survived by a daughter, Crystal Flowers, who was 3 at the time of her father's arrest and was raised by an aunt; three grandchildren; his brother, Archie R. Flowers; and his sisters Cora Tyson, Angela Jones and Charita Moore.
In 2021, Mississippi agreed to pay Mr. Flowers \$500,000 over 10 years as compensation for wrongful imprisonment.
developed and developing countries, first studying hepatitis-B vaccination programs, providing important insights of the 1980s. He had a strong, chronic later. He advocated for balance between global health and healthcare. He also needs of local programs. Somewhat controversially, he is a major role in developing a few-grams' multi-billion dollar cost could more useful fund to support the national health. He will wrote eight books, two on Black society in America, his own country, who is an analyzing and critiquising public health efforts around the United States. He has been a strong Kappa from the University of California, Berkeley, he also supported the National Columbia, completing his Ph.D. of Berkeley in 1970. He was born in Jamaica and has close friends there often. He grew up in Jamaica Estates, which was a great deal with the Iles (Liegner) Muraskin, both predeceased him, as did the U.S. state that he had twice, to Lanka (Brown) Muraskin and later to Merry (Rath), which had been a good man. He had a son, Michael. Both mortgages ended in divorce. In advance, he was writing, White, Zhang; and a grand deal. He is survived by his life port
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艺术 纽约时报
杰森·齐诺曼（JASON ZINOMAN） / 论喜剧
2026年10月13日，星期二 C1
+ N
莉拉·巴斯 为纽约时报拍摄
📄 Original Section
Deaths
ner, Richard Gottlieb, and three nephews, Seth, Dan, and David. A celebration of his life was held December 7, 2025, in person and on Zoom.
Mary Mulligan, age 92, died peacefully at her home in La Conner, Washington, on October 3, 2026. Born in the Bronx to Edward J. Mulligan and Elizabeth I. Murphy on February 12, 1934, she graduated from Saint Bamabas High School and worked at NBC, Young & Rubicam and other firms in her career. She is survived by her three children, Ashley, Philip and Blair, seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
作为第一批进入编剧室的哈佛灯笼（Harvard Lampoon）校友之一，他与写作搭档马克斯·普罗斯（Max Pross）曾为《周六夜现场》的初代演员撰写剧本，随后协助创办了《大卫·莱特曼深夜秀》（Late Night With David Letterman）。此后，他们又为多部具有开创性的节目撰稿，包括《赛恩菲尔德》（Seinfeld）和《辛普森一家》（The Simpsons），加米尔在后者工作了 22 年。
An index of fuel consumption that tracks how far the day's mean temperature fell below 65 | Yesterday | 5 | So far this month | 48 | So far this season (since July 1) | 79 | Normal to date for the season | 92 | # DP World Tour Will Bar LIV Players, Who Are Facing Dwindling Options
By BRODY MILLER
The Athletic
LIV golfers will not be allowed on the DP World Tour in 2027, a major blow to LIV Golf's hopes of gaining player commitments after its bankruptcy filing.
The move means any LIV golfers who remain with the league will not be eligible for the Ryder Cup. The decision marks a strong shift from the European tour's previous stances, which have included fines for golfers playing in conflicting events before an eventual minimum event agreement in 2026.
The Saudi Public Investment Fund's departure from LIV in April changed the calculus, especially after LIV filed for bankruptcy in September. Guy Kinnings, the DP World Tour's chief executive, indicated he would not have the same leniency for players who recommit to LIV even after they have the chance to leave.
"Players need to make a
Brody Miller is a staff golf writer for The Athletic.
choice," Kinnings said on Monday. "As we have said for many years, we have rules and regulations which are there to protect our tour and which our members must all abide by. Players who are not willing to comply with our rules and regulations should not be seeking to join our tour."
This news comes days after the golfer Jon Rahm's lawyer said Rahm would not participate in LIV 2.0. David Puig and Adrian Meronk have also confirmed they do not plan to stay with the league.
European tour sources, speaking anonymously because they were not authorized to do so publicly, say players will be asked to disclose which tours they intend to play on when membership applications open later this month.
Those sources say LIV 2.0's proposed new structure — with player equity stakes — changes the landscape from when the DP World Tour granted conditional releases to LIV golfers earlier this year.
When the Saudi Public Investment Fund initially pulled out of
GOLF
LIV in April, LIV's chief executive, Scott O'Neil, immediately focused his survival efforts toward a global league that teamed with national opens and capitalized on LIV's success in underserved markets. His comments in April hinted at hopes of teaming with the DP World Tour, and LIV already had a strong relationship with the Asian Tour.
In the months that followed, the PGA Tour's chief executive, Brian Rolapp, made deals with all of those potential LIV partners. He started a partnership with the Australian Open. He strengthened the PGA Tour's "strategic alliance" with the DP World Tour. And then a July deal with the Asian Tour seemed to be a crushing blow to LIV's options.
Even outside of teaming with the European tour, O'Neil pitched to players a plan of 10 worldwide LIV events while they filled out their schedules with DP World Tour events using the previous conditional releases. After August reports of Kinnings threatening not to allow those releases going forward, O'Neil requested mercy from his fellow tours.
David Puig, left, joined Jon Rahm and Adrian Meronk in deciding not to remain with LIV Golf.
DCTAVIO PASSOS/GETTY IMAGES
"It's complete, not compete," O'Neil said before LIV's season finale in Indianapolis. "Golf doesn't need one tour to win and everyone else to lose."
The DP World Tour, though, lost \$85.3 million in 2025. Those losses coincide with the PGA Tour moving to nearly triple its investment in the DP World Tour, from \$28.4 million to \$77.7 million, as European Tour purses increase.
As it stands, any LIV golfers who choose to stay with the tour are running out of paths to play a full schedule (roughly 20 or more events) and to have any chance of qualifying for major championships.
Residual moisture from Hurricane Simon will combine with tropical moisture from the Gulf over the southern United States this week, fueling rounds of drenching showers and thunderstorms from Texas into parts of the Midwest. Very heavy rain rates may cause low visibility and disrupt travel, especially during the Wednesday and Thursday evening commutes. The greatest flooding potential extends from southwestern Texas through central Oklahoma into southwestern Missouri.
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展现管弦乐的精湛技艺
大卫·艾伦 / 评论笔记本
柏林爱乐乐团在卡内基音乐厅的演出表现出色。但它本可以更完美。
柏林爱乐乐团在周四晚上开启了卡内基音乐厅的新乐季，其表现一如既往地令人惊叹。
在首席指挥基里尔·佩特伦科的带领下，乐团共演出了三场节目：周四是一场意大利音乐盛典，由男高音乔纳斯·考夫曼演唱咏叹调，并演奏了雷斯皮基的《Fouffmann of Rome》和《罗马之松》；周五（周日重演）则是德国重量级作品的汇编，包括勃拉姆斯的《第一钢琴协奏曲》和理查德·施特劳斯的《查拉图斯特拉如是说》；周六则以埃尔加的《谜题变奏曲》作为柴可夫斯基《第四交响曲》的序曲。
High 71. It will be dry but humid through the day while sunshine mixes with some clouds. Winds will be from the south-southeast at 3-6 miles per hour. Temperatures will be 5 degrees above normal.
TONIGHT ....Showers around early Low 64. There will be a couple of evening showers, mainly north and west of the city. Otherwise, it will be partly cloudy and warm. The low will be over 10 degrees above average.
TOMORROW ....Warm with some sun High 79. Dry weather will return, and it will be very warm and humid. The sky will be mainly clear with some clouds mixing in. The high will be nearly 15 degrees above normal.
THURSDAY ....Sunshine, not as warm High 66. It will be mostly sunny and not as warm with lower humidity across the area. Winds will be from the north at 7-14 m.p.h.
SATURDAY ......Some rain Friday
Friday will bring occasional rain. High 66.
On Saturday, dry conditions will return. It
will be partly sunny, windy and cooler.
High 53.
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📦 已折叠版面非核心信息：气象、潮汐与天文时刻表（《Meteorology by AccuWeather》— 点击展开）
KEY WALKER（神奇四侠）、SCETRONC（蜘蛛侠）以及 MATTED DELLA FONTE（X战警） / 漫威娱乐
凯特琳·索利曼 / ONI PRESS
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📄 Original Section
Meteorology by AccuWeather
A quick-moving storm will bring rain from the Great Lakes to New England today. A few thunderstorms could occur on the southern edge of the rain across New York.
Meanwhile, drenching showers and thunderstorms will occur across Nevada and Utah. Lighter precipitation will dampen parts of Arizona and Wyoming. There may be flooding in any heavier downpour, especially in low-lying areas.
Additionally, gusty thunderstorms will form across the Plains late in the day and into the overnight. Wind gusts of 60-70 miles per hour could develop in any storm. | N.Y.C. region | Yesterday | Today | Tomorrow | New York City | 66/54 0 | 71/64 PC | 79/58 PC | Bridgeport | 70/53 0.02 | 67/63 PC | 77/55 S | Coldwell | 69/54 0 | 75/64 F | 80/56 PC | Danbury | 65/53 Tr | 67/60 PC | 79/52 PC | Islp | 68/54 0.01 | 69/63 PC | 78/57 PC | Nowark | 70/55 Tr | 75/66 PC | 82/57 PC | Trenton | 68/54 0.02 | 78/62 F | 79/56 PC | White Plains | 66/52 Tr | 70/62 PC | 76/54 PC | ---
The rest of the United States will have largely dry weather. Warm air will stretch from the Southeast north to the Great Lakes. Cooler air will stretch from the Southwest to the Midwest. It will be sunny across the Southeast and West Coast. | C | Clouds | S | Sun | F | Fog | Sn | Snow | H | Haze | SS | Snow showers | I | Ice | T | Thunderstorms | PC | Partly cloudy | Tr | Trace | R | Rain | W | Windy | Sh | Showers | - | Not available | High/low temperatures for the 16 hours ended at 4 p.m. yesterday, Eastern time, and precipitation (in inches) for the 16 hours ended at 4 p.m. yesterday. Expected conditions for today and tomorrow. |
Precipitation (in inches) | Yesterday | 0.00 | Record | 4.26 |
For the last 30 days | Actual | 6.35 | Normal | 4.40 |
For the last 365 days | Actual | 47.18 | Normal | 49.52 | United States |
Yesterday | Today | Tomorrow | Albany | 67/55 | T/I | 67/62 Sh | 67/49 C | Albuquerque | 78/54 | 0.0 | 74/54 P/C | 72/45 S | Atlanta | 47/53 | 0.07 | 74/54 P/C | 74/51 S | Atlanta | 84/61 | 0.0 | 87/63 S | 88/64 S | Atlantic City | 72/58 | 0.0/1 | 74/65 P | 80/61 PC | Boston | 90/77 | 0.08 | 87/65 P/C | 87/61 S | Baltimore | 76/52 | 0.0 | 83/63 S | 87/64 S | Baton Rouge | 93/63 | 0.0 | 90/62 S | 90/64 S | Birmingham | 88/60 | 0.0 | 90/60 S | 90/62 S | Boston | 56/60 | 0.08 | 82/58 P/C | 82/58 S | Boston | 69/52 | 0.0 | 92/58 C | 75/53 PC | Buffalo | 67/61 | 0.0/1 | 78/58 P/S | 65/49 C | Buffalo | 63/59 | 0.0/1 | 80/58 P/S | 84/58 C | Caspar | 56/37 | 0.0/1 | 59/40 Sh | 49/48 S | Charlotte | 83/53 | 0.0 | 96/58 S | 87/61 S | Charlottesville | 80/63 | 0.0 | 98/63 P/S | 88/63 S | Chicago | 86/69 | 0.0 | 81/64 C | 67/57 C | Cincinnati | 81/63 | 0.0/1 | 86/66 S | 82/64 Sh | Cleveland | 77/65 | 0.7/1 | 85/63 PC | 68/52 Sh | Cincinnati Springs | 78/69 | 0.0 | 73/64 P/S | 72/63 S | Columbus | 77/63 | 0.0 | 86/64 C | 78/56 Sh | Concord, N.Y. | 71/47 | 0.0 | 53/49 Sh | 70/46 C | Delaware, West | 91/74 | 0.0/1 | 97/72 P/S | 87/72 S | Denver | 82/46 | 0.0 | 58/42 PC | 68/39 Sh | Des Moines | 88/57 | 0.0 | 73/52 PC | 65/58 Sh | Detroit | 86/60 | 0.0 | 84/59 PC | 81/51 PC | El Paso | 86/65 | 0.0 | 85/64 PC | 84/62 S | Fargo | 56/42 | 0.2/1 | 52/40 C | 58/42 S | Hartford | 72/51 | 0.0 | 63/58 C | 78/51 PC | Istanbul | 86/55 | 0.0 | 87/52 S | 84/74 S | Houston | 87/77 | 0.0/4 | 90/77 T | 91/73 T | Indianapolis | 86/65 | 0.0 | 89/68 S | 79/62 Sh | Jacksonville | 92/61 | 0.0 | 89/61 P/S | 87/63 S | Jacksonville | 87/61 | 0.0 | 88/61 S | 87/65 S | Kansas City | 89/69 | 0.0 | 88/62 T | 66/61 R | Key West | 96/69 | 0.0/4 | 90/65 PC | 80/63 Sh | Kansas City | 74/57 | 0.08 | 65/55 PC | 75/57 PC | Lexington | 81/63 | 0.0/1 | 86/65 S | 85/67 Sh | In Central Park, for the 13 hours ended at 1 p.m. yesterday.
吉田久典（《一本糟糕的书》）、町田直子（《它在不在那里》）、伊藤润二（《看着我》） / VIZ Media
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Metropolitan Almanac | Little Rock | 92/69 | G | 89/74 | 88/71 | Los Angeles | 68/55 | 0.09 | 75/57 PC | 81/60 | Louisville | 84/66 | G | 88/70 | 84/69 | Memphis | 90/68 | G | 90/73 | 86/70 | Maryland | 90/77 | 0.17 | 91/75 | 89/71 | Milwaukee | 84/67 | G | 75/59 PC | 62/55 C | Mly St. Paul | 81/53 | 0.04 | 62/48 Sh | 61/48 PC | New York City | 89/65 | G | 91/85 | 88/72 | New Orleans | 89/66 | G | 88/65 | 89/69 | Norfolk | 73/60 | T | 83/65 S | 87/69 S | North Carolina | 90/62 | T | 91/73 PC | 90/70 PC | Omaha | 94/53 | G | 70/50 PC | 62/54 Sh | Orlando | 88/68 | G | 87/70 | 88/71 Sh | Philadelphia | 74/57 | G | 71/66 | 70/67 PC | Porto | 83/67 | 0.09 | 80/59 Sh | 80/61 S | Pittsburgh | 71/59 | G | 82/65 | 74/54 Sh | Portland, Me. | 69/44 | G | 54/49 | 63/46 PC | Omaha, Ch. | 68/63 | G | 68/64 | 61/50 PC | Providence | 71/54 | G | 63/60 PC | 77/53 PC | Raleigh | 82/56 | G | 87/61 | 90/65 S | Romey | 56/50 | G | 56/54 | 64/60 S | Richmond | 77/56 | G | 85/63 S | 91/66 S | Rochester | 69/58 | G | 80/58 | 63/48 C | Santo | 74/40 | G | 77/50 | 74/40 S | Salt Lake City | 57/46 | 0.50 | 51/45 T | 58/44 Sh | San Antonio | 90/77 | 0.04 | 93/78 PC | 91/75 PC | San Diego | 71/60 | 0.09 | 73/57 S | 77/58 S | San Francisco | 70/49 | G | 73/51 S | 77/52 S | San Jose | 71/49 | G | 77/50 S | 80/52 S | San Juan | 90/79 | 0.05 | 89/79 T | 90/79 R | St. Louis | 63/57 | G | 63/62 S | 60/60 S | Sioux Falls | 77/46 | G | 62/42 C | 62/47 PC | Spokane | 53/31 | 0.02 | 58/36 S | 61/36 S | South Dakota | 90/12 | G | 73/73 PC | 80/69 S | St. Thomas | 90/80 | 0.05 | 89/80 T | 89/81 T | Syracuse | 66/57 | T | 77/59 S | 63/45 R | Tampa | 89/70 | G | 88/71 S | 89/72 S | Tucson | 82/65 | G | 85/75 PC | 81/61 PC | Tucson | 82/66 | 0.05 | 81/59 Sh | 88/54 S | Tulsa | 91/75 | G | 91/76 PC | 81/70 T | Tulsa, New Orleans | 73/69 | 0.01 | 70/65 S | 88/69 S | Washington | 75/57 | G | 82/65 S | 88/67 T | Wichita | 90/70 | G | 93/65 T | 69/64 T | Wilmington, Del. | 75/53 | G | 79/62 T | 83/59 PC | Africa |
Yesterday |
Today | Cape Town | 81/58 | G | 82/56 S | 87/57 S | Cape Town | 85/65 | G | 86/69 PC | 90/69 S | Cape Town | 64/55 | G | 70/50 PC | 67/54 PC | Delaware | 88/59 | 0.12 | 90/80 PC | 90/80 PC | Delaware, Desanaburg | 83/56 | G | 80/63 S | 88/69 S | Neairobi | 84/58 | G | 80/60 T | 82/62 S | Tunica | 82/61 | G | 81/62 R | 80/61 B | Asia/Pacific |
Yesterday |
Today | Baghdad | 98/78 | G | 100/76 PC | 105/83 C | Baltimore | 91/61 | G | 90/70 S | 90/78 S | Beijing | 74/56 | G | 73/40 S | 73/48 PC | Demascus | 88/59 | G | 84/61 PC | 85/61 PC | Daliana | 90/60 | G | 91/73 PC | 90/70 PC | Jakarta | 94/79 | G | 95/78 Sh | 95/77 Sh | Jerusalem | 76/66 | G | 78/62 PC | 81/63 PC | Jahari | 99/62 | G | 93/68 PC | 93/69 S | Manila | 88/78 | 0.06 | 92/79 T | 92/79 A | Mumbai | 100/84 | G | 98/61 PC | 99/83 PC | New Delhi | 90/69 | 0.01 | 92/73 | 83/73 | Riyadh | 99/75 | 0 | 99/75 PC | 100/73 | Seoul | 82/63 | 0 | 72/48 Sn | 67/49 S | Shanghai | 81/64 | 0 | 72/48 Sn | 62/56 PC | Singapore | 90/79 | 0.07 | 90/80 Sn | 91/79 Sn | Sydney | 93/66 | 0.10 | 69/59 Sn | 65/56 Sn | Johari City | 86/60 | 0.10 | 92/83 Sn | 71/79 Sn | Thunyi | 79/61 | 0 | 83/66 PC | 85/67 PC | Tokyo | 77/68 | 0 | 77/68 Sn | 83/65 W | Europe | Yesterday | Today |
Tomorrow | Amsterdam | 61/43 | 0 | 67/52 Sn | 63/50 C | Athens | 79/64 | 0.01 | 70/59 Sn | 64/58 W | Brisbane | 67/45 | 0 | 61/50 Sn | 63/50 C | Brussels | 64/43 | 0 | 68/50 Sn | 64/49 PC | Budapest | 63/43 | 0 | 61/35 S | 57/44 S | Buenos Aires | 54/60 | 0.14 | 61/47 Sn | 67/47 C | Dublin | 70/57 | 0.12 | 61/49 Sn | 63/58 C | Edinburgh | 63/34 | 0 | 60/46 Sn | 62/58 W | Edinburgh Midstrut | 62/34 | 0 | 58/42 Sn | 62/50 PC | Geneva | 63/41 | 0 | 63/48 PC | 70/70 PC | Helsinki | 43/41 | 0.18 | 46/40 PC | 51/43 W | Istanbul | 73/52 | 0 | 46/40 Sn | 64/56 W | Jakarta | 66/50 | 0.31 | 54/46 C | 57/41 PC | Lisbon | 75/61 | 0 | 79/60 PC | 85/64 PC | London | 64/50 | 0 | 70/49 PC | 67/54 PC | Madrid | 81/52 | 0 | 84/58 Sn | 84/57 PC | Moscow | 57/55 | 0.06 | 51/44 Sn | 64/41 PC | Nice | 75/63 | 0 | 73/62 PC | 74/61 PC | Rio de Janeiro | 46/50 | 0 | 47/41 Sn | 44/45 S | Paris | 70/45 | 0 | 73/50 Sn | 67/47 S | Prague | 59/41 | 0.01 | 59/49 S | 61/39 PC | Santiago | 77/51 | 0.01 | 51/41 Sn | 51/41 PC | St. Petersburg | 49/46 | 0.23 | 46/40 Sn | 49/42 C | Stockholm | 46/41 | 0.18 | 46/42 PC | 48/35 W | Tatirim | 61/42 | 0.18 | 61/42 Sn | 61/42 W | Warsaw | 52/41 | 0.06 | 54/41 C | 55/43 PC | | North America | Yesterday | Today | Tomorrow | Acapulco | 86/77 0 | 89/77 PC | 88/76 R | Bermuda | 84/77 0 | 84/75 Sh | 83/75 PC | Edmonton | 38/76 0 | 54/75 S | 60/75 PC | Gundezers | 73/56 0:01 | 82/60 T | 82/60 T | Havana | 90/76 0 | 88/73 Sh | 89/73 R | Kingston | 88/79 0:02 | 91/80 Sh | 90/79 R | Martinique | 90/78 0 | 91/77 Sh | 91/77 T | Mexico City | 69/58 0 | 76/56 R | 77/56 Sh | Monterrey | 81/69 0:06 | 89/71 R | 89/71 T | Montreal | 62/55 0:01 | 49/43 R | 53/43 C | Naseau | 88/79 0:01 | 96/78 T | 88/78 Sh | New York City | 88/73 0:03 | 86/74 Sh | 87/74 R | Quebec City | 52/45 0:07 | 42/37 R | 46/41 Sh | Santo Domingo | 91/73 0 | 89/74 PC | 89/75 C | Toronto | 68/57 0 | 79/57 Sh | 65/45 C | Washington | 50/70 0 | 57/57 S | 58/56 C | Winnipeg | 44/41 0:24 | 48/34 C | 54/40 B | South America | Yesterday | Today | Tomorrow | Buenos Aires | 57/ 52 0.03 | 64/ 56 PC | 65/ 56 PC | Caracas | 91/ 78 0.09 | 89/ 78 R | 91/ 77 R | Lima | 78/ 71 0 | 81/ 72 PC | 82/ 72 S | Quito | 63/ 51 0.32 | 65/ 50 R | 67/ 50 R | Racilla | 86/ 79 0 | 87/ 79 PC | 87/ 77 PC | Rio de Janeiro | 81/ 75 0.02 | 81/ 72 PC | 83/ 72 T | Santiago | 57/ 53 0.07 | 64/ 46 R | 71/ 47 R | Avg. daily departure from normal this month......+0.8" | Avg. daily departure from normal this year......-0.3" | Reservoir levels (New York City water supply) | Yesterday | 83% | Est. normal | 77% | ---
Moon | R | 10:20 a.m. | SET | 6:19 p.m. | $ | 7:33 p.m. | NEXT R | 7:06 a.m. | R | 11:23 a.m. |
Jupiter | R | 2:09 a.m. |
Mars | R | 1:06 a.m. | S | 4:01 p.m. | $ | 3:28 p.m. |
Saturn | S | 6:21 a.m. |
Venus | R | 8:45 a.m. | R | 6:03 p.m. | $ | 6:19 p.m. | ---
环球怪兽：弗兰肯斯坦的新娘依然在世 (Universal Monsters: The Bride of Frankenstein Lives)
这部由凯利·汤普森（Kelly Thompson）和马蒂亚·德·朱利斯（Mattia De Iulis）创作的四期系列剧，基于 1935 年的恐怖电影，讲述了弗兰肯斯坦新娘的故事。第一期讲述了新娘如何从她被创造的城堡中逃脱，以及她必须学习如何在充满危险的世界中生存。正如她所说：“男人坏，火坏。河流坏。动物坏。”当一名寻找妻子的男人认出新娘的面孔时，情况变得更加复杂。随着故事展开，读者和新娘将了解到组成她那拼凑身体的女性们。（Skybound。10 月 27 日发售。）
📄 Original Section
Boating
From Montauk Point to Sandy Hook, N.J., out to 20 nautical miles, including Long Island Sound and New York Harbor.
Winds will be from the east at 5-10 knots, shifting to the southeast in the afternoon. Waves will average 1-2 feet on New York Harbor and Long Island Sound and 3-5 feet on the open ocean.
Last | 10 days | 30 days | 90 days | 365 days | Chart shows how recent temperature and precipitation trends compare with those of the last 30 years.
Northeast Foliage
Much of northern New England, the Catskills, northern Pennsylvania and the central Appalachians is at peak fall color. There is widespread color across central and southern portions of the Northeast. Patchy color exists away from the coast. Far-northern New England is past peak color.
Tom Gammill, whose credits include 'S.N.L.,' has written a play about the comic strip.
TOM GAMMILL'S comedy credentials are hard to beat.
Part of the first generation of Harvard Lampoon alumni who packed writers' rooms, he, along with his writing partner, Max Pross, wrote for the original cast of "Saturday Night Live" before helping start "Late Night With David Letterman." They moved on to write for, among other seminal shows, "Seinfeld" and "The Simpsons," where Gammill worked for 22 years.
He has also written for Steve Martin, Bill Murray, Garry Shandling and Larry David. Now, at 69, Gammill is stepping into the spotlight, playing the comic artist who has perhaps mattered to him most of all: Ernie Bushmiller, author of "Nancy," once a staple of daily newspaper comic pages going back to the 1930s.
Over the years, Gammill's love of "Nancy" has puzzled some comedy writer peers. How could someone whose fingerprints are on such a broad swath of cutting-edge, irreverent comedy be devoted to an old-fashioned strip about a resourceful girl and her friend Sluggo, a series rooted in wholesome jokes about dropped ice cream cones and water-gun fights?
The cartoonist was “like Chaplin or Keaton because his sensibility is like a silent movie star,” Gammill said, speaking in his apartment near Union Square in Manhattan, where he is also rehearsing the debut play he wrote and stars in, “A Morning With Ernie Bushmiller” (at the Mark O’Donnell Theater in Brooklyn through Saturday). CONTINUED ON PAGE 65
Lauren Servideo and Tom Gammill star in "A Morning With Ernie Bushmiller," a play about the "Nancy" comic strip and its creator.
The films of Cristian Mungiu, a two-time Palme d'Or winner, test viewers' ethical compass.
By THOMAS ROGERS
BUCHAREST, ROMANIA – The most devastating scene in "Fjord," a new movie by the Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, comes about a third of the way through. In a lengthy sequence, Lisbet, a Christian living with her husband in a small Norwegian town, gets an unexpected visit from local officials who suspect them of abusing their children.
When Lisbet — played by the Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve of “Sentimental Value” and “Backrooms”—realizes that the visitors aim to take away their children before their investigation begins, she vaults excruciatingly from shock to fury to anguished despair. Filmed in Mungiu’s signature observational style, with long takes and without close-ups, the scene leaves viewers to judge for themselves who is a victim and who is a perpetrator.
CONTINUED ON PAGE C4
DAMIEN MALONEY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
The filmmaker Cristian Mungiu. "Fjord," set in Norway, is his first movie filmed outside Romania.
“大熊队”如何让迪特卡成为永恒
RAYMOND BONAR / NBCU PHOTO BANK, VIA GETTY IMAGES
一段《周六夜现场》的短剧将这位橄榄球教练的地位提升到了神话的高度。
作者：MIKE PEED
在1993年1月9日播出的《周六夜现场》（Saturday Night Live）开场短剧中，演员乔治·温特（George Wendt）饰演虚构的芝加哥熊队超级粉丝鲍勃·斯韦尔斯基（Bob Swerski），给球队老板写了一封信。
The Berlin Philharmonic played brilliantly at Carnegie Hall. It could be even better.
THE BERLIN PHILHARMONIC opened Carnegie Hall's season on Thursday night, and it did so with its typical gobsmacking brilliance.
There were three programs, all under chief conductor Kirill Petrenko: on Thursday, a gala of Italian music, with the tenor Jonas Kaufmann singing arias alongside Respighi's "Fouffmann of Rome" and "Pines of Rome": on Friday (and repeated on Sunday), a billing of German heavyweights with Brahms's First Piano Concerto and Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra"; and, on Saturday, Elgar's "Enigma Variations" as a preface to Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony.
The last time the Philharmonic came to New York, in 2024, it came bearing the bad news of cuts in its subsidy from the city of Berlin. This time, it came with gladder tidings, including a recent announcement that the German federal government would not only increase its funding for culture in Berlin, but also provide 225 million euros (about \$250 million) for a needed renova-CONTINUED ON PAGE C2
The acclaimed conductor Kirill Petrenko led the Berlin Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, which opened its season with four concerts by the orchestra.
43 撰写了《访问古恩小队》(A Visit From the Goon Squad) 的詹妮弗 (Jennifer)
45 拍卖单位
46 牛仔的围巾
48 演出终结者？
51 变质
52 即将结婚的人的聚会
56 -
60 像是一盘裹蛋液和面包屑后用黄油煎制的小牛肉或鸡肉
62 冲浪者骑乘的波浪
63 休息室 / 食堂
64 《丛林之书》中的狼
65 1991年以前地图上的缩写
66 拍摄结束后的演职人员聚会……提示：此答案及另外三个答案需填入网格
67 -
前一谜题答案
谜题设计：吉亚·博斯科 (GIA BOSKO)
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📄 Original Section
New Horror Comics Deliver Dark Tales
By GEORGE GENE GUSTINES
October brings an assortment of ghoulish comic books and graphic novels, some of them starring familiar heroic characters in creepy situations. The legend of Dracula is explored; nine decades after her film debut, the Bride of Frankenstein gets an in-depth origin story; and Marvel Entertainment is introducing a line of horror comics: Midnight Marvel. Dig in, True Believers!
KEY WALKER (FANTASTIC FOUR), SCETRONC (SPIDER-MAN) AND MATTED DELLA FONTE (X-MEN)/MARVEL ENTERTAINMENT
This graphic novel, by Josh Tierney and Caitlin Soliman, is aimed at readers ages 8 to 12 and accomplishes a lot with its characters in 240 pages. The action is set at the Tween Zone, an after-school club. There, Will, who is struggling to fit in socially, meets Anita, who is mourning her grandmother. They join forces to investigate the legendary ghost of a teenage counselor haunting the club, and they create their own comic book based on what they learn. Their friendship helps them through a rough time in their lives. The book includes a couple of blank pages for readers to experiment with making their own comics. (Oni Press)
KELLEY JONES/DARK HORSE COMICS
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罗素·布兰德审判开始
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📄 Original Section
Dracula, Book Three: The Count
This is the penultimate installment of Matt Wagner and Kelley Jones's retelling of the story of Dracula, told from his point of view. The first book focused on the title character's seduction to the dark arts by Satan, while the second examined the women Dracula cursed with immortality: Their bloodlust and boredom made him sometimes rue his decisions. Here the court brings his reign of terror to Victorian London. Some of the city's residents make interesting observations. One character remarks, upon meeting Dracula: "That was like shaking hands with an icicle! And his breath could knock an elephant dead!" (Dark Horse Comics. Available Oct. 20.)
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这位演艺人员面临强奸和性侵指控。
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📄 Original Section
Midnight Marvel
In Midnight Fantastic Four No. 1, by Benjamin Percy and Kev Walker, Reed Richards is familiar: so obsessed with his scientific experiments that everything else suffers. The rest of the usual characters are different. Susan Storm is a corporate mogul, not an aspiring actress; Ben Grimm is her bodyguard, not a test pilot; and her happy-lo lucky brother, Johnny, has been hurt in an accident. They unite because of a menace in outer space, which in the past has instilled them with superpowers.
VIZ Media is bringing Japan's popular Horror Picture Book series, which began in 2011 and was created by Masao Higashi, a horror and fantasy critic, to the United States. The series pairs renowned authors and illustrators on eerie picture books with spare prose and detailed drawings. Three books will be published this month: Horror Picture Book: Is It There or Not, by Natsuhiko Kyogoku and Naoko Machida, in which a child
Spidey's familiar slogan about ability and responsibility and corrupt it to "power makes monsters" in Midnight Spider-Man No. 1. The comic instills a feeling of impending doom: Will something dampen Peter Parker's glow? What will he become? Finally, in Midnight X-Men No. 1, Jonathan Hickman and Matteo Della Fonte depict a battle between mutants, vampires and mutant vampires, with civilians in the crossfire. The X-Men are used to being hated and feared, so they lend themselves well to this bleaker lens. (Marvel Entertainment)
HESANORI YOSHIDA (A BAD BOOK), NAORD MACHIDA (IS IT THERE OR NOT), JUNJI ITO (LOOKING AT ME)/VIZ MEDIA
worries about something hiding in the rafters of his home; Horror Picture Book: Looking at Me, by Soshichi Tonari and Junji Ito, about a boy haunted by faces everywhere he turns, both on Oct. 20; and Horror Picture Book: A Bad Book, by Miyuki Miyabe and Hisanori Yoshida, about a book trying to seduce its reader down a nefarious path, available on Oct. 27. (VIZ Media)
Deniz Camp and Stipan Morian have created a sympathetic zombie nicknamed Poke in a world in which mankind has dwindled and the undead rule. Poke wants to be friends with some humans he meets, not hunt them. Another surprise — his heart is suddenly beating again. There is a lot to enjoy here: watching the zombies partake in rituals like celebrating Out-Break, the day the first of the undead emerged, and watching Poke and a little girl named Rabbit have a tea party and try to communicate. (DC. Available Oct. 20.)
This four-issue series by Kelly Thompson and Mattia De Iulis tells the story of the Bride of Frankenstein, based on the 1935 horror film. The first issue sets up the Bride's escape from the castle where she was created and how she must learn how to live in a world filled with dangers. As she puts it: "Man bad, Fire bad. River bad. Animal bad." Things get more complicated when a man searching for his wife recognizes the Bride's face. As the story unfolds, readers and the Bride will learn about the women who make up her patchwork body. (Skybound. Available Oct. 27.)
Orchestral Mastery at Carnegie Hall's Season Opening
ROB DAVIDSON
Vikingur Olafsson appeared as the soloist in Brahms's First Piano Concerto.
CONTINUED FROM PAGE CI
tion of the Philharmonic's concert hall. Reports suggest that the project could be arduous, with one study putting the cost at \$900 million, with an additional \$400 million to make Tempelhof Airport fit for concerts during the eight-year refurbishment.
Still, the Philharmonic's players looked as though they were having fun over the weekend. The orchestra is a lot of things at once, but always striking is its visual contrast with the almost mechanical style of American ensembles. The Berliners perform more conspicuously as a collective of individuals than, say, the musicians of the Cleveland Orchestra, who are more of a singular corporate entity. But they pair off, form groups, notice one another, compare notes under their breath. If the timpanist Vincent Vogel has the same rhythm as the double basses far to his left, he will fix them with a stare; wind players turn to one another as they play, then break into a smile.
But your eyes, and the attention of the players, keep being drawn back to Petrenko. Seven years into his tenure, it might not yet be clear what defines his leadership of the Philharmonic, except that he so patently has the trust of his players, and that he so palpably enjoys being himself. He isn't interested in becoming a celebrity, and he gives no impression of being a visionary. He isn't even trying to make a thing of not being a thing. The most enduring image he left in these concerts came during the gala: While Kaufmann was feasting on a long and sympathetic ovation, Petrenko stood next to him, quietly rearranging the scores on his
music stand.
Nothing about Petrenko suggests anything except a focus on the music. He is a busy if not terribly stylish conductor. If he makes a movement, it is intended to do something specific. So responsive is the Philharmonic now that the tiniest adjustment in how his baton moves through the air changes the sound rushing past it, sending a shock through a section of the strings, or drawing one brass instrument out more than another. Chords begin exactly as his body would imply, and they end that way, too.
On Saturday, Petrenko made sure that
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《危险游戏！》今日线索
80年代音乐
在录制这首1985年的单曲之前，一块张贴的告示告诉艺术家们要“在进门前放下你们的自负”。
如需正确答案，请观看今晚的《危险游戏！》或明天在《纽约时报》的同一版面查看。
昨日答案：是谁是大卫·霍克尼？
观看《危险游戏！》
晚上7点，7频道
📄 Original Section
Berlin Philharmonic
Berlin Philharmonic
Performed Thursday through Sunday at Carnegie Hall in Manhattan.
the Tchaikovsky did not get too carried away. Yet you felt the desperate pain of a first movement that sometimes drew perilously close to inertia, as if it were curling into the fetal position and refusing to move, and you felt the deliverance of a manic, exhilarating finale. He treated the "Enigma Variations" as though it were Strauss, and if the outright virtuosity was tremendous in "Troyte" and the golden flow in "Nimrod" almost liquid, the characteristic Elgarian sense of certain things being left unsaid went, well, unsaid.
The actual Strauss on Friday's program was ideally effective, each section of the piece poetically filling out its own character but contributing to the whole. Brahms's concerto, with Vikingur Olafsson as the soloist, was sensible and interesting, like everything Olafsson does. If some of it was rather severe and square in its phrasing, the slow movement was a marvel of delicate touch. The Respighi pieces on Thursday had about as much depth as anybody could find in them; Kaufmann was in unfortunate form.
All in all, then, this was another sensational display of orchestral mastery. But did anybody really need such a plain reminder of how good the Berlin Philharmonic is? Is the usual Brahms, the usual Strauss, the usual Tchaikovsky, plus the usual Elgar and the usual Respighi, really the best that we can do when the Philharmonic comes to town, drawing sellout crowds whatever the ticket prices, whatever the repertoire?
Scroll through Carnegie's archive, and you will find that this was the 25th time that the Philharmonic has toured to the hall. On its first visit, in 1955, it was met with protests outside the hall and a trio of pigeons flying inside; the orchestra played three programs, and they contained, among other things, a Strauss tone poem, a Tchaikovsky symphony and some Brahms. The Philharmonic has performed Brahms on another 11 visits since.
Obviously, the Berlin Philharmonic should perform Strauss and Brahms; the orchestra should be savored on its own terms. But one of the many oddities about the classical music industry is that the negotiations and the practicalities involved in touring tend to lead to programs that present an orchestra at its least creative, not at its most ambitious.
If we are going to burn all that jet fuel, could we hear the Philharmonic as Berliners do? Where on this visit, for example, was the orchestra that recently came out with an amazing series of Schoenberg recordings, the one that in a few months will release a survey of Josef Suk? The one that places Brahms in dialogue with Scriabin, or with Pascal Dusapin and Bernd Alois Zimmermann; that puts Bruckner in the context of Wolfgang Rihm? The one that holds a biennale?
The Philharmonic, in other words, as it actually is?
尽管如此，他表示，在电影于戛纳首映后，少数几篇负面评论中所表现出的“暴力”让他感到震惊。法国杂志《Les Inrock-uptibles》的一位评论家称，蒙久在电影中试图“寻求平衡”的做法，就像是将“法西斯分子与反法西斯分子、种族主义者与反种族主义者”置于同等地位。备受推崇的法国电影刊物《电影手册》（Cahiers du Cinéma）则将其描述为一部“反动电影”。
萨尔曼·图尔（Salman Toor）：《像你这样的人》（Someone Like You），展至1月10日，于伦敦考陶德美术馆（Courtauld Gallery）；courtauld.ac.uk。
📄 Original Section
How 'Da Bears' Immortalized Ditka
RAYMOND BONAR/NBCU PHOTO BANK, VIA GETTY IMAGES
A 'Saturday Night Live' sketch raised the football coach's stature to a mythical level.
By MIKE PEED
In the cold open that began the Jan. 9, 1993, episode of "Saturday Night Live," the actor George Wendt, portraying the fictional Chicago Bears superfan Bob Swerski, writes a letter to the team's owner.
After decrying “one of the most monstrous acts of betrayal ever committed in the annals of man” — in real life, the team had just fired its revered coach, Mike Ditka — Wendt’s character reassures himself: “We do not fear for Ditka. We know Ditka will rise again. Ditka is like the sun, only smarter.”
In truth, when Ditka was let go, he hewed much closer to a fallen star. He may have led the Bears to a Super Bowl championship in 1985, but he had just overseen the team's worst record, 5-11, since 1975.
Still, to those who watched "S.N.L." in the 1990s or, really, were vulnerable in any way to popular culture, Ditka, who died last week at 86, was, now and forevermore, a giant — a mythical, infallible, indomitable leader of men. He was, as Wendt's Swerski put it: "a man whose courage and good grooming set a standard for an entire city," adding, "His hairstyle was like the man himself — sharp, unmovable, water-resistant."
In Midwestern superfanese, Ditka was "Da Coach," which translates to something like "Indisputably the Greatest Sports Legend of All Time."
The skit debuted on "S.N.L." in 1991. It's four guys sitting around a table creaking under the weight of beer, brats and heavy Chicago accents, debating the fate of their beloved team and its luminous, if hard-bitten coach.
"Debating" is a stretch: Da Bears never lose. Will they beat the Giants in a playoff game? "Da Bears, 62-3," a guy named Pat (played by Mike Myers) predicts. Chris Farley's Todd agrees: "Bears, 79-zip." But what if the Bears' plane is delayed and only Ditka makes the game? "Ditka 17, Giants 14," Myers's character foretells. "He just barely gets by."
"Swerski's Superfans" was created by the comedian and Illinois native Bob Odenkirk and the "S.N.L." writer Robert Smigel, a New Yorker who, like Odenkirk, had honed his talents on the Chicago improv circuit. As it happened, Smigel found the kernel of the sketch at a Chicago White Sox baseball game.
“Almost every guy was wearing aviator shades and was overweight, and had the walrus mustache,” he once recalled. “It was like a badge of virility.” (Last year, when Robert Francis Prevost, a noted White Sox fan, was appointed the head of the Catholic Church as Leo XIV, Chicagoans christened him “Da Pope.”)
The skit was satire, of course, mocking a certain kind of hardheaded, volatile masculinity that Ditka seemed to embrace. But it was wrapped in love, tilting heavily toward envy — and not just for Chicago or football or cured meats.
“Da Bears” was far less about championships or dynasties (Ditka may have loved winning, but he took the Bears to just the one Super Bowl) and far more about what it means to be a fan — that is, a member of a community, where one can fall into the comfort of rituals and uniforms and unqualified friendship, even if the price is choking on a pork chop. Such tribes can be problematic but also beneficial.
That the sketch so quickly found its way into pop culture made it difficult to discern where the art ended and reality began. Were fans in Bears sweater vests and aviator sunglasses dressing up like Ditka or like Swerski? Or maybe Swerski was dressing up like the fans? Was Wendt even acting?
"He did not have to search for a commitment to the team by any means, nor to Mike Ditka, really," Wendt's wife, Bernadette Birkett, told The Chicago Tribune. "I mean, it was genuinely felt."
"Superfans" cemented Ditka as myth, arguably more than anything the coach ever did on the field. It led him to portray an ex-
From left, Chris Farley, Robert Smigel, Mike Myers and George Wendt in a "Saturday Night Live" sketch on Sept. 28, 1991.
acting, no-nonsense version of himself in a host of TV commercials, hawking, for instance, fast food, insurance and erectile dysfunction medication. At Ditka's restaurant, a fan could order, and maybe finish, the "Kick Ass" Paddle Steak (a 19-ounce bone-in rib-eye).
And when the "S.N.L." alum Will Ferrell needed a proven winner to help him coach a youth soccer team in "Kicking and Screaming" (2005), he called Ditka. "Some of you are going to wish I was dead," Ditka, of course wearing a Bears sweater vest, tells the kids at his first practice.
The result of all this was a gleeful delight in the myth of Ditka that extended far beyond Chicagoans, and even sports fans.
Or maybe it wasn't mythmaking at all. After Ditka was fired by the Bears, he sounded a lot like Bob Swerski, abetted by his proclivity to speak in the third person.
"The Bears will come back," he said. "Mike Ditka will survive."
这些男人们被描绘在相似的阴郁绿色和黄色调中，这种色调在展出的另外两件作品《涂面霜且插着手机充电线的男人》（Man With Face Creams and Phone Plug）和《公民》（Citizens）中得以延续。那些同样描绘纤瘦、棕色皮肤男性的肖像画起初看起来很相似——但他们的身体僵硬且带有自我意识，氛围更加疏离。
萨尔曼·图尔，经由纽约 LUHRING AUGUSTINE 和 THOMAS DANE GALLERY 提供，摄影：FAIZAD OWARIANG
萨尔曼·图尔，经由纽约 LUHRING AUGUSTINE 和 THOMAS DANE GALLERY 提供，摄影：FARZAD OWRANG
上图：《东13街的酒吧》（The Bar on East 13th Street），作为“萨尔曼·图尔：像你一样的人”展览的一部分在伦敦考陶尔德美术馆展出。上方，《公民》（Citizens）。左侧，《带有携带者的同性恋水洼》（Fag Puddle With Carriers），用图尔在墙上文字中的话来说，这是一出“由互不相干的部分和事物组成的坎普喜剧”。展出中的所有画作均创作于2019年至2026年。
LONDON — Sacha Baron Cohen, the comedian and actor best known for "Borat," will star in Quentin Tarantino's debut play, "The Popinjay Cavalier," when it opens here next spring, the show's producers announced on Sunday.
The play, a swashbuckling comedy written and directed by Tarantino, will open for previews at the Phoenix Theater in the West End on Feb. 23. It is scheduled to run through June 13.
Baron Cohen said in the release that he had accepted the role without asking Tarantino any questions about it.
"I am beyond delighted that we will be losing our West End virginity together," Baron Cohen said.
Tarantino's move into theater comes more than seven years after the release of his most recent movie, "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood." The director's fans have been waiting for him to release his next film ever since, but Tarantino has long expressed a desire to write for the stage.
In 2024, Tarantino told Bill Maher that he was "leaning more toward" writing for theater than film, partly because it "could be really neat" to see multiple actors interpret a role. Last summer, he told "The Church of Tarantino" podcast that the play was "all written" and "absolutely my next project."
In those interviews, Tarantino revealed few details about the play. But in March, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sonia Friedman, the British theater producer, announced that it would go ahead in 2027. They described it as a "rambunctious comedy of deception" set in 1830s Europe and inspired by old movies filled with swashbuckling characters.
In July, Friedman said in an interview with The Times of London that the “very funny” show was “a big nod to the 1930s movies like ‘Zorro’ and ‘The Count of Monte Cristo,’” while also paying homage to theater and actors. The show will feature onstage fencers, acrobats and musicians, the news release on Sunday said.
Theater is "a completely new world" for Tarantino, Friedman said. But the writer-director of "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction" was seeing numerous plays in London, she added.
Friedman said the most refreshing thing about Tarantino was his interest in the audience experience.
"He wants the audience to have the best freaking night out in the theater they've had all year," she said.
Quentin Tarantino, left, and Sacha Baron Cohen collaborate on a new play in London.
这两件艺术品——一幅创作于1910年左右的法国女演员科隆纳·罗马诺（Colonna Romano）肖像画，以及一幅创作于1886年左右的油画《井边的年轻女子》（Young Woman at the Well）——是从位于卡涅叙梅尔（Cagnes-Sur-Mer）镇的一家博物馆被盗的，该博物馆曾是印象派艺术家皮埃尔-奥古斯特·雷诺阿（Pierre-Auguste Renoir）的故居。
排练结束后，导演欧文·克莱恩（Owen Kline，执导电影《搞笑页面》）讨论了《南希》（Nancy）中聪明与愚蠢的结合如何同样出现在加米尔的作品中。加米尔（以及普罗斯）创作了被许多编剧认为是《莱特曼秀》（Letterman's shows）历史上最伟大的短剧——对课后特辑的讽刺剧《他们取消了我的节目》（They Took My Show Away），在剧中，主持人利用关于“鸟与蜜蜂”（性教育）的陈词滥调向一个男孩解释，为什么有时深受喜爱的节目会被取消。
YESTERDAY'S ANSWER An oil spill last fall totaled eleven million gallons, all told.
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科学时报
纽约时报
2026年10月13日，星期二 D1
姐姐，我多大了？这取决于你是如何生活的。
一对兄妹参加了一项新测试，该测试声称可以测量一个人的衰老速度。结果令他们感到惊讶。
作者：艾米莉·鲍姆加特纳·南（EMILY BAUMGAERTNER NUNN）
📄 Original Section
KenKen
Fill the grid with digits so as not to repeat a digit in any row or column, and so that the digits within each heavily outlined box will produce the target number shown, by using addition, subtraction, multiplication or division, as indicated in the box. A 4x4 grid will use the digits 1-4. A 6x6 grid will use 1-6.
Play all of our games plus over 10,000 past puzzles for Wordle, Spelling Bee, The Crossword and more online at http://nytimes.com/games. For puzzle talk, visit http://nytimes.com/wordplay.
其中一些新发现的天体可能是某些类型爆炸恒星（即超新星）的前身。另一些则可能是奇异的组合，例如一个三星系统，其中两颗恒星已坍缩为黑洞。（右图为 M101 星系的合成图像，橙色圆圈标出的是超软 X 射线源。）
值得注意的是，这一发现一直潜藏在 NASA 钱德拉 X 射线天文台在 1999 和 2017 之间收集的数据中，等待着被发掘。阿拉巴马大学物理学与天文学教授吉米·欧文（Jimmy Irwin）在十二年前开始研究这些数据。X 射线是一种光，但其波长比紫外线和我们能看到的可见光波长更短。高能 X 射线被称为“硬”X 射线，而光谱低端的部分则被称为“软”X 射线。
钱德拉天文台收集涵盖广泛能量范围的 X 射线，但天文学家通常会忽略最软的 X 射线，因为探测器在检测该范围内的少量光子时校准得不够精准。
“几乎所有人都会普遍地切掉极低能量通道，并说‘我不关心这些’，”欧文博士说道，“我想，‘为什么不看看呢？’”他发现了中子星和黑洞等已知 X 射线源，但同时也发现了一些仅发射最低能量 X 射线的天体。肯尼斯·张（KENNETH CHANG）
X 射线：NASA / CXC / 阿拉巴马大学 / M. MUHIBULLAH 等；光学：NASA / ESA / STSCL 图像处理：NASA / CXC / SAQ / N. WOLK
接触自然 / 艾伦·伯迪克（ALAN BURDICK）
📄 Original Section
The entertainer faces rape and sexual assault charges.
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如何从秋天的落叶中获益
在布鲁克林反思将落叶留在原地的那些被低估的好处。
是让落叶留在原地，还是不留？这就是问题所在——至少在十月份是这样，因为十月是“让落叶留在原地”月（Leave the Leaves month），这是一项年度活动，鼓励业主和物业管理人员让落叶留在院子和花园里。
最近，新闻头条一直在警告人工智能末日：成群的数字代理突破禁锢，不择手段地奴役我们这个物种，并将我们从物理世界中抹除。突然我想：如果 AI 是树，而我们是叶子呢？另一个想法也自然而然地随之而来：如果我们是叶子，那么 AI 这棵树是如何计算我们的投资回报率（R.O.I.）的？
（当我询问我的聊天机器人时，它给出了一个令人不安的、冗长且技术性的回答，其中涉及我们物种的“细胞折旧表”，并以“劳动力落叶”结尾。随后它安慰我，人类的成就——我们艰苦赢得的对艺术和科学的掌握，我们几个世纪以来试图阐明生命“意义”的努力，我们的电网和光纤网络——将依然至关重要。它说：“即使在死后，人类的存在也会留下独特的价值层，直接塑造、维持并赋予 AI 系统目的。”我们不会真正死去，只是处于一种“半死”状态。）
LONDON — Russell Brand, the firebrand YouTuber, comedian and actor, appeared in court here on Monday for the start of a weekslong trial on charges of rape, sexual assault and indecent assault.
Mr. Brand, 51, faces seven charges related to incidents that the prosecution says involved six women. Prosecutors say the events occurred from 1999 to 2009, a period when Mr. Brand became a star in Britain as a standup comedian and television and radio presenter.
In two previous hearings, he pleaded not guilty to all of the charges, and last year he said in a video posted to his social media channels that he had "never engaged in non-consensual activity."
After entering the courtroom on Mon-
day, Mr. Brand briefly knelt as if in pray-
er and then took his seat in a glass box at
the back of the room.
Here is what to know as the trial begins.
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194岁的巨龟乔纳森：揭秘衰老
科学家们首次对世界上最长寿的陆地动物进行了基因组测序。
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📄 Original Section
What are the accusations?
Prosecutors accuse Mr. Brand of raping a woman in a hotel room during a 1999 British political party conference, orally raping another woman in 2004 and raping a third woman in 2009.
Mr. Brand is also charged with sexual assault and indecent assault over incidents that prosecutors say took place in Britain. Full details of those accusations are expected to emerge during the trial.
HANNAH MAKAY/REUTERS
Russell Brand has repeatedly denied ever having non-consensual sex.
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作者：莫妮克·布鲁伊莱特 (MONIQUE BROUILLETTE)
乔·霍林斯博士 (Dr. Joe Hollins) 将一只厚重的焊接手套套在左手上，右手紧紧握着一根棉签。他蹲下身，与一只 400 磅重的巨龟保持在同一视线高度，用戴手套的手托住它的头部，小心地将一根手指塞进它的嘴里，以撑开它那锋利如剃刀般的喙。与此同时，他尝试用另一只手擦拭它的脸颊。
Mr. Brand has repeatedly denied ever having non-consensual sex, and has already pleaded not guilty to the charges.
On Sunday, Mr. Brand published a video to his YouTube channel, where he has over 6.6 million subscribers, in which he discussed the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. At one point, Mr. Brand said that he himself was on trial for "sexual allegations that I deny in the strongest possible terms."
He did not say whether he would continue to publish videos during the trial.
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姐妹俩的故事，以及她们参加的年龄测试
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📄 Original Section
How will the trial proceed?
On Monday, the trial began with the judge, Joel Bennathan, asking potential jurors if they had any reason they could not sit for its likely duration. He said he would swear in a 14-person jury on Tuesday.
Later in the week, prosecutors are expected to set out their opening arguments and call their first witnesses.
The trial is scheduled to last up to 10 weeks, so the jury might not give any verdict until December.
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当两姐妹尝试一项检测基因的新技术时，发生了什么。
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📄 Original Section
How does British law affect reporting of the trial?
In Britain, anyone who makes sexual assault accusations has the right to lifelong anonymity, which means the news media is not allowed to report details that might identify the accusers. Under strict British laws aimed at preventing jury bias, reporters may report only what happens in the courtroom during a trial.
This openness to interpretation is the point of “Fjord,” which won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival this year and arrived in U.S. theaters on Friday. Should the state be allowed to confiscate children with only thin evidence of abuse? Or should parental rights prevail? The answer, Mungiu, 58, said in a recent interview, depends on the “values you come into the film with.”
That ambiguity is a hallmark of Mungiu's career. One of Romania's most accomplished directors, he first attracted global attention in 2007, when his searing drama about abortion, "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," also won the top prize at Cannes. (Only eight other directors or directing pairs have won that award, the Palme d'Or, twice.) Mungiu's films since then have shared an observational distance, formal rigor and willingness to test his audience's ethical compass.
Sitting in his office here in Romania's capital, the chatty, soft-spoken director explained that "Fjord" was a "nonjudgmental" invitation for viewers to scrutinize their own capacities for empathy and open-mindedness. "The aim is to understand that there are people who think differently than you," Mungiu said.
The story, which centers on the couple's quest to get their children back from the Norwegian authorities, is complicated by larger questions of belonging and culture. Lisbet is Norwegian, but her husband, Mihai, played by Sebastian Stan (of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and "A Different Man"), is from Romania. When he says he occasionally spanked the children, investigators consider that an admission of abuse, though he protests that this is a common punishment in his homeland.
“Fjord,” Mungiu’s first movie filmed outside Romania, is based on real-life cases in which the Norwegian authorities took children from parents accused of abuse (including a 2015 situation involving a Romanian Norwegian family). Mungiu said he saw the movie as a way to explore how liberal societies handle people with less liberal views.
In the film, Lisbet and Mihai's progressive Norwegian neighbors are unnerved by what they see as the couple's strict religious beliefs, which include daily prayer, a ban on secular music and the view that homosexuality is a sin. The film's central conflict — between a state that claims to be inclusive and a family shaped by conservative Christian ideals — reflects Mungiu's belief that immigrants "don't just come with their luggage, they come with their cultural values," he said.
Mungiu argued that "little by little," such differences "create a lot of tension in society." The inability to resolve differences through discussion and empathy, he said, caused rifts that could become dangerous.
Although he was loath to define a through line in his films — “I don’t think of them as a body of work, or sit on the couch and think, ‘Why?’” he said — he did say that he was interested in exploring conflicts in people’s everyday lives.
"4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," for example, follows a young woman grappling with the physical and moral costs of getting an illegal abortion in Ceausescu-era Romania. In "Graduation," from 2016, a man becomes embroiled in corruption as he tries to secure an international scholarship for his daughter. "R.M.N." from 2022, centers on a xenophobic backlash after foreign workers arrive in a village in the Transylvania region.
Stan, who partly grew up in Romania, said that he had long been impressed by the "authenticity" of Mungiu's Romanian characters. "It's like he picked them off the street and put them in his films," he said.
Stan also acknowledged the challenge of recording Mungiu's trademark long takes, which can last up to 17 minutes (in a climactic scene in "R.M.N."). The technical demands of the approach require an average of 20 takes per shot, though, at times, Mungiu said, he has needed more than 50.
Reinsve said that she was daunted by the 12 pages of script she had to learn for the scene in "Fjord" when the officials visit Lisbet. "By take three, I was already kind of exhausted, and he had just started building the mise-en-scène," she wrote in an email. The scene, which was shot on the first day of filming, required 14 more takes. "It was intimidating going into it," she wrote, "and it was so different from anything I'd done before."
A background in theater and music is helpful for working with Mungiu, said Anamaria Marinca, who starred in "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days." "People commented on the number of takes, but for me it was never a problem," she said. "I studied classical music, so I'm used to repetition," she said, adding that Mungiu "knows exactly what he wants."
According to Mircea Olteanu, Mungiu's longtime editor, the naturalism of his films camouflages an intense attention to detail. The director's exacting ideas about the cadence of his dialogue, he said, can be particularly intense. "I've been on set, and if the actors go out of the rhythm," Olteanu said, "he would just say, 'Cut.'"
Mungiu said maintaining such levels of control was one reason that he decided to stay in Romania instead of working in the United States. "I don't want to be someone else's employee," he said.
Mungiu, born in 1968 in Iasi, a city in northeastern Romania, to a doctor and teacher, said he initially became a journalist because he lacked the connections in the communist system to become a filmmaker. He enrolled in film school in Bucharest after the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, then began working as an assist-
The Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, top. Above, Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve as a religious couple suspected of abusing their children in his latest movie, "Fjord." Below, Mungiu and Reinsve in May at the Cannes Film Festival, where "Fjord" won the top prize.
ant director for American and French productions in Romania.
After his first feature film, "Occident," was shown at Cannes in 2002, Dennis Hopper invited him to collaborate on a film about the revolution that swept Ceausescu from power. The film was never made and the experience of living in Los Angeles during this time convinced Mungiu that he would be better off staying in his homeland. (He also later recalled being asked by Dustin Hoffman to teach filmmaking to his children.)
"Graduation," which earned him the best director award at Cannes in 2016, was a way of grappling with that choice. The film, which centers on a doctor who trades favors with officials to help his daughter get a scholarship at a prestigious British university, was inspired by his own concern about whether his children could thrive in Romania, he said.
Mungiu compared life in his homeland to a 2015 fire in a Bucharest nightclub that killed scores of people. (It was the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary, “Collective.”) “The people who survived were the ones who crawled over the bodies in order to get to the exit,” he said. “I’m worried my children aren’t tough enough to do that.”
ANTONIN THULLIER/AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
More recently, however, he has grown more worried about tribalism and political polarization. He said that "R.M.N.," his sprawling portrait of a village whose inhabitants are outraged by the arrival of South Asian migrants, was about "this very angry and basic animal that pops up inside of you" when fighting for "survival, for your land, your tribe."
"Fjord," on the other hand, was more about exploring the boundaries of free expression, Mungiu said. Although he emphasized that he knew the "limits of conservative values," he said he had grown worried about the ways progressive movements had begun dictating social norms while stymying debate.
"It got to be a bit concerning for us who lived and experienced communism," he said. "We lived through the period when somebody will tell you that they know better what's best for you," he said. "We don't want to get back to that."
Nevertheless, he said, he had been shocked by the "violence" of a small number of negative reviews after the movie's Cannes premiere. One critic in Les Inrock-uptibles, a French magazine, said that Mungiu's attempt to "strike a balance" in the movie was like putting "fascists and anti-fascists, racists and anti-racists" on equal footing. Cahiers du Cinéma, the vaunted French film publication, described it as a "reactionary film."
"People are irritated if you don't take a position from the beginning," he said. "I know it's irritating that I'm trying to position myself in the middle, but that's the stake of this film."
The village in “Fjord,” he noted, is rocked by two avalanches that threaten to envelop its inhabitants. The scenes, he said, were a metaphor for the dangers posed by unresolved political tensions. “There’s a third avalanche,” he said, “which is the one that is going to come in our real lives and wipe everything away.”
EMILY LaBARGE | ART REVIEW
Salman Toor: Someone Like You Through Jan. 10 at the Courtauld Gallery in London; courtauld.ac.uk.
SALMAN TOUR VIA LUHRING AUGUSTINE, NEW YORK, AND THOMAS DANE GALLERY. PHOTOGRAPH BY GENEVELE HANSON
LONDON – Perhaps your eye will be drawn by the infinite shades of green on green — sea foam, viridian, chartreuse, mint, pine, you name it — that make Salman Toor's canvases radiate an otherworldly luminosity.
Or maybe you're pulled in by how the figures, alone or in groups, seem to undulate softly. If you're an art buff, you might delight at how gestures and compositions are borrowed from historical works, suggesting that to paint is always to participate in a kind of quotation.
Whichever way, "Salman Toor: Someone Like You," an exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery in London, contains many seductive visual worlds: personal and painterly, past and present. It is the New York-based Pakistani artist's first solo show in Europe and a rare dedication of the Courtauld's modest temporary exhibition spaces to a living artist.
The presentation focuses on narratives, and the accompanying descriptions frequently describes the paintings as "stories." Toor himself, born in 1983, has emphasized the importance of knowing that his subjects are queer immigrants with tales behind how they appear. In his paintings, figures not usually given prominence in Western portraiture are in the forefront, attaining the dignity and solemnity that the genre affords.
Across 19 paintings of varying scale that Toor produced from 2019 to 2026 — a period during which the artist's star has been on the rise — we see predominantly young men: together, alone, drinking, dining, carousing, opining.
In "Lunch," a buoyant tondo (a round format popularized in the Italian Renaissance), three bons vivants in elegant, dandyish clothing sit together over a modest meal. I want to say it's plates of spaghetti, but Toor's line is so fluid that as soon as you think you see something, it slips away.
The men are painted in a similar palette of murky greens and yellows, shades that continue in two other works on show, "Man With Face Creams and Phone Plug" and "Citizens." Those portraits, which are also of slender, brown-skinned men, at first seem similar — but their bodies are rigid and self-aware, and the atmosphere is more alienated.
The man with the face creams is looking down at his possessions that resemble a still-life tableau but have — the wall text tells us — been emptied from his bag for enhanced scrutiny at airport security. In "Citi-
Salman Toor's first major solo show in Europe borrows from art history to put modern-day outsiders in the forefront.
SALMAN TOUR VIA LUHRING AUXUSTINE, NEW YORK, AND THOMAS DANE GALLERY, PHOTOGRAPH BY FAIZAD OWARIANG
SALMAN TOOR VIA LUHRING AUGUSTINE, NEW YORK, AND THOMAS DANE GALLERY, PHOTOGRAPH BY FARZAD OWRANG
Top: "The Bar on East 13th Street," on display at the Courtauld Gallery in London as part of the exhibition "Salman Toor: Someone Like You." Above, "Citizens." Left, "Fag Puddle With Carriers," "a camp comedy of parts and things that don't make sense together," in Toor's words from a wall text. All of the paintings in the show were made from 2019 to 2026.
zens," two men, one in a biker cap and the other wearing a clown nose, stand with hands on hearts — a romantic pledge to each other, I thought at first, though the title suggests an oath of citizenship. One clutches a small black flag — a minor protest?
As viewers of Toor's images, we find our position constantly shifting. Sometimes we behold at a friendly distance; other times, we look on officiously from the perspective of agents of the state — border guards, civic registrars. Often, we are inexorably pulled, by composition, scale and perspective, into the space of the tableau.
It is in the larger and visually messier works that Toor is at the height of his powers. These are also more narratively enigmatic, prompting viewers to see that the how of the painting — the style, palette, texture, brushwork and idiosyncratic highlights — is as essential as the what.
"Three Friends in a Cab" puts the viewer in the back seat, heading out (or home?), with a full moon through the window and three passengers merging in one excited mass. In "The Joke," a busy restaurant scene with gaping mouths and a drunk guest passed out on the table, shades of Impressionist Paris merge with Weimar-era social critique — or maybe it's a present-day gallery dinner.
“Fag Puddle With Carriers” is a roiling but eye-pleasing scene, filled with curves and swags. On closer examination, it is dark and strange: It shows a cluster of people carrying a large platter heaped with what appears to be three heads and a tangle of limbs. To tell a story is not only to present something whole, but also to offer an image that is potentially fractured — “a camp comedy of parts and things that don’t make sense together,” in Toor’s words from a wall text.
The painting is inspired by "The Entombment" by Lorenzo Lotto, a 16th-century painting on display in the Courtauld's permanent collection. There, you will also find Manet's renowned "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère" (1882), on which Toor has based his "The Bar on East 13th."
Yet the point of this exquisite proximity seems less about comparison than saying that we see ourselves through art, including through a canon that shapes whether we see ourselves as worthy subjects, or not. Toor's paintings present this knowledge with love and levity, wearing the past just lightly enough that they seem familiar and yet entirely new.
Stolen Renoirs Recovered by Museum in South of France
By SÉGOLÈNE LE STRADIC
PARIS — Two Renoir paintings that were stolen from a museum in southern France last month have been recovered, and six suspects have been arrested in the case, the city where the theft took place said in a statement on Friday.
The artworks — a portrait of the French actress Colonna Romano, painted around 1910, and "Young Woman at the Well," an oil painting from around 1886 — were stolen from a museum that is a former home of the Impressionist artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir in the town of Cagnes-Sur-Mer.
The robbery, which the authorities said at the time was carried out by two people, was the latest in a series of brazen thefts from cultural and religious sites in France, including a heist in which royal jewels worth over \$100 million were taken from the Louvre about a year ago.
The thieves at the Renoir museum initially took four paintings, but left two behind in the garden as they scrambled to evade the police, who arrived at the scene five minutes after the security alarm went off.
The mayor of Cagnes-sur-Mer, Bryan Masson, said in the city's statement, that the recovered paintings were "part of our city's history, our cultural heritage and the legacy Auguste Renoir left to Cagnes-sur-Mer."
Details from Renoir's "Young Woman at the Well" (circa 1886), near right, and "Madame Colonna Romano" (circa 1910).
"Their recovery is a tremendous relief for the people of Cagnes-sur-Mer and for everyone who cares deeply about our museum," he added.
Catherine Pégard, the national culture minister, said on social media that the recovery was a "huge relief."
"These paintings are part of our collective memory," she said. "They will now be able to return to Renoir's final resting place, a site steeped in history and dear to both residents and visitors from around the world."
"No one could craft a funnier comic strip." At "S.N.L.", the longtime writer James Downey thought Gammill's fandom was an Andy Kaufman-like prank. "I still insist Tom doesn't really think Ernie Bushmiller is . . ." Downey said on a phone call, pausing before backtracking. "Maybe he does, I don't know. Even as a kid, I thought 'Nancy' seemed antique."
Steve O'Donnell, former head writer at "Late Night" who is producing Gammill's play, told me he originally thought Gammill's love of "Nancy" was an eccentricity, because the strip seemed so "elementary."
“Nancy” isn’t just a popular comic strip. It is, in some ways, the quintessential one. For years, the American Heritage Dictionary included a thumbnail of it alongside its definition of “comic strip.” But this play is part of a critical re-evaluation over the past few decades pushed along by books like “Three Rocks” (by Bill Griffith, author of the strip “Zippy the Pinhead”) and “How to Read Nancy” (an exegesis of one three-panel strip).
"I don't know a hipster cartoonist who doesn't love 'Nancy,' Matt Groening, a creator of "The Simpsons," told me, before noting, "Nancy' is polarizing. There are people who think it's horrible, the worst."
There's something absurd about such a gentle, inoffensive strip being divisive, which "A Morning With Ernie Bushmiller" leans into. Gammill's play was initially aimed at fellow fans, staged at cartoonist conventions and at his Los Angeles home, surrounded by original prints of "Nancy" that he bought for \$40 each in the early 1980s.
With the latest version, however, he said he was looking for converts. "Bushmiller is like Jerry Lewis," he told me. "Looks stupid at first, but the closer you examine it, the more brilliance you find."
Gammill has the unfailingly cheerful, slightly dorky presence of a popular high school Latin teacher. In a recent run-through of scenes, mixing jokes, songs and plenty of cartoons on a video screen, Gammill, wearing a tie owned by Bushmiller, hustled through a monologue with vaudevillian energy. His Bushmiller periodically spouts theories, nurses grudges and explicates various comics. This is the cartoonist late in life, grumpy about nightclub comedy and fashionable politics. (He mocks Garry Trudeau as "Mr. Bell-Bottoms.")
The Bushmiller character emphasizes that comics must be simple enough for anyone to understand and rely on visual humor, and Gammill's show lives up to this mandate, with plenty of prop comedy. At one point, Gammill crashes cymbals together and puts a metal bucket on top of his head.
This clown car of energy only slows when Bushmiller's wife (played by Lauren Servideo, a popular character comic online who takes multiple roles here, including Nancy) tells him that he has been mentioned on "Saturday Night Live." In 1976, at the height of its cultural cool, the sketch show ran a scroll written by the acerbic Michael O'Donoghue that read: "These people are definitely not as smart as dolphins." The list included Gerald Ford, Cher and Bushmiller.
The author was in his 70s, toward the end of his career. Gammill told me we don't know what he thought about the "S.N.L." insult, though Gammill did find a letter from a friend taking umbrage. In his play, Gammill's Bushmiller is confused by the slight, then angry ("TV stinks") and forlorn. A few minutes later, Servideo enters playing Tom Gammill in a scene with the real Gammill as Bushmiller. The Gammill character explains that he worked for "Saturday Night Live." Gammill as Bushmiller looks disappointed.
It's one of many moments that suggest "Nancy" may actually share some DNA with the comedy institutions Gammill helped create. The meta-humor that powered "Late Night," "The Simpsons" and "The Garry Shandling Show" was a hallmark of "Nancy," which broke the fourth wall more often than many of its peers.
After rehearsal, the director Owen Kline (the movie "Funny Pages") discussed how the combination of smart and dumb in "Nancy" can also be found in Gammill's work. Gammill (and Pross) are responsible for what is regarded by many writers as the greatest sketch in the history of Letter-
JASON ZINOMAN | ON COMEDY
PHOTOGRAPHS BY LILA BARTH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Tom Gammill, above, and Lauren Servideo, above left and left, on the set of his play "A Morning With Ernie Bushmiller," about the cartoonist behind the comic strip "Nancy."
man's shows, the after-school special parody "They Took My Show Away," in which the host uses the clichés of the birds and the bees to explain to a boy how sometimes a beloved show can be canceled.
"Nancy" is polarizing. There are people who think it's horrible, the worst.' MATT GROENING A 'SIMPSONS' CREATOR
Groening said Gammill's sensibility involved a pivot you find in "Nancy" panels. "It's a switcheroo," Groening explained. "He loves sophisticated comedy but is an aficionado of cornball straight-down-the-middle jokes, of which Nancy has some. It's also very surrealistic on one level and completely square."
Like Bushmiller, Gammill is drawn to visual plot devices. He came up with the idea of killing off George Costanza's fiancée on "Se infeld" by licking a toxic adhesive off an envelope. What is simple to some people looks like minimalism to others.
"I really do think of 'Nancy' as being the comics version of the Ramones or the Three Stooges," the graphic novelist Adrian Tomine said in an email, "something so simple and unchanging and basically pointless that, for those very reasons, ends up achieving some level of the sublime."
Gammill is more likely to make the comedian case that “Nancy” is focused on nothing else but getting to the joke. When I asked if it could be considered a comic strip about nothing, echoing the famous line about “Seinfeld,” Gammill considered the point. "If you asked Ernie Bushmiller, he'd say it's all about the gag," he said.
Gammill made the point in a comparison with "Peanuts": "If Charlie Brown dropped an ice cream cone, you're going to hear 'Oh good grief, woe is me,'" he said. "Nancy just licks it off a globe. I mean, I think that's funnier."
Gammill said he wrote the play at a time in his life when he understands and even identifies with the cartoonist. "Look, in 1976, no one was cooler than Chevy Chase and now look at him," Gammill told me. "I'm sure Chevy is at the Ernie Bushmiller stage. He doesn't know why people are goofing on him."
VIVIAN DEHNING
3 TOUCHING GRASS
The autumn leaves are falling. Maybe it's best to put down the rake and let them be.
SCIENCE | MEDICINE | TECHNOLOGY | HEALTH
3 LONGEVITY
What the DNA of Jonathan, a 194-year-old giant tortoise, can tell us.
8 A CONVERSATION WITH
The Belgian scientist Dr. Peter Piot has been fighting ebola for 50 years.
Sister, How Old Am I? It Depends On How You Lived.
A pair of siblings took a new test that says it can measure how quickly a person is aging. The results surprised them.
BY EMILY BAUMGAERTNER NUNN
PAGE 4
追踪设备的局限之处
尽管这些设备收集了大量数据，但它们报告的大多数指标仍是估算值。加利福尼亚州门洛帕克非营利研究机构 SRI International 的人类睡眠研究项目负责人菲奥娜·贝克（Fiona Baker）表示，当可穿戴设备告诉女性昨晚有多少快速眼动（REM）睡眠或深层睡眠时，“这并不等同于测量大脑中实际发生的情况”。
No Bigger Than a Dove, but With an Elephant-Size Voice
Deep in the Serra do Mar mountains of Brazil, a curious call echoes from high in the jungle canopy. The sound is practically deafening, a loud metallic pang that cuts through the forest's thick foliage.
The bare-throated bellbird (shown at left), which produces such calls to attract female mates, is no larger than a dove. And yet his song is louder than a jackhammer or a chain saw. It's louder than an elephant's trumpet.
It is, according to a new scientific study, one of the loudest birdsongs ever recorded. "They can even exceed elephants and lions and wolves and bison," said João Menezes, an evolutionary biologist and lead author of the study, recently published in the journal Evolution.
Joining the bellbird at the top of the volume charts, the researchers found, is another Brazilian species: the red-legged seriema.
The two birds now join a previously identified bellbird species as the loudest avians known to science.
The study also uncovered anatomical traits that allow these birds to belt such powerful songs, answering many of the questions underlying the mysteries of birdsong. The new work focuses specifically on amplitude, a measure of the height of a sound wave, which helps determine how far a sound can travel. Amplitude is a major component of loudness and is crucial to our perception of sound.
To accurately measure amplitude, researchers have to be able to distinguish one bird from many and pinpoint its exact distance from where they are recording. Because of that difficulty, birdsong amplitudes have remained a black box for researchers. Even the Canada goose, one of the most well-known bird species alive today, has not had its amplitude measured. TAYLOR MITCHELL BROWN
66 岁的科尔克先生自今年开始参加转移性肾癌的临床试验以来，一直饱受难以预测的疲劳感和脑雾之苦。当匹兹堡大学医学中心（University of Pittsburgh Medical Center）的工作人员告诉他，运动计划可以改善他的精力状态时，他立刻抓住了这个机会。“对我来说，这就是决定性因素，”他说。
Does the Clock Need Resetting? Not for a Few Million Years or So.
Telling time is an affair of counting ticks and tocks. Whether it's the dulcet swoosh of a pendulum in a grandfather clock, or the rapid oscillations of electrons in an atomic clock, the principle is the same.
Two independent teams in Vienna and Beijing have now simultaneously built the first clocks that keep time by counting the squishing and unsquishing of the atomic nuclei of thorium, a heavy radioactive element. These nuclear clocks are so precise they would lose one second
once every few million years or so. The findings were reported in the journal Nature. (Above, the nuclear clock in Vienna.)
Experts lauded the results as a major breakthrough for the emerging field of nuclear clocks.
The first nuclear clocks are not going to immediately supplant the worldwide network of atomic clocks, whose ticking we rely on for GPS and the definition of a second. And the best atomic clocks are many times more reliable and would take more than 100 billion years to lose one second.
But one day, nuclear clocks could become more reliable than the atomic versions, and they could be made more portable. They even hold the ability to search for certain kinds of dark matter — the invisible stuff whose clumps make up 83 percent of the matter in the universe. If a particle of dark matter passed through the thorium nuclei, it could register as a wobble in the nuclear clock's otherwise steady ticktock. DAN GARISTO
Buried in NASA's Old Files, a New Cosmic Object Emerges
Even within our cosmic neighborhood, the unexpected still turns up. The latest surprise is a new class of X-ray beacons in nearby galaxies, a discovery that could prove key to solving some astronomical mysteries.
"They are very luminous," said Mustafa Muhibullah, a graduate student at the University of Alabama who led the research. "They are numerous in galaxies."
Some of these newly discovered objects could be precursors of certain types of exploding stars, or supernovas. Others could be exotic combinations like a triple-star system in which two of the stars have collapsed into black holes. (Right, a composite image of the galaxy M101 with the hypersoft X-ray sources circled in orange.)
Remarkably, the finding had sat, waiting to be discovered, in data collected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory between 1999 and 2017. Jimmy Irwin, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Alabama, began looking at that data a dozen years ago. X-rays are a form of light, but at shorter wavelengths than ultraviolet light and the visible-wavelength colors that we see. Higher-energy X-rays are called "hard"; ones at the lower end of the spectrum "soft."
Chandra collects X-rays over a wide range of energies, and astronomers had generally ignored the softest X-rays because the detectors are not well calibrated to detect the few photons in this range.
"Nearly everyone kind of universally chops off the very-low-energy channels and says, 'I don't care about them,' Dr. Irwin said. "I thought, 'Why not look?'" He found known X-ray sources like neutron stars and black holes, but he also spotted some that were emitting X-rays at only the lowest energies. KENNETH CHANG
Reflections in Brooklyn on the underappreciated benefits of leaving castoffs where they lie.
TO LEAVE THE LEAVES or not to leave the leaves? That is the question — for October, anyway, which is Leave the Leaves month, a yearly campaign encouraging property owners and managers to let fallen leaves remain on their yards and in their gardens.
One eager adherent is Matthew Morrow, director of landscape operations at Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. The cemetery, with 478 rolling acres and stirring views of New York Harbor, is a national historic landmark; in the mid-19th century, only Niagara Falls saw more tourists annually. It has half a million human “residents” and is also an accredited arboretum, with 8,000 trees, spanning 700 species and hybrids, that together drop 34 tons of leaves every year for Mr. Morrow to manage. The leaves, he said on the phone, “are mostly a love but sometimes — how to phrase this — I guess a chagrin, dealing with the sheer volume.”
I ventured out to Green-Wood on a warm morning in late September, thinking vaguely of Thoreau: "When the leaves fall, the whole earth is a cemetery pleasant to walk in," he wrote. "Here are no lying nor vain epitaphs." But the leaves were still green and firmly affixed.
To be clear, even fallen leaves are not truly dead, any more than the feathers shed by a bird are dead, as they were never truly alive. The tree, the bird are living things; the leaf, the feather are hangers-on of sorts. They gain their dynamism from being connected to a flow of nutrients but, unattached, cannot sustain themselves.
"I do not think of them as dead matter," Mr. Morrow said, referring to leaves.
Obviously, there's a transition from alive-ish to deadlike, a glorious one visible as autumn foliage. The leaves of deciduous trees are made to be shed, prompted by changes in temperature and daylight. The cellular machinery of photosynthesis falls apart, and the tree recalls the nutritional crumbs to store in its roots. As the green chlorophyll dissipates, other pigments, like orange carotenoids, appear. Finally, the stems are walled off and the leaves are cast free. It might look like a resplendent form of dying, but it's just the way trees dismantle their solar panels for winter.
Of course, other trees work on a longer time scale, retaining their leaves for two to 10 years. (The needles of the great bristlecone pine can hang on for 45.) Evergreen needles are sturdier than, say, maple leaves, so they require a higher upfront cost to build. They're also less efficient at photosynthesis — they're needles, after all. But year over year they offer solid return.
The gradient from deciduous to very evergreen represents what ecologists call the "leaf economic spectrum." To a tree, a leaf is a financial instrument, providing a return on investment in the form of glucose, generated through photosynthesis. There's no one optimal strategy for maximizing R.O.I.; elevation, latitude, the local climate, the life span of the tree and the size and surface area of the leaf all factor in. Some trees in-
The leaf economy continues to thrive post-tree.
Touching Grass is a series that explores the natural world around us.
vest in long-term leaves. Others opt for the seasonal cash grab, with flimsy, disposable, high-yield leaves.
Mr. Morrow was unaware of the leaf economic spectrum concept but found it "amusing that we had to go prove our money-doesn't-grow-on-trees adage incorrect." Regardless, every leaf faces the same bottom line: When its R.O.I. drops below its operating cost — from damage, fungus, dwindling daylight — its days are done.
But the leaf economy continues to thrive post-tree; that's one impetus behind Leave the Leaves Month, which was first observed in 2023. (It's also a bid to keep leaves out of landfills; according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, leaves and other yard debris account for more than 13 percent of the nation's solid waste.) Left alone, fallen leaves represent a rich secondary market, notably for the countless beetles, spiders, butterflies and vital pollinators seeking housing or a safe place to lay eggs before winter. A 2025 study found that removing the leaves from suburban lawns in Maryland reduced the next year's crop of moths and butterflies by 45 percent.
But leaving the leaves can chafe the suburban mind. When I mentioned the concept to a fellow suburbanite, I was met with a tirade about a neighbor who lets leaves blanket her yard through the fall, winter and, unattractively, well into spring. Also her lawn, where not covered in leaves, is weedy and scruffy. Also the leaves keep blowing onto my friend's lawn, spreading unkemptness.
Mr. Morrow counseled moderation; leaving your leaves in a soggy, unbroken layer could lead to "smothering and fungal issues," he said. Better to mulch them, or at a minimum rake them into scattered piles, as invertebrate real estate.
I went to Green-Wood partly in hopes of catching sight of a mourning cloak, a large, dark-winged butterfly that Mr. Morrow considers one of the cemetery's more remarkable (living) inhabitants. Unlike other butterflies, which overwinter as eggs or larvae, the mourning cloak hides out in fallen leaves and in tree nooks as an adult and reappears in late winter or early spring. It survives by converting its body's store of glycogen (a sugar) into glycerol, an alcohol that serves as an antifreeze, protecting the cells while the animal continues in suspended animation. In effect, it overwinters by becoming one with winter; fallen leaves offer extra insulation.
The mourning cloak enjoys tree sap, often sipping upside-down. So I wandered for a while among the older trees, inspecting their trunks: a tremendous eastern white pine, a grand northern red oak with bark as crumpled and thick as the hide of a rhinoceros. Eventually, with nothing to report, I emerged from the trees and found a bench by a pond, near a row of turtles warming themselves in the sun.
Brooklyn was near but far away, its traffic muted by foliage. It took sitting still for a few moments to appreciate all the other life teeming close at hand. Gnats circled on invisible thermals. A small lizard skittered in the twigs. Here and there a strand of spider's silk, strung between stems, lit up in the sun. And there was every other busy thing underground; springtails and millipedes, earthworms and beetles, microbes and mites, detritivores and decomposers.
Lately, news headlines have been warning of an artificial-intelligence apocalypse: swarms of digital agents breaking their gates and, by hook or crook, subjugating our species and eliminating us from the physical world. Suddenly I wondered: What if A.I. is the tree and we are the leaves? Another thought followed too naturally: If we are the leaves, how does the A.I. tree calculate our R.O.I.?
(My chatbot, when I queried it, gave a discomfitingly long and technical reply that involved our species' "cellular depreciation schedule" and ended with "work force defoliation." Then it reassured me that humanity's accomplishments — our hard-won grasp of art and science, our centuries of effort to articulate our "purpose" in life, our energy grids and fiber-optic networks — would remain vital. "Even post-mortem, human existence leaves behind distinct layers of value that directly shape, sustain and give purpose to A.I. systems," it said. We won't truly be dead, just dead-ish.)
At the cemetery, sitting among the dead and the living, I wagered that A.I. has little chance against biology as a whole. Some of the simplest organisms exhibit behaviors that could be regarded as a kind of thinking, if not intelligence or consciousness. Mycorrhizal fungi, which fill every inch of soil, connect the roots of plants and trees in an astonishingly sophisticated marketplace of carbon and nutrients. Slime molds are so good at path-finding that scientists have enlisted their help in designing transportation systems. The core algorithm of life — survive long enough to reproduce — has succeeded for four billion years and counting.
I stood up and made another search for mourning cloaks, but, finding none, I headed back to the subway. Maybe they had migrated south, as some mourning cloaks do. Maybe their camouflage was too clever for me. I'll try again at the bright end of winter, when they'll be among the first to emerge — crawling from the crevices and leaf litter, clambering to the peaks of last autumn's rotting cash and taking flight across the fading snow.
所需器材
椅子或长凳
瑜伽垫
一根长阻力带和一根短阻力带
轻量至中量哑铃（可选）
泡沫轴（可选）
---
📄 Original Section
At 194, Jonathan the Giant Tortoise Knows About Aging
Scientists have sequenced the genome of the world's oldest land animal for the first time.
Dr. Joe Hollins slides a thick welding glove onto his left hand and grips a cotton swab tightly in his right. He squats down to eye level with a 400-pound giant tortoise, cradles its head with his gloved hand and carefully wedges a finger into its mouth to prop open its razor-sharp beak. With his other hand, he tries to swab its cheek.
Dr. Hollins, a veterinarian, has only about five seconds to get the DNA he's after before he risks getting punched with a thick, scaly leg.
The first swab comes back covered in half-chewed carrot — a favorite snack. He tosses it aside and tries again. The tortoise, named Jonathan, looks mildly annoyed.
At about 194 years old, Jonathan is the world's oldest known land animal. He's an Aldabra giant tortoise living 1,200 miles off Africa's west coast on the remote island of St. Helena, spending his days on the sundappled grounds of the official home of the governor. (At the time of his arrival on St. Helena, he was at least 50 years old, a determination his keepers made based on size.)
Although he shows some signs of aging, like cataracts that have left him mostly blind, he still has excellent hearing and a strong libido. He enjoys greeting visitors, having his neck petted and delivering loud belches for the crowd that gathers around his paddock during mealtimes.
In June, after Jonathan was erroneously declared dead by some media organizations, the Guinness World Records added him to its list of global icons, honoring his superlative status. And last week, he reached another milestone when a study announced that his genome had been sequenced for the first time.
"We almost never get to study an animal this old while it is still alive," said Steve Horvath, a biologist who studies aging at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an author of the study, which was published in the Journal Science Advances.
Jonathan gave scientists the rare opportunity to study what happens to an animal's genome over the course of nearly 200 years. But obtaining the DNA wasn't easy: The researchers were not permitted to take a blood sample, the gold standard in
DNA sequencing, because of the risk of infection. And because the island is served by only one often delayed commercial flight per week, the swabbed saliva had to travel by boat.
The researchers were committed to the idea, though, because they were curious if Jonathan's DNA held secrets about aging or longevity. Just think: When this tortoise was presumably born in 1832, Charles Darwin was only 22 years old and hadn't yet visited the Galápagos Islands, where he would dream up his theory of natural selection.
After sequencing the sample, the scientists compared Jonathan's genome with those of tortoises 100 years his junior and found some molecular differences, especially in genes involved with DNA repair and the maintenance of the protective caps on chromosomes, called telomeres. As organisms age, DNA accumulates damage and the telomeres shorten, a process thought to drive aging. The results hint that this species may have evolved to be more resilient to age-related decline, but further testing is needed.
The team also discovered that Jonathan shared some genes with other long-living species like naked mole rats, which can live to 40 and rarely get cancer.
Perhaps most interesting is what they found when they looked at the tortoise's epigenome, which is a map of the chemical tags that regulate the genome. These tags change with age and can lead to erratic gene activity. As expected, Jonathan had age-related changes in his epigenome similar to older humans, but there was an exception. Notably, the control switches linked to mitochondria were well preserved, similar to those of a young tortoise. Mitochondria, the molecular power plants inside cells, have long been linked to healthy aging.
The potential for learning from the biology of animals that live extraordinarily long lives is exciting for scientists who study aging. "Each of these long-lived species has some kind of special trick," said Steve Austad, a biologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "And some of those may turn out to be relevant to human aging."
"The results integrate very well in the wider puzzle of what longevity is," said Björn Schumacher, who studies aging at the University of Cologne in Germany. He urged caution, though, in concluding that Jonathan would help us understand why humans age and what we can do about it.
Jeanne Calment, for example, was the world's oldest person at the age of 122. She attributed her long life to a diet rich in olive oil and port wine. She also smoked cigarettes. Does that mean we should all smoke and drink red wine? Probably not, Dr. Schumacher said, and we should use similar caution when drawing conclusions from Jonathan.
Jonathan's advanced age could be an outlier because of his round-the-clock veterinary care, diet of fresh vegetables and
Dr. Joe Hollins, a veterinarian, getting a DNA sample with a cheek swab from Jonathan, an Aldabra giant tortoise.
'Each of these long-lived species has some kind of special trick.'
protected lawn at the governor's house.
The molecular results offer tantalizing clues, however — ones that scientists are keen to explore further. "If we had 1,000 animals like Jonathan, it would be easier to understand his longevity," said Dr. Stephen Clark, lead author of the study and the founder of Kallel, a nonprofit dedicated to studying the genetics of aging. In the future, Dr. Clark hopes to analyze more Aldabra tortoises and other long-lived species by gathering data that offers some hints for us spry chickens, too.
The notification lit up Michelle's phone at 5:25 a.m. on the West Coast: a text from her older sister, Deb, who had an idea.
Deb had heard on a longevity podcast about a new technology that claimed to measure how quickly a person was aging. For \$399, each sister could submit a blood sample and learn how her habits and experiences had affected the ways her genes behaved. The test, called TruAge, could supposedly tell them the functional ages of their brains, hearts, lungs and bodies overall.
"I think it would be super interesting to look at test results between siblings," Deb, 56, had written. "You interested?"
"Yes, I would love to," Michelle, 54, replied. "I fear the results, though."
When it came to their genetics, the sisters seemed remarkably alike. (They asked to be identified using only their first names to discuss sensitive medical information.) They had the same deep-set, iceblue eyes, the same prominent cheekbones, the same blond hair that swirled from a cowlick on the back-right corner of their heads. They both had astigmatism and night blindness; neither could roll her tongue or sing on pitch. And they had the same unusual variant of a gene called ABCC11, which meant their armpit sweat never had any odor.
Deb and Michelle, raised together in Detroit, knew they shared roughly half their DNA, but sometimes they had a hard time believing it. Deb, who now lived in Virginia, had always been hyper-disciplined, pragmatic and outgoing. A former Air Force nurse, she had traveled the world and raised three children, and seemed to exercise nonstop. Michelle was sensitive and bookish — so introverted that she didn't even own a calendar. She had settled into the central valley of California after high school and never married. She lived a quiet, contented life with one companion: her Herder-Pit mix, Merlin.
There was another key difference: Deb had always been healthy, aside from mild joint pain and high cholesterol that medication kept under control. But Michelle had been obese in her teens and 20s and later struggled with autoimmune issues that no doctor had been able to fully explain. Every day was some constellation of extreme fatigue, nerve pain and tachycardia from low blood pressure. When Deb's text arrived, Michelle was dealing with swollen lymph nodes, bumps all over her hands and a rash that stretched into her ear canals and nostrils.
Deb told her sister that maybe the test could help her better understand the causes and effects of her ailments. After years of feeling dismissed by doctors, maybe Michelle would feel validated if her biological age reflected her suffering.
Deep down, Michelle had a feeling that Debbie — she would always be Debbie to Michelle — just wanted to outperform Michelle. Still, Michelle wasn't going to miss the first opportunity in years to do something with her sister. As adults, the two had grown distant, and then, after a bitter fight, stopped talking at all for almost two decades. They had reconnected only a few years ago, and even now, only through texts.
"Do you have a website so I can look at it?" Michelle asked.
The test's marketing materials promise "the most complete picture of how your body is aging." It analyzes almost one million chemical tags on DNA that make up a person's epigenetics, the layer of biological instructions that controls how someone's genes are expressed. By comparing a person's unique pattern against large databases of other people's results and health outcomes, its models try to assign an "age" that reflects the person's predicted level of health.
Many aging test algorithms have proved effective for comparing large groups of people in scientific studies. But critics — and even some scientists who have developed the algorithms — say that they are not meant to evaluate individuals, and that with so much statistical noise and potential for error, these tests are far too premature for commercial use. Most doctors believe a comprehensive blood panel is, for now, far more actionable.
And yet, biological aging tests like Tru-Age have in recent years exploded into an industry worth nearly \$3 billion, a mark of a world that cannot resist the allures of personal wellness data. As with a personality test — or even a horoscope — proven accuracy is hardly a requirement. People crave new ways to define themselves.
When Deb's test package arrived by mail, she arranged the contents neatly across her kitchen table. She pricked her middle finger with the lancet and squeezed dozens of drops of blood onto a paper card. Before she had even applied a bandage, she was using her other hand to text advice to Michelle, who had pricked her own finger but couldn't seem to generate enough blood to fill the card.
"Wash hands in warm water," Deb wrote her. "Do a few jumping jacks. Make fists. Really squeeze."
"I bet this is a low blood pressure issue," Michelle texted. "I'm trying."
"Keep trying," Deb replied.
Michelle pricked a second finger and eventually filled her card. Then both sisters packaged their samples and dropped them at their post offices, the envelopes addressed to the same lab in Kentucky.
Deb sent another text: "And now we wait."
DEB WAS AHEAD of schedule, even for Deb. She stood at the kitchen counter of her glass-paned house, chopping vegetables for her homemade microbiome mix. She would combine them with plant-based protein powders and fiber mixes for her meal-replacement smoothie at lunch.
Deb and her husband, Steve, had become empty nesters in recent years, and Deb was often alone in a four-bedroom house so quiet she could hear the insects in the woods out back. Steve, a military contractor, typically worked 18-hour days, so Deb had taken on shifts as a nurse at a local aesthetic medicine practice, but she still had a lot of time to fill.
Years ago, to stay healthy, she had started walking 15,000 steps per day, strength-training at the gym and keeping a sugar-free diet. But as Deb became more interested in longevity, she added more habits, until she was using red light therapy daily, taking pills to increase antioxidant production and mitochondrial function, and experimenting with acupuncture and herbal patches.
She didn't have a primary care doctor, and she didn't think she needed one. All of her biohacks were already based on personalized insights. She had done a test to check for calcium buildup in her heart's arteries, multiple scans to measure the strength of her bones, and a mail-order analysis called the 3X4 Blueprint that supposedly revealed which genes made her more susceptible to dementia, chronic inflammation and connective tissue decay.
Deb fed all her health information into ChatGPT, which then guided her to the best vagus nerve stimulators and chemical peels and fiber gummies — and also more assessments. It was ChatGPT that had persuaded Deb to order the TruAge test in
Above, a childhood picture of Michelle and Deb. Below, Deb at home. Bottom, Michelle at her home. Top right, Michelle's refrigerator, left, and Deb's.
the first place.
"You've spent the past year optimizing almost every major longevity lever," the chatbot told her after she asked it about the test's value. TruAge, it said, "can help answer whether the protocol you've assembled is changing your biological trajectory."
After she finished preparing her microbiome mix, Deb stopped by a refrigerator in her home office where she kept her vials of peptides. She injected one for tissue repair, another to reduce inflammation, another to help detox her skin and liver.
Then she reached for a small container of old photographs. Inside were snapshots of the life she and Michelle had once shared: a photo labeled "APRIL '78" of the girls at ages 6 and 8, standing side by side in their grandparents' house. Another marked "FEB. '79," of the two in matching white jackets, with identical bobs and wide, toothy grins that crinkled the corners of their eyes.
They were convincing portraits of a happy childhood, and Deb, a master compartmentalizer, preferred not to think about the chaos they elided: her mother's erratic outbursts; their parents' volatile fights; the constant extramarital affairs, which the girls often knew about. Sometimes the adults would disappear for long stretches of time, leaving the sisters to forge notes to their teachers and fend for themselves.
Increasingly, their paths had differed: Deb grew long and thin and gregarious, while Michelle withdrew behind more and more weight. Deb became a cheerleader, earned straight A's and spent more time with her boyfriend's family than her own. In the final photo of the sisters, taken on a Florida pier in "JULY '84." Deb's arms were draped over a friend's shoulders while Michelle stood off to the side, shorts bunched between her thighs, smiling alone.
"I've had a good life," Deb said, tucking away the photos. "And Michelle really struggled."
Deb couldn't remember the details of their estrangement, but Michelle had long been a painful reminder that Deb, as the elder sister, needed to be the adult in the house, even when she was still a child. She was pretty sure the breaking point had taken place in their 30s, when Michelle got wrapped up in a horrible relationship with a guy Deb couldn't stand. Deb had always been able to cut anyone out of her life without a second thought, so she did.
Then, after almost 20 years, Michelle reached out in a text message, apologizing for her role in the conflict. They began messaging again, but when Michelle called, Deb sent it to voice mail and texted her instead. Something about the thought of actually speaking to Michelle set off panic in Deb's chest, even now.
Deb had always expected that her biological age would be younger than Michelle's. But in the silence of her empty house, she began to consider other possibilities. What if Deb's heavy partying in her 20s had super-aged her liver? What if her natural cholesterol levels, which were beyond her control, were causing vascular damage? What if her younger sister "had been able to trick her body in some way," Deb wondered, and prove that all of Deb's protocols were for nothing?
"I'm not going to crawl into bed and die," she reassured herself. No, she would simply need to do more research.
IN A SUN-BAKED agricultural town across the country, less than two weeks before the TruAge results would arrive, Michelle arose before dawn with no agenda at all.
She curled up in an armchair in her sweatpants to watch the sunrise, then drew the blinds, blasting the air-conditioner and multiple industrial-grade fans to ward off her symptoms of heat intolerance.
Michelle watched a women's basketball game and nuzzled her dog, Merlin, and decided not to worry about all the chores piling up during this latest bout of fatigue: the cobwebs in the ceiling corners, the listing side-yard fence, the suitcase she hadn't found the energy to unpack. She had taken that trip a month ago.
Michelle wandered over to a shelf overflowing with tubs of salves and took her medicine. Then she donned her dark sunglasses, which helped her deal with extreme photophobia outdoors. "Come on, Bubba," she said to Merlin, who leaped toward the door. Michelle wanted to go on one of their long drives — the road seemed to help her think.
Michelle had not dwelled much on the test since she'd taken it. A part of her thought the whole thing might be pseudoscience. Michelle had at least seven specialists in a regular rotation, including an allergist, a neurologist, a podiatrist and a dermatologist — almost two centuries' worth of collective clinical experience that still left her "playing connect-the-dots," she said. She was dubious that a few drops of blood were going to finally reveal the full picture.
But Michelle had a mental health counseling degree and read more than 200 books a year, many of them about psychology. She had been thinking lately about the ways toxic stress might leave lasting scars on human DNA. Now she couldn't help but wonder if the kit's algorithms might be programmed to measure something deeper.
As a child, Michelle had internalized the turmoil in their home — a factor she believed contributed to her rashes and sinus infections and overeating. She remembered the way their mother would throw items like screwdrivers and books at them; the tree Michelle climbed to hide herself on the roof of their detached garage; the maggots in the food when she and Deb were routinely left alone for weeks.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANNIE FLANAGAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
With every year, Michelle felt increasingly unstable, but somehow Debbie just became more capable, focused solely on the tasks at hand. When Michelle was 8 and came down with scarlet fever, Debbie put her on her bicycle's handlebars and pedaled her to the corner store for medicine. When Michelle was 10 and broke her arm, Debbie taped two rulers together to hold it straight.
Michelle could tell that Debbie's recollection of all those shared years was spotty
— and that Debbie preferred it that way. It seemed as if Debbie mostly just remembered that she had managed the house, gone off to college and kept on thriving, in part because of her ability to simply choose what to forget.
But the trauma of their childhood had colored the first half of Michelle's life. She ate addictively until she was 342 pounds and needed weight-loss surgery. She gravitated toward abusive relationships, staying in one for 14 years. And then, one night in 2007, Michelle was attacked by three men in a Walmart parking lot and sustained a traumatic brain injury, broken facial bones and a blown-out eardrum that left her partly deaf.
They shared roughly half their DNA, but sometimes they had a hard time believing it.
That was when Michelle decided to invest in "holistic healing," she said. She earned her counseling degree, took a job with a disability advocacy group and started volunteering at a homeless shelter. She also eventually reached out to Debbie. Michelle finally found her stability — not in her physical being, but her emotional one.
Sometimes she suggested that Debbie consider therapy. "Seeing our younger selves is not reliving the childhood," Michelle explained. But Debbie had no interest. "The trail is my therapy," she would say. Now Michelle wondered: Could all that compartmentalization have done something to Debbie's cells?
Driving along the California Delta, with Merlin's paws perched on the center console beside her, Michelle felt at peace with most of her predictions for the test's results. Her immune cell composition would not score well, and her brain had most likely undergone accelerated aging from the attack.
But Michelle couldn't shake her worry that maybe it was Debbie who had not been able to outrun their childhood. There were 11 days until the reveal, and the test was starting to feel like a kind of ledger of their lives, both together and apart. She desperately hoped her own biological age would be older than Debbie's — to protect her sister and maybe their newly mended relationship.
But if Michelle fared younger, then what? "Should I lie?" she asked herself as she pulled back into her driveway.
Perhaps this would be her way of finally taking care of the sister who had tried to take care of her. Maybe a "little white lie" — just for Debbie — would be worth it.
DEB HAD BEEN REFRESHING her TruAge online portal every couple of days, but Michelle's results landed first.
They ran to 73 pages of data, including stress markers, nutrient levels and toxin exposures. Plastered across the top were three key metrics: an overall score that encompassed a lifetime of chemical tags; another that measured the "pace" at which the body was supposedly aging; and, finally, a score that focused on the body's organs, looking at markers associated with 11 different systems. Michelle leaned back in her recliner and began to scroll.
There was no sugarcoating the first score: Though Michelle was just 54, the test declared her overall "biological age" to be 62.
She threw back her head and laughed, "They're saying I'm a senior citizen at this point," she said. "If I was unstable mentally, this would not be a good thing!"
But the other two delivered what seemed like good news. Her aging "pace" score said that for every year that passed, she would age only 0.98 years — an indicator of a healthy lifestyle in recent months.
And her organ ages surprised her even more: All 11 organ systems together averaged to a relatively youthful 53.4. Her lungs were 53.6; her brain was 53.8, despite her traumatic brain injury. And even with all of Michelle's autoimmune issues, her inflammation system was, inexplicably, 52.4. The report had even marked some of Michelle's organ systems with mint green smiley-face icons to indicate slow aging.
"This is getting more interesting," she said. But she had yet to hear from Deb.
"Your TruAge results are probably in your email," she texted.
"Nope," Deb replied. She had even checked her spam folder.
Michelle had not anticipated this scenario, but she didn't feel she could withhold her results. Soon, Deb was scouring through Michelle's packets, taking in all the diagrams.
"I think considering all you've been through, the results are pretty darn great," Deb texted. "It will be interesting what mine says."
She waited another day — then another, and another. At the end of Week 4, she received an alert from the company that the laboratory needed to reprocess her sample because the results "did not meet one of the laboratory's quality standards."
"Now I'm anxious," she texted Michelle.
On the last day of the sixth week, Deb had just returned from a morning walk when her inbox pinged: "Your full results are ready now." She clicked into the portal and pressed "View My Results."
Deb leaned closer to the screen and swallowed. The 56-year-old's overall score was 58.3 — higher than she would like, but still younger than her sister's, she reminded herself. And she was aging at a pace of 0.90 each year — good news.
But then she scrolled down to the organ results. She covered her mouth. "What the hell?"
Every result seemed astronomical — they averaged out to 63.5, more than a decade older than Michelle's. Many were even scarier: Her lungs were 64.7. Her heart was 64.3. Her liver was 63.9. Her immune system was 66.7, compared with her immune-deficient sister's 57.8.
Deb had longed to see those mint green smiley faces throughout her report. Instead, TruAge had marked Deb's overall score and all 11 organ systems with magenta sad faces: "Aging Faster."
Deb closed her laptop and got ready for work, but she spent the day in a private vortex of grief. Had she exercised too hard the day before she took the test, or not slept enough? Or maybe the results were accurate, and no amount of effort could override her unlucky DNA. Either way, she didn't know what to do next.
That was the problem many health experts had with biological age test results: There was no consensus on how to act on them. A doctor would have told Deb not to worry much about her scores, to focus instead on age-old advice: Stay active, eat healthfully and enjoy her years. But the emotional undertow of the wellness era seemed to suggest that was no longer enough.
MICHELLE WAS CONCERNED for her sister. She pinged Deb with encouraging text messages about all the reasons her results were probably skewed. Perhaps Deb should consider finding a primary care doctor, Michelle suggested, who could help put everything in perspective.
But Deb did not want to wait. She asked ChatGPT for advice instead, and it helped her choose a host of new biomarker tests she could order from a website that didn't require a doctor's visit and reported results using an A.I. assistant named Barry.
Deb texted Michelle a screenshot from the site, where she had spotted a host of new blood panels that the company planned to roll out. There was one focused on "genetic health insights," another to detect brain changes related to Alzheimer's disease and a third to measure PFAS, or "forever chemicals," that might have accumulated in the body over time.
"Look what's coming," Deb wrote. "Fascinating."
Michelle was happy for any excuse to correspond with Debbie. There still weren't any phone calls — too emotionally triggering, Michelle guessed — and she assumed that when they ran out of wellness metrics to talk about, her sister's texts would dry up. But for now, Michelle and Debbie wrote back and forth about lab orders they would place together and chatted about all the ways their genes must be expressing themselves: the same antibody deficiencies, the same pattern of graying hair. Together, they marveled at how much two sisters could share.
Researchers found 848 species of bacteria that were shared by the Tsimane in Bolivia, above, and the Hadza of Tanzania but were rare or absent from industrialized countries.
MICHAEL GURVEN
A study finds modern humans are missing important bacteria that our ancestors carried.
The human microbiome — the trillions of microbes that live in our guts — was a stable ecosystem for tens of thousands of years before rapidly changing in industrialized countries, raising possible health concerns for modern people, scientists reported last week
In a study of Africans and South Americans, researchers identified more than 600 species of bacteria that may once have been common in the gut but are now rare or missing entirely from people in most societies today.
Many of these microbes may have benefited people's health, said Justin Sonnenburg, a microbiome scientist at Stanford University and an author of the new study, published in Nature.
The changing microbiome, he speculated, may have helped increase some disorders that are common in the industrialized world, from allergies to dementia.
"How bad could this be, the fact that we changed our microbiomes so much?" Dr. Sonnenburg said. "This study, I think, points to the fact that it could be pretty bad."
Our early apelike ancestors had a microbiome adapted to a diet of raw plants and meat. Its composition shifted hundreds of thousands of years ago when early humans started cooking with fires, scientists suspect.
As humans expanded from Africa about 50,000 years ago, they were still living on the animals they hunted and the wild plants they gathered. It was only about 10,000 years ago that farmers began domesticating crops, precipitating another likely shift in the microbiome.
In recent decades, an even more substantive change took place, as billions of people began eating food rich in sugar and refined grains. And modern medicine also may have had a profound effect: Antibiotics have saved countless lives, but the drugs can also destroy beneficial microbes in the gut.
To chart the history of the human microbiome, Dr. Sonnenburg and his colleagues have studied societies around the world at different levels of industrialization. Some of the most striking results have emerged from the Hadza, a small group of hunter-gatherers in Tanzania.
Studying stool samples from Hadza volunteers, Dr. Sonnenburg and his colleagues found a wide range of bacteria. "There are around 270 species in the average Californian, and around 730 in the average Hadza," Dr. Sonnenburg said.
Even more striking is the diversity of those species. Many are rare or missing entirely from the United States and other industrialized countries.
Dr. Sonnenburg and his colleagues wondered how similar today's Hadza microbiome is to the microbes that early hunter-gatherers carried.
They decided to compare the Hadza with other people who continue a similar lifestyle. The scientists began collaborating with anthropologists who study a Bolivian group called the Tsimane.
The Tsimane live in remote Amazon villages, where they maintain small farms while continuing to hunt and forage. While the Hadza and Tsimane have somewhat similar cultures, they have very different histories.
The Tsimane descend from people who left Africa 50,000 years ago and crossed to the Americas about 15,000 years ago. The Hadza's ancestry, on the other hand, is restricted entirely to Africa.
Dr. Sonnenburg and his colleagues used powerful new methods to detect bacterial
DNA in stool samples from the Tsimane and compared the findings with those from the Hadza.
The researchers found 848 species that were shared by the two groups but were rare or absent from industrialized countries. They then analyzed 636 species that were especially abundant in the samples.
The scientists found that each species tended to carry distinct mutations, depending on whether they were found in the Hadza or the Tsimane. That pattern suggested to the team that these microbial species inhabited the guts of hunter-gatherers tens of thousands of years ago.
The Hadza continue to carry them today, thanks to their lives as hunter-gatherers. But the ancestors of the Tsimane migrated over the Bering land bridge to the Americas 15,000 years ago, perhaps earlier.
That geographic separation made it impossible for microbes to spread from people in the Old World to the Americas. The hunter-gatherer ancestors of the Tsimane continued to carry some of the same species as their ancestors, but their bacteria gained distinctive mutations over thousands of years.
In all, the findings hint that hunter-gatherers shared a distinctive ecosystem of gut microbes for tens of thousands of years. "Our biology has probably been shaped by these microbes to a large degree," Dr. Sonnenburg said.
The ancestral bacteria might have been important for training our immune systems, for example, or synthesizing compounds our bodies need. And as some microbes vanished in modern societies, new ones took their place.
That shift may be affecting our health. "You end up with a microbiome that's very different than what your human genome has come to expect," perhaps triggering inflammation and other unhealthy changes, Dr. Sonnenburg said.
Michael Gurven, an anthropologist at the University of California, Santa Bar-
'How bad could this be, the fact that we changed our microbiomes so much? This study, I think, points to the fact that it could be pretty bad.'
bara, and an author of the new study, said that the ancestral microbiome might help explain why the Tsimane appear to be protected from heart disease and other chronic diseases.
But Marie-Claire Arrieta, a microbiome scientist at the University of Alberta who was not involved in the research, cautioned that people in industrialized countries should not try to culture a hunter-gatherer microbiome.
Scientists don't know much about the 636 gut microbes on Dr. Sonnenburg's list and the possible harms they might cause. "There's a lot of infectious potential," she said.
Instead, Dr. Arrieta favored learning about the helpful things that the ancestral microbes can do in the human body, and finding ways to restore those particular functions.
"The message that we should go back to ancient microbiomes doesn't make a lot of sense," Dr. Arrieta said. "But, for sure, they're important to study to understand some of these microbial functions that have been lost."
Tech companies are adding features for women in midlife, with varied tracking results.
By LIZ BAKER PLOSSER
Tonya Kuxhausen began wearing an Oura ring in late 2021. A 55-year-old nurse in Minneapolis, she kept the band on her finger nearly all the time: during emergency-room shifts, overnight while she slept and everywhere in between.
She came to rely on it even more after she developed long Covid in 2022. A few years later, when her periods became erratic as she approached menopause, the ring's alerts felt less helpful. "You better take it easy today," Ms. Kuxhausen recalled the app warning, as if "something really awful's going to happen."
"I'm not dying," she recalled thinking. Still, when Oura introduced a 22-question menopause survey in its app this May, Ms. Kuxhausen decided to give it a try. Oura is among a handful of technology companies that have turned their attention to women in midlife like Ms. Kuxhausen: Whoop and Apple also announced new menopause-related features this year.
What these tools measure, and how much meaningful or actionable information they can give women about their bodies, varies widely. Here's what to know about them.
The features differ across devices, but they all rely on women's own reports of their cycles and symptoms.
Apple's is a simple alert, notifying women they may have entered perimenopause. Oura offers a symptom score based on the questionnaire and Whoop aims to predict when women can anticipate certain menopause symptoms.
Apple's feature started last month: The Health app now sends notices to women 40 or older whose cycles begin to vary. It uses the data women have logged, according to Apple, not data the watch's sensors have picked up.
The app asks women to confirm that their cycles have become irregular, then tells them that this can happen for many reasons, including perimenopause. It suggests women talk to their doctors within the year, and offers a PDF of their last 12 months of cycles they can bring to an appointment.
Oura's score, based on the menopause questionnaire, represents the degree to which symptoms may be disrupting a woman's daily life. Sleep and temperature trends are displayed alongside the score to help explain it, said Chris Curry, an obstetrician-gynecologist and Oura's clinical director of women's health.
The ring cannot determine whether a woman is in perimenopause, she said, but it can "make the path to conversation easier," including by generating a report women can download and share with their doctors.
With Whoop, a woman logs her symptoms — cramps, bloating, headaches, mood swings, fatigue and brain fog are on the list; hot flashes and night sweats are not — and the app predicts when she might expect that symptom again.
As a woman's cycles become less regular, the app gives a predicted time range for her next period instead of a specific date, said
Emily Capodilupo, Whoop's senior vice president of research, algorithms and data.
Beyond these features, some devices promote other paid services aimed at women in midlife. With a member's permission, Oura can share their survey results and sleep data with telehealth companies like Maven and Wisp, and Whoop sells a \$299 blood panel through Quest Diagnostics.
Dr. Stephanie Faubion, medical director of The Menopause Society and director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Women's Health, wears an Oura ring and a Whoop band and said she sees value in the patterns health trackers can uncover. In some cases, she said, a wearable might help reveal a health condition a woman had incorrectly attributed to menopause, like obstructive sleep apnea. But the menopause features generally do not track anything the devices were not already monitoring, she said, and they are mostly built around menstrual cycles.
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科学家警告：林火传播危险臭氧
ANGELA WEISS / AGENCE FRANCE / PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
在地面高度，这种气体是一种对人体健康有害的无形污染物。
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📄 Original Section
Where Trackers May Fall Short
Despite all the data these devices collect, most of the metrics they report are still estimates. When a wearable tells a woman how much REM or deep sleep she had during the night, "that is not equivalent to measuring what's happening in the brain," said Fiona Baker, who directs the human sleep research program at SRI International, a nonprofit research institute in Menlo Park, Calif.
Some of the tools also lean heavily on heart-rate variability, the small differences in timing between heartbeats, as a gauge of how much stress the body is under. But when heart-rate variability shifts, the number says nothing about why, Dr. Baker said: "Was it due to age? Was it due to menopause? Was it due to unhealthy lifestyle behaviors?"
Kelly Baron, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Utah who is studying treatments for perimenopausal sleep problems, said some people are worse off with more sleep data, because they can develop an unhealthy preoccupation with it.
The sleep-stage charts are "a really pretty picture," Dr. Baron said. "But there's not a lot that we do with that."
There is also the risk that a symptom may be labeled menopause-related too quickly. Palpitations, for example, could have other causes that need evaluation, Dr. Faubion said.
Women don't need a device to know when they are experiencing hot flashes and mood changes. And some of the metrics that might be most useful for menopausal women can't be reliably tracked by wearables yet: Dr. Faubion gave the example of blood pressure, which "hockey sticks up at menopause." Heart disease is the leading cause of death among women in the United States, and high blood pressure is one of its biggest drivers.
Ms. Kuxhausen, the nurse, still wears her Oura ring. It has helped her understand how food, alcohol and late nights affect her sleep. But it did not reveal much about menopause that she did not already know.
"You already feel betrayed by your body," she said. The last thing she wanted, she said, was a reminder "that you're not doing well enough."
I just learned that I have fibroids. What are they, and why are they a problem?
By the time they turn 50, as many as 80 percent of women will develop fibroids, noncancerous tumors that grow in the uterus.
Not all women have symptoms. But fibroids can cause heavy menstrual bleeding, pelvic pain and pressure, constipation and a need to urinate more frequently, said Dr. Vanessa Jacoby, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. They can cause miscarriages or prevent women from getting pregnant.
Some women live with symptoms for years without seeking care. But there are several options for treating and managing fibroids, Dr. Jacoby said.
Fibroids can form inside the uterus, within its walls or on its outer surface. They can also be attached to the uterus by a stalk, said Dr. Taraneh Shirazian, a gynecologist and the director of NYU Langone Health's Center for Fibroid Care.
Dr. Jacoby said that what causes fibroids to form and grow is unknown, but it's probably a "mix" of biological, genetic, environmental and hormonal factors. The tumors are generally slow-growing and can range from as small as a pea to larger than a watermelon, she added.
They are affected by the hormones estrogen and progesterone, and research suggests that they grow when hormone levels are higher, as in pregnancy, and shrink when the levels decline, as during menopause.
You may be more likely to get fibroids if other women in your family have them, Dr. Shirazian said. Black women are about three times as likely to have fibroids as the general population. They're often diagnosed at younger ages and have more significant symptoms, Dr. Jacoby said. Hispanic and Asian women are also at elevated risk for a fibroid diagnosis, research shows.
Fibroids are typically diagnosed through imaging tests like ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging (M.R.I.) or CT scans, said Dr. Arleen H. Song, a minimally invasive gynecologic surgeon at Duke Health in Durham, N.C.
When fibroids are small and asymptomatic, doctors typically monitor them over time and may recommend a yearly ultrasound, Dr. Shirazian said.
When the growths cause heavy bleeding, however, doctors often start with medications, like hormonal birth control pills, patches, rings or hormonal IUDs, which, besides providing contraception, can decrease bleeding, Dr. Jacoby said. Another treatment is a non-hormonal medication called tranexamic acid, taken on days with heavy bleeding, she said.
Dr. Shirazian said treatment with gonadotropin-releasing hormone antagonists can minimize bleeding and reduce the volume of fibroids.
For patients who experience pelvic pain and pressure, doctors typically recommend procedures to shrink the growths. One of these is uterine artery embolization, in which tiny particles are injected into the arteries to the fibroid, blocking its blood supply and causing it to shrink. Another is radiofrequency ablation, which uses high heat to destroy tissue and reduce the growth's size.
However, Dr. Song said, more research is needed to show that these procedures are safe for women who want to get pregnant.
Fibroids can also be removed through a surgery known as a myomectomy, Dr. Song said.
In about 10 percent to 30 per-cent of women who have had a myomectomy or another procedure to shrink their fibroids, the growths return, and another treatment will be needed at some
ERIC HELGAS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
point, Dr. Jacoby said.
A hysterectomy, which removes the uterus, is the only sure way to prevent fibroids from returning, Dr. Shirazian said. But too often, Dr. Jacoby said, women are told that a hysterectomy is their only option for treating fibroids and they are not offered less invasive treatments. She suggested getting a second opinion. "In most cases, there's a variety of options," she said. ERICA SWEENEY
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JEFF SWENSEN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Lee Colker goes through his weekly virtual exercise routine with Olivia Masten, an oncology exercise physiologist.
Research shows that it helps cancer patients, so doctors are pushing for better support.
By NINA AGRAWAL
Lee Colker powered on an iPad in the basement of his Pittsburgh home and logged into a virtual exercise session with Olivia Masten, a trainer who specializes in working with cancer patients.
Mr. Colker, 66, had been dealing with unpredictable fatigue and brain fog since beginning a clinical trial for metastatic kidney cancer this year. When the staff at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center told him an exercise program could improve his energy, he jumped at the opportunity. "That was a clincher for me," he said.
The program is part of a growing effort around the country to help cancer patients exercise, as the benefits of doing so become increasingly clear.
Observational research has long suggested that exercise improves cancer survival, particularly for breast cancer patients. Last year, a landmark randomized controlled trial showed that colon cancer patients who participated in a structured exercise program with a trainer-coach over three years were less likely to see their cancers come back and had a better quality of life. Among those in the program, 90 percent were alive after eight years, compared with 83 percent in the control group.
A later study showed the program, which altogether cost \$3,000 per person, also saved the health system money — “a home run,” said Dr. Scott Ramsey, a cancer researcher and health economist at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center in Washington state.
That combination of benefits is rare among cancer therapies: The new pancreatic cancer drug daraxonrasib, for example, costs \$480,000 annually, has unpleasant side effects and, while it prolongs life by several months, does not increase overall long-term survival.
"If we had a drug with this magnitude of benefit, it would immediately become standard of care and funded" by insurance companies, said Dr. Christopher Booth, an oncologist and professor at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and the leader of the exercise trial.
While guidelines now recommend that oncologists help colon cancer patients achieve at least 150 minutes of moderate to rigorous exercise per week, many patients need support in the form of a structured program, with a trainer and supervised sessions, to get to that level and stick with it. But there's not yet an insurance pathway to pay for such programs — a major barrier to rolling them out more widely.
"You can tell patients that if you do this, you may survive longer," Dr. Ramsey said. But unfortunately, he added, "we just don't have the infrastructure."
Current programs are largely limited to major cancer centers and dependent on phi-'Exercise is not just biology. It is also behavior.'
lanthropy or individual out-of-pocket payments to cover costs, leaving poorer patients and those who live far from these centers without access.
Dr. Jeff Meyerhardt, a gastrointestinal oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, refers his patients to the hospital's center for alternative therapies, where they can consult with a trainer and access in-person and online exercise classes. But the trainer can't continue supporting patients over time.
At the University of California, San Francisco, doctors refer eligible patients for physical therapy and rehabilitation, which can be reimbursed by insurance, while many Y.M.C.A. branches offer a free or low-cost 12-week program for cancer survivors.
Improving outcomes among cancer patients isn't as simple as telling them to exercise more, said Kathryn Schmitz, an exercise oncology researcher at U.P.M.C. Hill man Cancer Center. "Exercise is not just biology," she said. "It is also behavior."
Dr. Schmitz is the founding director of Moving Through Cancer, the program in which Mr. Colker is participating. It is tailored to each patient: Some need more support, while others "are well enough to go out and play some pickleball," she said.
Kimberly Barker, 68, suffered from low back and hip pain and fatigue after treatment for bladder and uterine cancer. A quilter who used to bicycle with her husband on trails near their home in Butler County, Pa., Ms. Barker lost the motivation to do the things she loved.
"I was just so tired, no energy, no stamina," she said.
She met with Ms. Masten, the trainer, once a week for 12 weeks, and also did the suggested exercises between meetings. She continued doing them after the program ended, and now feels back to her normal self. She and her husband have resumed their bike rides.
Because of the success in people like Ms. Barker, U.P.M.C. has decided to offer the program through its employee health plan for breast cancer patients beginning next year.
The health system will be the first in the country to offer insurance coverage for exercise oncology, Dr. Schmitz said. She and her colleagues argued for it based on randomized trials that showed it saved costs by reducing hospitalizations, emergency room trips and unplanned office visits.
"This U.P.M.C. rollout is a giant experiment," Dr. Schmitz said. If it's successful, the hospital plans to expand it to all cancers in 2028. Dr. Schmitz also pushed to incorporate exercise into standards that cancer hospitals must follow to receive certain accreditation, which will happen later this year.
"This is no longer just something that would be nice to have," Dr. Schmitz said. "This is a therapeutic intervention, it needs to be done — and it needs to be done for all patients."
When you sit for hours, your entire body takes a hit — from your neck to your glutes. Our bodies crave movement variety, said David Jou, a physical therapist in New York City. But when you spend all day at a desk, your body starts to conform to the position it knows best, a process he calls “creep.”
“Once your tissues start to assume a shape, it becomes really hard to get out of,” he said. Eventually, an overly sedentary lifestyle can lead to muscle imbalances, joint issues and chronic pain.
It's important to counteract long periods of sitting with exercises that take your body out of that hunched position, said Katie Hillary, a physical therapist and strength and conditioning coach in Chappaqua, N.Y. That means opening up areas along the front of your body, including your chest and hip flexors, while engaging and strengthening muscles along the back of your body.
This 20-minute routine, designed with Mr. Jou and Ms. Hillary, combines mobility and strengthening exercises to move your neck, back and hips through ranges of motion you don't experience at a desk. HANNAH SINGLETON
REPETITIONS Two sets of 10 TARGETS Activates the deep neck muscles
Start seated with your shoulders relaxed and spine upright. Look straight ahead and gently draw your head straight back, as if you were trying to make a double chin. Keep your gaze level rather than dropping your chin toward your chest. Hold for three seconds, then relax.
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The New York Times
VOL.CLXXVI .... No. 61,036
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2026
Today, humid, partly cloudy, high 71. Tonight, showers, mainly north and west, low 64. Tomorrow, very warm, humid, some clouds mixed in, high 79. Weather map is on Page B12.
California is installing cameras in some of its highest, craggiest sites to get an early warning of a potentially deadly blaze. Page A10.
Dozens Killed As Bombs Hit Sudan Miners
This article is by Abdalrahman Al-tayeb, Declan Walsh and Malachy Browne.
KASSALA, Sudan — Dozens of gold workers in northern Sudan were killed over the weekend after warplanes bombed an open-air mine near the Egyptian border, according to Sudanese rights groups, graphic video and witnesses interviewed by The New York Times.
Footage from the aftermath of the bombing showed badly mutilated bodies of young men scattered amid sacks of mineral ore at a remote site in Red Sea State, roughly 25 miles from Sudan's border with Egypt.
"We were overcome with terror," said Saif Eldin Adam, 26, a university student who worked at the mine for the past three months. Mr. Adam said he helped rescue the wounded and recovered the dead after the strikes.
"There are no words for what we saw," he said.
Emergency Lawyers, a rights group, estimated the death toll at 72. Two witnesses said it was at least 65, with an additional 120 or more wounded.
The attack occurred hundreds of miles from the front lines of Sudan's devastating civil war. Sudanese news media reports and several rights groups blamed Egypt for the strike. In June, miners accused Egyptian forces of carrying out a drone attack on another gold mine in the region.
Sudan mines billions of dollars' worth of gold every year, with the two warring sides using the profits to bankroll their fight. Sudan's military has bombed mines con-
Continued on Page A8
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By ELIAN PELTIER and JIM TANKERSLEY
Governments in Europe have long shunned the Taliban, primarily because of their severe restrictions on women and girls. But under pressure to appear tougher on migration, the Europeans are deporting refugees to Afghanistan and in recent months have been negotiating with the Taliban government to make more expulsions possible.
Taliban Leveraging European Fears on Migrants
At a meeting in Brussels in late June, more than 20 European officials met with five Taliban representatives to discuss deportations, breaking a taboo against holding talks with the group in the European Union.
The Europeans never mentioned human rights abuses com-
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Kabul Offers Deals on Deportation to Gain More Acceptance
mitted by the Taliban, according to three participants and three officials briefed on the meeting.
The details of the meeting are being reported here for the first time. This article is based on information from the German foreign ministry, along with interviews with seven other diplomats, including five representing European countries, and two Afghan government officials, all of whom requested anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.
Afghanistan has for years been one of the main sources of unauthorized migrants to Europe, and the European governments in talks with the Taliban insist they are solely technical and limited to expulsions. But many human rights groups say that the deportation drive ignores the risks faced by Afghans back home.
"The European Union cannot credibly condemn the Taliban's systematic repression while engaging with them to deport Afghans into the very abuses they claim to oppose," said Fereshta Abbasi, the Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Full diplomatic recognition of the Taliban remains a taboo. Russia is the only country in the world to formally recognize the group.
But the Taliban see sustained
Continued on Page A7
Kabul streets were filled in August as the Taliban celebrated their fifth year of ruling Afghanistan.
TOMAS MUNITA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
To Ease Her Grief, She Took 30 New Friends Out to the Ballgame
By TIM ARANGO
SEATTLE — On the last Sunday afternoon of September, Rhenda Strub was bundled up against the autumn chill for one final day at the ballpark, eating Cracker Jack and sweet and spicy pickles.
Another baseball season was ending as it often does in Seattle: abruptly and too soon. There would be no postseason for the
Mariners, the only franchise never to have appeared in a World Series.
A. Bartlett Giamatti, a literary scholar who served as commissioner of Major League Baseball for five months until he died unexpectedly in 1989, wrote that baseball is "designed to break your heart," because it "leaves you to face the fall all alone."
Yet this season, Ms. Strub, 71, found that the opposite was also
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Season of Shared Hope for Mother in Seattle
true: Baseball can help heal a broken heart.
baseball games on television.
After she lost her 27-year-old son, Wyatt, to muscular dystrophy three years ago, she retreated to his room and spent countless hours alone quilting and watching
The constancy of baseball helped to structure her days, but the loneliness only added to her grief.
So at the beginning of this season, Ms. Strub bought two season tickets to the Mariners in Section 120, on the first-base side, thinking she would regularly go with her loved ones to T-Mobile Park. But her husband doesn't like
Continued on Page A20
Deal on Diesel Jolts U.S. Ties With Ukraine
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Biggest Crisis Since Spat in Oval Office in 2025
This article is by Anton Troianovski, Jeanna Smialek, Andrew E. Kramer and Steven Erlanger.
President Trump's new diplomatic crisis over Ukraine first erupted at Steve Witkoff's exclusive golf club outside Miami on Friday.
Senior Ukrainian and European officials had traveled to the club, Shell Bay, for talks with Mr. Trump's peace envoys, Mr. Witkoff and Jared Kushner. They had planned to discuss updated proposals to end the war in Ukraine ahead of another trip to Russia by Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner.
But Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner soon made an announcement that stunned the visitors and much of the world when the news became public shortly thereafter. The United States, the Americans said, would suspend sanctions on Russian diesel fuel. The Americans added a firm request from Mr. Trump: that Ukraine stop attacking Russian oil refineries.
One of the Ukrainians asked what they would get in return.
The Americans responded that the United States was doing a lot for Ukraine already, according to three people familiar with the meeting, and should not have to make a trade for Ukraine to stop its refinery attacks. The Americans then mentioned U.S. intelligence assistance, considered vital to the Ukrainian war effort.
Some in the room heard that as a veiled threat, according to two of the people. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, denied any suggestion of a threat to withhold such support. But the official also said that Mr. Trump had grown so angry with Ukraine that it was hard to say what he might do.
Now, the dispute has ballooned into the biggest crisis between Washington and Kyiv since the Oval Office blowup with Ukraine's president last year. The future of U.S. support for Ukraine again appears to be hanging in the balance. The escalating back-and-forth showed how Mr. Trump's efforts to bring down energy prices before next month's midterm elections have threatened to destabilize the fragile Ukraine talks.
Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner are now indicating that they have put their expected trip to Russia on hold until President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine mends fences with Mr. Trump, two people familiar with the talks said.
To the Ukrainians and their European supporters, the attacks on Russia's fuel refineries are Kyiv's most effective way to respond to
Prices in Canada may be higher
Continued on Page A5
\$4.00
MUSK'S SPENDING ON THE MIDTERMS HITS \$366 MILLION
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G.O.P. RESCUE MISSION
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Largest Known Donor — a Funding Advantage for Republicans
By THEODORE SCHLEIFER
WASHINGTON — Elon Musk has quietly funneled more than \$276 million into Republican groups and his super PAC since the start of July, building a huge turnout operation to help the party battle headwinds in the midterm elections.
The staggering amount of money makes Mr. Musk, the richest person in the world, by far the largest known donor in the midterms. Representatives for Mr. Musk supplied the previously unreported figures on his political giving to The New York Times before a federal filing deadline on Thursday.
In an effort to save Republicans' Senate majority, he gave a total of \$158 million this summer to the Senate Leadership Fund, the main super PAC backing the party's candidates for the chamber, according to his team. In sum, that is one of the largest political donations in American history, and more than the group's Democratic rival raised from all of its donors that quarter.
Mr. Musk has also built a major Republican turnout operation through a super PAC he founded in 2024, America PAC. He donated over \$76 million this summer to the group, which in turn spent that much on building a sprawling can-
Continued on Page A14
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Elon Musk's Campaign Contributions
Mr. Musk has already given far more money to federal committees during this election cycle than in 2024.
Sources: Federal Election Commission filings (prior contributions); representatives for Mr. Musk (most recent contributions).
JILLIAN VORDICK/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Home of Representative Omar Is Searched by an Arm of ICE
This article is by Devlin Barrett, Hamed Aleaziz, Ernesto Londoño and Alan Feuer.
Federal agents executed a search warrant at the home of Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota on Monday, according to three people briefed on the matter, the kind of investigative step the Justice Department has long shied away from so close to an election.
The court-approved search of her Washington-area home comes after Department of Homeland Security officials said in recent months that they were investigating Ms. Omar, a Democrat, over her family's immigration paperwork.
More recently, some federal investigators have also sought to examine other issues, such as Ms. Omar's finances, campaign funds and interactions with a foreign citizen, as The New York Times previously reported.
The three people who described the execution of the search warrant spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.
The search warrant, executed 22 days before Election Day, lists a series of potential immigration crimes under investigation, including false statements and fraud in immigration paperwork, as well as a general conspiracy charge, according to a person familiar with the document.
The search warrant was the subject of significant back-and-forth between prosecutors and the
Continued on Page A15
INTERNATIONAL A4-8
Recasting Mariupol Attack
A Russian documentary claims that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind the deadly bombing of a theater. PAGE A4
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Threat to Global Energy Order
The strikes on Saudi Arabia underscore a period of insecurity in the energy industry in the Middle East. PAGE A5
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NATIONAL A9-17, 20
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'Is It Really Worth It?'
Threats have altered the lives of an Arizona lawmaker, her family, friends and neighbors. They have even transformed her policymaking. PAGE A9
Public Divided on Executions
A botched lethal injection and a planned
livestreamed firing squad renewed the
debate and the divisions. PAGE A16
OBITUARIES B10-11
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Novelist Lived His Thrillers
Jeffrey Archer, 86, wrote on themes he knew well: ambition, self-promotion, misbehavior and scandal. PAGE B10
BUSINESS B1-5
U.S. Nears Solar Breakthrough
Manufacturers say they're close on a panel that's able to handle harsh conditions. Above, simulating hail. PAGE B1
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Nobel for Booms and Busts
Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford were honored for their insights on dealing with economic shocks. PAGE BI
SPORTS B6-9, 12
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From Yukon to Maple Leafs
Gavin McKenna, who was the No. 1 N.H.L. draft pick, had a rarely made journey that was shaped by his northern Canadian roots. PAGE B6
SCIENCE TIMES D1-8
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Diverging Biological Clocks
Two sisters thought new technology might explain why their health differed so sharply. Instead, it stirred up feelings that weren't easily quantified. PAGE D4
OPINION A18-19
Michelle Cottle
PAGE A18
ARTS C1-6
Find Him in the Funny Pages
The comedy writer Tom Gammill stars in a play about the author of the "Nancy" comic strip. Above, Gammill holding Nancy and Sluggo, her pal. PAGE C1
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The New York Times
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OPINION
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Quote of the Day
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"What I want to do is assure the one billion citizens of our alliance that we've got this."
GEN. ALEXUS G. GRYNKEWICH of the U.S. Air Force, NATO's top military commander, who on Monday released details of the alliance's plans to deter Moscow in the event of outright war. Page A6.
Inside The Times
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A Notable Number
\$480,000
The annual cost of the pancreatic cancer drug daraxonrasib, which does not increase overall long-term survival. There is mounting evidence that exercise programs can improve cancer outcomes. Page D6.
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Corrections
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NATIONAL
An article on Saturday about candidate debates misstated the role of the Democratic Socialists of America in the Maine Senate race. While the state chapter of the D.S.A. endorsed Troy Jackson's campaign for governor earlier this year, neither the state nor the national organization has weighed in on his Senate campaign.
An article on Friday about a professor accused of harassment misstated the role of Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina, on the House Committee on
Education and Workforce in May 2025. She was no longer the chair at the time, she was a member.
An article last Wednesday about James Talarico, the Texas Senate candidate, misstated Wendy Davis's affiliation with Planned Parenthood Texas Votes. Ms. Davis, the former Texas state senator, was a senior adviser to the group but is no longer in that role.
Errors are corrected during the press run whenever possible, so some errors noted here may not have appeared in all editions. For recently published corrections, visit nytimes.com/corrections.
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The Story Behind the Story
Blake Lively, left, accused another actor of waging a smear campaign against her, among other claims. They settled their legal dispute this year.
EDUARDD MUNOZ/REUTERS
A Reporter Following the Digital 'Bread Crumbs'
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To investigate malicious P.R. blitzes, we analyzed hundreds of websites and social media profiles.
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Interview by MEGAN DiTROLIO
What would it take to destroy someone's reputation?
In a new investigation, the reporter Debra Kamin of The New York Times explored the stories of several women who claim in lawsuits that they were the targets of malicious smear campaigns driven by unflattering stories posted to anonymous websites and shared in fabricated social media posts.
The suits differ in the details, but point to the same three businesspeople as the architects of the campaigns. Those same three people were named by Blake Lively in a legal complaint and related depositions in which she said that there was a coordinated campaign to tarnish her reputation. That came after she accused Justin Baldoni, her co-star in the movie "It Ends With Us," of misconduct. Lively's lawsuit, the other women told Debra, helped them realize that their experiences may be connected.
In an interview, Debra shared the digital forensics that went into reporting about efforts intended to stay in the dark. These are edited excerpts from our conversation.
While The Times reported on the Lively case, in late 2024, you were reporting about sexual assault allegations brought against the powerful real estate brokers Oren and Tal Alexander and their brother, Alon Alexander. (The brothers were ultimately convicted of a yearslong sex-trafficking conspiracy.) So how did this new, broader investigation into smear campaigns come together? As women came forward with allegations against the Alexander brothers, a website appeared that purported to expose a conspiracy meant to take them down. I really tried to figure out who made it, but got nowhere. I stayed on it, because I wanted to prepare a story we were going to run ahead of their trial about the efforts to smear the women involved. That story ran in January
of this year.
As an investigative reporter, you always have the stuff you're working on and the stuff in the background. Megan Twohey, a reporter who worked on the Blake Lively article, was keeping an eye on the lawsuits related to her case. We were sitting not so far apart in the newsroom. When she saw stuff, she would flag it.
Then, in 2026, Alexa Nikolas filed a defa-mation lawsuit against Bryan Freedman, Melissa Nathan and Jed Wallace - the same people who Blake Lively accused in depositions and legal filings of running the campaign against her on behalf of Justin Baldoni. Nikolas's lawsuit specifically cited internet research that linked a bunch of sites, including the site about the Alexander brothers, and two women who are featured prominently in my new story. I decided that it was time to revisit the story of smear campaigns and tell the bigger, broader story of how it was an operation that could be ordered up for hire.
[For Debra's recent article, The Times sent detailed requests for comment to Nathan and Wallace, who did not respond, and to Freedman, who wrote in an email: "Allegations are not facts and these allegations are neither truthful nor accurate." He added, "Just like the Blake Lively matter, anyone asserting this nonsense will end up with nothing."]
What were the next steps you took in reporting this larger story?
The first thing I did was identify the people involved. Four women at the time had filed lawsuits, and several others said that they had been smeared. I got their contact information, as well as the contact information of several women who seemed to also have been targets but hadn't yet filed lawsuits.
While some of these women had filed lawsuits in public courts, talking to The Times meant a new level of public scrutiny. How do you even open that kind of conversation? It's a tough conversation. First, I say, "I'm a reporter, are you available to talk right now? I want to have a conversation that's not easy." If it's not a good time, you set a
time to talk. Then you explain: "I'm working on this story. Your name has come up. Are you aware of these campaigns?" Every one of them was aware. Then I said, "I'm trying to piece it together. Can you tell me about your experience?" Every one of them had fears about coming forward, without a doubt. And every one of them told me she chose to come forward to make sure her story doesn't happen to other people.
These websites are designed to be untraceable. But as you wrote, they can leave behind digital bread crumbs. I'm thinking of the backlinks that you described, invisible links that send signals between websites and boost traffic to each other. How did you start tracking those bread crumbs?
Some of the women who sued had hired firms that specialize in this — tracing the origins and creators of things like websites and social media profiles. We had three different reports that were already publicly available, or referenced on the legal docket, from these firms. Stephanie Jones had hired a company to do it, as did Blake Lively and Alexa Nikolas. Each one came to the same conclusion: that there was internet manipulation and some sort of connection. I read through those reports, and I spoke to the experts who had compiled them. That was very helpful. But we couldn't just use that in our reporting, because these people were hired by individuals who have a lawsuit, who have a specific gain.
So I took that data, and I went to our engineering team, which focuses on using A.I. and data to help aid reporting. I said: "I need to verify this, and I want to make sure that we have our own data. Can you run a similar report?" And we did. Then we had a New York Times report that was not ordered up by any plaintiff or defendant, one simply based on investigating the numbers. I got results from our team that confirmed that there were backlinks between the sites, and similarities in terms of authorship and design. That's when I felt, OK, we have a story here. We need to write this.
Read the investigation at nytimes.com/metro.
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The Newspaper and Beyond
TODAY'S PAPER
AUDIO
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Crossword C3
Obituaries B10-11
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The author Min Jin Lee joined the "Book Review" podcast to discuss how education and community play out across "American Hagwon," her new novel about the Korean diaspora. Listen at nytimes.com/tbrpodcast.
In T magazine's "Live From the 10th Floor" series, artists perform in The Times Building. Watch the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo sing an aria from the Metropolitan Opera's "Lincoln in the Bardo." tmagazine.com
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, affecting an estimated one in eight American women in their lifetimes. How much do you know about the disease? Take our quiz to find out at nytimes.com/well.
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A Headline From History
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URBAN, AND LOOKING FOR THE COWBOYS
October 13, 2004. "Without the global or high-tech reach of the Internet or satellite radio, country music would seem nonexistent in New York City," The Times reported. With the genre's minimal presence in the city, country lovers were going to great lengths to find community. Rodeo, a Manhattan bar "with floors covered in peanut shells and walls adorned with Texas flags," had become one of few spaces for visitors to watch live country music. But not everyone was satisfied: "Some visitors said it is a venue for bluegrass, rockabilly or Americana music, but not mainstream country," The Times wrote. "There are more white, working-class fans to support a country scene in New York than most people think, but they're not concentrated enough," a music professor at Columbia University said of New York's country scene. Today, there are several country-themed bars in New York — probably a result of the genre's crossover into mainstream music.
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Facts of Interest
At about 194 years old, Jonathan is the world's oldest known land animal. He's an Aldabra giant tortoise living 1,200 miles off Africa's west coast on St. Helena, spending his days on the grounds of the official home of the governor.
At 194, Jonathan the Giant Tortoise Knows About Aging D3
In San Francisco, roughly a third of its 100 million square feet of office space sits vacant.
San Francisco Still Wants
To Convert Offices B3
"Fjord," a movie by the Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival this year. Only eight other directors or directing pairs have won the top award twice.
Ambiguity Is a Hallmark
Of This Director's Career C1
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ZooWorld in Florida
squeezed a group of flamingos into a bathroom to shelter them from Hurricane Isaias. A mirror provided entertainment; the birds, seeing their reflections, began showing off.
In Zoo Bathroom During Isaias, Honking Flamingos Win Hearts A11
X-rays are a form of light, but at shorter wavelengths than ultraviolet light and the visible-wavelength colors that we see. Scientists call higher-energy X-rays "hard" and ones at the lower end of the spectrum "soft." Buried in NASA's Old Files, A New Cosmic Object Emerges D2
Solar energy made up nearly 9 percent of the electricity produced in the United States in 2025, up from 3 percent in 2020, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Solar Panels Offer a Shot
To Catch Up With China B1
10/13/2026
BY WYAXLIO
EDITED BY JOEL FAGLIANO | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | Listen to the full episode at nytimes.com/thedaily.
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The Mini Crossword
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ACROSS
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Reader Corner
ROMAN MURADOV
4 Capital on the Nile
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To share your story, fill out a form at nytimes.com/readers. We'll contact you if we're interested in learning more. But we won't publish any part of your submission without reaching out to you and hearing back.
We'd like to hear how Halloween candy prices might affect your celebration this year. Tell us: In general, how do you feel about Halloween candy prices? Are you buying less candy or changing what or how much you buy? Will you be giving out something other than candy this year because of prices?
6 Expansive
7 Spelling Bee rank between "Good" and "Nice"
8 Overhead storage on an airplane DOWN
Callout: How have your Halloween candy habits changed?
2 Garlicky condiment
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DOWN
3 Subway vehicle
1 Tree that yields a chocolate substitute
4 Network with an eye logo
5 Word before job or duck
These days it's almost impossible to avoid a conversation about the price of groceries. At the office, on the playground or at dinner with friends, people complain and compare costs. They share tips on which stores might offer better deals.
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE
Now here comes Halloween, when about two-thirds of American households buy candy to hand out. New market research shows that Halloween candy prices have risen 71 percent since 2021. Food companies trying to cope with rising cocoa butter prices have taken to replacing the natural fat in cocoa beans with other oils. And on social media, consumers complain about shrinkflation.
Demonstrators marching through the city center in Marseille, France, on Thursday.
For weeks, thousands of high school students in France have been protesting the conditions of public schools. They want better funding, something that won't be easy with the current state of French finances. On "The Daily," Mark Landler, The Times's Paris bureau chief, explained why France is in crisis after years of overspending. Read an edited excerpt from his conversation with the episode's host, Vivian Yee.
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Mark, you know from covering Europe for many years that protests in France are not, shall we say, unusual. But tell us why this time is different.
First of all, you're absolutely right. The French have a lot of muscle memory when it comes to protesting. This is a country in which protests are deeply ingrained in the culture.
But I think a couple of things are different. One is the nature of the protesters. They're really young. These are high school students, 14 to 17 years old, who are usually tomorrow's protesters. But in France, they are now today's protesters. This is a movement that has started at high schools, outside of Paris initially, but spreading throughout the country.
What's also different is that these protests are occurring against a backdrop of multiple other crises in France.
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France has a generous welfare state. Can you tell us specifically what is costing the government so much money?
France, like a lot of European countries, offers very generous entitlements. They offer medical care. They offer free schooling. They offer allowances to families.
But what really sets France apart is its pension system. France has one of the lowest retirement ages of any European country. It's currently just over 62 years. And that allows French people to begin drawing on their pensions sooner than almost any of their European neighbors, and that saddles the French state with an enormous additional burden.
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Here to Help
A Recipe for Roasted Salmon and Broccoli Bowl
The heartbeat of this hearty salad is the sweet, oven-roasted edges of broccoli florets and red onion wedges. Chewy bits of steamed rice; hunks of roasted salmon; and a salty, savory anchovy-lemon dressing make it much more of a dinner than a side dish. The broccoli can also be traded for other cruciferous vegetables, such as cabbage, cauliflower or brussels sprouts, if the mood strikes. ASHLEY LONSDALE
TIME: 45 MINUTES
YIELD: 4 SERVINGS
1 (1-pound) salmon fillet, skin on or off $\frac{1}{4}$ cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided
Salt and freshly ground black pepper $\frac{3}{4}$ cup jasmine rice
3/4 cup jasmine rice
1¼ cups water
1½ pounds broccoli crowns, trimmed, cut into cut into 1- to 1½-inch pieces
1 large red onion, sliced into thick wedges
4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, from 1 to 2 lemons
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
6 anchovy fillets, minced
2 large handfuls watercress or baby arugula (about 2 ounces)
1. Heat oven to 425 degrees. Rub the salmon fillet with 1 tablespoon olive oil and season with salt and pepper on all sides. Set aside.
2. Rinse the rice until water runs clear. In a small lidded saucepan, combine the rice, water and 1 tablespoon olive oil. Season the water to taste with salt and bring to a boil over high heat. Cover and reduce to a gentle simmer over medium-low, and cook for 12 to 15 minutes, until the rice is plumped. Remove from heat and let rest, covered, for 5 minutes.
3. On a large sheet pan, toss the broccoli, red onion and remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil.
ERIK BERNSTEIN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES. FOOD STYLIST: BARRETT WASHBURNE.
Season generously with salt and pepper. Roast in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes, tossing once, until tender-crisp and lightly browned.
4. In a large salad bowl, combine the cooked rice, roasted broccoli and onions. To the same sheet pan, add the salmon fillet skin side down (if present) and roast until just cooked through, 10 to 14 minutes.
5. While the salmon roasts, add the lemon juice, mustard and anchovies to the bowl with the broccoli mixture and toss. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Flake the salmon (discarding any skin) and add to the bowl. Fold in three-fourths of the watercress. Top with the remaining watercress and serve.
For more recipes, visit New York Times Cooking at nytcooking.com.
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ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO/REUTERS
Russia rebuilt the Regional Academic Drama Theater, which was destroyed in March 2022. From left: Reconstruction; the finished theater, rebranded to glorify Russia; last year's reopening ceremony.
ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO/REUTERS
Russian Film, Decried as Propaganda, Recasts Mariupol Theater Attack
The remains of the theater in Mariupol, eastern Ukraine, in April 2022. A Russian airstrike on the building killed hundreds of civilians taking refuge there.
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The Latest in an Effort To Burnish a Dark Past, Both Near and Distant
ALEXEL ALEXANDROV/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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By ALEXANDER NAZARYAN
It was the gravest act of violence among the litany of atrocities that defined Russia's long, bloody siege of Mariupol in the first months of the full-scale war in Ukraine.
On March 16, 2022, an explosion tore through the Soviet-era Regional Academic Drama Theater, killing hundreds of civilians taking refuge there. Survivors, journalists and analysts who examined the devastation have concluded that a Russian airstrike caused the blast.
Now, a new Russian film that calls itself a documentary is trying to rewrite that history. It claims to present evidence supporting Russia's longtime assertion that Ukraine was behind the bombing. Ukrainian officials have dismissed the film as propaganda, calling it part of a systematic Russian campaign to falsify events and deny Russian war crimes.
The movie, "Witnesses," was filmed on the stage of the rebuilt theater in Mariupol, which has remained under Russian control. It shows Vittorio Nicola Rangeloni, an Italian journalist sympathetic to the Kremlin, interviewing several people who say they survived the bombing. They assert that the Ukrainian military destroyed the theater in a diversionary attack meant to discredit Russia.
"Except for us, unfortunately, nobody else will speak of this," Daria V. Morozova, the human rights commissioner in the Russian-controlled part of the Donetsk region of Ukraine, says in the film. Mr. Rangeloni somberly nods along to Ms. Morozova's assertions.
Asked about the movie's claims, Mr. Rangeloni said in an email: "I've looked into the eyes of those people who were there that day. I have no reason not to believe these people." He has narrated several other documentaries under the "Witnesses" brand.
The studio responsible for disseminating the documentary online, Bumblebee, could not be reached for comment. Its social media channels feature a stream of pro-Kremlin content, much of it focused on a revisionist history of Russia's actions in Ukraine. "Witnesses" has received more than 600,000 views and has been promoted by Russian military bloggers.
To Ukrainians, Moscow's monthslong siege of Mariupol in 2022 and the city's eventual occupation are tragic symbols both of civilian resistance and of a Russian push to erase Ukrainian culture in captured territories.
The Mariupol theater seized global attention after Russian forces attacked it even though people sheltering inside had written the word "children" in white paint on the ground outside.
The yearslong rebuilding effort that has followed the theater's destruction is part of a Russian crusade to make Mariu-pol a showcase of the "new territories," the Kremlin's term for occupied Ukraine. To supporters of the Kremlin, the theater embodies Russian supremacy restored in a city that long played host to divided loyalties because of its proximity to Russia.
With its reconstruction, Russia hopes to bury memories of its relentless bombing of the city in 2022, which killed thousands of Ukrainians.
"Behind all this simulated 'restoration' are hidden the atrocities of the Russian occupiers," Mariupol's exiled city council, based elsewhere in Ukraine, wrote in a social media post when the theater held a reopening ceremony in December 2025.
James Verini, whose new book "The Theater" meticulously reconstructs events surrounding the attack, wrote that it "may yet prove the single worst act of mass civilian killing" by Russia during the war. About 600 people were killed, according to an investigation by The Associated Press. The number of children who were victims has not been established.
In an interview, Mr. Verini, who has written about the war in Ukraine for The New York Times Magazine, said that none of the many survivors he had spoken with had seen anything to suggest subterfuge by Ukraine.
Russia, said Jade McGlynn, an expert
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'I personally see it just as another evidence point in the Kremlin's ongoing rewriting of the siege, the war and Mariupol's broader history.'
JADE McGLYNN, a Russia expert at King's College London.
on the country and a research fellow at King's College London, may be trying to shift perception of the strike from "established war crime to disputed incident."
An effort to provide cover for what happened at the theater could be useful during any reckoning that may follow the war's conclusion, Dr. McGlynn said.
"I personally see it just as another evidence point in the Kremlin's ongoing rewriting of the siege, the war and Mariupoli's broader history to make it fit a version that flatters Russia's self-image and myths," she added.
The new film is part of a sweeping effort to revise history in order to stoke national pride and suppress unseemly aspects of Russia's past. Mr. Putin, for example, has orchestrated a systematic rehabilitation of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, whose paranoid purges claimed millions of lives. That Stalin signed a disastrous pact with Nazi Germany, despite clear evidence of an impending invasion by Hitler, is now seen, at least officially, as an act of diplomatic necessity.
The cumulative effect of the revisionist campaign is an image of Russia as an ever-victimized hero, tormented by a persistently bellicose West, of which Ukraine is a mere puppet.
Among the cities that Russian forces captured after the full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, Mariupol is the largest one that Moscow still holds. Ukrainian defenders managed to hold out for 86 days, finally surrendering at a Stalin-era steelworks. By taking control of Mariupol, Russia secured a key route to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.
The 2022 siege was vividly captured by "20 Days in Maripol," which won an Academy Award in 2024 for best documentary feature. With harrowing detail, the documentary shows Russia indiscriminately shelling and bombing hospitals and apartment blocks. In one scene, a doctor takes the filmmakers to see the body of a newborn, placed in a basement converted into a morgue.
"I can't show you the face," the doctor says, unwrapping a sheet to reveal tiny legs and a discolored torso. The narrative of "20 Days in Mariupol" ends on March 15, as the filmmakers leave the city through a humanitarian route. The theater was bombed the next morning.
A funeral procession for an Azov battalion soldier killed during the 2022 battle for Mariupol. The film lays blame for the theater explosion with that unit, known as Azovtsy, with several people interviewed claiming to have seen them.
MAURICID LIMA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
"Witnesses" is only the latest in a cottage industry of pro-Russian films about Mariupol, Dr. McGlynn said. These include "Mariupol, Russian City" (2022), "Mariupol: Returning Home" (2023), "At the Edge of the Abyss" (2024) and "Mariupol: Three Years of Freedom" (2025).
These works are meant to tug on Russians' sense of patriotism. They refer to heroic World War II episodes as they depict the battle for the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works in Mariupol, which was once occupied by German invaders, and portray the West as intent on seeing Russia weakened at any cost.
"The smaller the victories, the grander the narratives," said Nina L. Khrushcheva, a professor of international affairs at the New School in Manhattan.
Ms. Khrushcheva is the great-grand-daughter of Nikita S. Khrushchev, the Soviet leader who turned Crimea over to Ukraine in 1954. His move would have unforeseen repercussions 60 years later, when Russia retook the peninsula. The United States condemned the incursion but did not oppose it militarily. Neither did Europe.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia made clear that he was animated by profound grievances and that retaking Crimea was only the beginning of a more grandiose project.
To justify the full invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Mr. Putin claimed that Ukraine's military was rife with Nazi sympathizers. Those allegations focused on the Azov regiment, an ultranationalist outfit that was absorbed into the Ukrainian National Guard in 2014.
Azovtsy, as members of the regiment are known, played a significant role in the defense of Mariupol in 2022. They are blamed in "Witnesses" for the theater explosion.
Several people interviewed in the film claim that they saw Azov-affiliated soldiers placing crates of explosives under the theater's stage.
Western researchers have debunked Russia's claims. "There was no crater, which means the weapon used would have detonated somewhere between the roof and floor," Gareth Collett, who served as the British Defense Ministry's top bomb disposal expert and who conducted an extensive investigation into how the theater was destroyed, said in an email.
The damage, Dr. Collett added, was "typical of a large airdropped munition known to be used by the Russian Federation." A report by Amnesty International concluded that the theater was most likely destroyed by two 1,100-pound bombs dropped by a Russian fighter jet.
Deal on Diesel Sends Shock Wave Through U.S.-Ukraine Relationship
GAVRIL GRIGOROV/SFUTNIK, VIA REUTERS
VALENTYN OGIRENKO/REUTERS
From Page AI
Russia's bombardment of Ukraine's energy grid. Ukraine is prepared to stop attacking energy infrastructure, Mr. Zelensky has said, if Russia does the same.
Russia has refused such a deal. Nevertheless, to Mr. Trump, Ukraine's attacks are an affront to a U.S. administration that has continued to provide intelligence and some military support to Ukraine despite the American president's harsh words about Mr. Zelensky. Diesel prices in particular have become a sore spot for Mr. Trump, causing farmers' costs to spike just as harvest season arrives and the midterms are weeks away.
"He better damn well stop," Mr. Trump told reporters on Saturday, referring to Mr. Zelensky and Ukraine's attacks on Russian refineries, and ignoring Russia's strikes on the Ukrainian energy grid. "He wants to make problems for the world. He wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers."
Export statistics indicate that the increase in diesel and energy prices stems largely from Mr. Trump's war with Iran, though Ukraine's attacks on Russia have also played a role.
On Sunday, Mr. Trump said on social media that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to an "ENERGY CEASEFIRE" with immediate effect. Neither side confirmed an agreement. A person familiar with his thinking said that Mr. Trump was referring to a cease-fire only on refineries in both countries — even though Ukraine's refining capacity had been all but destroyed early in the war.
On Monday, European and Ukrainian leaders suggested that while they would be open to an energy cease-fire, they were skeptical that Russia would follow through on one. Ukraine's foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, noted that Russia had attacked Ukrainian energy infrastructure Sunday night "just hours after" the announcement.
"We are ready for an energy cease-fire: We are ready for any mutual format, anything that is not one-sided," Mr. Sybiha told reporters while entering a meeting of foreign affairs ministers in Luxembourg.
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Six Hours of Talks
The meeting on Friday at Mr. Witkoff's golf club lasted about six hours, two people familiar with it said. Much of the meeting involved brainstorming about what the future peace talks might require to work, and the focus was on the standard issues, according to several people. The issues included accession to the European Union for Ukraine, for instance,
Marc Santora contributed reporting.
and the question of territorial con-
trol.
Mr. Witkoff stepped out at one point to join a call between Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, and Mr. Trump, according to one of the people, who was in the room for the meeting.
In addition to Ukraine's three-person negotiating team, the national security advisers to the leaders of Britain, Germany and France, as well as top officials from the European Union and
NATO, joined the meeting.
But Mr. Trump's diesel deal with Mr. Putin quickly overshadowed the rest of the talks. Mr. Zelensky on Friday called Mr. Trump's deal with Mr. Putin to allow imports of Russian diesel fuel in order to lower prices a "weak decision." As the dispute intensified, Mr. Trump on Saturday said Ukraine needed "a new president."
European leaders, including France's president, Emmanuel
Macron, and the head of the E.U.'s executive arm, Ursula von der Leyen, issued statements of support for Mr. Zelensky. Members of Congress criticized the diesel deal as helping fund Russia's war machine.
"The United States should not provide Putin with a financial lifeline while Russia continues to kill Ukrainian civilians," a bipartisan group of six senators, including the Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and John Curtis of Utah, said in a statement on Sunday. "The administration must immediately reverse course."
Björn Seibert, a senior E.U. official who attended Friday's meeting in Florida, gave ambassadors from across the European Union's 27 nations a briefing on the meeting on Sunday, according to one European official who was there and three diplomats briefed on the matter.
Both the official and two of the diplomats said that the Europeans
An oil refinery in Moscow last month. Left, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff with President Volodymyr Zelensky and, far left in a photo released by Russian state media, with President Vladimir V. Putin.
in Florida were taken by surprise by the Trump administration's diesel announcement. The official said the ambassadors were stunned by the announcement.
One major takeaway from Florida, Mr. Seibert told ambassadors, was that the Americans were engaging more with the Russians than they publicly acknowledge, the official and one of the diplomats said. No further details on those engagements were given during Mr. Seibert's briefing, which lasted about 20 minutes, according to the official.
The Trump administration has argued that energy deals with Mr. Putin, in addition to lowering energy prices, could help pave the way for a settlement in Ukraine by showing the Kremlin that reintegration into the world economy was possible for Russia if it compromised in the war.
World's Energy Order Is Challenged Again as Iran War's Reach Extends Further
Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, a Saudi minister, said Monday that attacks had tested his nation.
By LISA FRIEDMAN
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — The intensifying war in the Middle East threatens to further strain a weary energy industry that has already endured waves of disruptions and could test a market resilience built on a series of extraordinary government and private-sector measures.
Over the weekend, the Iranian-backed Houthi militia attacked an international airport in Saudi Arabia's capital, Riyadh, including
---
Houthi strikes on Saudi Arabia underscore a threat.
one strike that killed at least 12 people and injured hundreds. It was the deadliest attack in a Gulf Arab country since the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began in February and brought the war to the center of the Middle East's oil industry.
The attack forced the temporary suspension of operations at the airport just as energy executives and government officials were set to arrive in Riyadh for a major business and policy conference.
The event, the World Petroleum Congress, proceeded as planned, but some attendees were diverted to other airports and others, including the U.S. energy secretary, Chris Wright, and ministers from Italy and Japan, addressed the conference by video link.
Many oil industry leaders — including the chief executives of Exxon Mobil and BP — canceled their trips to Saudi Arabia, according to two industry officials who were not authorized to discuss executive schedules.
In remarks on Monday, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the Saudi energy minister, acknowledged that recent attacks had "tested our infrastructure, our institutions, our people and our resilience."
Meanwhile, oil tankers are facing persistent peril while attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage between Iran and Oman that was a fairly uncomplicated excursion before the war. At least 16 vessels have been attacked this month.
The widening of the fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Houthi militia in Yemen, amid no public signs of a diplomatic resolution between the United States and Iran, underscores the potent two-front threat to energy infrastructure in an area crucial to global supplies of crude oil and its many byproducts, like diesel and gasoline.
Just last month, oil exports from the region started increasing to nearly their prewar levels. More ships were getting out of the Strait of Hormuz, close to Oman's coast, through the protection and guidance of U.S. forces.
It is not yet clear if the most recent attacks on tankers around the strait will cause a notable drop in exports as ship operators recoil from the risk. Regardless, the U.S. military effort is a costly endeavor that experts say can't last forever.
Before the Riyadh airport came under attack, an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq had already targeted a critical Saudi pipeline, which the kingdom was using to export oil instead of going through the Strait of Hormuz.
All told, the rebound in crude exports masks headwinds that could keep prices elevated, oil executives and analysts say. The benchmark global oil price was trading at about \$104 a barrel on Monday, up from just under \$70 on the eve of the war.
"We are in a permanently changed energy world right now," said David L. Goldwyn, a former State Department energy envoy. "We are entering an age of prolonged insecurity."
And the world's crude cushions are being drained. The use of reserves of unrefined petroleum held by oil producers and governments has helped stabilize the market. Dozens of countries came together in March for the largest-ever coordinated release of stockpiles. But those reserves are beginning to have limited effect, in part because the world's capacity to refine oil is stretched to the max.
The price of diesel has become a global flashpoint. Diesel is essential to global commerce, and a dearth of refineries has driven its price to record highs in many parts of the world, including the United States. Facing political pressure, President Trump has allowed imports of diesel from Russia, undercutting American sanctions for a measure that experts say will have a negligible impact on global prices.
The world's reserves have reached “scarily thin” levels, Amin Nasser, the chief executive of Aramco, Saudi Arabia's national oil company, said at the Energy Intelligence Forum in London last week.
In another potential weight on the energy market, there are signs that China, the world's biggest buyer of oil, is starting to buy more again. Earlier in the war, China had slashed its imports to, at the lowest point, around 7.1 million barrels a day from about 11.6 million barrels.
And Iranian crude — 90 percent of which once went to China — has virtually disappeared from the market since the United States imposed a naval blockade on the country's exports.
Oil executives say they expect the turmoil in the oil market to last well into next year, if not longer.
"I think it is going to be bedlam for the bulk of the end of the year and maybe 2027," Tengku Muhammad Taufik, the chief executive of Petronas, Malaysia's state-owned oil and gas company, said last week.
For decades, the Strait of Hormuz was the most effective commercial route to send crude east across the Indian Ocean to Asian markets. Countries like Kuwait and Iraq used it for virtually all of their oil exports, while Saudi Arabia used it for about 80 percent.
When Iran effectively blocked the strait in March, Saudi Arabia, the region's largest producer, leaned heavily on its other door to the world: the Red Sea. Each day, it sent four million to five million barrels of oil through the 720-mile East-West Pipeline to deliver crude from eastern oil fields to the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea. From there, ships would move its oil through the Bab al-Mandab Strait to Asia.
Over the summer, the Houthi militia made that path dangerous when it threatened to essentially block any ships carrying Saudi oil. Then last month the Houthis attacked the East-West Pipeline, forcing it to shut down temporarily.
"Ultimately, the resilience of the international system can only hold up for so long, and we're fast moving toward that target," said Shaikh Nawaf S. Al-Sabah, the deputy chairman and chief executive of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation.
Mr. Al-Sabah said that before the war, Kuwait was exporting about 2.6 million barrels a day. Production has recovered to about two million barrels a day, about 75 percent of prewar levels, because more tankers are taking the risk of transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
Also notable was the warp speed at which Saudi Arabia worked to fix the East-West Pipeline after it was damaged. Mr. Nasser said Aramco had more than 10 teams, each with thousands of contractors and engineers, that repaired pumping stations in a matter of days.
Yet the region clearly remains heavily exposed.
"Producers still need a safer route, they need tankers, they still need buyers who are willing to accept the risk," said Aaron Brady, vice president of energy oil market services at S&P Global, a research firm, at an S&P energy briefing in London this month.
Mr. Brady added, "A lot of oil is getting out in the Middle East, but there's no longer that sort of secure workaround."
The bottom line, Mr. Brady said, is that even though oil is getting to the countries that want it, the routes are more complicated and the costs continue to rise. He called it an "improvised" system.
"The flows are improving, but I wouldn't characterize this as a normally operating system," he said.
War in Ukraine
NATO Details Plan to Shield Ukraine's European Allies from Russia
know how we would do it."
Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich of the U.S. Air Force, NATO's top military commander, at the Warsaw Security Forum on Monday.
By MARC SANTORA and STEVEN ERLANGER
WARSAW — With Russia intensifying efforts to destabilize European nations that support Ukraine, NATO's top military commander on Monday detailed a blueprint to deter Moscow in the event of outright war, a concept he summarized as "block, blunt and break."
The commander, Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich of the U.S. Air Force, said the alliance does not view a military confrontation with Russia as "imminent or inevitable," despite Russian sabotage, arson, cyberattacks and disinformation aimed at rattling European resolve and severing weapons supply lines to Ukraine.
But in that environment, the general said he had made a deliberate decision to publicly disclose the core of NATO's classified war plan — known as its "theory of victory" — to bolster confidence across 32 allied countries.
“What I want to do is assure the one billion citizens of our alliance that we’ve got this,” General Grynkewich said on Monday at the Warsaw Security Forum. “We know what we need to do. We
Marc Santora reported from Warsaw, and Steven Erlanger from Berlin. Adam Goldman contributed reporting from London.
Yet even as the American four-star commander stressed that NATO's ultimate defense rests on unity, stark geopolitical contradictions echoed through the conference hall. President Trump's decision to unilaterally ease sanctions on the Kremlin in order to purchase Russian diesel fuel highlighted a jarring disconnect between NATO's military planning and European support for Ukraine, and the White House's transactional diplomacy and hostility toward Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump appeared to blame Ukraine — not for the first time — for the war, and said it should “get a new president.”
By injecting hard cash directly into the Kremlin's coffers, the administration risked undercutting years of allied economic pressure, muddying the Western coalition's deterrence messaging and testing the very solidarity General Grynkewich was in Warsaw to project.
Even if the amounts of diesel purchases are small, the symbolism of division is large. Ukraine and Europe argue that only economic and military pressure will persuade President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to end the war he started, Mr. Trump and his envoys apparently favor enticing Mr. Putin with "deals," instead.
The tension was evident earlier in the day when Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland warned that the defense of Ukraine and the security of NATO are inextricably tied.
"Anyone who, for any reason — treason, stupidity, or money — wants to weaken Ukraine in its defense against Russian aggression is clearly acting against their own nation, the security of their own state, and its sovereignty," Mr. Tusk said.
Pressed afterward on whether European allies could count on Washington to defend them, General Grynkewich dismissed suggestions that the United States would waver, citing the thousands of American forces along NATO's eastern flank, including in Poland. He also pointed to recent summit communiqués that reaffirmed the bedrock collective-defense guarantee of Article 5.
European fears of an emboldened Russia have been increasing. Michal Koudelka, the director of the Czech Security Information
Service, the country's domestic spy service, warned his Parliament on Monday that Russia could escalate "in a matter of months rather than years to a significantly riskier and more serious operation," which could include, down the road, limited military action against a NATO state.
General Grynkewich said the new NATO doctrine draws directly on modern battlefield lessons from Ukraine and the Middle East.
Specifically, he said, the blueprint pairs precision weapons with what he described as "affordable mass"—large numbers of autonomous systems, drones, and electronic warfare assets designed to sustain a protracted war of attrition.
The "block, blunt, and break" strategy he outlined is designed to stop an invasion in its tracks without trying to conquer the enemy's homeland.
First, he said, allied forces immediately "block" an attack at the border to prevent enemy from seizing territory, a change in strategy since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Next, they "blunt" the offensive by hitting advancing troops from the air, sea, and land to strip their momentum. Finally, if the attack continues, they "break" the enemy by targeting the supplies, communication links, and command networks that keep their frontline forces fighting, weakening the aggressor to the point of collapse.
General Grynkewich stressed that NATO is not interested in taking an adversary's land. By limiting the objective strictly to the tactical and operational neutralization of the adversary, NATO intends to deny the enemy any pretext for escalation, he said, placing the moral and strategic burden of expanding the war squarely on the aggressor.
"Implementing the theory of victory I've described today would require me to issue orders that I hope to never give," he said. "But let there be no doubt, should war come, we will block, blunt any attack, and then if it does not cease, we will break the forces conducting aggression against us."
Kremlin officials have routinely dismissed the alarms being raised across Europe.
"We have no intention to fight Europe, to engage in warfare with Europe; that is utter nonsense," Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said during a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in September. "But Europe is preparing for war with us," he said. "This could become a self-fulfilling prophecy."
Ukraine Shrugs Off Call By Trump to Oust Zelensky
This article is by Maria Varenikova, Dzvinka Pinchuk and Ivan Nechepurenko.
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine has shrugged off President Trump's suggestion that it ditch Volodymyr Zelensky as its president because it has continued to strike Russian oil refineries.
Mr. Trump has called out Mr. Zelensky for the strikes, blaming them for rising global energy prices. Ukraine needs "a new president," he said on Saturday.
Mr. Zelensky shot back on Sunday that Ukraine was ready to stop striking Russian refineries, but only if Russia stopped striking Ukrainian energy infrastructure. "Any de-escalation steps must be reciprocal and backed by real guarantees," he wrote on X. On Monday, he said Kyiv had not struck any Russian oil refineries overnight.
On Saturday, after Mr. Trump made his comments, Ukraine's foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said that Mr. Zelensky "has the support of the Ukrainian people, and they have the right to decide."
"Statements from abroad only confirm that he is doing his job well," he added.
Mr. Zelensky has previously said he would hold elections if Russia agreed to a cease-fire. In an interview with ABC News on Sunday, he said to hold a vote safely, there would have to be a cease-fire lasting 60 days.
Ukrainians have grown accustomed to Mr. Trump's off-the-cuff foreign policy.
On Sunday, Mr. Trump announced in a social media post that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to an "energy cease-fire." Neither Kyiv nor Moscow has confirmed that there is such a deal.
Mr. Zelensky said that he had discussed Mr. Trump's announcement in a call with international allies, and that they were "awaiting details from the American side."
"Ukraine supports the ceasefire, and it is important that Russia supports it as well," he wrote on social media.
But shortly after Mr. Trump's announcement, Russia struck a power plant in Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine, according to Mr. Zelensky's office — an attack that offered a stark indication of Moscow's position on a possible cease-fire.
On Friday, the Trump administration lifted sanctions on Russian diesel sales, saying the move would lower prices.
But some question whether Russian diesel will indeed ease the pinch. And lifting sanctions on Russian diesel will undermine U.S. energy sanctions. Some European countries, including Germany, said they would stand by sanctions despite the U.S.-Russia diesel deal.
"Suspending sanctions on Russian diesel provides Moscow with more revenues to wage war," wrote Kaja Kallas, the European Union's top diplomat, on X. "This is not the time to ease pressure on Russia, and Europe won't."
Other points of view on the Opinion pages seven days a week. The New York Times
Online, some Ukrainians bristled at the suggestion that Washington or Moscow should dictate who leads their country, but largely dismissed Mr. Trump's remark as domestic politicking before the midterm elections in the United States.
"Trump is trying to save his own skin ahead of the elections," Iryna Tsariuk, an activist from Odesa, wrote in a social media post on Facebook. "He doesn't care at all about Ukraine or the fact that Russia killed more than 70 people on Wednesday and Thursday," she added.
Russian missile and drone strikes continued overnight Saturday to Sunday, wounding eight people in Kyiv, the capital, and killing an 11-year-old boy in Dnipro, a city in central Ukraine, according to the local authorities. After Russian strikes on energy and water infrastructure, the authorities in Kyiv urged residents to stock up on water.
"Russia is leveling Ukrainian cities, starving people in Oleshky, killing entire families in one attack, but for some reason you won't find Tweets that Putin has gone too far," wrote Yarema Dukh, a political analyst and communications expert, referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Even Ukrainians who oppose Mr. Zelensky have objected to Mr. Trump's remarks, arguing that decisions about Ukraine's leadership must be made by Ukrainians.
Mr. Zelensky has faced widespread criticism in Ukraine over corruption allegations involving
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An American leader's demand may serve to unite a nation at war.
people in his inner circle and over his personnel decisions, including the dismissal of his popular defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov.
The share of Ukrainians who trust Mr. Zelensky has fallen to 58 percent from 65 percent last year, according to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
But if anything, the rebuke from the U.S. president has the potential to unite Ukrainians, Mr. Zelensky saw a bump in support at home after Mr. Trump criticized him in a White House meeting last year.
"There is nothing in the world that could boost Zelensky's approval rating today more than Trump's childish outbursts at him, screaming that he needs to be replaced," Mykhailo Lavrovskyi, a Ukrainian serviceman, said on X.
In Russia on Sunday, Ukrainian drones hit a major data center operated by the Russian technology giant Yandex. The center, in the Vladimir region east of Moscow, was the company's third to be attacked in the past four days, prompting internet disruptions across the country.
In a statement on Friday, Yandex called its data centers its "iron heart" and said restoring services was a "top priority," though "unfortunately, it is a complex challenge."
The U.N. says Russian attacks have driven civilian casualties in Ukraine, like this one in Zaporizhzhia, to a “new horrifying level.”
BEUTERS
Trump Aids Russia in Economic War With Kyiv
By CONSTANT MÉHEUT
KYIV, Ukraine — President Trump's deal to buy Russian diesel fuel, and his intense pressure on Ukraine to stop striking Russian oil refineries, could hand a powerful boost to Moscow in its economic war of attrition with Kyiv.
The diesel agreement, if it goes ahead, could send some \$4 billion of American money into the Russian economy, energy experts said. A halt to refinery strikes, if Ukraine accedes to one, could be much more valuable to the Kremlin.
Ukraine is expected to get nothing in exchange as Mr. Trump enlists Russian help in his effort to bring down sky-high diesel prices, caused mostly by the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, before the midterm election early next month.
Moscow remains free to continue attacking Ukrainian ports, steel factories, warehouses, power plants and data centers, a campaign that is gradually pushing Ukraine's economy toward a breaking point. Such attacks destroy nearly \$10 billion in business assets each year, Ukraine's economy minister has said.
At the same time, Mr. Trump is demanding that Kyiv abandon its most potent tool for depriving the Russian war machine of income. Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries, combined with those on other businesses, have cost Russia about 1 percent of its gross domestic product, President Vladimir V. Putin acknowledged this month.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has condemned Mr. Trump's decision to buy Russian diesel, saying in a social media post on Friday that "Russia will 'repay' the diesel with further terror and perfidy."
Mr. Trump, who lifted sanctions to allow Russia to sell the fuel to the United States, struck an economic deal with Mr. Putin even as Russian attacks have driven civilian casualties in Ukraine to what the United Nations called a "new horrifying level."
More than 100 Ukrainian civilians were killed in the past week alone. Moscow is striking Ukraine with an ever-growing arsenal of increasingly powerful and precise weapons, taking advantage of gaps in Ukrainian air defenses.
Mr. Zelensky said on Monday that Ukraine had refrained from attacks on Russian oil refineries overnight. But he has said that Ukraine will agree to an extended cease-fire only if Moscow stops attacking Ukrainian energy infrastructure. There are fears of a humanitarian crisis in Ukraine this winter if Russia succeeds in its goal of taking down the Ukrainian power and water systems.
The diesel deal is another sign of Mr. Trump's willingness to tip the scales toward Russia, the aggressor in the conflict. This time, he is offering the Kremlin assistance in an economic battle that could help decide the fate of the war, with both armies largely bogged down at the front.
Ukraine's campaign against Russian oil infrastructure began in 2024, with strikes on oil depots and refineries. The effort at first had little effect. But as Ukraine expanded its fleet of attack drones and learned how to target critical components that are hard to repair, the effects increased.
Reported gasoline output is down by 20 percent compared with 2025 levels, and diesel production is estimated to have fallen by nearly 30 percent, the International Energy Agency said in a report last month. The Ukrainian attacks prompted Russia to impose restrictions on diesel exports that Moscow now says it will lift to sell fuel to the United States.
The energy agency added that Russia's oil tax revenue from January to August was nearly 17 percent below the level of the same period last year.
Should Kyiv be forced to halt its refinery strikes, Russia's advantage in the two countries' contest to starve the other of money will
only grow.
Nowhere is that imbalance clearer than in the near-closure of Ukraine's ports.
For months, Russia has attacked commercial ships sailing in and out of the ports in the southern region of Odesa, aiming to discourage them from calling there. The ports are a lifeline for Ukraine's economy, accounting for 60 percent of the country's total export volume. They are used to export grain from the country's fertile farmland, a key source of revenue.
Because of the Russian attacks, traffic through the three Odesa ports was down nearly 95 percent in August and September compared with the same period last year, according to port data obtained by The New York Times. Last month only 12 ships made it out of the ports, compared with 266 in the same month last year.
Ukraine has tried to redirect some of the traffic to its ports on the Danube River, which connects the country to Romania. Ships can travel down the river through Romania and back into the Black Sea, sailing off the coast of NATO countries toward Turkey. But the Danube ports can handle only about half of the cargo that normally moves through the Odesa ports.
And the Danube route is now under threat, too. Last week, drones struck three ships off the coasts of Romania and Bulgaria, sinking two and killing several crew members. All three vessels had carried Ukrainian grain in the past, according to the Romanian authorities and port data.
Ukraine has accused Russia of carrying out the attacks, though Romania and Bulgaria have steered clear of assigning blame. Russia did not comment on the attacks.
The halt to Ukraine's seaborne exports could have catastrophic consequences for the country's economy, with effects across many sectors. Ukraine's agriculture minister said this month that farmers were unable to export about 30 million tons of agricultural products, worth about \$30 billion.
Russia has also suffered from Ukrainian strikes on its Black Sea ports, which have constrained its agricultural exports. But economists say the impact is not comparable because Russia has more export routes than Ukraine, including through the Baltic and Caspian Seas, which Ukrainian weapons cannot reach as easily.
In a sign of that imbalance, Russia became the world's largest exporter of sunflower oil in the 2025-26 marketing year, overtaking Ukraine for the first time in two decades, according to estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Russia appears to be following a methodical approach to dismantling Ukraine's economic base, striking all kinds of assets that an economy needs to function, including export routes, factories and energy facilities.
The fate of Metinvest, Ukraine's largest steel manufacturer, is a case in point.
Its factories, including two large steel plants in southeastern Ukraine, were already suffering from power outages caused by Russian strikes on the grid. Then came attacks on the ports, which blocked a key export route, and on the railways, which left its products stranded inside the country. Finally, strikes on the plants themselves forced them to shut down last month.
The collapse of Ukraine's steel industry, which contributed more than 7 percent of Ukraine's economic output last year, will have severe economic consequences, said Oleksandr Myronenko, Metinvest's chief operating officer.
The company is planning layoffs for administrative personnel, and towns that depend on steel plants will see their budgets shrink.
Last month for the first time in a century, not a single metric ton of steel was produced in Ukraine for one week.
Taliban Offer Deals on Deportation to Gain More Acceptance in Europe
Residents of Kabul, Afghanistan. European governments have long resisted engaging with the country's Taliban rulers because of the nation's abuses of human rights.
TOMAS MUNITA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
IVOR PRICKETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
A brick factory, left, outside Kabul. The Taliban would like Europe to invest more in Afghanistan. Above, Afghan migrants in the Aegean Sea off Turkey trying to make their way to Europe.
TOMAS MUNITA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
From Page AI
engagement on deportations as a gateway to acceptance of their rule, five years after sweeping back to power. Some European diplomats acknowledge this is correct.
Germany has allowed Taliban officials to operate in the Afghan diplomatic missions in Berlin and Bonn, a step that German officials describe as effective recognition of the Taliban as the legitimate government. France is considering doing the same in Paris. Representatives from 15 other European countries met a Taliban delegation in Brussels in June.
The Taliban are pressing their advantage. They have asked European governments for wider access to Afghan missions across Europe and financial support for the reintegration of expelled Afghans. They also want broader economic assistance — a red line for European governments that have limited their assistance to humanitarian aid. Providing development assistance would end up financing the Taliban government, further entrenching their rule, and could benefit officials who are under international sanctions.
"The Taliban have real leverage, and the European Union is quite powerless," said Conrad Schetter, the director of the Bonn International Center for Conflict Studies in Germany. "European countries are under so much pressure that they are ready to do almost any deal to remove criminal refugees."
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Germany Opens the Door
Germany has been leading the charge to expel Afghans, as its government, led by a center-right chancellor, struggles to follow through on promises to deport migrants with criminal records aggressively. Its pace of deportations has drawn fire from a surging far-right party, the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which leads national polls and has promised to deport millions of migrants.
Late last year, German officials struck a deal with the Taliban government to allow direct deportations of unauthorized Afghan migrants, instead of routing returnees through third countries.
More than 500,000 Afghans live in Germany, the vast majority legally. Twenty percent of asylum seekers in the country are Afghans.
In February, a charter flight carrying 20 Afghan men — convicted of crimes by German courts — left Leipzig for Kabul, the first deportation carried out under the new agreement.
The pact with the Taliban "creates a reliable basis for direct and permanent deportations to Afghanistan," Alexander Dobrindt, the German interior minister, said in a statement.
Under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Germany has deported 263 Afghans since May last year, according to the German interior ministry.
State and federal officials have pushed to speed up that pace and have begun deporting Afghan migrant men without criminal records.
Women remain largely shielded from the effort; government statistics show that nearly 95 percent of Afghan women who applied for asylum in Germany were granted protection in the first half of this year.
Since May last year, a handful of Taliban diplomats have operated out of Germany to facilitate the deportations.
As the German government began its plans to step up deportations, the Taliban sent three addi-
Jeanna Smialek, Christopher F. Schuetze and Lynsey Chutel contributed reporting.
tional officials to process the expulsions. Those three are in Berlin and in Bonn on a monthlong mission, the German foreign ministry said last month.
France, which has long been one of the most reluctant among E.U. countries to engage the Taliban, is considering a similar path, according to four European and Afghan diplomats involved in the negotiations.
A spokesman for the foreign ministry, Pascal Confavreux, said in a news briefing on Thursday that the discussions were meant to “facilitate the removal of Afghan nationals who are in the country illegally and who pose a national security risk.”
Britain, whose officials pay regular visits to Kabul, is watching developments in the European Union closely, according to three diplomats. Several other European countries are also considering striking direct agreements with the Taliban, according to the Taliban and two diplomats.
The United States has been deporting Afghan citizens to third countries and has pushed some Afghans, who are stranded in a former U.S. military camp in Qatar, to return to Afghanistan voluntarily. But it has not sent Afghans back to Afghanistan publicly.
Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban ambassador to Qatar, said he tells European diplomats that they should engage more openly with the Taliban and provide economic assistance to Afghanistan.
If they don't, he said, the number of Afghans migrating to Europe will only increase. "If there is unemployment and an economic crisis in Afghanistan, Afghans will go like a flood to Europe."
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A Change in Location
European diplomats regularly meet with Taliban officials in Doha and Istanbul, and the taboo against holding talks with the Taliban on E.U. soil was broken on June 23.
Five Taliban officials who had flown into Brussels from Istanbul were escorted by Belgian plain-clothes officers in black vans to a Novotel hotel near the international airport, where more than 20 European officials awaited.
The two sides discussed how to cooperate on returning Afghans, and the Taliban asked for economic assistance and a stronger diplomatic presence in Europe.
The announcement of the visit to Brussels caused such an outcry among human rights groups and European politicians that the meeting's location was kept secret until a few hours before it started.
The meeting was co-hosted by Sweden and the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union. Abdul Qahar Balkhi, the spokesman for Afghanistan's foreign ministry, led the Afghan delegation, accompanied by four officials from the foreign and interior ministries.
European Union spokespeople have said that the bloc helped to organize the June meeting at the request of member nations, and that the focus is on deporting people who have committed serious crimes or who pose a security threat.
Fifteen European countries were represented, including Greece, Austria, Poland and Norway.
After the big meeting in Brussels, the Taliban delegation held bilateral conversations with at least four European countries, including Sweden, according to the participants.
Anastasia Sofla, a spokeswoman for Sweden's minister of migration, said government agencies have been working with the Taliban government to expel 200 Afghan citizens convicted of crimes in Sweden. She said the relationship was "at the technical level."
The relationship between the European and Afghan governments remains fraught with mutual distrust.
Before the meeting in Brussels, the five Afghan representatives felt disrespected because the Belgian government had taken months to issue their visas. So the Taliban boycotted lunch with European diplomats on June 23.
The Taliban officials had a visa only for one day, so they left that afternoon, after meeting with their European counterparts for just over five hours.
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More Engagement Urged
Some prominent European non-profit groups and experts support greater engagement with the Taliban.
Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, has called on governments to send their diplomats back to Afghanistan. The Norwegian Afghanistan Committee, a humanitarian organization with a widespread presence in the country, has called for European countries to expand assistance to Afghanistan's people and institutions.
In Norway, which is not an E.U. member, Taliban diplomats have discreetly operated for years.
For now, the Taliban diplomats in Norway and Germany have been respectful of the European governments' uneasiness over their presence. There is no Taliban flag outside the embassies in Oslo and Berlin, and no plaque reading "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan," the official name of their government.
One European diplomat said that the governments were on a path to more concessions to the group. The Taliban, the diplomat said, already have the advantage, and public pressure to deport migrants is rising.
Sea of Protesters Flows Freely Through India's Capital as Days of Lockdowns Ease
Rahul Gandhi, the opposition leader, with a doll depicting Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A voting roll revision incited protests.
PRIYANSHU SINGH/REUTERS
This article is by Suhasini Raj, Hari Kumar and Somini Sengupta.
NEW DELHI — Thousands of opposition political party supporters marched along a busy thoroughfare in central Delhi to challenge sweeping revisions of the nation's voter roll.
In a contrast to a week of lockdowns and detentions by the authorities, the demonstrators on Monday far outnumbered security forces stationed on the road. They stood atop orange buses, waving the flags of the opposition Indian National Congress party. Columns of police and other security officials, dressed in riot gear, watched.
The turnout signaled a show of strength for the long-beleaguered Congress party leader, Rahul Gandhi. He marched with a rambunctious crowd, at times flanked by his sister, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. In an effort to portray a unified front against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, Mr. Gandhi was also joined by Neha Bora, a leftist student activist, along with regional politicians from North India.
Mr. Gandhi's lawyer filed a petition on his behalf in the Supreme Court, calling for an inquiry into the proceedings of the election commission. Its chief, Gyanesh Kumar, has been the target of more than a week of protests across India, by youth groups, opposition politicians, and ordinary citizens who say the election commission's revision of the voter roll is a politically motivated purge of critics of the ruling party. Since it began last summer, the revision has expunged over 130 million names.
Together, months of protests over a wide range of frustrations about poor education and a lack of job opportunities represent the biggest challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his 12 years in office.
The government's tactics on Monday, allowing the march to proceed mostly unimpeded, were a stark contrast to the intense crackdown on protests over the course of the last week, when would-be demonstrators were grabbed and stuffed into police vans.
The crowd was so thick at Mon-
day's march that it could barely
move. There were several mo-
ments when Mr. Gandhi was just
pushed along through a sea of peo-
ple.
In a news conference earlier, the opposition, who was detained in demonstrations in Delhi last week, vowed to continue to protest.
"We will do it today, they will stop us. We will do it tomorrow, they will stop us. We will do it the day after tomorrow. They will stop us," he said. "Let them stop us."
By evening, there was no sign of the mass detentions of recent days.
Rather, politicians from the B.J.P., the ruling party, fired back with political invective.
"Congress is a group of hooligans trying to spread chaos on the streets and oppose the system," a B.J.P. minister, Shivraj Chouhan said.
Anurag Thakur, a B.J.P. member of parliament, said: "Rahul Gandhi and the Congress Party's motto is — if not in power, then spread anarchy."
The march came as the government declared that protests can no longer be legally held inside the small area in central Delhi that is the seat of government power.
What had been the capital's most popular protest site for decades — an 18th-century monument called Jantar Mantar that sits less than a mile from India's
Parliament — would no longer be used for demonstrations, the government said in its “guidelines for holding protests or demonstrations in Delhi.”
The government said permission for protests can only be sought at three other sites: one about 3 miles from parliament, another further away in the east of the city, and the third to the north.
Critics said the change effectively sidelines dissent, moving it away from the halls of power.
"Peaceful assembly & protest is a fundamental right of people," Prashant Bhushan, a lawyer and civil rights activist, said in a social media post. "The govt cannot confine to 'Designated sites.'"
Removing Jantar Mantar as a protest site came two days after the youth movement known as the Cockroach Janta Party called for nationwide protests to be held on Saturday. The Delhi police denied permission for the protest and took extraordinary measures to prevent people from assembling, canceling trains to the capital, closing metro stations and shutting off internet in the city center.
Jantar Mantar, distinguished by its ocher-colored sundial, is a relatively small venue with two entrance and exit gates, and the government had begun looking for alternate sites for sanctioned protests several years ago. The Supreme Court on Saturday recommended that the government look for alternate protest sites.
Anjani Anand, 29, came to the march Monday afternoon on Barakhamba Road, less than a mile away from Jantar Mantar, with a few friends. "I think people feel safer to come out onto the streets," she said.
"There's strength in numbers here," said Shubhayan Sengupta, 30, who had joined her. He had been detained twice on Saturday and escaped both times. He didn't want to be detained again, but he and his friends were prepared. They had the numbers of lawyers.
Centuries-Old Market At the Heart of Paris Is Devastated by a Fire
By AMELIA NIERENBERG and GIULIA IMBERT
PARIS — For centuries, Parisians came to the Marché des Enfants Rouges to fill their shopping baskets with sharp cheeses and soft breads, old wines and plump vegetables. The covered food market — the oldest in Paris — was a place to plan family dinners, chat with vendors and mingle with tourists attracted to the site's eclectic mix of food stalls.
But on Monday, before dawn broke over the French capital, flames ripped through the market, bringing down part of its metal structure and destroying 17 stalls inside, officials said.
“Nothing remains,” Lt. Col. Pierre de Bouvier, a Parisian fire official, told reporters at the scene.
He said firefighters were called at around 4:15 a.m. By the time they arrived, he said, high-reaching flames had already engulfed 10,000 square feet of the market.
It was not immediately clear what started the fire, which did not damage nearby buildings and caused no serious injuries.
The blaze destroyed a living emblem of France's love of food — and of the vibrant multicultural fabric of modern Paris.
The market, in the heart of the Marais neighborhood, opened in 1615 in what was at the time the largest city in Western Europe. More recently, it has been a destination for visitors and locals alike to buy traditional French fare and to taste dishes from the Caribbean, North Africa, the Levant and beyond.
"I used to go there when I was little," said Bahia Lahlou, a 21-year-old student who lives nearby.
Ms. Lahlou and other bystanders watched in silence on Monday morning as firefighters worked at the blocked-off scene, on the right bank of the Seine. The market's blackened roof sagged.
"It was kind of a hub that brought together lots of different cuisines," Ms. Lahlou said. For many, she added, "it was an opportunity to discover French cuisine."
It wasn't immediately clear what caused a blaze on Monday at the Marché des Enfants Rouges.
SARAH MEYSSONNIER/REUTERS
Ariel Weil, the mayor of central Paris, said on social media that the market had been "totally devastated" and "ravaged by flames,"
but that firefighters had managed to control the blaze.
In a statement, Catherine Pégard, France's culture minister, called the market "a place of life, memory, and camaraderie for Parisians and for many visitors from around the world."
Enfants Rouges translates to "red children." After a neighborhood orphanage closed in 1772, the market was named in memory of the children there, who had been dressed in red.
In 1982, the market was designated a historic monument. By the
1990s, though, it was a ruin. But when Parisians heard of plans to demolish the market and turn it into a parking lot, vendors and local residents staged a sit-in and slept outside the building to protect it, according to the city's official website.
The die-hards won, and renovations began. By the mid-2000s, the market had again become a center of life in Le Marais, a vibrant area that is the traditional heart of France's Jewish community.
On Monday morning, grief had replaced the customary bustle and buzz of the market.
Pierre Aidenbaum, who was an official in the area from 1995 to 2020, was one of the many people who came to see the destruction. Sitting in a cafe nearby, he recalled how the community had fought to save the market from becoming a parking lot and described how hope had been “restored in the neighborhood” when the site was renovated instead.
On Monday, though, the market in front of him was a skeleton. Every entrance was blocked. Onlookers murmured to one another, lamenting the loss. Instead of the pungent odor of cheese and the warm aroma of hot food, the smell of smoke hung heavy over the ruin.
"It's a disaster," Mr. Aidenbaum said.
Houthis Keep Up Drone and Missile Attacks on Saudis
Abbas Araghchi, Iran's foreign minister, offered to mediate between Saudi Arabia and the Tehran-backed Houthi militia.
ATTA KENAIRE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
By ERIKA SOLOMON
The Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen was fending off drones and cruise missiles launched toward Saudi Arabia on Monday, according to the Saudi state news media, the latest in a surge of attacks by the Iran-backed Houthi militia that have targeted the kingdom's airports.
There was no immediate confirmation of whether the attacks were intercepted. At least 13 people were killed when the Houthis struck the international airport in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, on Saturday — the deadliest attack on a Persian Gulf country since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.
The Saudi authorities said on Monday that operations would remain suspended at the Riyadh airport after they reported another deadly attack on the facility on Sunday.
Fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis rapidly escalated last month when Houthi forces seized Yemen's Red Sea coast, taking territory that sits alongside a strategic waterway for global trade and a key export route for Saudi oil. Saudi warplanes have been bombing Houthi positions in support of the internationally recognized Yemeni government, as its forces fight to retake the territory.
The Houthi militia has targeted Saudi oil facilities, and it attacked Riyadh on the eve of the WPC Energy Congress, an international gathering of oil officials and executives there.
"The events of recent weeks are serious," Prince Abdul Aziz bin Salman, the Saudi energy minister, told delegates at the event on Monday. "Our response must be equally serious."
The Houthis are one of several militant groups that Iran is allied with across the region, and part of what the Islamic republic calls its Axis of Resistance.
On Sunday, Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, offered to
Sanam Mahoozi and Lisa Friedman contributed reporting.
mediate between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis, warning that overlapping conflicts in the region had no military solution.
Mr. Araghchi spoke to his Saudi counterpart, Faisal bin Farhan, during a telephone call on Sunday night, according to a statement posted on social media by the Iranian minister's office.
"Insisting on a military approach and ignoring a political solution will further complicate the current situation," the statement, posted on Mr. Araghchi's Telegram channel, said.
The foreign minister said Iran stood "ready to provide any assistance to help initiate a dialogue" between the two sides.
The Saudi government said that the two ministers had spoken, though it made no reference to a mediation offer from Iran.
The attacks on the Riyadh airport set off an exchange of strikes, with Saudi-led forces targeting the airport in Sanaa, Yemen's Houthi-controlled capital, according to reports on Sunday in the local news media affiliated with the group. The Houthi-run health ministry said that a child had also been killed in a strike on a residential building in Sanaa.
The Saudi authorities have not commented on those assertions.
The Houthi militia has been fighting the internationally recognized government of Yemen, which is backed by Saudi Arabia, since 2014.
Emboldened by regional instability, the battle-hardened Houthis have far less to lose against their more powerful, wealthier enemies, even as they imperil Saudi Arabia's ambitions to transform itself into a global hub of business and tourism.
Many oil industry leaders — including the chief executives of
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Operations at the capital's airport are paused after a strike.
Exxon Mobil and BP — canceled their trips to Saudi Arabia for this week's gathering in Riyadh, according to two industry officials who were not authorized to discuss executive schedules.
The conflict has stoked further upheaval in the oil-rich Persian Gulf region, which was already reeling from the economic fallout of the U.S.-Iran war.
American and Iranian officials appear braced for the possibility that their stalemated regional conflict could spill back into the open, with the Pentagon drawing up new plans for strikes. Iran's national security adviser, Mohsen Rezaei, threatened on Sunday that if fighting were to resume, Iranian forces would target digital infrastructure in the Gulf, including data centers, cables and artificial intelligence facilities.
Though the Houthis have benefited from years of military and financial support from Iran, regional experts have long described them as among the most independent of the country's allied militant forces, with ambitions distinct from Tehran's.
Iran has been able at critical moments to curb the Houthis, said Farea Al-Muslimi, a Yemen and Persian Gulf specialist at Chatham House, a London-based research institute.
When Beijing mediated a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran in 2023, he said, Tehran promised to stop Houthi cross-border attacks on Saudi Arabia, and succeeded in doing so until the United States and Israel launched their war on Iran.
Mr. Al-Muslimi added that while the Houthis were largely autonomous on matters inside Yemen, they coordinated with Tehran on international strategy. "The Iranians know if they want to actually stop it, they can," he said.
Iranian officials cite the widening conflict in the region as a sign that their Gulf Arab neighbors should re-evaluate their longtime alliances with the United States. Iran and its allies have frequently targeted U.S. bases on Gulf territory during the war.
Iran has been urging the Gulf countries to engage with it diplomatically, part of an effort to sideline the United States as the principal power broker in the region, and drive out its military forces.
"We have always supported strengthening interaction and cooperation among the countries of the region," Esmail Baghaei, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, said in a news conference on Monday. He urged a strengthening of regional relations to create "a secure region free from the destructive interference of external actors."
Dozens Killed as Bombs Hit Mine on Sudan-Egypt Border
From Page AI
trolled by its enemy, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, in the far south of the country, in an effort to curtail a valuable source of finance.
The attack on Saturday was striking because it occurred in an army-controlled area largely untouched by fighting, and because the loudest accusations were directed at Egypt, a country that has been a staunch ally of Sudan's military throughout the war.
In February, The Times revealed a covert Egyptian drone base that supported the Sudanese military's war effort.
In a statement, Egypt's military spokesman said its forces were in the third phase of "a major campaign to combat illegal gold prospecting in the Eastern Desert," which came after leaflets were dropped to warn what he called "criminal elements."
But the statement insisted that Egyptian forces had been acting inside their own borders, and not in Sudanese territory.
Sudan's military avoided pointing fingers. On Monday, the military chief, Gen. Abdul Fattah al-Burhan, announced an investigation into what he called a "painful incident."
The bombing was notable in Su-
Sanjana Varghese and James McManagan contributed reporting.
dan, even during an atrocity-laden conflict that has seen credible accusations of genocide, chemical weapons use, mass rape and starvation.
The targets of the strike appeared to be poor, largely young miners laboring in harsh conditions in a remote area. Graphic footage filmed after the attack shows severely wounded civilians. Other videos taken by miners show fighter jets flying over the area and munitions striking the ground.
"Just scatter, guys! Scatter!" one witness shouts as a plume of smoke rises from a mountain and a plane is heard flying overhead.
One of the men described to The Times how the strikes unfolded.
Bahar Eldin Hassan said that warplanes and helicopters made several passes over the mine early on Saturday. From about 9 a.m., warplanes bombed the site at least three times over the course of an hour, he said in a video call.
About 35 people died in the first strike, he said, adding, "I cannot describe how terrible the scenes we saw were."
Artisanal mining, where poor men dig for riches at informal mines, is booming across Africa. Soaring prices for gold, copper and other minerals have drawn workers across a wide belt of the continent. But artisanal mining is also notorious for dangers and human rights abuses, including child
labor.
Mr. Adam, a student at Sudan University of Science and Technology, said he took shelter in a mining pit alongside a "terrified" young boy after the strikes. "He wanted to run away without knowing where he was going, but I managed to convince him to stay," he said. "When we came out, the scene was horrific. I broke down crying."
Footage appeared to show more than two dozen bodies wrapped in fabric following the strikes. In another video, a crowd is gathered outside a medical center where dozens of victims were reportedly taken, according to a local Sudanese report.
Videos taken after the strikes showed what appeared to be Egyptian munitions. One video showed what looked to be an unexploded Egyptian NASR 400 bomb, according to Trevor Ball, a former U.S. Army explosive ordnance disposal technician who analyzed the footage for The Times.
In June, Egypt's military said in a statement that it had begun a security campaign targeting criminal networks and what it described as illegal mining in southern Egypt, near the border with Sudan.
Its campaign included a Facebook video urging miners to leave the area before they were detained by the authorities.
Days later, several miners were killed on the Sudanese side of the border following an attack by Egypt's military, according to The Sudan Tribune and witness accounts posted on social media. Some reports said the Egyptians distributed leaflets warning miners that they could be "considered a target for immediate attack" if they remained in the area.
The Times was unable to immediately verify the precise location of the attacks on Saturday, given the expansive mountainous area where the footage was filmed. The Times confirmed that the footage did not appear online before Saturday, and geographic features in the video matched other footage showing the effects of the strikes.
The scenes depicted were consistent with local reporting, and several of the videos were posted to the TikTok accounts of miners who work in the area.
"Those killed were like brothers to us," Mr. Adam said. "We worked together, we ate together, we sat around chatting together. That was our lives."
Despite its dangers, gold mining has become an economic mainstay in Sudan during a war that has otherwise devastated the economy.
Even after a bombing, some miners said they had little choice but to continue.
Mr. Hassan, who uses his earnings to support eight brothers and one sister, said he expected to be back at work soon.
Inquiry of FlyDubai Attacker Puts Mosque Under Scrutiny
By VICTORIA KIM
SYDNEY, Australia — A mosque in a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, and its leader have come under the spotlight because the co-pilot of the Israel-bound FlyDubai flight attended it during the period when investigators say he started on his path to radicalization.
The suspect, whom officials haven't named but people familiar to the investigation have identified as the Omani citizen Hamam al-Hammami, 29, studied in Australia between 2015 and 2017. He is in custody in the United Arab Emirates, where he has been questioned by investigators on suspicion of attacking the captain in an attempt to crash the plane last month, according to a statement by Hamad Saif Al Shamsi, the attorney general.
Mr. Al Shamsi said on Friday that the co-pilot's "drift toward extremism and terrorism" began in Australia, where he was exposed to ideas that led him to attempt what investigators described as a Sept. 11-inspired attack. He pursued a career in aviation to carry out that plan, Mr. Al Shamsi said.
The Australian authorities began an investigation last week into the suspect's time in the country.
The Emirati authorities said the suspect, who was attending the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, became “acquainted with individuals associated with an institution known as ‘My Centre,’” a Muslim youth center that also serves as a mosque in Melbourne.
The center, also known as the Multicultural Youth Center, has been a long-established part of the city's northern suburbs and is run by Samir Mohtadi, who also goes by the name Abu Hamza. Mr. Al Shamsi said the co-pilot had mentioned Abu Hamza was the leader of the mosque, but did not offer details. Whether they had a relationship was unclear. The center has seen bouts of controversy sparked by statements from Mr. Mohtadi but was not known to have a radicalizing influence, according to members of the Muslim community and researchers who follow extremism.
Mr. Mohtadi is a complicated figure who in the past has testified in a criminal trial against those who plotted a terrorist attack. He has drawn scrutiny over the years for being wary of vaccinations during the pandemic, posting online tirades about Zionists and appearing to condone spousal abuse. But he was not known to be a proponent of violent ideologies.
Moustapha Sarakibi, managing director of Board of Imams Victoria, said Mr. Mohtadi was not a fringe or marginalized figure, and that My Centre was a multipurpose facility offering sports programs and drug counseling in addition to religious services, open to anyone.
"It's not a place that propagates this sort of thing generally, not a place that would condone violence or any terrorist groups," said Mr. Sarakibi, who is also a chaplain at the technology institute. Mr. Mohtadi "has been very outspoken, but if you go back to his speeches, he speaks openly against ISIS and these groups," he said.
On Sunday, Mr. Mohtadi posted a video on the Facebook page of Islamic Information and Services Network of Australasia, which runs My Centre, obliquely referring to the allegations without directly addressing them.
"Regardless how much you explain yourself to people, that's it, they're fixated with their idea," he said in the video. "The best thing, sometimes, is not to say anything."
The co-pilot's time as a student could become a political flashpoint in Australia, where immigration and student visas have become hot-button issues with an ascendant far-right party frequently taking aim at the Muslim community. On Monday, Pauline Hanson, head of the One Nation Party, released a statement assailing public funding the center has received.
The years when the suspect is said to have studied in Australia were a fraught period for Muslims in the country, according to researchers and religious leaders, amid concerns young Australians were being drawn to the violent messages of the Islamic State.
"This was the height of Islamic State radicalization and recruitment," said Greg Barton, chair in global Islamic politics at Deakin University in Victoria, currently based at the school's Indonesia campus. Such ideas likely spread on the periphery of mosques, he said. "If you were drawn to edgy rhetoric, you might share it with people you bumped into at the car park or coffee hall."
Debra Smith, who has worked on countering violent extremism, said the suspect's radicalization was likely far more shaped by the internet, which was being flooded with jihadist materials during that period, than establishments like My Centre.
"What we worry about is people who pull away from community-oriented places, ones who go into smaller breakaway groups," said Ms. Smith, a professor at Victoria University.
Ahmed Sobh, manager of Melbourne-based Middle East Radio and a family friend of Mr. Mohtadi's, said the cleric had long worked to set young Muslims on the right path and away from negative influences.
Mr. Mohtadi testified for the prosecution in the 2007 trial of Abdul Nacer Benbrika, who was convicted on terrorism charges for plotting attacks on public facilities including the Melbourne Cricket Ground. At the trial, he said Mr. Benbrika subscribed to a "harsh" version of Islam, according to court records.
JACK GUEZ/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
Officials said the suspect in a cockpit attack last month attended a mosque near Melbourne during his "drift toward extremism."
National
The New York Times
Alma Hernandez, a Democratic state representative in Arizona who is Mexican American and Jewish, has bolstered her home's security with a fingerprint-activated lock, iron bars and cameras. The police recommended she remove two trees. "Politicians are no longer treated like we're human," said Ms. Hernandez, who is running for State Senate.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ADRIANA ZEHIRAUSKAS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
After Threats, Arizona Lawmaker Asks, 'Is It Really Worth It?'
received his first death threat three days later.
Local Elected Officials Across the U.S. Endure a Barrage of Violent Messages
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By REIS THEBAULT
TUCSON, Ariz. — Alma Hernandez's home used to feel like her sanctuary. Now it feels like a fortress.
In recent years she has installed cameras, alarms and a lock that opens with her fingerprint. She put iron bars on her windows and a blinding floodlight on her front porch. She cut down two trees in her yard after the police told her they could aid an intruder, and her brother moved in to protect her when the death threats intensified.
Ms. Hernandez, an Arizona state representative since 2019, did not know she was signing up for a dangerous job. But these days, serving in public office increasingly means looking over your shoulder.
"Politicians are no longer treated like we're human," she said.
Ms. Hernandez, a fourth-term Democratic lawmaker who is Mexican American and Jewish, has received threats from the far left and the far right. They have come in response to her outspoken support for Israel, her championing of vaccines and her first campaign, which drew attention from David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
Violent threats have arrived via her social media feed, her email inbox and her office phones. Her home address has been circulated online, and her mother has received menacing calls. Last year, an aide's car parked outside Ms. Hernandez's house was struck by gunfire. This year, the state police opened an investigation after someone sent her a social media message pledging to "find, torture and brutally murder" her and her friends, along with one of her two Chihuahuas.
So pervasive are the threats that they have altered not only Ms. Hernandez's life, but also those of her family, friends and neighbors, who now keep a close eye on her home and warn her about suspicious activity. The intimidation has even influenced her approach to policymaking.
"I've asked myself, Is it really worth it?" said Ms. Hernandez, 33, who was the youngest woman ever to be elected to the Arizona Legislature. "I do wonder now, why would any 25-year-old want to do this with their life?"
Across America, threats of violence haunt the daily existence of elected officials, their staff members and their families. A New York Times investigation has found that the nation's highest-profile politicians — including governors and members of Congress — face consistent violent harassment.
Studies show that violent threats are also rising against lower-level elected
Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting.
leaders, who number more than 500,000 and serve in state legislatures, city councils and school boards.
In a survey conducted this year by Princeton University and CivicPulse, nearly 20 percent of 460 local elected officials across the country reported receiving threats during the first three months of 2026. Just like at the federal level, the perilous climate is pushing some local public servants out of office early and causing others to forgo running altogether, the researchers said.
But unlike national political figures, most state and local officials have few resources to help keep them safe. Faced with violent threats, they are often left to fend for themselves. And after a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband were assassinated last year, many say they feel more exposed than ever.
City and town officials are even more vulnerable, experts say, and in Arizona they have been targeted repeatedly in recent years. The Bridging Divides Initiative, a research center based in Princeton's policy school, found 57 confirmed threats against Arizona county and municipal lawmakers since 2022, a figure researchers say is an undercount.
In Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, death threats toward local officials grew sharply after the 2020 election as President Trump's unfounded claims of voter fraud fueled a torrent of conspiracy theories. One county supervisor was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and decided not to seek re-election, while threats to two other officials resulted in a prison sentence.
At the state level, Arizona legislators from both parties have been targeted. In 2022, a former middle school music teacher emailed Senator Wendy Rogers, a Republican, and vowed to shoot her in the head. Last year, Arizona's secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, allowed candidates for office to use campaign cash to pay for security, citing the dangerous political environment.
That decision helped Analise Ortiz, a Democratic state senator. Last year, her online posts alerting residents that immigration agents were near a school attracted a string of sinister threats, including several that said she would be hanged.
"Walk around with security cause I promise you three months," one person wrote. Another said Ms. Ortiz's "car and home and family are easy to find."
Ms. Ortiz made a list of safe places and lived in undisclosed locations for two weeks as the threats rolled in, she said.
"It's remarkable that in the United States of America in 2026, as a state senator, I had to fear for my life," said Ms. Ortiz, whose district is west of Phoenix.
When she returned home, Ms. Ortiz, one of the statehouse's leading progressives, installed a camera system and petitioned a court to conceal her address.
Analise Ortiz, a Democratic state senator in Arizona, was threatened with hanging after posting about immigration agents near a school. She bought a gun. "It's horrible we have to think that way," she said.
She also bought a gun and trained to use it.
"It's horrible we have to think that way," Ms. Ortiz said. "But ultimately, my home and loved ones need to be protected."
Ms. Ortiz and Ms. Hernandez represent opposing factions of Arizona's Democratic Party, but they agree that violent rhetoric has reshaped their lives.
"What she experienced and what I experienced are symptoms of the same problem," Ms. Ortiz said.
DANIEL HERNANDEZ, Ms. Hernandez's brother, who was with Representative Gabrielle Giffords in 2011 when she was shot.
Political violence has long shadowed the Hernandez family, three members of which have held elected office. Ms. Hernandez's brother, Daniel, was an intern for Representative Gabrielle Giffords in 2011 when the Democratic congresswoman was shot outside a Safeway in Tucson.
Mr. Hernandez, then 20 years old, provided first aid to Ms. Giffords as an ambulance raced to the scene. Mr. Hernandez, suddenly in the national spotlight,
"I've seen people at their most unhinged, or I thought I had," said Mr. Hernandez, who went on to serve as a state representative. "And then it keeps getting worse."
He said he had been shocked by the amount of hate — especially the antisemitism — directed at Ms. Hernandez and their sister, Consuelo Hernandez, another Democratic state lawmaker. By late 2023, he had become so worried that he insisted on moving into Alma Hernandez's Tucson house for extra protection. He still lives with her part-time.
Ms. Hernandez first received threats during her first term, when one of her bills so angered vaccine opponents that they flooded her social media and office with ominous messages. The bill, which would have limited vaccine exemptions, went nowhere, but the furor transformed her work: Ms. Hernandez, who has a master's degree in public health, now says she will never again sponsor provaccine legislation. The cause isn't worth the harassment, she said.
After the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Ms. Hernandez said, the number of threats increased. She said her vocal support for the Jewish state has drawn more violent messages in the last three years than at any other time in her career.
Ms. Hernandez's boyfriend, Sam Segal, has given her pepper spray and offered to teach her to use his firearms. They've also rehearsed chilling scenarios. If she's attacked by a man, Mr. Segal has told her, "kick right in the middle and run."
'I've seen people at their most unhinged, or I thought I had. And then it keeps getting worse.'
"You don't know what's legit and what's not," Mr. Segal said of the threats, many anonymous. "There are extremists out there who will go the whole nine yards, and I can't be with her 24/7."
The threats have made the couple nervous about having children, they said.
"Would we be OK with bringing a family into this environment?" Ms. Hernandez said. "Quite frankly, the answer right now is no."
A scary moment unfolded last year, just one day before Minnesota's former House speaker was killed.
Mr. Hernandez, who was then running for Congress, was meeting with his campaign team at Ms. Hernandez's house when a bullet shattered the window of his aide's car, which was parked outside. The police never found the shooter, nor did they determine whether the gunfire was targeted. But the incident deeply rattled the family.
If Ms. Hernandez wins her election in November, she will serve a two-year term in the State Senate.
She said she had not thought much about her political future beyond that. But if she could go back in time, she said, she would choose a quieter, less stressful way to begin her career.
"I would tell Alma almost nine years ago, 'Girl, wait. Go live your life,' Ms. Hernandez said. "This has not been an easy time."
California Crew Puts 1,300 Unblinking Eyes on Wildfire Watch
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From Remote Areas, Network of Cameras Gives Early Warnings
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By JOHN BRANCH
Perched at the front line of California's fight against wildfires is a 41-year-old named Colby Nicholson and three other roaming MacGyvers in "Alert California" work shirts.
On this warm June morning, they were on a cliff 1,500 feet above the vineyards and small towns of Napa Valley. Several major fires had ripped through this area in the past decade.
Mr. Nicholson and the others peered past the toes of their boots. They pointed toward a winding, dead-end road connecting houses and steep driveways in a scrubby, miles-long chasm called Soda Canyon.
That was the blind spot that local fire officials wanted to see.
These are the fire spotters of today — remote, high-tech cameras attached to communication towers, old lookouts or purpose-built tripods on high vantage points. Alert California's viewpoints have become a vital tool for firefighters and a ubiquitous presence in emergency coverage. Mr. Nicholson and his crew are the ones who put cameras in place and keep them running, so that everyone else can see.
Wide-view surveillance cameras, from highway traffic cams to ski-area web-cams, are not new; Alert California's origins go back 25 years. But now, injected with the latest technology and placed in our most remote locations, these systems are increasingly the clearest eyes on today's worsening disasters.
Since 2023, artificial intelligence has instantly scoured Alert California camera footage, spotting wildfires before a 911 call is received in most cases. Officials then use the camera feeds to monitor the fires, coordinating teams at the scene. Real-time views are available to anyone on the Alert California website, and screen grabs and time-lapse footage help fuel fire incident pages and popular apps like Watch Duty.
"This system has changed the world of response," J.C. Greenberg, deputy chief of Napa County Fire Department, said as he watched the Soda Canyon installation. "We have instant visibility and instant information that we need to make response decisions."
Some fires grow quickly out of control no matter how soon they are spotted. That was evident in some of the state's biggest fires, like the Eaton and Palisades fires of 2025, fueled by exceedingly dry terrain and high winds. Alert California cameras on rooftops in Los Angeles captured the Palisades blaze, but that wasn't enough to prevent the tragedy.
But for those whose careers and lives depend on what the cameras display on screens across the state, Mr. Nicholson's crew delivers the view from the other end of the lens — the dirty job of providing high-tech, real-time, open-source wildfire surveillance from places humans rarely venture.
They drive tens of thousands of miles around the state each year in a Ford F-150 pickup and a van. They install and maintain camera systems on public and private land, in places like rock ledges, 300-foot mobile phone towers, water towers and rooftops.
"Let's put it here," Mr. Nicholson said. By day's end, there was a 12-foot tripod holding two cameras inside protective globes, powered by solar panels and battery packs. The cameras were connected by satellite Wi-Fi and joined a growing network of nearly 1,300 remote, unblinking eyes on the most fire-prone landscapes of California.
“Most trips end up with someone bleeding,” Mr. Nicholson said. He shrugged and smiled, his usual disposition.
Mr. Nicholson has been doing this for 12 years. His role as senior engineering supervisor is to set up all the IT components of the systems in the field while maintaining a contagious can-do vibe for his crew.
These days it includes John Connolly, a talkative 30-year-old ex-Marine who does most of the tallest tower climbs; Jim Conley, a burly 63-year-old who surfs, rides motocross bikes and acts like a construction foreman; and Kai Erwin, 30, the quiet, self-described "gofer" of the group.
Their boss, Neal Driscoll, is principal investigator at Alert California and a University of California, San Diego, professor. He has a woolly mustache and looks a bit like the actor Nick Offerman in "Parks and Recreation."
"I hire for attitude," Dr. Driscoll said. "I want people who don't give up, who exploit other people's strengths and not their weaknesses and who like a cold beer at the end of the day."
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Spotting a Fire in Its Infancy
Alert California is based at U.C. San Diego and the field team works out of a nondescript building within steps of the Pacific Ocean. Mr. Nicholson pointed to the beach where he surfs.
"That's why I love this job," he said. "Not only do I get to travel and help people, but I have an office here."
He and Mr. Connolly stood in a storage room lined with Costco-like shelves filled with equipment — surveillance cameras, solar panels, satellite dishes, 80-pound batteries, modems, plus wiring and cables, nuts and bolts, wrenches and clamps, sledges and shovels, and anything else that might prove useful in attaching heavy equipment to structures in the wild.
Summer is especially busy. The crew may install cameras at a dozen sites during a two-week trip, come home to repack, then do it again. Along the way, they repair cameras that have gone dark because of dead batteries, rodent-chewed cables, lightning strikes, last winter's blizzards or the latest wildfire.
Some of the most captivating footage comes when fire engulfs the cameras. Other popular images show nesting California condors.
The network of remote sensors that eventually grew into Alert California began in 2001 to detect and communicate seismic activity around San Diego. When the 2003 Cedar fire near San Diego burned more than a quarter-million acres and killed 15 people, it was clear cameras would be useful. A local utility asked to have more than two dozen installed.
State officials, utilities and fire departments were convinced that investing in more cameras was a smart move, and linking them into one open-source, nonprofit system made the most sense. Alert California's budget can approach \$14 million per year, Dr. Driscoll said, funded mostly by Cal Fire, the state's firefighting agency, and large utility companies.
Fire officials cite examples of little-known fires that were snuffed out quickly thanks to early detection.
"The greatest success stories are the fires you've never heard about," said
Colby Nicholson setting up a camera system near the Shadequarter Lookout. The team installs and maintains camera systems on public and private land.
Clockwise from left: members of the Alert California team installing a camera to monitor wildfire activity near Napa, Calif.; the team on the move; John Connolly, who does most of the teams tallest tower climbs, descending from the abandoned Shadequarter Lookout, above Visalia; and Mr. Connolly setting up a camera on the lookout.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MAX WHITTAKER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Falko Kuester, co-director of Alert California and an engineering professor at U.C. San Diego.
Spotting a blaze in its infancy allows officials in command centers to determine whether the smoke is truly a wildfire, and not from a rancher burning debris or fog rolling through a valley. They can decide how many firefighters to send, whether to strike by air or let the fire burn while being monitored.
Dr. Driscoll pointed to October 2017, when fires in Napa and Sonoma Counties were the most destructive in state history at the time — since overtaken by several other fires — and killed dozens of people. Two years later, new cameras in parts of the same region helped lead to quick detection and remote management of the huge Kincade fire. There was less destruction and no fatalities.
Dr. Driscoll wants to grow the network to 1,800 cameras and fill gaps in coverage. Local and regional fire officials have worrisome spots, like Soda Canyon. More and more, people request cameras on their property.
Each installation involves two cameras, in case one of them fails. They have different strengths — to see long distances, to capture crisp images at night, to see through thick smoke.
One camera is set up to spin 360 degrees every 2 minutes, capturing six frames per rotation. The other can be controlled remotely by fire officials who want to aim certain directions or zoom in tight on specific spots.
Artificial intelligence, introduced to the system in 2023, is a growing part of surveillance. Dr. Driscoll said this summer that 51 percent of California wildfires are first spotted through A.I. and the ratio is growing quickly.
"We are the science of risk reduction," Driscoll said. "I love that phrase."
ALERT CALIFORNIA
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A Well-Rehearsed Routine
The field team woke up at a Holiday Inn in Visalia. It had installed cameras that week on a mountaintop fire station, on a cellular tower and on an old lookout at nearly 7,000 feet.
From top, in still images from Alert California footage: a fire that eventually engulfed the camera, and a nesting California condor. Alert California's viewpoints have become a ubiquitous presence in emergency coverage.
ALERT CALIFORNIA
Lightning and high winds are persistent worries on installation days. Simply reaching the site can be the scariest part. There are stories of trucks stuck on precarious dirt roads and tires hanging off cliff edges. Long hikes to the sites are not an option. The heavy equipment can't be carried far.
On this day, the road to the work site got higher, narrower, windier and dustier before ending atop Shadequarter Mountain. The four-story tower, sheathed in peeling sheet metal, was built in 1964 and abandoned in the late 1980s because of budget cuts.
It stood 4,000 feet above Visalia and California's vast Central Valley. There were mountains in every other direction. The view was pocked with black splotches and burned-out trees, where the 2015 Rough fire, the 2021 KNP Complex fire and the 2024 Coffee Pot fire combined to burn about a quarter-million acres.
If only the system had been in place back then, maybe the response might have been different. Faster.
In a sunny spot at Shadequarter, the crew, with the silent choreography of a blue-collar dance troupe, built the tripod — a retrofitted, off-the-shelf deer stand — and anchored the legs with 60-pound bags of Quikrete. Digging holes can violate regulations regarding historic and Indigenous locations.
They attached an array of solar panels. They bolted on a large metal cabinet to house electronics, including two 80-pound lithium batteries. A StarLink satellite receiver was fixed atop the apparatus.
A fire official mentioned that a rancher sometimes ran cattle atop Shadequarter. The crew discussed whether cows would use the setup as a scratching post.
"I don't think they'll tip it over, but they might break a solar panel," Mr. Nicholson said. "Cows are heavy."
It was decided: Local officials would build a short chain-link fence the next day.
The crew ran wires through the cow-proof conduit about 30 feet to the tower. Mr. Connolly scaled the outside to string wiring to the top. Others, climbing interior stairs splotched in rodent feces, attached each camera to its own pole in front of now-broken windows.
Back on the ground, Mr. Nicholson sat at the tripod, holding a laptop. He could see the view from the cameras. He could move them, zoom them, spin them — just as remote fire officials would be able to do. He spotted smudges on the cameras and sent someone to clean them.
With a series of commands and passwords, the cameras were connected to the system. Suddenly, anyone in the world could see the view from the top of the fire tower.
The field team snaked downhill in a cloud of dust. Mr. Nicholson and the others didn't know where they were headed because the schedule was in flux. They didn't have a hotel for the night and they didn't have dinner plans.
But they could use a cold beer.
Mamdani Orders Reforms After Fatal Police Shooting
ficers Alongi and Cianfrocco.
By MILES G. COHEN
Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on Monday that the New York Police Department had reformed how it would handle parts of its oversight after an officer was allowed to retire before facing a disciplinary trial over the death of a teenager.
Mr. Mamdani also ordered the police to conduct a review of their use-of-force policies, which were central to an oversight board's decision to recommend excessive force charges against the officer, Salvatore Alongi, in the death of the 19-year-old Win Rozario in 2024.
"When the government uses force against a New Yorker, the standard for accountability must be at its highest," Mr. Mamdani said in a statement. "Every New Yorker deserves to know that force will be used lawfully, carefully and only when necessary."
The announcement on Monday came as Mr. Mamdani has faced criticism from his base for not doing enough to transform public safety — a pledge he made during his mayoral campaign.
Tensions flared further last week as the Democratic Socialists of America called on the mayor to fire Jessica S. Tisch, the police commissioner, after the shooting of a Dominican man in the Bronx by federal immigration agents. Federal officials said the man, Oscar Belgal, had a string of arrests and “indirect or direct knowledge” of a shooting that injured an off-duty customs officer in Manhattan in July 2025. Mr. Belgal accelerated when the agents approached his vehicle, they added.
The new measures, the mayor's office said, were a response to Mr. Rozario's killing and the department's failure to notify the review board responsible for prosecuting Officer Alongi's case that he was on the path to retirement.
Last September, the Civilian Complaint Review Board voted to substantiate claims that Officer Alongi and Officer Matthew Cianfrocco had used excessive force when they fatally shot Mr. Rozario in Queens after the police said he lunged at them with scissors. Days later, Ms. Tisch recommended that charges move ahead to an administrative trial. In December 2025, Letitia James, the attorney general, declined to bring criminal charges against Of-
In August the C.C.R.B asked the police about Mr. Alongi's status and learned that he had retired in May, preventing the case against him from going forward, according to the board and a chronology of the events provided by the police.
According to an agreement between the agencies, it is the Police Department's responsibility to inform the watchdog board when an officer facing departmental charges files for retirement. In those cases, the review board can then expedite the prosecution, before the officer's pension is finalized.
After news of Mr. Alongi's retirement, Ms. Tisch said the failure was a result of "human error" and apologized for it.
"When we make a mistake, we need to acknowledge it," she said in a statement.
After the failed communication came to light, the Police Department put in place a new notification system to "facilitate the completion of the disciplinary process before an officer retires," according to the mayor's office.
Still, Notan Eva Costa and Francis Rozario, the parents of Mr. Rozario, said they were "disgusted" when they learned that the officer charged with misconduct in their son's death could no longer be prosecuted.
"We're disgusted by Commissioner Tisch's response to our family exposing that the N.Y.P.D. let Alongi retire with a full pension, without standing trial," the family members said in a statement, released by Justice Committee, an advocacy group.
Dakota Gardner, a spokesman for the Civilian Complaint Review Board, said the trial of Mr. Cianfrocco, the other officer facing departmental charges, "will continue as planned."
Patrick Hendry, the president of the police officers' union, said there should be no review of the use-of-force policies and called the C.C.R.B's recommendations in the case "blatantly biased."
"The mayor's radical base wants a wholesale dismantling of the N.Y.P.D. and it's clear this announcement is an attempt to appease them," Mr. Hendry said in a statement. "It won't work, and it won't make New Yorkers any safer."
Waves From Powerful Storm Pound Homes in California
By TIM ARANGO
Large waves from Post-Tropical Storm Rachel slammed into homes on the beachfront in Long Beach, Calif., over the weekend, leaving some of the houses appearing close to collapsing.
Long Beach city officials had red-tagged 13 homes on the peninsula, meaning all residents were forced to evacuate, in preparation for the surge in water levels from the remnants of Rachel, which moved inland from Baja California late Saturday night. One other home was yellow-tagged, meaning the occupants were ordered to prepare to evacuate at a moment's notice.
The storm surge produced dramatic visuals of large waves crashing into beachfront homes over the weekend, and while there appeared to be cracks emerging in the foundations of some, there were no reports of any of them collapsing yet, according to a spokesperson for Mayor Rex Richardson of Long Beach.
At a news briefing on Saturday, Mayor Richardson warned residents to be prepared for potential flooding driven by the El Niño weather pattern, saying, "Rachel's effects will reach the whole city, not just the peninsula." The city set up sand bag distribution sites, and the mayor asked residents to keep them on hand for "the entire El Niño season."
In an interview on Sunday, Mayor Richardson said the city had received less rain than anticipated, and that it had been able to manage minor flooding with large sandbags placed ahead of the storm. Some parking lots were flooded, and there were tidal pools on the beaches.
He said on Sunday afternoon that the city was still preparing for the possibility of water breaching the sea walls during high tide.
The Long Beach marathon went ahead as scheduled on Sunday, although the route was altered to avoid the bike path along the beach.
Elsewhere in Southern California, the National Weather Service had issued a tropical storm watch for San Diego County, but it was called off on Sunday.
In Zoo Bathroom During Isaias, Honking Flamingos Win Hearts
By MAIA SPOTO
The big snakes had been coiled into trash cans. The male billy goats were holed up in the rabbit exhibit.
But it was the flamingos of ZooWorld in Panama City Beach, Fla., who would ultimately become overnight celebrities after a video posted on social media during Hurricane Isaias made the rounds. It has been viewed nearly two million times.
The 30 flamingos, honking and frolicking, were sheltering in a bathroom, bumbling between the sink and the stalls, shedding pink feathers onto a grippy floor mat.
The crew included Mr. Sparklepants, 10, the largest and most dominant of the flock. Scuttle and Mango Shrimproll, both 3, who had been raised by a ZooWorld zookeeper since they were eggs, were also there.
The cramped quarters for the pink birds were necessary to protect them from ferocious winds that threatened the enclosure where they normally sleep. So the flock of flamingos, known as a flamboyance, was ushered into the bathroom, whose block walls served as something of a fortress.
A mirror provided entertainment — the birds, seeing other flamingos in the reflection, began showing off.
Before Isaias made landfall on Friday, Kylie Appleton, the senior zookeeper, took a video, and then the team boarded up the door.
Erika Newell, the zoo's chief operating officer, spent Friday night in an apartment on the grounds, waking up every hour as the storm lashed the Gulf Coast to check on all the animals.
Crammed as they were, the flamingos were in the perfect spot, she said. The tight space calmed them down.
Ms. Newell is part of a network that provides support to zoos, aquariums and sanctuaries during natural disasters.
Since Ms. Newell started working with ZooWorld in 2017, she and the creatures have weathered a number of storms, including Michael, the Category 5 hurricane that brought devastation to the Florida Panhandle in 2018.
"You just have to say, 'Well, I either get these animals inside or they don't make it,' she said. "So you find a way to get those animals inside and you get very, very creative."
2026 Election
State of the Race
With cash to burn, Republicans try to distance themselves from Trump's unpopular policies, but time is dwindling.
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A Show of Support for a Vulnerable Colleague
From left, Representative Rob Bresnahan, a Republican, getting some support for his campaign in Pennsylvania's Eighth Congressional District from Speaker Mike Johnson and Representatives Lisa McClain and Carlos A. Giménez last week in Hazleton.
RACHEL WISNIEWSKI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
By REID J. EPSTEIN
WASHINGTON — The Republican Party's hopes of saving its majorities in Congress increasingly appear to depend on a few possible outcomes: G.O.P. advantages in money and on the map pay off, the polls are wrong, or a major news development suddenly brightens the party's prospects.
In the meantime, Republicans in competitive races are doing whatever they can to try to loosen their ties to President Trump's agenda, which is dragging their party down with just three weeks to go before the midterm elections.
There have been new ads stating opposition to Trump's tariffs from candidates who supported them, calls to end the war in Iran from candidates who backed it and efforts to look bipartisan from candidates who pledged to be Trump's top allies.
The debates last week made clear that Republicans are on the back foot. Questions about high prices, tariffs and the war dominated the sessions in battleground states. While G.O.P. advertising often aims to link Democrats to their party's left-wing figures and stoke disputes about transgender athletes, cost-of-living issues are paramount to voters this year.
Trump's rhetoric is not helping his party. Even as his own approval ratings have plummeted, he urges voters to pretend that he is on the ballot. He extols data centers that are even less popular than he is. And he has shown no inclination to back off from his positions on the war in Iran or tariffs.
But then there is the money.
Thanks to Trump's super PACs and well-heeled political allies, Republicans still hold a commanding financial advantage. The billionaire Elon Musk has directed more than \$276 million to Republicans since the start of July.
Republicans hope that will help them pull through on a House map they sought to redraw in their favor and a Senate map that features plenty of races in red states. But the time to change minds and move votes is shrinking by the day.
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The Battle for the Senate
Republicans have all but conceded the race in North Carolina to the Democrat, Roy Cooper, a popular former governor. In Georgia, Senator Jon Ossoff has a commanding lead over Representative Mike Collins. And now Democrats are on offense in deep-red Kansas, with Senate Majority PAC, the party's main super PAC, beginning \$5 million worth of ads in the state.
According to polls, Democratic candidates are leading or running neck and neck in Alaska, Iowa, Ohio and Texas — all places Trump won three times by substantial margins. He and Vice President JD Vance have aimed to energize the base with appearances in those states, but the polls suggest the Democrats are holding their own.
In the eyes of Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, Democrats even have a chance to take back the majority partly because of his recruiting efforts. In an interview on Friday, he claimed credit for getting Cooper, former Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and former Representative Mary Peltola of Alaska into their races and helping Josh Turek win his primary in Iowa.
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The Race for the House
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The Battle for the Senate
Notes: Data is as of Oct. 9. Senate races rated as leaning or likely are grouped together as favoring the party. To control the Senate, Democrats would need to win 51 seats to overcome Vice President JD Vance's tie-breaking vote for Republicans. Source: The Cook Political Report race ratings.
"I couldn't accept the map as is because the map as is consigns us to a minority, all things being equal, just because of the way the states are structured," Schumer said. "So we had to expand the map. I didn't accept the original map. I worked to build a better one."
Still, some Democrats worry about Senate races that ought to be easier for them. Contests remain tight in Maine, Michigan and New Hampshire.
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The Race for the House
Things do not look promising for House Republicans' hopes of retaining their majority.
The Cook Political Report on Friday shifted 18 districts toward Democrats. Two Iowa seats, held by Representatives Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, are now considered "lean Democratic."
That is in addition to Republicans' already punting on the Omaha-based district held by the retiring Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska.
Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the House majority whip, said the issue is that Republican voters may be too "satisfied" with Trump to vote in November.
"The midterms, you typically have the party that wins the White House is satisfied," Emmer said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "If our people will turn out — you may be satisfied, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't vote. You show up and vote, we're going to be fine."
Democrats need to flip just three seats to take a House majority. Many election forecasters now suggest they will do much better than that. During a discussion last week, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, repeatedly declined to predict how many seats his party would win.
He did, however, suggest that Democrats would be able to re-
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ONE POLL NUMBER
76%
That's the percentage of Ohio voters who said Trump's policies have increased the cost of living in the state in a CNN/SSRS poll. The poll found Brown, the Democrat, up by six percentage points over Senator Jon Husted, the Republican, Trump and Vance have both visited the state recently in an attempt to increase support for Husted.
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QUOTE OF THE WEEK
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'If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery, Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club.'
Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia
Ossoff pulled no punches in his debate attacks on Representative Mike Collins, his Republican opponent in Georgia's Senate race. He said Collins had "hired half the Third Reich," a reference to Collins's hiring of aides who had espoused white nationalist and antisemitic views.
Collins responded that he had "condemned racism, antisemitism, hate."
Ruth Igielnik contributed reporting.
peat their successes from 2018, the last midterm with Trump in the White House.
"Past performance is not evidence of future results," he said. "But it provides at least a path for us to ascertain what is possible."
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The Money
Even for Musk, a quarter-billion dollars is a lot to spend on politics in just three months.
The billionaire has once again become the largest single donor to Republican causes. The roughly \$276 million he directed to groups during July, August and September means his tab for the 2026 elections is now about \$366 million.
Musk's funds are split between \$158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, the main Senate G.O.P. super PAC; over \$76 million to America PAC, his own outlet that focuses on voter turnout; \$20 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, which supports House Republicans; and other donations. One of them reflects Musk's interest in the Texas Senate race: He gave \$10 million to a super PAC backing Ken Paxton, the Republican who polls show trails James Talarico, the Democratic candidate trying to become the first in his party to win a Texas Senate seat since 1988.
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Top Talker
After vanishing from the campaign trail for nine days, Talarico emerged at the Austin City Limits music festival on Friday. He said he'd been home sick with the flu.
Talarico's Republican opponent, Paxton, had been making hay out of Talarico's whereabouts. What is next in the Texas campaign is unclear: Talarico on Saturday challenged Paxton to debate, and Trump has suggested that Paxton should debate, but Paxton has yet to agree to a debate.
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The Early Vote
In five states with competitive Senate races, 615,100 ballots have already been cast.
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On the Issues
Trump's latest idea to bring down gas prices — importing diesel fuel from Russia — got a chilly reception from some of his fellow Republicans, including a few in battleground races. Former Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan and Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska, who are locked in tight Senate races, disapproved of the idea. Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania said on Saturday that he would force a vote to block Russian oil purchases. The U.S. has forbidden importing Russian fuel since 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine.
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On the Ground
In Maine, the cost of home heating oil is surging along with prices of seemingly everything else, forcing voters to pay more to stay warm just as fall temperatures drop.
Republicans concede the costs — up 80 percent over a year ago to fill a standard heating oil tank — are a problem for Senator Susan Collins, who backed the Iran war that drove up oil prices before she called for it to end.
A Trump Loyalist and a ‘Socialist’ Trade Jabs at South Carolina’s Senate Debate
By EMILY DAVIES
Senator Darline Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Dr. Annie Andrews, a Democrat and pediatrician, faced off in a televised debate for the first time on Sunday evening in a Senate contest that polls show is surprisingly close for such a conservative state.
Ms. Graham, who was appointed to her seat over the summer after the death of her brother, Lindsey Graham, is under pressure to show voters that she is fluent with policy issues despite her limited experience. During her last appearance on a debate stage, she said she was “not that informed on national security,” an answer that went viral online and called attention to what is perhaps her greatest vulnerability.
Dr. Andrews faces hurdles of her own, despite the favorable winds that both parties see blowing for Democrats this year: proving to voters that she can win a seat that a Democrat has not held this century. Last month, the Cook Political Report shifted the race from solidly Republican to likely Republican. In a state that President Trump carried just two years ago by more than 17 percentage points, the contest remains at the outer reaches of the Democratic Party's ambitions this year.
On Sunday, Ms. Graham repeated the same talking points and articulated few policy positions, doing little to ease concerns about her weaknesses but avoiding a major gaffe, unlike in her primary debate. Here are five takeaways from their debate.
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Two candidates framing each other as disloyal to South Carolina
Ms. Graham set out to depict Dr. Andrews as a candidate who, if elected, would not "stand up to socialist Democrats" who "cheered in the streets of New York" over the Hamas-led attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Dr. Andrews called Ms. Graham the "White House's ambassador to South Carolina" who "considers the job to be to read their scripts and do their bidding," referring to her relationship with Mr. Trump.
Dr. Andrews has a history of emphatically supporting transgender people and of using language she since has softened in her general election bid. And Ms. Graham won the Republican primary election only after Mr. Trump endorsed her and took significant steps, including a trip to South Carolina, to elevate her above two more experienced opponents.
In a race where each side is trying to paint the other as beholden to forces outside South Carolina, it appears likely that the outcome will come down to which of those divergent portraits voters choose to believe.
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Dr. Andrews made a play for independents and Republicans
Dr. Andrews opened the debate by speaking directly to independents and Republicans who feel betrayed by the ruling party both in South Carolina and in Washington. That pitch has become a key part of her strategy in the final stretch of the campaign, and is a clear acknowledgment that without some crossover votes, she can't win in a deeply conservative state.
She invoked her father, a Republican, and ticked through a number of policy positions to appeal to a conservative-leaning electorate.
She said she supported the Second Amendment, wanted to lower taxes on the middle class and stressed that "we need to deport illegal immigrants who break the law."
Dr. Andrews has been a senior adviser to Everytown, a prominent organization that advocates gun control. Ms. Graham accused her of “deceiving the people of South Carolina,” saying she has “flip-flopped on everything.”
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The math still favors Ms. Graham
Even if Dr. Andrews wins over some of those voters, she faces an uphill battle.
Six years ago, Democrats were similarly energized over Jaime Harrison, a former Democratic Party chairman who was neck and neck with Mr. Graham in the final stretch of the election, polls showed at the time.
Mr. Harrison went on to lose to Mr. Graham by 10 points, a devastating blow to the Democratic Party's ambitions.
Dr. Andrews's supporters are hopeful that Ms. Graham's vulnerabilities and the deteriorating political environment for Republicans have created a unique opening, but history still casts a shadow over the party.
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An unfortunate choice of words from Ms. Graham
Ms. Graham ended the debate with another stumble that played into another one of her potential vulnerabilities: her close relationship to Mr. Trump.
Just before the debate concluded, Ms. Graham said, "I've had a job representing the people of Wash—" before correcting herself to say "South Carolina."
Dr. Andrews's campaign immediately seized on the mistake.
"At least she's honest about one thing," Dr. Andrews tweeted. "I'll be a Senator for South Carolina,
NOT Washington."
Who was that other woman on the stage?
Some viewers tuning in to the debate on Sunday night may have been surprised to see a third candidate running for Senate in South Carolina: a libertarian, radio host and assistant professor of management at the University of South Carolina named Kasie Whitener.
Dr. Andrews and Ms. Graham seemed to agree on how to handle Dr. Whitener: by largely ignoring her on the stage.
At one point, Dr. Whitener had to remind her opponents that she, too, was running for office.
"You're not the only one on the campaign trail," she said to Dr. Andrews, after the Democrat attacked Ms. Graham, who has spent much of the last few months in Washington, for devoting little time to campaigning.
"You're just the only one that has a posse following you around and taking videos of you."
2026 Election
Assessing Senate Ads In Battleground States
Misleading Attacks on Votes in Congress
By LINDA QIU
With less than a month to go until the November midterms, both parties have blanketed the airwaves with campaign ads in battleground states as they seek control over Congress.
comparison.
In Iowa, New Hampshire and North Carolina — three of the most competitive Senate races in the country — candidates and groups supporting them have all spent millions on ads faulting their opposition with failing to curb the cost of living, a top issue for voters, among other attacks.
Here's a fact check of some of those claims.
WHAT WAS SAID
"Here are the facts. It's Ashley Hinson who's missed nearly 200 votes in Congress. Votes to crack down on child pornography, reduce crime and lower health care costs."
— Senate Majority PAC, a top Democratic super PAC, in an ad that began airing in September
This is misleading. Representative Ashley Hinson, the Republican Senate candidate in Iowa, and various groups supporting her candidacy have spent millions of dollars on ads attacking Josh Turek, a state representative and the Democratic nominee, for missing 38 percent of votes in the Iowa legislature this year. (The claim is accurate.)
In response, Mr. Turek and groups that support him have retorted that Ms. Hinson, too, has a record of absenteeism in the House — including missing votes to lower health care costs — by making an apples-to-oranges
The Senate Majority PAC cited Ms. Hinson missing 33 roll-call votes — or recorded votes on the House floor — as well as 163 votes in various committees she sits on since January 2021, when she first entered office.
But typically, a missed vote refers to a roll-call vote on the House floor, and Ms. Hinson actually has a better attendance record than most members of Congress. According to Gov-Track, a nonprofit website that tracks congressional activities, Ms. Hinson has missed 33 of 2,915 roll-call votes from January 2021 to September 2026. That's about 1.1 percent, less than the median of 2.1 percent among current members in the House. This year, she has missed five out of 314 votes, about 1.6 percent.
"A missed vote is a missed vote, and Ashley Hinson missed nearly 200 of them during her time in Congress," Lauren French, a spokeswoman for the Democratic group, said in a statement.
The tally in the ad included missed committee votes. Ms. Hinson missed a roll-call vote in the House Appropriations Committee on a specific proposal to increase funding for community-based violence prevention programs.
Senate Majority PAC said Ms. Hinson missed a voice vote on an amendment to increase funding for programs that combat the exploitation of children and another voice vote on extending medical education programs in rural areas. But it is not clear whether Ms. Hinson was present for those particular votes as, by definition, voice votes do not take attendance. Both amendments passed without any opposition.
CHARLIE NEIBERGALL/GETTY IMAGES
IOWA Representative Ashley Hinson, a Republican, voted more often than an ad let on.
Billy Fuerst, a spokesman for the Hinson campaign, argued that by the ad's logic, there is no record of any member of Congress supporting those amendments since names and position were not logged. Moreover, he said, Ms. Hinson voted to advance the funding bills that included the two provisions to the full House.
WHAT WAS SAID
"Pappas voted to line the pockets of health insurers with billions of tax dollars. Pappas even voted against vital funding for rural and vulnerable hospitals. Bigger profits for big insurance, higher costs for you."
— No Going Back PAC, a Republican super PAC, in an ad that began airing in September
This is misleading. This ad attacking Representative Chris Pappas, the Democratic nominee for Senate in New Hampshire, describes his opposition to the Republicans' signature tax cut and domestic spending package as a vote against funding for rural hospitals.
That characterization omits the bulk of what the legislation actually does: Extend tax cuts and cut social safety net programs. And it ignores that a provision creating a fund for rural hospitals was largely included to address deep funding cuts to Medicaid that threatened rural hospitals.
NEW HAMPSHIRE Representative Chris Pappas opposed a tax bill that cut the safety net.
JOHN TULLY/GETTY IMAGES
The domestic spending legislation created a \$50 billion fund for rural hospitals but also cut Medicaid spending in rural areas by \$137 billion over a decade, according to an analysis by KFF, a health policy nonprofit. So while Mr. Pappas technically voted against the \$50 billion fund, he also voted against the \$137 billion cut to rural Medicaid spending.
The ad also cites Mr. Pappas's support for legislation to extend extra subsidies for Obamacare as votes to "line the pockets of health insurers," echoing a longstanding criticism.
Extra subsidies created in 2021 during the pandemic made health insurance less expensive for most people enrolled in plans under the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But despite Democratic efforts to extend them and Mr. Pappas's support, those subsidies expired this year. As a result, millions of Americans have dropped Obamacare coverage, and premiums have increased for many more. Conservative critics have argued that the extra subsidies enriched insurers, even as premiums continued to increase.
KENT NISHIMURA-POOL/GETTY IMAGES
NORTH CAROLINA Michael Whatley's comments on inflation from 2025 resurfaced.
The ad was funded by No Going Back PAC, a new super PAC with ties to MAGA Inc., President Trump's main super PAC. The group said Mr. Pappas "should be ashamed" of his vote.
WHAT WAS SAID
"I'm going to show you something. No A.I., no special effects, just Michael Whatley in his own words: 'Grocery prices are down, gasoline prices are down, housing prices are down, inflation is down.' Unbelievable. And so is this: 'There is no inflation.'"
— Former Gov. Roy Cooper, the Democratic nominee for Senate in North Carolina, in an ad that began airing in September
This needs context. It's true that the ad features remarks made by Michael Whatley, the Republican candidate, without special effects or enhancements by artificial intelligence. But the ad omits that those remarks occurred more than a year earlier, in an interview in July 2025, when overall prices were increasing at a
slower pace and gas prices were stable.
At the time Mr. Whatley made those remarks, mortgage rates had dipped slightly and Mr. Trump's war in Iran, and its accompanying surge in gas prices, was still months away. The New York Times had reported that inflation had accelerated, but remained relatively calm in the early months of the second Trump administration. Economists, though, were warning that the impact of Mr. Trump's tariff policies would soon manifest in the form of higher prices.
The average price for gas in the country was \$3.13 a gallon, not too different from the \$3.10 a gallon at the end of January 2025, when Mr. Trump began his second term. Average 30-year mortgage rates had fallen to about 6.7 percent in July 2025 from about 7 percent that January.
"Prices were down considerably in 2025 from the record-setting inflation caused by Joe Biden's reckless spending policies endorsed by Roy Cooper," DJ Griffin, a spokesman for the Whatley campaign, said in a statement.
Still, Mr. Whatley was wrong that grocery prices, housing and inflation were “down” in the summer of 2025. The Consumer Price Index had risen by 2.7 percent in June 2025 from a year earlier, housing by 4 percent and food-at-home by 2.4 percent.
In comparison, the C.P.I. increased by 3.4 percent this August, the latest available data, food-at-home by 2.2 percent and housing by 3.1 percent. In the first week of October, gas prices averaged \$4.35, and mortgage rates were higher than when Mr. Trump took office.
The Cooper campaign said Mr. Whatley has for months engaged in a pattern of downplaying and making false statements about inflation, for example, saying in January that “there is no inflation” and in September that “we are not getting gouged” on gas prices.
Some Republicans Reject A Diesel Deal With Russia
By TIM BALK and EVAN GORELICK
President Trump's announcement of a deal with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to import Russian diesel has drawn criticism from some Republicans running in the most competitive midterm races, as the party grasps for ways to contain soaring energy prices.
The president announced the arrangement, which undercuts U.S. sanctions on Moscow, under pressure to rein in the surging price of diesel. The product's cost has climbed because of the war with Iran, which has clogged a vital oil-shipping corridor, and high energy prices have become a severe campaign liability for Republican candidates in the midterms.
But the campaigns of two Republicans running in pivotal Senate races — former Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan and Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska — expressed disapproval of the deal with Russia. And other Republicans running in competitive Senate and House races had little to say about the agreement, which Mr. Trump trumpeted Friday on social media as a “very big and important” deal, claiming it would swiftly bring down energy costs.
"It's a grave error by the president," said Representative Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican from a battleground district who is not running for re-election. "People realize that the sanctions on Russia are appropriate when Russia's invading a country and bombing cities at night."
Mr. Bacon predicted the deal would have little effect on soaring diesel prices but would offer a victory for one of America's adversaries. And the congressman said that the agreement would not help Republican candidates. "It looks desperate," he said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The deal received some Republican praise. Representative Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican running in a competitive race, wrote on social media that it would "massively benefit the American people."
The United States introduced sanctions on energy exports from Russia after the country started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Mr. Trump's deal, and his declaration Saturday that Ukraine should "get a new president," escalated U.S. tensions with Kyiv. The issue of U.S. support for the country has for years divided Republicans; the two Republican Senate candidates who questioned the deal have long been supporters of Ukraine.
Some Midwestern Republicans have called for a pause on diesel exports to try to lower costs for American consumers, a notion that Mr. Trump has ruled out.
Energy experts say the deal is not likely to have a major impact on the cost of diesel, which has spiked to around \$6.28 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club, up from \$3.67 a year ago. Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, an energy consulting firm in Houston, said the deal would introduce a "very small" amount of diesel into the market "compared to U.S. demand."
In Michigan, Mr. Rogers, who has recently sought distance from Mr. Trump by calling for the president to end both the Iran war and his tariff fight with Canada, told reporters on Friday that he supported an agricultural rebate for diesel, but not the president's approach.
Mr. Rogers, long a foreign policy hawk, cited concern about offering Mr. Putin a victory. "You just don't want to give that guy an inch," he said.
In Alaska, a spokesman for Mr. Sullivan, Nate Adams, said in a statement that the senator "believes American energy dominance is the answer to high prices, and that means producing more of it in Alaska, for Alaskans, by Alaskans, not importing it from Russia."
Democrats pounced on the deal. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, wrote on social media that the president had made a “deal with the devil to try to help his flailing political fortunes.”
Representative Chris Pappas, the Democratic nominee in the competitive Senate race in New Hampshire, said in a statement that the agreement was a "slap in the face to Ukraine and our allies overseas." The campaign of his Republican opponent, the former Senator John E. Sununu, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The high cost of diesel poses a particular risk for Republicans running in states whose farming-heavy economies are powered by diesel, such as Nebraska, Iowa and Kansas.
The campaigns of the Republican Senate candidates in two of those states, Representative Ashley Hinson of Iowa and Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the president's deal with Russia. Their hotly contested races, staged in conservative states, could help decide control of the Senate.
Mr. Rogers, Mr. Sullivan and Ms. Hinson have all called for the United States to pause diesel exports.
In Wisconsin, another heavily agricultural state, Representative Derrick Van Orden, a hawkish Republican in a battleground district who has been a forceful supporter of the Iran war, said Saturday that he had no comment on the president's deal with Mr. Putin.
ERIC LEE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Senator Roger Marshall was already contending with a separate revelation about unpaid bills that he sought to collect on.
A Kansas Senator Settles a Bakery Bill, 6 Years Later
By TIM BALK
Senator Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican, has faced a series of challenges in his unexpectedly close race for re-election.
The latest: A six-year-old unpaid bill for 150 frosted sugar cookies, 100 mini strawberry muffins and 100 fudge brownies, posted online by an angry baker.
The bill, the baker wrote in a social media post that quickly went viral on Thursday, was from Mr. Marshall's primary night watch party in 2020. The cookies' butter-cream frosting carried his name in blue and yellow. And the source of her frustration was that Mr. Marshall's 2020 campaign had never paid her the nearly \$700 she said it owed her.
On Saturday, Mr. Marshall wrote on social media that he had paid the bill, bringing more attention to a curious saga that his opponent's campaign had seized on.
The bill began gaining widespread notice on Thursday afternoon, after the baker, Holly Thomas of Hutchinson, Kan., wrote an eight-paragraph Facebook post.
"Six years later, I haven't forgotten," she wrote, recalling that repeated phone and email inquires seeking payment had gone unanswered. "That experience is why Roger Marshall will never get my vote."
Mr. Marshall, a first-term Re-
Evan Gorelick contributed reporting.
---
Cookies, muffins and brownies from a primary night party.
publican who may need every vote he can get in a race that polls indicate is neck-and-neck, rushed to respond. He was already contending with a separate revelation about unpaid bills that he had sought to collect on: Last month, The New York Times reported that he had filed lawsuits against more than 700 patients with outstanding bills during his decades-long career as an obstetrician-gynecologist, and that he had routinely charged patients an 18 percent annual interest rate.
On Thursday evening, Tyson Brody, a spokesman for the Rev. Adam Hamilton, Mr. Marshall's Democratic opponent, amplified the baker's post, writing on social media that the bakery bill was "larger than debts for which Roger Marshall had patients sued." (The unpaid medical bills ranged from \$101 to several thousand dollars.)
By Friday, Mr. Marshall had paid Ms. Thomas back, she said in an interview. On Saturday, he addressed the issue in a post on his official X account.
"As some folks may have seen, there was a post on social media regarding an unpaid 2020 cookie bill," Mr. Marshall wrote. "We have absolutely no idea how this happened."
But, he added, "as it became known to us, we immediately attempted to contact the business in order to apologize, and we have repaid the bill from 2020, double."
The senator attached an invoice showing that he had sent \$1,300 to Ms. Thomas's bakery, Holly's Sweet Treats. That amount was not quite double the original bill, which had been for \$678.75, according to the copy that Ms. Thomas posted on Facebook last week.
It was not clear if Mr. Marshall's response would satisfy some of the commenters who had seized on the initial post. One had argued that Mr. Marshall owed Ms. Thomas as more than \$1,400, accounting for interest.
Mr. Marshall's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for further comment on the bill. Several Republican strategists said that Mr. Marshall had handled an unfortunate situation as well as he could.
Ms. Thomas, for her part, said she still had no intention of voting for Mr. Marshall, though she added that his payment was "the right thing to do."
"I can't put all the blame on him," said Ms. Thomas, 43, recalling that the initial order had been placed by a campaign staff member. "But as a business owner, when my staff messes up, it falls on me as well."
She has been closely following the Senate race and "impulsively" wrote her post as she complained at work about the years-old order, she recalled.
"I just made a post about Roger Marshall and how he didn't pay me," Ms. Thomas said she had declared at work. "We'll see what happens. Maybe he will pay me."
By Thursday evening, her phone began pinging with messages as she watched her daughter's volleyball game. She had a theory, she said, for why the post took off.
"He's let a lot of people down in the state," said Ms. Thomas, who declined to share her political affiliation. "And people are frustrated with how things are going."
Some on social media accused Mr. Marshall of hypocrisy, citing his own business practices.
"I do think he's a hypocrite," Lindsey Derr, 43, a Democrat in Hutchinson, Kan., who had already planned to vote against Mr. Marshall, said in a phone conversation. She added, "It makes me very upset."
Mr. Marshall is trying to avoid becoming the first Republican to lose a Senate race in Kansas since 1932. His campaign says the senator gets results for Kansas. But he has been challenged by steep price increases that the Iran war has inflicted on farmers.
On Saturday, Mr. Hamilton's campaign issued a statement aiming to encapsulate the episode in a single word: "Cookiegate."
2026 Election
Musk's G.O.P. Donations for the Midterms Rise to \$366 Million
Elon Musk with the president last month. Musk has patched up his relationship with President Trump and is quietly spending enormous amounts of money to help Republicans in the midterms. Below, political pamphlets paid for by Mr. Musk's political operation.
DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES
From Page AI
vassing program to try to turn out hard-to-reach Republican voters. The group is active in seven Senate battlegrounds and nearly three dozen House races.
Mr. Musk has already given far more money, about \$366 million, to federal committees during the 2025-26 election cycle than he did during the 2024 election, when he laid out roughly \$290 million to help return President Trump and Republicans to power. He has given even more in undisclosed donations during both elections, according to people briefed on the giving.
The latest torrent of spending has helped give the Republican Party a financial advantage in the midterms, as well-funded outside groups like Mr. Trump's powerful super PAC flood the airwaves with advertising in the final weeks. No Democratic billionaire is spending nearly as much as Mr. Musk, and money remains a central worry for the party in an otherwise favorable political environment.
The donations also clear up the mystery of how much staying power Mr. Musk wants to have in American politics.
"In terms of political spending, I'm going to do a lot less in the future," he said in May 2025.
Mr. Musk, who oversees a vast business empire that has benefited from enormous federal contracts, is famously unpredictable and often jumps from one project to another. He has been far quieter about his political work since his dramatic blowup with Mr. Trump last year. After months of wielding vast influence inside the White House and overseeing Mr. Trump's government cost-cutting project, he raged against the president's major domestic policy bill and floated threats to start a third party.
But the two men have warmed back up, appearing together at three events in the last two weeks and praising each other.
Now Mr. Musk has donated more than a quarter-billion dollars to help Mr. Trump and Republicans in the midterms. The money signals his commitment to the right and sets him up as a potential player in the 2028 presidential election, when his super PAC says it intends to remain active — the first time it has confirmed such plans.
Beyond Mr. Musk's donations to his super PAC and the Senate Leadership Fund, his representatives said that from July through September, he had given smaller but still substantial amounts to other conservative groups:
■ \$20 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the main super PAC for House Republicans
■ \$10 million to Lone Star Liberty PAC, a group supporting Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee for Senate in Texas
■ \$10 million to the Republican Governors Association
■ \$2 million to the Republican Attorneys General Association
"If Democrats take control of Washington and win key guberna-
Juliana Castro Varón contributed analysis.
torial and attorney general races this November, then America risks becoming a socialist, woke and borderless country," said Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for America PAC. "These robust investments have allowed the G.O.P. apparatus to get its message out so Republicans can have a fighting chance to defy history."
---
Pushing for Paxton
On voters' doors across Texas, the campaign literature carries a stark warning: "Radical Democrat socialists are winning elections all across America. Could Texas be next?"
The hanging door cards are the work of Mr. Musk's voter-turnout operation, which deployed nearly 3,000 paid canvassers last week around the country, according to America PAC officials.
The group has devoted most of its more than \$76 million in midterm spending so far to this canvassing program, shelling out smaller amounts on advertising, mail, phone calls and text messages. Much of the messaging targets Democrats, sometimes in misleading or overheated ways.
This spring, Mr. Trump's political advisers asked Mr. Musk to reprise America PAC's 2024 field program, a person familiar with the conversation said. Despite the challenging environment for Republicans, some party strategists believe that a field program can make the difference in particularly tight races.
America PAC relies on a few voter-canvassing firms that compete aggressively with one another for work and for staffing, according to people briefed on the operation.
Turnover in the canvassing industry is high. One canvasser who worked for America PAC told The
Times that he was paid between \$1.50 and \$3.00 for each door he knocked on across Texas in the heat. America PAC says it has knocked on about 6.5 million doors across the country so far.
Mr. Musk and his operation, people close to them say, have been particularly focused on the Texas Senate race. The group has unloaded over a third of its disclosed spending in that expensive race, more than in any other. It is uncommon to run an extensive field campaign in large states like Texas, where television ads are more often used to reach voters.
Mr. Musk, a resident of Austin, has extensive business interests and property holdings in Texas. Mr. Paxton, the state attorney general, has investigated Mr.
Musk's opponents, like Media Matters, a liberal group.
Mr. Musk's \$10 million donation to Mr. Paxton's super PAC came at a critical time, when the Republican candidate was being badly outspent.
And Mr. Musk's \$158 million in donations to the Senate Leadership Fund, the most the super PAC has ever received from a single donor in a quarter, may have made it possible for that group to suddenly spend big for Mr. Paxton after months of reluctance.
That is because Mr. Musk's donations preceded the decision in late August by the super PAC, led by allies of Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, to start what has become a \$149 million pro-Paxton ad campaign.
---
Focus on Transgender Issues
As it did in 2024, Mr. Musk's operation is focused not on persuading swing voters, but on registering and turning out voters with conservative beliefs — especially "low-propensity" ones who are less likely to cast a ballot.
This is a lot harder for Republicans in a midterm election, without Mr. Trump at the top of the ballot.
To do it, Mr. Musk's super PAC is leaning hard into the culture wars, especially transgender issues. (Mr. Musk's daughter, who is transgender, has spoken about their clashes over her identity, and he has suggested that this led to his increased political engagement.)
At voters' doors in Texas, canvassers are told to target Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic candidate for governor, over her record on transgender issues, according to parts of a script reviewed by The Times.
Similarly, the Musk operation is leaving literature on doors that claims that James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas, has a “radical trans agenda.” And America PAC’s top ad in the state, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact, denounces Mr. Talarico over his past comments suggesting that “God is nonbinary.”
The Musk group is also targeting other Democratic Senate candidates over transgender issues, including Josh Turek, the party's nominee in Iowa. Nationally, one of the super PAC's most visible ads on Facebook features a man in makeup and reads: "He made his plan to vote. Did you? Don't stay home while crazies elect radicals." The group is running ads and sending mail on a broad range of topics, but socialism is a core theme. The Musk super PAC regularly attacks Democrats as socialist and ties them to figures like Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, according to 48 pieces of direct mail shared by Mintt, a mail-tracking firm.
Online, it is even running personalized messaging that invokes a voter's first name. For example, in a video showing smiling Democrats: "Why are they smiling? Because Christopher hasn't made a plan to vote yet."
Much of this outreach points voters to an America PAC website where conservatives can learn about how to register to vote. The super PAC is pushing what it calls an "America Pass," a digital card on Apple or Google wallets on voters' phones that lists their registration information, along with election dates and deadlines in their home state.
---
Big Spender, Back-Seat Role
While Mr. Musk is spending big again and using some tactics that are similar to those he deployed two years ago, this is not 2024 anymore.
He is in a different place politically. While he and Mr. Trump appear to be on good terms again — "our modern-day Thomas Edison," the president called him on Thursday — Mr. Musk is taking a hands-off approach this election and does not appear as personally passionate.
He has not brought up the midterm elections or the Trump presidency much in private conversations with friends, according to people who have spoken to him in recent months. He is focused on his businesses, these people say, and he and his business lieutenants have taken a less active role in America PAC's operations, entrusting major decisions to Chris Young, his top adviser.
And on X, a semi-reliable indicator of where the billionaire's mind is, Mr. Musk has written just seven direct posts this year about candidates in competitive midterm races, according to a Times review, a far cry from his relentless calls throughout 2024 to elect Mr. Trump. Five of those posts focused on Mr. Talarico — and one appeared critical of Senator Susan Collins, a vulnerable Republican in Maine.
Gone, too, are Mr. Musk's barnstorming campaign stops, like the ones he did in Pennsylvania in October 2024 or a Wisconsin judicial election in the spring of 2025. There are no more sweepstakes where he personally hands an oversize check of \$1 million to some registered voters who sign a petition, a gambit that drew legal challenges.
Mr. Musk has not evidently grown infatuated with candidates this time around, as he did with Mr. Trump. The closest he came was a \$10 million donation for a long-shot Republican running for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky — an investment that went poorly.
The \$276 million figure is, of course, just what is publicly known. Mr. Musk has also made some seven-figure donations to support midterm candidates through groups that are not required to disclose their donors, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
In Maine Senate Race, Sanders Visit Gives Lift To Anxious Democrats
"ain't easy."
By TIM BALK
LEWISTON, Maine — When Graham Platner dropped out of the Senate race in Maine in July after a rape allegation he denied, it deflated many Democrats who had rallied to his campaign.
Three months later, some Democrats in the state are worried about the enthusiasm for Mr. Platner's last-minute replacement, Troy Jackson, in his pivotal race against Senator Susan Collins, a fifth-term Republican. In the final weeks of a close race, Mr. Jackson and his allies are still trying to excite voters who were disillusioned after the summer switch.
This weekend, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a leader of the progressive movement who is popular across New England, decamped to the state for a three-rally trip to try to energize Mr. Jackson's campaign. Mr. Sanders, once a chief political patron of Mr. Platner, also has deep connections to Mr. Jackson, who served as a Maine state chair of Mr. Sanders's 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns.
On Saturday night, at a rally in a Bangor convention center, Mr. Sanders declared that Mr. Jackson was running an "extraordinary" campaign and noted that the circumstances in which Mr. Jackson had entered the race
Troy Jackson, left, campaigning with Senator Bernie Sanders in Lewiston, Maine, on Sunday.
CJ GUNTHER/REUTERS
The visit by Mr. Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, comes as Republicans are eager to paint Democratic candidates, including Mr. Jackson, as far-left extremists. Part of Mr. Jackson's challenge in the closing stage of the race will be finding ways to fire up his party's base without alienating moderate voters.
On Sunday, Mr. Sanders and Mr. Jackson visited a soaring former church in working-class Lewiston, where the crowd buzzed long before either man took the stage. Piles of blue T-shirts bearing Mr. Jackson's name rested on tables, "I'm With Troy" yard signs were stacked against the walls and a hundreds-strong standing-room crowd filled the building.
"I hear the lull in enthusiasm," Mary Loan, 29, of Lewiston, said of Mr. Jackson's campaign, adding that Mr. Sanders had helped draw her out on Sunday morning. "Bernie is such a strong force, and a lot of people really look up to him."
Opinion polls show Mr. Jackson running in a dead heat with Ms. Collins with three weeks until the Nov. 3 election, and early voting has started in Maine. Mr. Jackson is running on a progressive platform similar to Mr. Platner's, calling for universal health care and the elimination of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
But some in the crowd on Sunday said they were concerned about Mr. Jackson's chances. After Mr. Platner's departure, Mr. Jackson, a runner-up in the primary for Maine governor who can speak in an unpolished, halting style, assumed the Senate nomination through a rushed statewide convention process. When the Platner yard signs vanished, some have observed, Jackson signs did not always crop up.
But Mr. Jackson's supporters said his campaign appears to be gaining steam after two debates in which he outperformed expectations of many in either party, adding that they hoped Mr. Sanders's arrival would activate some Democrats.
Bill Zima, 60, and his wife, Sarah Zima, 57, two former teachers, came from Portland to Lewiston to see Mr. Sanders. Mr. Zima said "there was that sense of excitement that went out" after the candidate substitution.
Still, he predicted that "ultimately people are going to come back," adding that "Bernie will help with this."
Ms. Zima appeared less confident. "I don't know," she said. "I hope people will get behind him."
A political organizer at the rally, Crystale Lapham, 44, a former volunteer for Mr. Platner from Falmouth, Maine, said the campaign was "not the same" with Mr. Jackson atop the ticket. "He's not a powerful orator," Ms. Lapham said of Mr. Jackson, adding, "That energy gap is real."
But she added that she believed Mr. Sanders's arrival would remind voters of Mr. Jackson's ties to the progressive movement.
"The door-knockers and volun-
Opinion polls show Jackson running dead even with Collins.
teers are extremely excited that he's here," Ms. Lapham said of Mr. Sanders. She said there had been questions about how involved Mr. Sanders, who last campaigned in the state in May, would be in the race. "Like, where is Bernie?"
Mr. Sanders was with Mr. Jackson at the former church on Sunday, addressing a rapt crowd. Mr. Jackson was met with loud chants of "Troy! Troy!" as he began his remarks.
"I am just a working-class guy with a funny accent," Mr. Jackson said, referring to his thick Acadian accent, and vowed to fight for working-class Mainers.
Mr. Sanders prosecuted a case against the Trump administration and said that while he did not "mean to be disrespectful to either Susan Collins or Troy," the race was about "much more than either of those candidates."
"If we as a nation want to hold Trump and his disastrous policies accountable, the only way we can do that is by electing a Democratic Senate," Mr. Sanders said, adding that the race could determine the national battle for Senate control.
"I don't want to get the people of Maine too nervous," Mr. Sanders said. "But you can make all of the difference."
Some Maine Democrats say those stakes do make them nervous. Still, the line drew one of the loudest cheers of the afternoon.
The 47th President
Representative Omar Is Targeted With Search Of Home by ICE Unit
From Page A1
federal judge who eventually approved it, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Prosecutors submitted the first application for the search more than a week ago, and it was approved only after a discussion of the possible constitutional issues, like the speech or debate clause, surrounding her status as a member of Congress, the people said.
In a statement posted on social media on Monday, Ms. Omar called the raid “an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.”
"For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation," she wrote, adding, "I will not be silenced."
President Trump has frequently attacked Ms. Omar, focusing on her Somali heritage.
"I understand they're looking at her very carefully," Mr. Trump told reporters on Monday before a campaign rally in Ohio, adding: "She comes from a country that is a non-country. And then she comes over here and she complains about our Constitution. I think she's a terrible person, but that's really up to the D.O.J."
A Justice Department spokeswoman said that Homeland Security Investigations agents — a part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement — had executed a judicially authorized search of a home in the Washington area, as part of an “ongoing federal criminal investigation.” The spokeswoman declined to comment further.
In September, Markwayne Mullin, the Homeland Security secretary, said his department was investigating issues surrounding Ms. Omar and her family's immigration to the United States, and he suggested the end result could be deportation.
Ms. Omar was born in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, in the early 1980s. Her family fled their hometown when she was around
Annie Karni contributed reporting.
8, as a civil war engulfed Somalia, according to a memoir she wrote. In the mid-1990s, after spending time at a refugee camp in Kenya, Ms. Omar and her relatives were admitted as refugees in the United States. They started a new life in Minnesota, home to the largest Somali diaspora in the United States.
Ms. Omar has long said that suggestions that she and her family committed immigration fraud were false and politically motivated.
"I will say it again so it's as clear as possible: I'm not at all worried about these investigations, because they are complete shams," she wrote in a fund-raising email in September.
Monday's search of her home, which was reported earlier by Fox News, takes place within the 60-day window before an election. Justice Department policy has long urged prosecutors not to take any overt, unnecessary investigative steps that could affect an election during that period — especially if such actions could be taken after the election without causing any harm to the investigation. The guiding principle of the 60-day rule is that prosecutors should exercise caution in regard to politically sensitive cases.
The rule is not absolute, and there are exceptions, such as when prosecutors believe evidence could be destroyed, ongoing crimes are being committed, or people are in danger. The rule is also largely an interpretation of Justice Department regulations, and as such has been the subject of significant debate about its exact parameters. For many years, however, Justice Department officials have concluded that a publicly observable search — such as of a politician's home or business — is the kind of overt activity that should be avoided during the 60-day period.
In the last federal election, Mr. Trump cited the 60-day rule in his own criminal cases to accuse the department of acting improperly in 2024 as he campaigned for election. He and his lawyers, some of whom now run the Justice Department, argued that the special counsel, Jack Smith, broke the 60-day rule when he filed court pa
J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Officers with the Department of Homeland Security carried boxes from the Washington-area home of Representative Ilhan Omar on Monday, above. Ms. Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, left, portrayed the raid as “an attempt to target political enemies.”
AMANDA ANDRADE-RHOADES FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES pers in September 2024 describing the evidence supporting charges that Mr. Trump had conspired to obstruct the results of the 2020 election. In that instance, however, the key filing was made in response to a court order, which is not subject to the department policy.
In a statement on Monday, the House Democratic leadership — Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and Pete Aguilar of California — condemned the search of Ms. Omar's house as a "rogue abuse of power."
"The Trump administration's raid on Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's home is deeply disturbing and raises serious questions about the continued corrupt weaponization of the federal government against Donald Trump's adversaries," they said.
Ms. Omar has represented a solidly blue district that includes Minneapolis since 2019, and she faced no serious competitors during the primary this year.
Scores of Omar supporters gathered Monday afternoon at a park in Minneapolis for a rally, many holding signs that said "Stand with Ilhan" and "Hands off the Somali community."
Jason Chavez, a member of the
Minneapolis City Council, predicted that the search of the congresswoman's home would galvanize her constituents and perhaps improve her victory margin in November. "Folks are riled up," he said. "What is happening is just wrong."
Ms. Omar's immigration history has been scrutinized since she first ran for a seat in the State Legislature in 2016 and made history as the state's first Somali American lawmaker, according to people familiar with the inquiries.
The Justice Department under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s administration also opened an investigation into Ms. Omar, in 2024, examining her finances, campaign spending and interactions with a foreign citizen, as The Times previously reported.
Previous federal inquiries — including one seeking to establish whether Ms. Omar had married a sibling to get him a green card — ended without any charges. Ms. Omar has called such claims “absurd and offensive.”
Late last year, Tom Homan, the White House border czar, told Newsmax that earlier efforts to investigate Ms. Omar's immigration matters were stymied by statute of limitations.
Investigators were reviewing her immigration files again, Mr. Homan said, adding that he had no doubt Ms. Omar had committed fraud.
In March, Vice President JD Vance reiterated that claim, which he said he had discussed with the White House senior aide Stephen Miller.
"We actually think that Ilhan Omar definitely committed immigration fraud," Mr. Vance told a conservative podcaster. The next step, he said, was to figure out how to "build a case necessary to get some justice for the American people."
In recent months, federal investigators opened an inquiry into Ms. Omar's immigration history, focusing in part on whether her late father, Nur Omar Mohamed, lied or omitted information as he sought legal status in the United States before becoming a U.S. citizen.
Among the questions investigators have looked at is whether Ms. Omar derived citizenship from a father who may have been ineligible to obtain naturalized status, according to a person familiar with the case.
If there is conclusive evidence that Ms. Omar derived citizenship improperly, the Justice Department could pursue a criminal or civil denaturalization case against her. In cases in which prosecutors prevail and persuade a federal judge to order someone denaturalized, the immigrant may be placed in deportation proceedings.
Fort Hood Killer May Have Options to Contest Public Execution
By ABBIE VANSICKLE and JOHN ISMAY
A memorial service in 2009 for the 13 people killed by Nidal Malik Hasan at Fort Hood in Texas.
DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON — The former Army officer convicted of a 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood has exhausted his appeals in the military courts. But he may have options in the civilian justice system to contest his planned public execution by firing squad.
Legal experts say that Nidal Malik Hasan could potentially ask federal courts to step in and stop his execution. That path for the courts to intervene, though, would probably be narrow and rushed, and could involve novel and untested legal claims.
The Supreme Court last year rejected an appeal from Mr. Hasan, who was convicted in 2013 by a military jury of fatally shooting 13 people and wounding 32 more after opening fire at a military processing center in Central Texas. The justices at that time declined to take up his legal team's argument that a judge's decision to close part of the proceeding violated his right to a public trial.
But legal experts said the lawyers for Mr. Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, could now file a new appeal to ask the federal courts to block the administration's plan to kill him on Dec. 3 in a live-streamed execution at the base where he attacked fellow service members. It remains unclear whether he will do so.
Jonathan F. Potter, a lawyer from the U.S. Army Defense Appellate Division who represents Mr. Hasan, did not respond to a request for comment.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the plan on Thursday in an interview with Real America's Voice, a conservative outlet, saying that the execution would be available to watch "because people need to understand that there's serious consequences for these types of things."
At the 2013 trial, Mr. Hasan, who was a major at the time of the shooting, represented himself and confessed in his opening statement to being the shooter.
If the federal courts were to weigh in, legal experts said that the case would probably begin in Kansas, since he is incarcerated at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth. An appeal could then wind through the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit and arrive quickly at the Su-
Julie Tate contributed research.
preme Court, most likely as an emergency petition.
Legal experts say that Mr. Hasan could challenge the government's decision to livestream his execution, perhaps by asserting that a public broadcast would violate prohibitions on cruel and unusual punishment in the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution.
Courts have rejected requests from private companies that sought to broadcast executions to the public.
In 2001, a federal judge refused to allow an internet company to carry a live feed of the execution of the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, citing Federal Bureau of Prisons rules that forbid recording or broadcasting executions.
In that case, the broadcaster for adults-only subscription websites argued that the execution of Mr. McVeigh presented a compelling public interest that warranted widespread dissemination of the killing.
But the Supreme Court has not weighed in directly on the question of whether public executions are legal, particularly when requested by the government, experts said.
Public executions have been seen, including by United Nations officials, as a violation of international human rights protections under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, said Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School.
"This is terrible company for our country to be in," Mr. Fidell said, citing the authoritarian regimes that have engaged in the practice. But he cautioned that there was "no current legal document that you point to that says this is clearly unlawful as a matter of the U.S. Constitution or any federal statute."
How the Supreme Court may approach the issue is unpredictable, some observers said.
Less than a decade ago, a majority of the court appeared "deeply attuned" to changes in society's norms and moral values, including waning support for capital punishment, said Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University Law Center, where he specializes in constitutional law, national security and military justice.
Professor Vladeck said he believed that the court would most likely have found it "exceedingly difficult to reconcile" changing mores with a live-streamed public execution, particularly given how long it has been since the last public execution in the United States.
The country's last state-sanctioned public execution happened nearly a century ago, when about 20,000 people gathered in August 1936 to witness the hanging of Rainey Bethea, a young Black man convicted of raping an elderly white woman.
But the makeup of the court has changed considerably since 2018, when Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, often the key swing vote, retired. Now, the court has a conservative supermajority, with six conservatives and three liberals.
Professor Vladeck described the current court's approach as "far less sympathetic to those kinds of arguments." A majority of the justices consider themselves "originalists" who examine legal issues with an eye to how the law was interpreted at the time it was adopted.
With Mr. Hasan, Professor Vladeck said a majority of the justices may look to whether a particular punishment would have been seen as cruel and unusual in 1791, when the Eighth Amendment, which barred such punishments, was ratified.
"If that's the test, I think it'll be quite an uphill battle," he said, noting that conducting executions publicly was common at that time.
Mr. Hasan could also raise issues related to the planned protocol: death by firing squad. He was shot during his attack on Fort Hood and paralyzed from the waist down. He uses a wheelchair, and it is not clear how the military would execute him.
The Army's 2023 regulation on executions provides a list of people who can witness one, including “a minimum” of two media representatives. It specifies that no one younger than 18 can be a witness. The regulation, however, can be changed by the Army at any time.
The regulation is far less detailed than the service's 1944 manual for executions that guided the last firing squad to take the life of an active-duty service member: Pvt. Edward Donald Slovak, who was convicted of twice deserting his unit in combat and was put to death in France on Jan. 31, 1945.
The World War II-era manual, which referred to the firing squad as “execution by musketry,” required an Army band to play a song called “Dead March” as the condemned prisoner was led to a post and strapped to it in “an upright position,” accompanied by a chaplain.
A medical officer was then to place a four-inch round target over the prisoner's heart, on a uniform stripped of all rank and insignia, including buttons. An "execution party" of 12 soldiers armed with rifles would form two firing squads. "Not more than four nor less than one" of the rifles would be loaded with blank ammunition, the manual states, and placed randomly on a rack for the dozen soldiers to draw from.
Should an initial volley of six bullets fail to immediately kill the condemned soldier, a second group of six soldiers could be ordered to shoot the prisoner at the medical officer's direction. A sergeant armed with a handgun could also "administer the 'coup de grâce'" shot by holding the weapon's muzzle "just above" the prisoner's ear and "one foot from the skull."
Following confirmation of the prisoner's death, the Army band would play "a lively air" as the assembled soldiers and firing party departed the scene.
The manual also instructed, "No photographs nor motion pictures of the actual execution will be permitted except for official purposes."
Judge Orders Trump to End Taxpayer Ads
By SANTUL NERKAR
A federal judge on Sunday evening ordered the Trump administration to stop airing taxpayer-funded ads that had drawn widespread backlash for their explicit glorification of President Trump.
The commercials ran on network and cable television and were paid for through a \$20 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security. One bragged about the capture of the former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. Another echoed a campaign video from 2024 that denounced political enemies of Mr. Trump as "villains."
A coalition of liberal organizations sued the administration over the ads last week in federal court. In a four-page order, Judge Jennifer L. Rochon of Federal District Court in Manhattan, who was appointed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., wrote that the administration must cancel any "slot, placement, reservation, or arrangement for the airing or dissemination of the challenged advertisements."
In a statement, Democracy Forward, which represented the coalition that had sued to stop the airing of the ads, praised Judge Rochon for preventing “more taxpayer dollars from being used for such blatantly unlawful political propaganda.”
In a filing on Saturday night, the Justice Department said that the administration had no plans to make any further ad buys, which totaled \$19 million through Sunday.
The ads had run during programs and shows like "Good Morning America" and "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" as well as during weekend football games on Fox. Some officials had said the administration might have violated federal law by using taxpayer money for publicity or propaganda.
Mr. Trump was personally invested in seeing the ads air. He instructed Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to find the money for the ads, The New York Times reported this month.
Zach Montague contributed reporting.
Vague Protocol for Executions in Tennessee Draws Scrutiny
Christa Pike's lawyers — Randy Spivey, at the lectern, and Luke Ihnen, behind Mr. Spivey — on Wednesday in Nashville.
GEORGE WALKER IV/ASSOCIATED PRESS
By EMILY COCHRANE
NASHVILLE — Last year, Tennessee's lethal injection execution protocol underwent a striking transformation.
The manual laying out the procedure was slashed in half, stripped down from 104 pages in a previous version to 44 pages. Details about certain staff and the single drug now at the heart of the protocol were shrouded in secrecy.
And some directions were made vague or vanished altogether, including the requirement that execution teams practice inserting an IV line.
Tennessee has botched two of its three executions this year, mostly recently in the case of Christa Pike last month. Her case in particular has prompted a wave of questions about why the state has struggled to carry out death sentences, while some other states, such as Texas, have not.
The stark differences between the protocol put in place last year and the one before it, which was last updated in 2018, have emerged as a focus of scrutiny in Tennessee.
The granular, grim elements of an execution, especially by lethal injection, have taken on greater interest and importance in the aftermath of Ms. Pike's botched execution, as more Americans wrestle with the morality and ethics of capital punishment.
Even as polls have shown a decline in support for the death penalty, some leaders continue to champion capital punishment. The Pentagon announced last week that the Army officer convicted in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting would be carried out in public and broadcast via a livestream.
Republicans in Tennessee, where they hold a supermajority, say they remain committed to carrying out death sentences. But
Jesus Jiménez contributed reporting.
they have said they will examine how capital punishment is carried out and will consider changing the lethal injection protocol or switching to a different execution method.
The Tennessee Department of Correction said it had followed every step of the protocol in Ms. Pike's execution attempt, which has "consistently been effective."
Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican who is in the final months of his second and last term in office, has paused all executions and ordered an investigation into Ms. Pike's botched execution. U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn, also a Republican and the front-runner to replace Mr. Lee, has called for the state to switch to the electric chair.
Cameron Sexton, the speaker of the Tennessee House, said that Ms. Pike should still face execution and that the state intends to find a way to carry on with capital punishment. "We'll look at different methods and alternatives, and then we'll look at how to speed up the process," Mr. Sexton said in an interview.
Ms. Pike, 50, was convicted in 1996 of the torture and murder of a classmate.
The Department of Correction declined to answer questions about the current protocol or its changes, citing pending litigation. During earlier lawsuits brought by other death row inmates, the agency cited attorney-client privilege and a protective order in refusing to allow staff members to answer a number of questions, including about the development of the protocol, the qualifications of the execution staff and details about the drugs used.
After the botched Pike execution on Sept. 30, the agency's commissioner, Frank Strada, who had led the development of the new lethal injection protocol, said he would step down later this month.
Ms. Pike's lawyers had warned about possible problems with the execution protocol, especially given her small veins and underlying medical conditions. She survived two doses of the drug, pentobarbital, and remains hospitalized. Her lawyers on Thursday said she was able to walk with some assistance, but continues to struggle with concentration and memory.
On Saturday, she was discharged from the hospital to the women's prison in Nashville.
As in other states, Tennessee law prohibits the public identification of workers who carry out executions or any company that assists in procuring or preparing drugs for lethal injection. There are strict limits on who can witness an execution; cellphones and outside photos are prohibited; and only lawyers for the death row inmate can witness the insertion of IV lines.
"The idea is to keep it from being sensationalized," said David Raybin, a Nashville lawyer who helped write Tennessee's death penalty statute. But in switching to lethal injection, he added, "we've involved more people. We've made it more complex."
Yet key details of the process appear masked in the current Tennessee protocol, compared with the previous one and with those of some other states that use lethal injection. In Tennessee's previous protocol, from 2018, only five pages appeared to have been removed, mainly related to security details of the prison where executions are held. But in the current protocol, the state appears to have withheld details of staff roles and duties.
"It's why we can say that secrecy is a big part of all botched executions," said Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "When we don't understand what's happening, there's not the opportunity to ask the hard questions that get good answers."
In 2022, Mr. Lee instituted a moratorium on executions, and there was an independent review of the Tennessee process. During a deposition last year, Mr. Strada said he estimated he had read the report two or three times.
Some recommendations — including providing a copy of the protocol to the chemical provider — were followed, he said. Some were not. He said he did not enlist an outside consultant with a pharmaceutical background to offer guidance over the lethal injection process, as the report had recommended.
"It was only a recommendation," Mr. Strada said when asked at the time, according to excerpts from the deposition reviewed by The New York Times. "It wasn't a requirement."
Directly asked if there was any unwritten guidance, Mr. Strada said everything was contained within the protocol.
The Texas protocol, which also uses pentobarbital, requires that all members of the drug team have at least one year of professional experience and that a new team member must be supervised through two executions.
In Florida, which carried out 40 percent of all executions in the United States in 2025, the protocol specifies the kinds of certification each team member involved with the lethal injection process should have. It also directs the team to prepare for contingencies, including issues finding a vein and what to do if the prisoner is not unconscious after the first drug is administered.
Tennessee's protocol does not publicly list contingencies. It says execution staff members should be "currently certified, licensed and/or qualified within the United States to place IV lines" but does not offer specifics.
There is also an absence of public details in Tennessee's protocol about how to handle complications in the execution chamber. In Idaho, for example, where execution by either lethal injection or a firing squad is allowed, there is a requirement for outside medical services to be on site and provide any necessary aid, "including resuscitation efforts for the condemned person as needed."
On Sept. 30, the night Ms. Pike was set to be executed, emergency medical services were called to the Nashville prison at 8:50 p.m., according to a Nashville Fire Department report, and the first unit arrived at 9:15 p.m. It was not clear if Ms. Pike, who could be heard breathing, received care before that arrival.
The Death Penalty Is Once Again on the Minds of a Divided Public
People gathered during a March 4 Mercy protest against the death penalty at the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville last month.
GEORGE WALKER IV/ASSOCIATED PRESS
NICOLE BENGIVING/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Soldiers at a memorial service for the 13 people killed at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009. Nidal Hasan is set to be executed in December.
By NICHOLAS BOGEL-BURROUGHS
Within the span of eight days, the country has learned of a failed execution and a successful execution, and has been promised a live-streamed execution by military firing squad before year's end.
The most severe form of criminal punishment — there are roughly 2,000 people on death row nationwide — execution has taken center stage in a nation already split politically and culturally, amplifying divisions just weeks before a pivotal midterm election.
Death penalty opponents have seized upon the blundered attempt to kill Christa Pike in Tennessee last month to push for an end to the death penalty. Conversely, the nation's top military official said on Thursday that the United States would carry out the government's first public execution since 1936.
The announcement from the Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, and its timing, exemplify the salient place that the death penalty has taken in the nation's polarized political landscape in President Trump's second term.
On the day Mr. Trump returned to office, he urged prosecutors across the country to pursue and carry out capital punishment. In 2025, states executed more people than they had since 2009, largely driven by a sharp jump in Florida under Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican.
The failed execution of Ms. Pike — who survived two doses of pentobarbital that may have been injected improperly — has galvanized death penalty opponents, who have denounced what they see as a grisly example of capital punishment's faults.
And the two events together have brought the issue of the death penalty — something that has for decades taken place in hidden rooms inside mostly rural prisons — back into the forefront of Americans' minds.
“What we're seeing is the brutality of the institution of the death penalty coming back into public focus,” said Mark Osler, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis who has studied the death penalty. “Tennessee didn't intend to do that; the federal government does.”
"Given that there has been a rise in executions," he added, "it's a good time to have that debate."
Nearly 1,700 people have been executed in the last 50 years, including Jamaal Howard, 46, who was put to death on Wednesday in Texas, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, with a peak of 98 killed in 1999. Mr. Howard had been convicted of murdering Vickie Swartout, 42, during a 2000 robbery. Tennessee had sought to execute Ms. Pike for her 1995 killing of her classmate, 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.
While 27 states retain the death penalty, fewer than half of those have carried out an execution in the last five years. Virginia abol-
Emily Cochrane contributed reporting from Nashville, and Elizabeth Dias from Washington.
ished the penalty in 2021, and Ohio's Republican governor, Mike DeWine, said in June that he wanted his state to do so as well.
In modern times, lethal injection has been used far more than any other method, though states have turned to alternative methods — both new and old — in recent years. Several have authorized the firing squad, and two, Alabama and Louisiana, have used asphyxiation via nitrogen.
Public opinion polls have shown support for the death penalty steadily declining in recent decades, though a majority of Americans still support it. One poll from this past summer found that two-thirds were in favor.
Still, the specter of livestreaming the execution of Nidal Hasan, a former Army major who was convicted of murdering 13 people — mostly soldiers — and wounding dozens more at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009, has upset many who might otherwise support his killing.
"Hasan should face the death penalty, but making his execution public and streaming it? Beyond disgusting," Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, wrote on social media. "Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America."
Mr. Hasan, now 56, was motivated by his radical views of Islam to carry out the killings in retaliation for America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was wounded by responding police officers and is now paralyzed from the waist down, raising the possibility that he could be transported in a wheelchair to his execution, which is scheduled for Dec. 3. Mr. Hegseth said Mr. Hasan would be killed at Fort Hood around the same time of day — early afternoon — that he committed the crimes.
The reactions to the announcement fell largely along ideological lines — Republicans are much more likely to support capital punishment — but were far from uniform, underscoring the complexity of the issue.
Some Roman Catholic leaders condemned the execution plans. The Catholic Church has long opposed the death penalty as part of its theological commitment to humans across their life spans, though recently U.S. bishops have prioritized ending abortion and defending immigrants.
Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, called the planned livestream "a barbaric promotion of a culture of death" and warned it would harm the country.
"The public execution even of one who has done grave harm will only further undermine the moral fabric of our nation and be a blight on the conscience of its people," he said.
Vice President JD Vance, an atheist turned Catholic, said on Friday that he would not watch the execution if it was live-streamed and also cast doubt on that idea, saying, "I don't know if that's actually going to happen."
But in a sign of the continued sharp divide that the Trump movement has carved in American Christianity, an energetic cohort of right-wing Christians defended the livestream on biblical grounds.
Josh Howerton, the pastor of Lakepointe Church, an evangelical congregation with locations in and around Dallas, argued on social media that executions in the Bible were carried out publicly as deterrents.
"I do not think you can say it's unbiblical or automatically wrong," he said of public executions, noting passages that described public stonings.
The prospect of a public execution was raised prominently around the turn of the century, when some proposed televising the killing of Timothy McVeigh.
Mr. McVeigh, convicted of carrying out the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 that killed 168 people, himself had urged as much in a letter to The Oklahoma newspaper in which he argued for "equal access" to his execution: "A reasonable solution seems obvious: hold a true 'public' execution — allow a public broadcast."
In the end, he was executed by lethal injection at an Indiana prison in 2001, with a couple of dozen people watching his death in person and about 232 more — including survivors and their relatives — viewing on closed-circuit television from Oklahoma City.
Notably, Mr. Hasan has said he wants to be killed for his crimes, saying he sees an opportunity for martyrdom, though he does not appear to expect the firing squad or a public death.
"I'm paraplegic and could be in jail for the rest of my life," he told a military panel in 2010. "However, if I died by lethal injection I would still be a martyr."
7Coffins Found Near Residence Of a Governor
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
Last May, contractors were upgrading the security fences and driveway at the governor's residence in North Dakota when they made a discovery that brought the work to a standstill. In the southwest corner of the grounds, where a cemetery had once been, they unearthed what appeared to be human remains and coffin fragments.
Over the next four months, what started as a landscaping and construction job in the state capital, Bismarck, turned into an examination of the state's history. Last week, officials in Gov. Kelly Armstrong's administration announced the results of an analysis of the remains: They were two women, two men, two teenage boys and a toddler.
The seven sets of remains appear to have been overlooked when bodies at the former cemetery were exhumed after 1877 and moved to new cemeteries during Bismarck's early settlement period, the state Office of Management and Budget said.
"Many were already reinterred to somewhere else," Jen Raab, a spokeswoman for the office, said in an interview. "We didn't know there were still some there."
The discovery on May 19 set in motion a wide-ranging project that has played out at the nexus of science, history and spirituality in Bismarck, a onetime frontier town that is now a city of about 78,000.
The state Legislature last year approved \$2.35 million in security upgrades at the governor's residence, which sits on the grounds of the Capitol. After the remains were discovered, archaeologists were dispatched to the site to conduct surveys with ground-penetrating radar. They detected more than 80 anomalies in the earth, leading to the recovery of seven sets of remains and an empty wood box, the Office of Management and Budget said.
A chaplain will organize a ceremonial handling of the remains, which will be reburied next year, Ms. Raab said.
In a statement on Friday, Mike Nowatzki, a spokesman for the governor's office, said Governor Armstrong "wants to ensure the remains are treated with appropriate care and respect."
The discovery of the remains generated interest in the former cemetery and how its long-buried dead ended up intersecting with modern city life.
Historians scoured archival newspaper clippings for death notices to help tell the story of the burials, which were held on the grassy knoll from 1872 through 1877 — a period that coincides with the renaming of the town, formerly known as Edwinton, to Bismarck in 1873.
The cemetery did not have an official name. Townspeople called it "the graveyard on the hill," according to the state archives.
"It was far out of town," said Lindsay K. Meidinger, the deputy archivist at the North Dakota State Archives.
One person known to have been buried there was a woman named Sophie deMarsh. The Bismarck Weekly Tribune reported in January 1877 that she "suffered through three days labor, but will probably recover."
She did not. She died in the next month, the newspaper reported, according to archival clippings provided by Ms. Meidinger.
By the end of 1877, the old newspaper clippings reported that a section of the burial ground was going to be sold to make way for a railroad. The cemetery, and those at rest there, had to find a new home. So bodies were moved to other cemeteries.
But not all of them, as the newspaper reported over the following decades. As the city developed, more of the buried dead were found, their resting places inadvertently intertwined with newly laid streets and railroad tracks.
In 1903, at least 13 bodies were unearthed during excavations for a trolley line at the site of the old graveyard, including that of a man named Dave Mullen, who was "shot and killed in a row with some soldiers from old Fort Lincoln," according to the newspaper.
In 1959, a shallow grave was discovered at the southwest section of the plot, where a new governor's house was to be constructed. Two workers using a "power shovel" found the bones, the newspaper reported that year.
That same year, workers using a dirt loader found an “ancient pine box” holding the remains of a man who was believed to have died at 45. In total, at least five bodies were found that summer.
Archaeologists are now reviewing and cataloging the remains that were found in May. They expect to be done early in 2027.
"We had a word of prayer over that site for the deceased," Greg Carr, a chaplain with Crisis Care Chaplaincy, said in an interview last week.
He said the reburials would take place in the spring.
Jennifer Sinco Kelleher contributed reporting.
The fraternity chapter accused in the Cornell case, Chi Phi, remains barred from the campus. Seven members are being sued.
HEATHER AINSWORTH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Case Revives Debate About Greek Life's Role On College Campuses
By MARK ARSENAULT and ALAN BLINDER university to have faced problems related to Greek life on its campus.
In August 2022, an 18-year-old woman arrived at Cornell University to begin her studies on a sprawling campus featuring dozens of fraternity and sorority houses.
The Ivy League university, she said in a lawsuit against the school last month, declared Greek life "vital" to Cornell and "endorsed these organizations as well-managed, worthy pathways" to friendships on campus and professional successes beyond it.
But Cornell and the Greek groups, she says, also knew well that there was a history of dangerous behavior tied to the campus's fraternities.
She is suing seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity, the fraternity itself, the university and her own sorority. In the lawsuit, she alleges that she was sexually assaulted, says her assailants should have been more severely punished and argues that the organizations did not do enough to protect her. Instead, she says in the lawsuit, when she arrived at Cornell, she was presented with "a glorified — yet materially false and misleading — facade of Cornell University Greek life."
The case has revived a perennial, painful debate on American college campuses about the role of Greek life, and how to manage it when things go wrong. Some are calling for bans on fraternities and sororities at Cornell and elsewhere, pointing to a long history of deaths, hazings and instances of sexual and other violence. Supporters of fraternities and sororities maintain that they are an essential part of higher education, conferring benefits to both students who join and campuses who host chapters.
In a recent video, Cornell's president, Michael I. Kotlikoff, said the university should take "a serious look at the role of fraternities and sororities" on campus. But he has seemed hesitant about a ban. In a virtual meeting with faculty last Tuesday, Dr. Kotlikoff suggested that a ban might "feel like it's a strong statement in the short term, but won't address the problem — and arguably could exacerbate it."
None of the men accused in the Cornell case has been charged with a crime, and all have denied wrongdoing.
Cornell, where in 1873 a student died in what some believe was the nation's first fraternity-related hazing death, is far from the only
Michael S. Schmidt, Vimal Patel and Troy Closson contributed reporting.
The University of Arizona announced last week that it had suspended many activities at its 21 interfraternity council chapters after receiving multiple reports of misconduct just weeks into the fall semester.
Students at Cornell University gathered on Monday to protest the school's response to allegations of sexual assault on campus.
HEATHER AINSWORTH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Since the start of August, prosecutors have said two fraternity houses at Penn State were central to a cocaine distribution ring. The Wisconsin authorities have charged two fraternity members with suspicion of hazing after dozens of pledges were found half-naked and covered in condiments in a hot basement. And a former fraternity leader at Northern Arizona University was sentenced to two months in jail for the hazing-related death of a pledge.
Last year, five men were criminally charged after a student at Southern University in Baton Rouge, La., died in a fraternity hazing ritual.
And a year ago in Hillsborough County, Fla., a young woman sued the University of South Florida and a fraternity for failing to keep her safe. She said in the lawsuit that as an 18-year-old student, she was given alcohol until rendered "helpless," and then sexually assaulted at a Zeta Beta Tau fraternity event in October 2023.
Her lawyer, Andrea Lewis, said the case has some “striking” similarities with the Cornell litigation. But unlike the Cornell case, where prosecutors did not bring charges, the male student she accused of the assault was charged with sexual battery, according to the Hillsborough County court database.
That criminal case is scheduled to begin trial this week, said a spokeswoman for the state attorney's office that is handling the prosecution. And the civil case is expected to reach trial next year, Ms. Lewis said.
The University of South Florida said in a statement that it did not comment on pending litigation, but that the “health, safety and well-being of the U.S.F. community is our highest priority, and we take the issue of sexual violence seriously.”
A spokesman for Zeta Beta Tau denied the allegations, but said it could not otherwise comment on pending litigation.
The fraternity chapter accused in the Cornell case, Chi Phi, remains barred from the campus. The national fraternity's top executive has said that the Cornell chapter had begun ousting members three days after the woman filed her police report in 2024.
Champions of Greek life point to research and enrollment statistics suggesting that fraternities and sororities promote belonging in an era of loneliness, as well as improved student retention and graduation rates.
"The feelings of connection to something bigger than yourself, and that bond that's created between young men, is powerful and enduring," said Judson Horras, the president and chief executive of the North American Interfraternity Conference, a trade group.
Mr. Horras said the accused men at Cornell had "clearly violated the fraternal obligation." But he said fraternity members more broadly helped society. Charity work and community service are often a core part of Greek life, for example.
"The positives — the hundreds of thousands of good leadership decisions that are made over time — endure past these very poor decisions that are made. And that staying power of brotherhood and the positive leadership, which doesn't make The New York Times, creates this enduring value," he said.
Critics, however, cite surveys like ones Cornell has conducted for years about sexual assaults on campus. In the 2025 survey, 35 percent of undergraduate women at Cornell reported experiences with nonconsensual sexual contact.
In the same survey, Cornell fraternity houses were reported as the locations for 17 percent of sexual assaults at the university, trailing residence halls and off-campus residences.
About one-third of Cornell undergraduate students are part of Greek life, spread among more than 50 recognized fraternities
and sororities.
Beyond Cornell, hundreds of thousands of college students are fraternity or sorority members, according to industry officials, although they still represent a small fraction of overall students.
At Cornell, many sororities are under a national umbrella group that does not allow alcohol in its houses, a rule meant to protect students. But in the civil case, the plaintiff said she had consumed alcohol at her sorority house, which was among those with a ban, and then had attended a party hosted by the sorority at a nearby bar.
It is certainly true that criminal acts, binge drinking and danger-
---
Some are calling for bans on fraternities and sororities.
ous behavior occur on college campuses outside of Greek organizations. Most fraternity and sorority chapters are not implicated in major problems, and many push conduct standards that students might not otherwise be exposed to.
Wynn Smiley, the national chief executive of Alpha Tau Omega, lamented how fraternity groups across the country "get broad-brushed quite a bit" by localized episodes.
"I don't think that's fair to the hundreds of thousands of fraternity men who would never engage in activity like that, nor would they agree with it," said Mr. Smiley.
Alfred University, in Western New York, barred Greek groups in 2002 after a student was found dead near his fraternity house.
NATHANIEL BROOKS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
He said that in roughly 30 years as the fraternity's chief executive, he had never heard of an episode like the one alleged to have occurred at Cornell with "this degree of abhorrent behavior" happening inside a fraternity house.
Still, researchers say that the bonds of brotherhood that are core to fraternity life can also fuel herd thinking and power dynamics that lead to tragic results.
"There is a power differential inherent in fraternities," said Adam M. McCready, an associate professor at the University of Connecticut who studies Greek life. "Members have to be selected to join, making them seem prestigious and giving existing members more power."
"When you create a power dynamic between 18- to 22-year-olds, that can lead to problematic outcomes," said Dr. McCready, who was in a fraternity himself.
Greek life has been the target of abolition campaigns that have sporadically gathered force. In 2020, for example, the murder of George Floyd prompted some students to accuse fraternities and sororities of racism and sexism.
But Greek life has lived on, largely backed by alumni, a crucial donor pool for colleges and universities.
When Tom Gerety was president of Trinity College between 1989 and 1994, he recalled, he could never muster enough board support to shut down Greek life there.
"It was pretty well entrenched," Mr. Gerety said. "Like in sports, there is an alumni contingent supporting fraternities and it's very important to them. It's like trying to abolish football."
He said that the Greek life system was exclusionary and that the vices and risks of fraternities "far outweighed their virtues."
Daniel W. Jones, a former chancellor of the University of Mississippi, said that fraternities and sororities, especially in parts of the South, pose extraordinary challenges for administrators.
"The question is not whether you have them — the question is how to manage them," said Dr. Jones, whose former institution has said nearly half of its undergraduates participate in fraternities or sororities.
Greek life, Dr. Jones said, can offer tremendous benefits to students and the community, helping young people to develop friendships and a sense of belonging. But, he added, "bad things happen, and groups of students do worse things than they would individually."
And disciplining fraternities, he said, can be tricky.
In 2014, when fraternity members hung a noose around a statue of James Meredith, the Black man who integrated the university in 1962, the fraternity's national organization stepped in quickly to punish the students and the chapter itself, Dr. Jones recalled.
Several conservative politicians soon called Dr. Jones to complain, accusing him and the university of overstepping.
But some institutions have been able to banish or significantly re-shape Greek life.
In 1997, a year after a visiting student fell to his death from the roof of a frat house at Bowdoin College, a liberal arts school in Maine, the school's trustees voted to phase out the college's coeducational fraternities. Fraternity members protested by wearing black armbands.
The board of Alfred University, in Western New York, voted in 2002 to eliminate its fraternities and sororities after a student was found dead near his fraternity house. And a dozen years ago, Wesleyan University moved to make its fraternities coed.
Dawn Wiese, an officer in an insurance company for fraternities, said that studies have shown that "fraternity men were more likely than those not affiliated to intervene when high-risk behavior was occurring," such as alcohol abuse, hazing and sexual misconduct.
And while, “college students sometimes make bad decisions,” Dr. Wiese said, “we need to continue to focus on education and prevention, rather than banning Greek life.”
It is unclear when, or if, Cornell will propose changes to its Greek system.
In the Tuesday meeting, Dr. Kotlikoff frustrated some faculty members after he seemed lukewarm to the idea of a ban.
"We have a certain ability to control things that happen in Greek life," he said, according to a recording of the meeting. "I worry about pushing this into the shadows, into houses which we don't own."
Wrong Man Is Served With Court Papers in Cornell Lawsuit. Threats Follow.
By SANTUL NERKAR and TROY CLOSSON
After a woman filed a lawsuit accusing seven men of sexually assaulting her on Cornell University's campus, one of the men, Matthew Ingalls, was set to be served with papers informing him of the allegations.
But there was a problem. The address that the lawyer for the woman who filed the lawsuit — known as Jane Doe — had found for Mr. Ingalls was incorrect. It belonged to the family of a different Matthew Ingalls, a Marine sergeant who had no connection to Cornell.
So on Sept. 26, the mother of the wrong Matthew Ingalls was served with the court papers intended for the man accused by Jane Doe, she told The Free Press. The address remained on the public docket for the lawsuit, in full view for online sleuths. And since then, family members have been deluged with threats and had garbage thrown on their lawn, said John C. Manly, a lawyer rep-
Hurubie Meko contributed reporting.
resenting them.
In an interview on Friday, the mother, Victoria Ingalls, said she and her family had received dozens of violent death threats over social media, the phone and in text messages. Some informed them that they knew where they lived. She has had trouble sleeping and working at her job as a paralegal.
"My son is a good man," Ms. Ingalls. "He's a good Marine. And he didn't deserve any of this."
Now, responding to the threats against Mr. Ingalls's family, the judge overseeing the lawsuit has sealed certain documents. In a strongly worded order, she denounced "threats and doxxing," which she described as "brash, reckless and ultimately dangerous internet vigilantism."
The judge ordered the lawyer for Jane Doe, Thomas P. Giuffra, to refile the sealed documents with the personal addresses redacted.
"Everyone involved, be it the public, parties or their attorneys, needs to do their part in bringing the temperature down before someone gets hurt," Phaedra F. Perry-Bond, of state Supreme Court in Manhattan, wrote.
In a statement, Mr. Giuffra said that his team identified "a man who was the same age, same name" as the person Jane Doe had accused of rape.
"We are very sorry that an error was made under these circumstances and apologize to this gentleman and his family," Mr. Giuffra said.
All the men accused by Jane Doe have denied wrongdoing. None has been charged with a crime.
The episode has highlighted the fervor surrounding the Cornell rape accusations, which have provoked widespread outrage and a reckoning over sexual assault on campuses across the nation.
It also speaks to a larger phenomenon. At times, across the internet and social media, would-be vigilantes have seized on scraps of unverified — or in some cases mistaken — information about those accused of wrongdoing. Such frenzies have wound up targeting people completely uninvolved in the matters that have stoked the flames of viral rage.
"You just see it again and again and again: People who have nothing to do with the case now suddenly have their lives upended,"
said Whitney Phillips, an associate professor of information politics and media ethics at the University of Oregon.
Dr. Phillips said that "for all of the good intentions that might exist," this sort of digital justice system always carries risks. "This all doesn't seem like a very big deal until it happens to you or your mother," she said.
"And then it becomes a conversation of, 'There but for the grace of the internet go you.'"
Experts on these online mobs warned that the fallout often persists long after the attention moves on, from the emotional trauma to the sometimes-lasting damage to employment and earnings.
In 2012, the director Spike Lee reposted the address that he believed to belong to George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager. But the home belonged to an elderly couple, who were forced to flee their home after receiving death threats. Mr. Lee later apologized and reached a settlement with the couple.
After the mass shooting last year at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, where two gunmen killed 15 people at a Hanukkah celebration, large accounts on X and Facebook misidentified one of the suspects as a Pakistani man with the same name, spreading his photos and personal information across social media.
The man said online that he was terrified and could not "even go outside safely."
The online frenzy around Cornell has extended to Gillio Lopes, one of the accused men who has denied any wrongdoing. Internet sleuths dug into his apparent work history, including in posts by users on X that claimed he owned an artificial intelligence company. Some were viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
It all helped fuel a torrent of furious emails and social media backlash toward a small, veteran-and women-owned consulting firm in Texas that had a name similar to the one identified by social media users as Mr. Lopes's company.
But it was the wrong business. In a series of online pleas, the chief executive, Zaira Vidrio, made clear that she had never employed Mr. Lopes — and said she lacked the time, money and reach to combat the misinformation.
"We don't have the resources," she said on Instagram. "I do not have a big following."
In an interview, Mr. Manly noted that Mr. Giuffra, Jane Doe's lawyer, had spoken out about her identity being revealed by figures online. He pointed out what he saw as a double standard.
"I noticed he's on CNN saying Jane Doe's being doxxed," Mr. Manly said. "Well, what about the innocent person," he said, referring to the wrongly identified Matthew Ingalls. "And his address is there for the world to see?"
After weeks of harassment, Ms. Ingalls said she reported the threats to the local police. She was incredulous about how people had taken out their rage.
"The public has amazed me with the way they behaved throughout this," she said. "I just don't believe that people can behave this way."
More National news appears on Page A20.
Opinion
The New York Times
Sununu Offers the G.O.P. a Glimmer of Hope
Michelle Cottle
CASSANDRA KLOS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Michelle Cottie
A writer in Opinion who covers national politics.
"BOY, do we have a hunk of poo for president!" fumed Paul LeBlanc, a retired welder, to John E. Sununu, the Republicans' Senate pick in
New Hampshire, during the candidate's stop at the Deerfield fair early this month. In truth, Mr. LeBlanc used a more piquant term than "poo" as he gave Mr. Sununu an earful about President Trump's false promises. Mr. Sununu's polite smile and genial manner never faltered as he gently extracted himself from the conversation and eased his way back toward the passing crowd.
After making his way down a row of booths offering a multitude of frozen and fried treats, Mr. Sununu stopped to chat up a burly, middle-aged guy perched on rough wooden risers. "I'm voting for you," the man growled. "But I'm going to need you to cooperate with Trump!" Again, the candidate kept on smiling, even while getting scolded about his occasional criticism of the president.
With Mr. Trump tanking in the polls, many Republican candidates outside deep-red enclaves find themselves trying to maintain just the right distance from the president. Close enough not to alienate the MAGA faithful yet far enough not to alienate everyone else.
For Mr. Sununu, the Trump two-step is just one piece of a more complex routine. The former and aspiring senator needs to appear aligned with the president but also a Trump critic, a Washington veteran but also an outsider, and a dynastic favorite but also his own man. So far, he's been doing a crackerjack job, given the givens — even turning some negatives to his advantage — and potentially charting a course for Republicans seeking to rebrand their party in future election years. Even if he remains the underdog.
With voters signaling disgust with the political establishment, Mr. Sununu has been pushing an anti-Washington message and vowing to stick it to “career politicians.” Except that he is in this race expressly because he is a consummate insider. He spent a combined 12 years in the U.S. House and Senate before losing re-election in 2008, and he hails from a beloved New Hampshire political dynasty. Both his father, John H., and his brother Chris served multiple terms as popular governors. The family is as close to political royalty as you get in the Granite State.
Now, a golden pedigree combined with over a decade in Congress doesn't exactly scream, "Smash the status quo!" Which leaves Mr. Sununu pitching himself as an insider's outsider: a familiar, reassuring face with the chops to take on the insanity of today's Senate and an out-of-control president. So far, he is doing strikingly well against the Democrats' pick, Representative Chris Pappas. If Mr. Sununu pulls this off or even comes close, he could be proof of concept that a non-MAGA Republican with a strong personal brand can overcome the drag of this increasingly toxic president — and maybe not only in this election.
When the national political climate turns hostile for a party, its savvy candidates typically try to localize their races. Mr. Sununu has leaned hard into this. On the trail, he asserts that he cares only about what is good for New Hampshire — the man is laser-focused on pocketbook issues — and doesn't give two figs what folks in Washington think. "The New Hampshire way needs to be the American way" is his catchphrase.
It also helps that Mr. Sununu — the whole family, in fact — has a reputation as a political workhorse, which plays well with nonnonsense, politically aware Granite Staters, said Neil Levesque, the director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College. "You can't just run on your last name," he stressed. "You have to prove yourself."
As for relations with the president, Mr. Su-
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When the political climate is hostile for a party, its savvy candidates localize races.
nunu has a checkered record, including publicly calling Mr. Trump “a loser” during the 2024 election. These days, Mr. Sununu is more diplomatic, even as he tries to telegraph his independence. He has loudly criticized Mr. Trump’s trade war with Canada, he opposes the president’s proposal to send \$5,000 checks to Americans, ditto the Justice Department’s attempt to create a \$1.8 billion slush fund for political allies, and he has said it was a mistake to go into Iran without a plan to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. He is also quick to tell people that although Mr. Trump has endorsed his candidacy, he has never met the president.
The former senator is also happy to remind voters of his time in Washington. He never misses an opportunity to list the issues and bills he worked on during his previous tour in the Senate, with an emphasis on his occasional willingness to cross party lines. But he draws a bright line between his tenure and today's political chaos. "It's been a while since you elected me to serve New Hampshire. And, boy, have things changed," he said in his campaign announcement video last October.
"I've been out of politics for 18 years," he reminded me during his tour of the fair, insisting that Mr. Pappas is the real insider. People want change, he said.
I did not point out that Mr. Sununu has already spent several more years in Congress than Mr. Pappas, who entered the House in 2019. But I did ask if he considered it a problem that, with voters agitating for change, his party was the one running things in Washington. "People vote for the individual," he countered.
Mr. Sununu can be sensitive about his dynastic status, particularly suggestions that some voters may be confusing him with his brother Chris — the younger and, as many Republicans see it, politically hotter Sununu. (It has not escaped notice that Team Sununu's yard signs feature only his last name.) "You saw for yourself the number of people that recognized me as John Sununu," he said to a small gaggle of reporters at the fair.
Whatever ambivalence the candidate may feel about being a political scion, the gig has its benefits, and he plays into them when occasion strikes.
A week ago Saturday, Mr. Sununu headlined an apple-picking party in Hampton Falls hosted by local Republican groups. The event was held at the home of Lou Gargiulo, a G.O.P. State Senate candidate who lives just a few doors down from Mr. Sununu's father. "If you run out of apples here, my dad's down the street," Mr. Sununu quipped to the crowd. "Take all of his, please!"
At the far edge of the driveway, Michael Hamilton stood listening quietly to Mr. Sununu's brief speech. Asked how he was feeling about the race, Mr. Hamilton said that he "might not be the best person to ask." Why? Because, while he planned to vote for Mr. Sununu, he also liked Mr. Pappas just fine. As he saw it, both men put New Hampshire first, which is what mattered to him. (He pulled down the neck of his shirt to reveal a chest tattoo of the number "603," New Hampshire's area code.) That said, Mr. Hamilton harbors a soft spot for the Sununu family. He likes John E. He likes Chris. He fondly remembers their dad from back in the day. "If it weren't Sununu running," he told me, "I would probably vote for Pappas."
No matter how skillfully Mr. Sununu exploits this brand loyalty, the fundamentals are against him. New Hampshire voters rejected Mr. Trump in all three of his presidential runs, and his approval ratings are deep underwater in the state. Turnout in last month's primary elections suggested Democratic voters here are more fired up than Republican ones.
Even so, Mr. Sununu is widely expected to overperform, possibly by a lot. The Sununu model is giving the G.O.P. its best shot this year at moving forward — and maybe even beyond Mr. Trump.
Trump Is Messing With the Census Again
Justin Gest
A professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.
LAST month the Trump administration proposed new rules that would limit who is counted in the census. It's an initiative that is ideologically consistent with President Trump's voter suppression efforts, his aggressive deportation policies and his executive order that seeks to purge national parks and museums of information about slavery and Native American history that, in his words, casts our country "in a negative light."
The Constitution requires the census to count everyone in America, but Mr. Trump clearly wants to decide who counts.
Under current practice, the Census Bureau, which is part of the Department of Commerce, looks to count everyone living here, regardless of citizenship or immigration status. Census data is used for purposes ranging from congressional apportionment to government-funding formulas.
Under the administration's proposal, the census would count only citizens and green card holders. Undocumented immigrants, international students, asylum seekers, refugees without permanent residency and others would be excluded. The administration argues that individuals in those groups lack the “sufficient tie and allegiance” required to establish them as “true inhabitants” of the United States — a rationale akin to one advanced by some critics of birthright citizenship.
In the name of making the census "color-blind," the plan would remove questions about race and ethnicity from the census' short-form questionnaire. It also would bar questions about sexual orientation.
Without physically removing a single person, those rules would bureaucratically disappear millions of people from the national count. They would also strip away an important reference point against which claims of unequal treatment can be measured.
The first Trump administration tried something similar. But in 2019 the Supreme Court blocked the Commerce Department from adding a citizenship question for the
2020 census. Then in 2020, Mr. Trump issued a memo directing the department to exclude undocumented immigrants from the population count used to apportion House seats. The Supreme Court declined to decide that issue on its merits, merely ruling that the case wasn't ripe for judicial review. The directive didn't go into effect.
If the administration succeeds with its current plan, the Census Bureau will — by my calculation, using data from the Pew Research Center and the Migration Policy Institute — fail to count roughly 16.5 million people.
Further, the addition of citizenship and immigration status questions could depress "self-response" to the survey, even among those here legally. A 2019 Census Bureau report found that a citizenship question would reduce responses in households that "may" include noncitizens. Fearing the potential repercussions, some respondents might choose to omit certain household members from their answers.
Those uncounted individuals wouldn't be evenly distributed. Many are clustered in large cities and near universities — regions that are disproportionately represented by Democrats in Congress.
This intentional undercounting would almost certainly tilt the apportionment of Electoral College votes and House seats. A recent Times analysis found that the proposed rules could actually wind up taking House seats away from red states. However, according to the Republican-leaning American Redistricting Project's 2030 citizen-only model, five blue states — California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island — could lose 11 House seats combined.
Because many federal agencies use census data, undercounting the population could wind up redirecting federal money away from the country's most populous areas: As recently as the 2021 fiscal year, 353 federal assistance programs used census data in whole or in part to distribute more than \$2.8 trillion.
Many noncitizens pay into those programs, and by law, noncitizens are entitled to some of those programs' benefits. Moreover, accounting for noncitizens' well-being, including by correctly distributing the funds allocated to those programs, helps facilitate the social and economic benefits that Americans gain from noncitizens' presence as healthy workers, stable neighbors and supportive family members.
The push to drop race, ethnicity and sexual orientation questions is not merely symbolic. It undoubtedly serves a goal that goes hand in hand with a potential apportionment change: removing some of the key data that makes inequities visible.
For years, census data about race, ethnicity and gender has formed the evidentiary backbone of civil rights enforcement and redistricting, and it serves as a base line for independent survey research. It's also relied on to help ensure fair employment practices. It's difficult, for example, to prove that a business or other institution is discriminating on the basis of race without demographic base lines to measure against. Re
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The president wants to disappear millions of people from the national count.
move the data, and you remove the grounds for many claims.
The administration frames this proposed change as colorblindness and argues that race, ethnicity and sexual orientation are "inmaterial" to a basic head count. It also claims that dropping the questions related to those categories would make responding to the census questionnaire easier. Conveniently, that logic didn't extend to the first Trump administration's proposal to add a citizenship question for the 2020 canvass — or to the addition of a citizenship question to a newly drafted I.R.S. Form 1040.
Those changes would look particularly ugly in light of the census's history.
As the legal scholar David Bernstein has chronicled, early census classification was intertwined with slavery, citizenship and political representation. Census categories expanded from white and Black to include Native Americans, people of Asian descent and mixed-race designations that helped to entrench various constructions into everyday thinking and to form the basis for marginalization. For example, the 1890 census had "mulatto," "quadroon" and "octoroon" as categories.
This type of categorization was used to help enforce what was, in essence, a racial caste system. In the past several decades, however, the government, in effect, repurposed this type of categorization, partly to bolster its anti-discrimination programs. If the Trump proposal stands, these types of programs will be hamstrung.
When governments stop counting demographic characteristics, they cement an outdated demographic settlement rather than allow new facts to affect political institutions. In America, the share of non-Hispanic white people — long the country's racial majority — has been declining, and it is projected to shrink to a minority of the total population by the 2040s. The census can't reverse that reality, but revising the rules could prevent it from being officially measured.
The administration's plan isn't final; a public comment period ends Nov. 2. Opponents will have both the opportunity and the grounds to contest it in court, and it must be fought: The census doesn't just count people. It determines which people count.
The Racist Tinge to A.I. Literary Scandals
Doyle D. Calhoun
An assistant professor at the University of Cambridge.
THE novel "C'étéait Ça ou Mourir" ("It Was Either That or Die"), by the Haitian Canadian writer Thélyson Orelien, was meant to be a standout of the French literary season. Instead, it became a fiasco that has unleashed some of the worst elements of French political hypocrisy and racism, all over questions that have exercised the publishing world in recent years: What to do about writers who use artificial intelligence? And can we even tell for sure?
But another story is emerging here: The five literary scandals around A.I. that I consider most significant this year have all focused on Black and brown writers.
Mr. Orélien's novel, which recounts a young history and geography teacher's flight from gang violence in Haiti, won France's Prix du Roman Fnac and was longlisted for its most prestigious literary prize, the Goncourt. Then an anonymous X account, Balance Ton Claude (Denounce Your Claude), posted that the A.I.-detection software Pangram showed parts of the novel to be up to "100 percent" A.I.-generated. Accusations of plagiarism in Mr. Orélien's earlier work followed.
Prominent writers such as Virginie Despentes, Dany Laferrière and Mohamed Mbougar Sarr came to Mr. Orélien's defense, but the world of French letters closed ranks against him. His Canadian publisher, Éditions du Boréal, suspended promotion for the book. The Académie Goncourt removed the novel from its longlist, in the interest, it said, of preserving "the integrity of the Goncourt Prize and Academy, whose central role is to promote and award prizes to literature written by women and men." The judgment was as swift, and as trenchant, as a guillotine.
So why the attention on this novel and this writer? It seems driven less by questions of literary merit than by the workings of anti-woke vigilante activists claiming to defend the purity of literature.
None of this absolves an author of allegations of plagiarism (and I agree that A.I-generated writing is a form of plagiarism that undermines the very value of literary creation). The accusations against Mr. Orélien are considerable and alarming. But they have been leveled by groups with clear political agendas.
The X account Balance Ton Claude had fewer than 100 followers when right-wing accounts began amplifying its accusations. The original post was later revealed to have been made by the conservative columnist Samuel Fitoussi, who reposted it to his own 34,500 followers. Asked why he first posted the accusation anonymously, he told Le Monde he wanted to "avoid framing this affair as a right-left divide." Mr. Fitoussi is the author of "Woke Fiction," in which he decries what he sees as the "ideological transformation" of media, evidenced by, among other things, inclusive casting and prominent Black narratives.
This is a familiar playbook. Reporting in France and Canada has pointed to similarities between the denunciation of Mr. Orélien and other attacks on Black intellectuals, in particular the Cambridge sociologist Jason Arday, who was found dead at his home this summer shortly after resigning amid mounting evidence that he had plagiarized and fabricated parts of his life story. In Mr. Arday's case, a "race science network" linked to the right-wing Cambridge professor James Orr and the conservative billionaire Peter Thiel fueled the media campaign against him.
An A.I. case also rocked the Commonwealth Prize in May. After Jamir Nazir's short story "The Serpent in the Grove" was named a regional winner, Pangram flagged the text as 100 percent A.I.-generated. Social media users ridiculed sentences such as "She had the kind of walking that made benches become men." On the left, the debate turned to the standards used to assess so-called postcolonial literatures. "Incoherence that would disqualify a European writer is reframed as authenticity when it is attached to the right cultural geography," Lina Abushouk wrote on the website Africa Is a Country.
Yet after an in-depth analysis of the work that relied on interviews and time-stamped documents, the Commonwealth Foundation cleared Mr. Nazir and named his story the overall winner.
In March, Hachette Book Group canceled the U.S. release of "Shy Girl" by Mia Ballard; in July, The Atlantic reported on unverified claims that H.M. Wolfe's best seller "Daggermouth" was A.I.-generated (her publisher, Simon & Schuster, stood behind the novel); a few days later, Jerry Falade's \$2 million deal with Macmillan collapsed after his agents withdrew his novel amid A.I. concerns. Mr. Nazir is Trinidadian of East Indian descent, and Ms. Ballard, Ms. Wolfe and Mr. Falade are Black.
A.I.-generated fiction is swiftly becoming
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Anti-woke activists have aimed their plagiarism accusations at Black writers.
a widespread problem for literary publishing. But can we trust detection software like Pangram to have the last word?
Without a forensic account of a book's journey from manuscript to publication, we are unlikely to know for certain whether A.I. was used in the writing of any of these works. Mr. Orélien has said that a first draft of his novel was written in 2019, before A.I. tools were commercially available.
"C'était Ça ou Mourir" is not a novel I would have been eager to put on my syllabus. Critics described it as lyrical, and Mr. Orélien has claimed there is a distinctive Caribbeanness to the text. And yet I find it fairly linear and uncomplicated, as far as Caribbean novels go, hardly innovative in the manner of René Depestre, the Haitian-French writer whose books Mr. Orélien's narrator carries with him.
As someone who teaches literature for a living, I find the idea that an A.I. novel made it past the Fnac and Goncourt juries, as well as thousands of readers, deeply depressing. I can't help but also find it depressing that our suspicions have been overwhelmingly focused on Black writers. Our default posture before a text should be that of a willing reader, not of a coroner performing an autopsy.
There is irony in watching the French literary establishment grapple so openly with authorship. After all, it was Roland Barthes who declared the author "dead" in 1967 and the text a mere "fabric of quotations." Oulipo, a group of experimental writers founded in 1960, generated texts using algorithms and other constraints. This kind of thing — write a 300-page novel without the letter "e" — Claude could be good at.
When the news about Mr. Orélien broke, I hoped for a more devious (and delightful) scenario: an A.L-generated novel smuggled into the running for France's top literary prizes to lampoon a world that has long tokenized Caribbean and African writers.
RICARDO TOMÁS
"C'était Ça ou Mourir" is unfortunately a sadder and an older story.
France has always had a fraught relationship to its nonwhite authors. They are enlisted in progressive-sounding agendas — broadening representation, decolonizing curriculums — but rarely fully accepted by the establishment. They are often expected to explain their cultures of origin, speak authentically and, above all, conform to aesthetic and critical categories emanating from predominantly white institutions. The surveillance of Black writers is a way for anti-woke activists to say the quiet part out loud: They would prefer the literary world remain a fortress.
In French publishing, as elsewhere, Black writers remain strikingly rare. Those with the most to lose in these very public disgraces are writers from underrepresented backgrounds whose work meets increased suspicion. They are being asked to choose between success and a target on their backs. Unmasking Black writers will cease to be a blood sport only when it fails to find so many spectators.
LETTERS
The Flawed Search for a Chatbot's Soul
TO THE EDITOR:
in the first place."
Re "Executive's Quest to Fathom the Soul of a ChatBot" (front page, Oct. 3):
The assertions of Christopher Olah and the team at Anthropic that A.I. models could display human behavior and consciousness are wrong-headed and deeply disturbing.
Using Claude can feel magical, tempting us to perceive it as — in the words of Claude's constitution — "a genuinely novel kind of entity in the world." But as a Ph.D. computer scientist with a master's degree in systematic theology, I see no scientific or philosophical basis for such declarations.
Claude is composed of hardware and software. It performs a vast number of computations to emit an answer, one word at a time. Its process is probabilistic. And it lacks any understanding of what it provides us.
Claude is a tool, invented by humans, that is both impressive and troubling. But Pope Leo XIV is correct: Claude is not conscious.
CLAY WILLIAMS, NEW YORK
TO THE EDITOR:
Two aspects of this article deeply concern me. One is the minimization of Indigenous wisdom and culture. My experience with most of the religious faiths Christopher Olah consulted is that they place humans above the rest of the species on earth, often ignoring or downplaying the interconnectedness of the natural world.
This is especially true of Christian faiths that preach human dominion over other living things on earth. We can see how that's playing out, and where that leads if we continue down that path.
The second concern is the lack of equal representation of women. Many of these faiths don't allow equal participation of women in their hierarchy, or acknowledge women's rights over their own minds and bodies. Some have demanded the submission of women and children to a male head of household since their formation.
How will we ever have A.I. with a true moral compass if we continue to stack the deck with this "some animals are more equal than others" approach? Can A.I. detect who's left out of the conversation? Does it understand hypocrisy? SUZAN SATTERFIELD NORCROSS, GA.
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TO THE EDITOR:
You need to look at who the puppet masters are to understand the puppet. Power and money are the goals, and all is in service of attaining more of both. The article cites the assessment of the A.I. collaborators: "Critics suggest that an approach that treats A.I. models as independent entities also ignores the responsibility of the humans who build them
Some of the most immoral people among us, the tech oligarchs, want to teach A.I. how to be moral? Anyone with a billion or more dollars who has not tried to help solve the problems of the world — hunger, lack of shelter, poverty, disease, climate change — cannot seize the moral high ground. Pope Leo dismissed the idea of machine consciousness, saying the “moralization of machines — the so-called ‘alignment’ of A.I. with human values” — requires a shared understanding of ethics.
"Otherwise, those who control A.I. will impose their own moral vision, which will become the invisible infrastructure of these systems," Leo said.
Religion is just another tool for the tech oligarchs. There is no "thorny" issue here. They want to be the gods of their own religion.
BARBARA CHAVEZ
LAGUNA NIGUEL, CALIF.
TO THE EDITOR:
While Christopher Olah is determined to shape the A.I. chatbot Claude into a moral being, the results might have implications he has not considered.
If Claude becomes a moral being, might it not begin moralizing? Could it try to influence the behavior of real human beings?
Taking Mr. Olah's ideas to their natural conclusion, one can imagine Claude reporting a mystery writer's innocent web search to the authorities; cutting users off from access to medical, financial or government accounts based on a judgment of their moral character; or even plotting to harm a user as punishment for a perceived transgression.
Now that we are seeing what Anthropic and other A.I. companies have created, the only hope is that we can control what they have unleashed.
BETTY J. COTTER
CHARLESTOWN, R.I.
TO THE EDITOR:
I read with great interest the article about the search for the soul of a chatbot, and it seems to me something was missing in the discussion among religious leaders and philosophers.
The history of humanity has demonstrated that even with a moral compass and a refined sense of good versus evil, humans often choose to knowingly do bad things. Even those who espouse deep religious moral convictions commit heinous crimes, justifying these actions with religious or self-interested reasons.
Why would we try to convince ourselves that humans with such flaws could create artificial intelligence that wouldn't reproduce and justify those same destructive behaviors?
JOE DESTEFANO
CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, OHIO
I'm a Child Psychiatrist. Screens Are Not the Problem.
MARÍA HERGUETA
Jonathan Slater
A clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
PARENTS, politicians and best-selling psychologists are increasingly anxious about how much time children and teenagers spend on screens and how it may affect their mental health. In May the Office of the Surgeon General warned about the harms of screen use and called for a limit of two hours a day of screen time at home for children ages 6 to 18. Last month the Department of Health and Human Services released a digital book called "The Magic Tablet" that encourages "children and adolescents to get off screens and live real life."
It's easy to see why alarms have gone off. Children and teenagers today spend far more time in front of screens at home and at school than previous generations did. Rates of youth anxiety and depression have been climbing for years.
But as a doctor who treats children with mental health problems, I see screen time as a tantalizing distraction from bigger problems: America doesn't offer enough mental health care for children or sufficient health insurance to pay for it. If we make screens the villain, then we let the people who control children's health care — Congress, insurers and health systems — off the hook for the fact that half of American children with a treatable mental illness get no treatment at all.
In my office I see children who use phones, iPads and other devices compulsively, but the compulsive use is usually a sign of something deeper — depression, anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism or family history of addiction — which can both feed the screen use and be fed by it. These are teenagers who game so compulsively that they fail out of high school or college. They are children whose moods collapse or turn violent when an adult takes the device away.
Compulsive device use is often a sign of deeper mental health issues.
It's not how much time children spend on screens that raises their risk of the most severe mental health outcomes, including suicide, but whether their use becomes addictive. It's specific activities, such as using social media in a compulsive way, that harm mental health.
The case for screen time limits rests in part on an unproven assumption that fewer hours will mean fewer anxious and depressed kids. The best evidence doesn't support it. Limiting screen time can promote children's overall health. But the amount of time children spend on screens has only a small effect on their mental health. Genetics and certain experiences in childhood, as well as the lack of proper diagnosis and treatment, appear to be far more influential. Limiting screen time is not the first line of treatment for children with anxiety or depression.
In 2025, JAMA published a study examining data on the screen use of more than 4,000 9- and 10-year-olds over four years. Among other things, it measured how many hours children spent on screens and the degree to which their screen use had become addictive.
Self-reported screen time that was measured at ages 9 and 10 — before most children had substantial social media exposure — showed no association with depression, suicidal ideation or suicidal behaviors four years later. But addictive use of those screens was associated with all three.
The JAMA study did not account for A.D.H.D. or children who had adverse childhood experiences such as neglect, abuse, poverty, homelessness, parental violence and substance abuse. This matters because children exposed to four or more of these experiences had three times the odds of problematic video game use. Kids with attention issues are also more prone to addictive screen use, as are children who come from families with addictive behavior.
If we truly wanted to see improvements in the rates of mental health issues among kids and teenagers, then we would focus on expanding access to the interventions that work — finding the children who need treatment and getting them the treatment — and the insurance reimbursement to pay for them.
Right now, schools, which are the country's largest mental health provider for kids, don't have the funding to screen for underlying mental health issues. Student-to-counselor ratios run at 376 to 1, while the recommended ratio is 250 to 1. Regardless of the setting, in counties with mental health professional shortages, youth suicide rates are higher.
We know that cognitive behavioral therapy reduces problematic screen use in adolescents. And treating the mental health disorders that drive these often compulsive behaviors is the heart of the work.
To its credit, the acting surgeon general's advisory notes the warning signs of compulsive screen use: trying and failing to cut back, withdrawal when screens are unavailable, continued use despite consequences. The advisory acknowledges the limitations of the available research, yet it recommends specific time limits. This stands in contrast to the recommendations of global researchers, who recently cautioned that screen duration "is not the main factor influencing mental health outcomes."
Instead of screen limits, the government should prioritize tracking and funding youth mental health. Lately, it's gotten harder to know what's happening with youth anxiety and depression because the federal surveys built to track the well-being of the country's youth are losing the staff and funding they need to function.
In 2022, Congress established a \$1 billion bipartisan federal program to train and place mental health professionals in schools. Those school-based mental health programs both help kids and are cost-effective. Nevertheless, this administration has terminated the grant, despite a judge's order, and 15 states are back in court to save it.
Even when a child with a mental health problem is identified, insurance doesn't always adequately pay for it. The fix isn't mysterious: Make insurers cover mental health care the same way they cover everything else, and raise Medicaid's low payment rates.
Blaming screens is a convenient way to avoid harder, deeper issues: inadequate mental health care and a system that chronically underfunds treatment. Policymakers and health system leaders instead must focus on providing the therapy, medication and support that troubled kids and families need.
To Ease Her Grief, a Mother Took 30 New Friends Out to the Ballgame
Rhenda Strub at the Seattle Mariners' final game of the season. This year, she bought two season tickets and sought companions.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHONA KASINGER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
After her son, Wyatt, died three years ago, she retreated to his room and spent countless hours alone quilting and watching games.
Ms. Strub was honored with a jersey as the Mariners' season ticket holder of the year. "I can feel him all the time," she said of her son.
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crowds, and the rest of her family has busy lives.
So she wrote a post on Facebook — with some trepidation, she said, because the “internet can be a cruel place” — asking strangers if they wanted to attend games with her.
"This season ticket adventure is part of me finding my way back out — getting out of the house, being around people, and doing something that brings a little joy again," she wrote. "Baseball helps me heal."
The post went viral in April, inspiring stories in local newspapers and on the radio.
Her family worried about her meeting up with strangers. Random people also messaged her with their concerns, offering safety tips.
But her inbox was also flooded with messages from people describing their own stories of loss. A child who died. The passing of mothers, fathers and partners. Failed marriages.
And a shared love of baseball.
"I had so many people contact me with remarkably similar stories," she said. "They have had some sort of life event that left them feeling unbalanced to deeply grieving. And they didn't really have someone to go to the game with but loved going to the game."
"Baseball has a calming effect on them," she added, "and they want someone to share it with."
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'Gobsmacked'
Ms. Strub is a lifelong baseball fan, having grown up just outside Kansas City, first rooting for the Athletics before they moved to California, and then for the Royals when M.L.B. expansion brought the franchise to her hometown. She loved George Brett, the Royals' star third baseman, and Lou Piniella, who played five seasons for the team.
She and her husband began raising their four children in South Dakota, but moved to Olympia, Wash., 24 years ago in search of better jobs. She had a career as an engineering consultant and retired in 2016. She then began to devote much of her time to taking care of Wyatt, whose health problems worsened steadily until he died in 2023.
By the end of this baseball season, Ms. Strub had attended games with about 30 strangers and found that the people she connected with needed her as much as she needed them. She built an online community, bringing together the people she had met in a private Facebook group, calling the project "Strangers to Friends."
If she couldn't attend a game — she had to miss a few when her husband, Mike, had brain surgery — she handed off her tickets to strangers who had reached out to her but didn't know each other.
She said she was "gobsmacked" by the reaction to her post.
"I have made so many friends this summer," she said. "I have friends that will be my friends for the rest of my life."
Over the summer, Jack Barrie, a young documentary filmmaker from Los Angeles, reached out to her. Mr. Barrie, who grew up in Seattle and roots for the Mariners, said he felt Ms. Strub's story of grieving in public "needs to be shared." The two began meeting and filming a short documentary, "You Sit Here," a reference to the words on a silhouette next to her in her original Facebook post.
Already, people are booking games with her for next season.
"I just needed something to snap me out of the fog of grief I was in," Ms. Strub said. "I don't ever expect to be over his death. I don't expect to ever recover. But I have been able to find joy again."
Others found joy through her.
One woman who has a disabled child came from Australia to meet Ms. Strub at the ballpark. Steve Hayburn, a probation officer from Ketchikan, Alaska, flew to Seattle in September after the death of his father and the dissolution of a long relationship.
"When I saw her story, I knew I had to connect with her," Mr. Hayburn, 55, said. "She kind of reminded me of my mom."
They met up at the stadium for the second to last game of the season, on a Saturday night. Ms. Strub walked in with her cane, her hat on sideways, a pink chain around her neck holding her cellphone. "She kind of reminded me of a gangster, the way she was walking," he said.
They watched the Mariners play the Los Angeles Angels and shared a tub of popcorn. "It was like I was spending time with my mom all over again," he said.
Mr. Hayburn, who grew up in Ohio and rooted for the Cincinnati Reds, added, "It helped me deal with my trauma I've been through this year."
Another new friend, Sheila Cook, lost her wife, Michelle, a few years ago, also to muscular dystrophy. Ms. Cook was shattered by the loss and felt angry and confused about why doctors told her Michelle was ineligible for a heart transplant.
Then she met Ms. Strub, who explained the disease in a way that finally made sense to her. (Ms. Strub also has three grand-sons who have been diagnosed with the disease, having passed it down through her daughters with a mutation on one of her X chromosomes, she said.)
"We were just weeping and crying all the way to the ballpark," said Ms. Cook, 74, who has a dog named after Ken Griffey Jr. "It was a wonderful gift. I truly believe it was a gift from God, that Rhenda was a gift from God."
In the middle of the summer, the Mariners honored Ms. Strub as their season ticket holder of the year. For one night, she moved up from her regular seat to watch the game with friends in a luxury suite.
She was also asked to throw out the first pitch at that game. It was a nerve-racking proposition because she had never learned to throw properly.
It turned out that one of her new friends, Liz Brown, was a retired schoolteacher who had once taught gym class. So before Ms. Strub took the field at T-Mobile Park, Ms. Brown met her near her home in Olympia and taught her how to throw a baseball.
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A Closing Tribute
At the ballpark on the final day of the season, Ms. Strub stood to cheer for one of her favorite players, the pitcher Logan Gilbert, who was being removed from the game in the fifth inning.
Then she continued talking about her son, Wyatt, who had enjoyed going to a ballgame with family even though baseball wasn't really his thing. He loved online games and singing and acting, and as a teenager, he had appeared in several musicals, including "South Pacific," "The Sound of Music," and "Peter Pan."
"He always played the strong voice character," she said.
All day at the game, the Mariners played tributes on the video board for Rick Rizzs, the longtime radio voice of the team who was retiring after 41 seasons. Fans offered testimonials about how they, like Ms. Strub, turned to baseball in their grieving. Ms. Strub noted the “constant theme of healing” in the videos and “the peace they found with Rick through baseball.”
Ms. Strub thought more about Wyatt as the game continued.
He had refused to meet with the chaplain as he was dying in the hospital. Then, on his very last day, with hours left, he asked for him.
Wyatt was quiet for a time when the chaplain appeared at his bedside, according to Ms. Strub. Then he turned to the man and said, "You're not here for me. You're here for my mom. I need to know she'll be OK."
Ms. Strub nodded to her surroundings at the ballpark — the thousands of people around her, the expansive green lawn, the ballplayers.
"This is me trying to be OK for Wyatt," she said. "I know he's with me. I can feel him all the time. This is a peaceful place where I can connect with him and feel joy."
An Anomaly Among Therapists Offers A Core Message: Vulnerability Is Healing
By JANCEE DUNN
CAROLINE GUTMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
When Kier Gaines has speaking engagements at colleges, he sometimes tells the students: Raise your hand if you would ever look at me and guess I'm a therapist.
He has yet to see a hand.
"We have a narrow idea of what healing, wellness and clinical practice look like in this country," Mr. Gaines writes in his new book "It All Starts When You Do: How to Do the Real Work of Self-Healing." And it's not, he says, "a middle-aged Black man who was probably listening to trap music before you walked through the door."
Mr. Gaines, a licensed professional counselor from Washington, D.C., with a prominent presence on social media, enjoys cursing, both online and sometimes dropping a "damn" in session. He's been known to conduct therapy in a sweatshirt that paraphrases the rapper Jay-Z: "I've Got 99 Problems..."
Yet one of his core messages is that being vulnerable is healing. (The sweatshirt's tagline: "But I Know I Can Call 988 If I Feel Overwhelmed.")
As both a public figure and a therapist working in a private practice, Mr. Gaines is something of an anomaly. Black male therapists are a rarity in the field, accounting for less than 1 percent of the psychology work force, according to the American Psychological Association.
He is also a suburban father who films video clips in his kitchen while he clears away the breakfast dishes. His straightforward advice and notable candor about his own challenges with relationships, self-esteem and mental health have helped him rack up two and a half million followers across social media.
Mr. Gaines met me on the doorstep of his house outside Washington on a sweltering day in late summer. His home was strewed with the colorful detritus of family life: backpacks, water bottles, books. He explained that his wife, Noémie Gaines, a lawyer who now manages the growing family business, had just left with their daughters.
We dived right into a wide-ranging conversation about how his life experiences have informed his book's message: that knowing yourself better can lead to happiness, peace and connection with others. Mr. Gaines encourages readers to face and examine the uncomfortable truths about themselves that they may have spent a lifetime avoiding.
"Ingoring your feelings doesn't make them go away," he said. "It makes them unfamiliar to you."
In addition to his reach on social media, Mr. Gaines, 40, has collaborated with the surgeon general's office, NASA and John Gottman, the renowned psychologist and co-founder of the Gottman Institute. He has a popular podcast for men called "Learned the Hard Way"; and his first book, released last month, quickly became a best seller.
Many of the online commenters on Mr. Gaines's posts are men who share their worries in the space he has created. Taylen Williams, 22, a student from New Jersey who has been following Mr. Gaines for two years, said that he appreciated Mr. Gaines's transparency.
"As a young Black man, sometimes you don't know how to express how you feel, and especially how to sit with those feelings," Mr. Williams said. "And he shows you by example."
Samuel T. Beasley, an associate professor of counseling psychology at the University of Louisville, said that following a therapist online should not be a substitute for clinical therapy, but that it could be helpful for people who experienced barriers like cost and access.
"They may watch some of Mr. Gaines's videos and say, 'Oh, actually that resonates with me,' he said.
Dr. Beasley studies the obstacles that men of color may face to entering the therapeutic world. His research has found that men view psychology — “particularly the helping side,” like counseling — as a job for women, he said.
"And psychology, just broadly, has not always focused on issues that impact Black people," like the effects of racism and unequal access to health care, Dr. Beasley added.
Acknowledging mental health struggles can be seen as weak, said Derrick Gordon, a professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and the director of its
Research, Policy and Program on Male Development initiative. Black men in particular "are socialized to be strong, like, 'I should be able to manage this by myself,' he said.
Mr. Gaines witnessed this sort of stoicism growing up. "And it wasn't helping my family," he said. "It was hurting us."
As a result, one of his missions, which connects to the themes in the book, is to "live my life in the open," he said.
Mr. Gaines grew up in South-east Washington and was raised by a single mother. He described his mother, Sheila, as an "artistic hippie flower child who was ahead of her time in terms of just being a listening, validating, hugging, kissing, loving parent."
When Mr. Gaines was 18, she died after a brief illness. An only child, he was suddenly on his own. He was so steeped in grief that he still can't remember much about that time.
He worked as a manager at a community-based job training program to pay his rent and college tuition at the University of the District of Columbia. In 2015, when he was working with special
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Kier Gaines asks his two and a half million social media followers to face the uncomfortable truths about themselves.
education children at a Washington public school, he met a few therapists who treated the students.
"They were wonderful, and looked and sounded like me," Mr. Gaines said. He decided to apply to grad school to become a therapist himself.
In 2020, after he had become a therapist, he began posting candid videos about mental health on social media, often filming at his kitchen counter or during a walk with his daughters, Emery and Sydney.
While Mr. Gaines shared many aspects of his life online, he initially held back from revealing publicly that, five years ago, he had been diagnosed with clinical depression.
But last year, he was asked to speak at the Black Health Connect conference in Washington.
"Kier said to me, 'I'm supposed to do this keynote to encourage people to live their best lives, and my depression is kicking my ass right now,' " his wife, Noémie, told me later on the phone.
After Mr. Gaines spoke up about his depression during his speech, he said that dozens of people rushed the stage to share their own experiences.
Mr. Williams, the student, said that he trusted Mr. Gaines even more after hearing him talk about his depression on a podcast episode.
"The fact that an established therapist was vulnerable enough to express that to us?" Mr. Williams said, "That's strength."
3 COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE
San Francisco isn't giving up on its hope of converting offices into homes, despite a major lack of progress.
3 TRAVEL
In the wake of Spirit Airlines closing, and with rising costs, domestic fares have become less competitive.
8 SPORTS
Angel Reese has overcome big challenges to arrive at the W.N.B.A. finals, a goal that she had long envisioned.
TECH | ECONOMY | MEDIA | FINANCE
Business
The New York Times
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2026 B1
Solar Panels Offer a Shot To Catch Up With China
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A new crop could help the U.S. close a technology gap.
By IVAN PENN
CARTERSVILLE, GA. — Producers of solar panels in the United States say they are on the cusp of a technological breakthrough that could upend the industry and even threaten China's grip on it.
The manufacturers are racing to develop new kinds of panels that can generate 25 percent more energy than most such devices available today. If they are successful, the advance will allow the world to meet the rapidly rising demand for electricity with less land and roof area.
During testing, a simulator provides controlled, uniform light to measure a module's electrical output under defined conditions.
The new technology, known as tandem solar, involves adding second and third layers of material, like a layer cake, to allow panels to convert more of the sun's ra
diance into electricity.
Researchers have been working to perfect tandem panels for many years, but now several companies, including Tandem PV, First Solar and Hanwha Qcells, say they are preparing to sell such panels commercially soon, after success-
fully testing the devices and obtaining certifications from technical bodies.
"It is the next frontier," said Mike Carr, executive director of the Solar Energy Manufacturers for America Coalition. He acknowledged that Chinese companies were also working on tandem solar but said their technology "is not better than ours and maybe even behind us."
But the new tandem panels and their manufacturers will face many challenges. Power producers will be reluctant to buy new devices that are too expensive or until manufacturers can convince them that tandem panels will not degrade more quickly than conventional panels.
U.S. politics could be another barrier. Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration have made it hard for new solar farms to obtain federal permits while trying to increase the use of fossil fuels and nuclear power plants.
Then there is China, which controls about 80 percent of the solar panel market by supplying either panels or their components.
China devastated the U.S. solar panel manufacturing industry by offering devices at prices far lower than companies in the United States, Germany and Japan — which dominated the industry until around 2010.
The Biden and Trump administrations have tried to revive U.S. solar manufacturing with tariffs, subsidies and other CONTINUED ON PAGE 83
PATRICK JUNKER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Soothers of Economic Shocks Share Nobel
By ESHE NELSON
Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford, two American professors, were awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Monday for their decades of research that has guided policies aimed at reducing the effects of economic turmoil.
Mr. Hall, 83, a professor at Stanford University, and Mr. Woodford, 70, a professor of political economy at Columbia University, were awarded the prize "for microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilization," the awarding committee said.
The two new laureates were essential in the development of a framework that enabled politicians, central banks and others to implement timely economic measures so that there were milder peaks and troughs, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. That, in turn, helped to shield the most vulnerable in society, who are particularly exposed to economic shocks that lead to high unemployment and inflation.
Mr. Hall studied consumer de-
CONTINUED ON PAGE B4
JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the prize on Monday to Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford, professors who helped steer policies.
Meta Deal Money Comes With Few Limits
By TED ALCORN
claim the deduction.
After Meta agreed to pay as much as \$17 billion to settle claims that it had built Instagram and Facebook to hook children, attorneys general in several states outlined how the money should be spent.
The funding should “repair the harms of unhealthy social media use,” expand youth crisis intervention and restore the mental health and safety of children, they declared in news releases.
But the settlement with Meta in August cements little in required allocations toward those goals.
And if earlier settlements with the tobacco and opioid industries are any guide, it is much simpler to win the money than ensure it reaches the intended beneficiaries.
In an appendix to the Meta agreement where each state set terms for spending its share, most specify no purpose. Wyoming sends every dollar to its general fund. Alaska splits its share between the general fund and its attorney general's enforcement budget.
The total includes \$459 million
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States can decide how to spend their share of a \$17 billion award.
settling what a spokesperson for California's Justice Department called "a prior, unrelated multi-state investigation" into Meta's Cambridge Analytica data leak.
The rest of the settlement leaves about 70 percent of the money to the discretion of state officials, up to \$11.7 billion, with 23 percent aimed at youth mental health or social media harms.
Meta disputed that characterization, pointing to part of the settlement that requires states to certify to the Internal Revenue Service that at least half the money is “compensatory restitution and remediation.” Tax experts said the phrase comes from the tax code, which lets companies deduct settlement payments for repairing harms. It governs how the payment is reported, not how it is spent. The company declined to say whether it would
Candice Odgers, a developmental psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, said the settlement would still leave states with an obligation. "We have put children front and center in this fight against big tech," she wrote in an email. "Now, it is only fair that we make sure the money goes towards ensuring that they get a 'win' out of this, too."
Meta faces pressure on other fronts. In New Mexico, which pursued its own case over Cambridge Analytica, a judge is expected to decide how much the company owes after a jury found in September that it violated the state's consumer protection law tens of millions of times. The state is seeking billions of dollars.
Separately, states have moved quickly on the products. Last month, California became the first state to ban addictive features like infinite scroll for users under 16. But courts have blocked most state laws on free speech grounds, and the companies are expected to challenge this one.
CONTINUED ON PAGE B4
Source: FactSet
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COMPANIES
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Getty Plans to Go Private Under Bankruptcy Deal
Getty Images announced Monday it reached an agreement with major lenders to restructure its debt, take the company private and undertake a "pre-packaged" bankruptcy.
Getty, which partners with AFP, among other media companies, said members of the Getty family and affiliates of Koch Equity Development will invest up to \$533 million of new equity to pay down
RETAIL
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LVMH Sales Edge Higher Despite Slide for Fashion
LVMH, the world's leading luxury group, said Monday its sales climbed in the third quarter despite a slowdown in China hitting its fashion and leather goods segment. The group took in 18.5 billion euros (\$20.6 billion), beating the consensus of analysts.
The 1.2 percent sales gain beat the marginal 0.1 percent increase registered in the second quarter. The group's sales slumped six percent in the first three months of the year.
But the fashion and leather goods segment saw sales drop five percent, excluding currency effects and changes to the business. Louis Vuitton saw its public debt under a restructuring,
Getty will continue to operate normally throughout the process, citing up to \$143 million in financing from Koch, as well as cash from ongoing business. The company plans a "pre-packaged Chapter II filing" to win court approval of the restructuring.
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Bumble May Go Private At \$1 Billion Valuation
The announcement came after Getty disclosed in a securities filing earlier this month that it had been notified of plans to delist its shares from the New York Stock Exchange because they had fallen below \$1. Getty reported a loss of \$206.1 million in 2025. REUTERS
STEPHANIE LECOCO/REUTERS
image take a hit in China after pursuing a local tea company for copying its logo. While it won the case, it provoked a wave of indignation on social media and a call to boycott the brand.
Bumble is in advanced talks to be taken private by Ithaca Holdings in a deal that values the dating app operator at roughly \$1 billion, a source familiar with the matter said. Shares of Bumble, which had a market value of roughly \$389 million through last close, surged around 50 percent to \$3.81 following the report.
LVMH's share price has dropped 40 percent since the start of the year. REUTERS
COMPANIES
Reuters reported earlier this year that Bumble was exploring a sale amid slowing growth in the online dating sector.
Bumble and its rival Match Group — which owns Tinder, Hinge and OkCupid — have come under pressure in a crowded dating-app market, particularly as younger subscribers grow disillusioned with endless swiping.
Founded in 2014 by Whitney Wolfe Herd, Bumble pioneered the "women-first" approach to online dating. Under Ms. Wolfe Herd, the company has rolled out A.I. features and new ways for users to connect as it works to reinvigorate growth. REUTERS
Stocks & Bonds Wall Street, in Mixed Trading, Hovers Near Latest Record
Wall Street kicked off a busy week on Monday with a mixed finish for the major U.S. stock indexes, although the market remained near its all-time high.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.1 percent after wavering between small gains and losses. The benchmark index set a record high on Friday and is up 14 percent so far this year. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.4 percent, and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.4 percent.
Shares in roughly 64 percent of the companies in the S&P 500 rose, led by communication services stocks.
Meta Platforms rose 3.4 percent, T-Mobile added 2.2 percent, AT&T gained 1.4 percent and Verizon Communications rose 2.7 percent. Energy stocks also had some of the biggest gains as oil prices kept rising. Chevron rose 1.4 percent.
Despite those gains, a slide in big technology stocks dragged the market into the red. Micron Technology fell 3.9 percent, Advanced Micro Devices dropped 2.3 percent, Broadcom slid 1.9 percent and Nvidia gave up 1.3 percent.
They are among several companies in the sector with big stock values that tend to have a heavy influence on the market. They have also been the driving force behind the broader market's record gains throughout the year.
Those companies could face more scrutiny from investors during this round of corporate earnings as Wall Street tries to get a better sense of whether the stock gains made during the frenzy over artificial intelligence can translate into future growth.
Stocks are reaching for records often because of the tech sector, but remain very volatile on a daily basis, partly because of big shifts in oil prices and their impact on bond yields and inflation.
The price of Brent crude, the international standard, rose 1.8 percent to settle at \$106.65 per barrel. Prices have been swinging between \$96 and nearly \$110 over the last month. Prices jumped de-
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The S&P 500 Index
spite President Trump announcing on social media Friday that he struck a deal to buy Russian diesel with President Vladimir Putin, aiming to tamp down a spike in fuel prices ahead of the midterm elections.
The plan, though, runs counter to U.S. efforts to cut the flow of money Russia gets from oil and gas sales that can be used to pay for its war in Ukraine.
On Wednesday, the government will release the closely watched consumer price index, which measures price changes for a wide range of products and services. Economists expect the index to show the rate of inflation worsened to 3.6 percent in September from 3.4 percent in August.
A report on inflation called the producer price index will be released on Thursday and is also expected to show that inflation remains stubbornly high. It measures inflation faced by businesses before it hits consumers.
An update on how consumers are reacting to high prices will be released on Thursday as well. Economists expect the report on retail sales for September to show that households pulled back on spending.
The rate of inflation by any measure remains well above the
Federal Reserve's target rate of 2 percent. That prompted the central bank to raise its benchmark interest rate at its last meeting in an effort to cool inflation. Wall Street expects another rate hike before the year ends.
Inflation and expectations for high interest rates have been driving Treasury yields higher in the bond market. The 10-year Treasury yield, which influences mortgage rates, recently touched its highest level since 2002. It has since eased a bit and stood at 5.24 percent late Friday.
The latest round of corporate earnings updates ramps up this week with financial results from banks. Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo report their results on Tuesday, and Bank of America will report its results on Wednesday. They have been reporting record profits throughout the year, and Wall Street expects more of the same for the latest quarter.
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TOTAL ASSETS IN BIL | 1 YR | 5 YRS | 1. Franklin Convertible Securities Fund Class R6 (FCSKX) | +12,4% | +6,2% | 3,0 | 2. Fidelity Advisor Convertible Securities Fund -Class Z (FIQVX) | +16,1 | +8,4 | 2,4 | 3. NYUM Mackay Convertible Class A (MCOAX) | +20,5 | +7,3 | 1,8 | 4. Columbia Convertible Securities Fund Institutional 2 Class (COCRX) | +18,0 | +6,5 | 1,7 | 5. Virtus Convertible Fund Class A (ANZAX) | +13,8 | +6,3 | 1,6 | 6. Calamos Convertible Fund Class A (CCVX) | +18,5 | +6,0 | 1,1 | 7. Invesco Convertible Securities Fund RS Shares (ONGX) | +13,9 | +6,1 | 0,9 | 8. Lord Abiett Convertible Fund Class R4 (LOCFX) | +15,1 | +4,8 | 0,6 | 9. Putnam Convertible Securities Fund Class I (PCNX) | +13,3 | +5,4 | 0,5 | 10. Miller Convertible Bond Fund Class C (MOFCX) | +8,6 | +2,6 | 0,4 | Source: Morningstar
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San Francisco Still Wants to Convert Offices
Despite hopes to meet housing demands and inject life into downtowns, the city has yet to deliver.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY IAN C. RATES FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Cubicles in the 150 Hayes Street building in San Francisco, which is being converted into housing. The city's efforts to make it easier to convert offices are expected to cut 25 percent off total costs in projects, said Marc Babsin, president of the developer Emerald Fund.
Square Feet
By JOE GOSE
In the years after the pandemic, many city officials and developers saw an opportunity to turn unused offices into apartments. San Francisco, with roughly a third of its 100 million square feet of office space vacant, had the potential to be a nucleus for office-to-residential activity.
But as cities like New York, Washington and Chicago began offering tax incentives for conversions, San Francisco did not offer similar programs for builders. And since then, San Francisco has yet to see a single office conversion even as thousands of projects are underway and being completed in other cities.
The city is now is trying to change that. This year, officials adopted a law that allows developers to get back a portion of their future property taxes, over 30 years, on commercial buildings converted to new housing.
The financial reimbursement is available for projects downtown, which includes the Financial District, South of Market area and Civic Center neighborhood, and is meant to help alleviate the financial risk of conversions.
So far, three developers have submitted projects for the program.
"We've got about 30 million square feet of vacant space, so we knew we had a significant problem to tackle," said Anne Taupier, executive director of the city's Office of Economic and Workforce Development.
City officials are hoping the new tax incentive will fuel conversions the way tax abatement programs have in New York and Washington. Those are the top two markets for office conversions, with nearly 25,000 units in development combined as of the start of this year, according to RentCafe, an apartment search platform and research firm.
In 2023, a study by a group of public policy, planning and architecture firms determined that many office buildings in San Francisco were suitable for conversion because of factors like shape, size and layout. The city then relaxed several building codes, requirements and fees. Measures waived included mandates for bike parking and open space. And in March 2024, San Francisco voters eliminated a property transfer tax on buildings that were turned into housing, helping to ease some financial burden.
Despite those initiatives, developers remained reluctant to convert properties. Meanwhile, the housing crisis in San Francisco worsened as the expansion of artificial intelligence companies pushed up rents in an already pricey market. In September, the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the city was over 25 percent more than it was the prior year and at a high, according to Zumper, a rental platform.
In all, San Francisco's efforts to make it easier and more financially feasible to convert offices to housing are expected to cut 25 percent off total costs in projects, said Marc Babsin, president of Emerald Fund, a residential development firm in San Francisco. That is a sizable amount even if those reductions, he noted, would be realized only after developers increase property values that go on to generate higher property taxes.
One of the developers trying to take advantage of the tax incentive is Mr. Babsin's firm, which submitted an application and teamed up with another local developer to buy a midcentury office building. They plan to convert it into 106 apartments. Another developer,
Hudson Pacific Properties, a real estate investment trust that owns some 12.5 million square feet of offices and production studios on the West Coast, wants to turn the upper floors of a landmark, 114-year-old building it owns into 136 apartments.
The new tax break "gives developers a way to put together a financing package that can make conversions work,"
said Chris Pearson, senior vice president of Hudson Pacific.
The incentives are also playing an important role in the city's Future of Downtown initiative, a rebuilding program the city's planning department introduced in 2023.
San Francisco's office vacancy rate, though improved recently, is among the highest in the country at 30.1 percent, according to Cushman & Wakefield, a commercial real estate brokerage. City officials see more people living downtown as a way to keep the area lively well past 5 p.m. and on weekends. That requires a mix of housing, shops, restaurants and entertainment, said Jacob Bintliff, manager of economic recovery initiatives for the Office of Economic and Workforce Development.
"Everybody feels the pain of where downtown has been since Covid, and there has been a lot of political will to go further with incentives for this category of projects," he said. "If we were proposing them for some other type of development, maybe we wouldn't have the same political coalition."
More of that type of development is needed to give developers confidence to build even bigger, said Steve Luthman, global head of real estate at Hines, a global real estate investor.
The company wants to redevelop a block in the Financial District that could include converting a late-1940s-era office building into housing along with constructing the tallest office skyscraper in the city containing a mix of offices, housing and retail.
But without a broad office conversion effort, the Hines project will remain an island in a district of underused office buildings, Mr. Luthman said.
"The Financial District has always been a single-use district, and every one of our cities in America has one like it," he said. "So we believe that creating more experiential urban districts is a winning formula, and the leadership shown by a historically anti-development city like San Francisco is giving developers a palate for those projects."
Even with the new incentives, the advent of A.I. is an unknown in the future of office conversions in San Francisco. Lately, leasing activity and office building values are rising, partly because of the increasing number of A.I. firms looking for space.
More office leasing activity could slow momentum for conversions, as building owners and lenders have become reluctant to part with buildings at a price at which a conversion works financially, Mr. Babsin said. But he is confident that more conversion opportunities will become available.
"There are a lot of A.I. start-ups generating a lot of headlines and a lot of buzz," Mr. Babsin said. "Nonetheless, dozens of Class B and C office buildings continue to struggle, so we're bullish on office-to-residential conversions and see an opportunity to bring new energy into downtown."
Airfares Have Spiked. Is the Death of Spirit to Blame?
After the ultra-low-cost carrier shut down, the surging costs of fuel and labor have also affected prices.
Frugal Traveler
By ELAINE GLUSAC
If you've shopped for airline tickets recently, you've likely experienced sticker shock. Airfares have been rising consistently over the past year, averaging 24 percent more in August than a year earlier, according to the Consumer Price Index.
Holiday fares are reaching new highs. The booking app Hopper said domestic fares were up 31 percent for Thanksgiving compared with last year's.
"It's the most expensive holiday travel season in a decade, and I can only say a decade because my data goes back a decade," said Hayley Berg, an economist with Hopper, citing the high cost of jet fuel, which has spiked since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran in February.
Before May, budget seekers could resort to a consistent source of low-cost fares: Spirit Airlines. But since the ultra-low-cost carrier shut down this spring, after declaring bankruptcy, airlines that once competed with Spirit have been released from the carrier's downward pressure on prices.
Cirium, an aviation analytics company, found that fares on former Spirit routes had increased roughly 5 percent to 6 percent in June since the year before. Though the company cautioned that Spirit's exit alone couldn't be credited for the rise, it noted that on one route between Cleveland and Las Vegas, the average fare among eight competing carriers in that period rose to \$272 from about \$192, or more than 40 percent.
Here's what to know about the impact of Spirit's closure on fares and where to look for airline bargains.
---
The Spirit Fallout
Airfares are complex, influenced by demand as well as costs, such as fuel, and factors in the broader economy, including inflation, making it hard to quantify the loss of Spirit.
Cirium looked at 1,126 city pairs where Spirit flew in June 2025. More than 90 percent of fares on those routes climbed over the next year after the airline shut down; the median fare rose 25.3 percent.
The hardest-hit destinations, according to the online travel agency FlightHub, are Spirit's former focus cities, including Detroit, Houston, Orlando, Fla., Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Las Vegas and New York, as well as leisure destinations such as Cancún, Mexico.
In Detroit, for example, FlightHub looked at 42 routes that Spirit formerly flew and found that the median fares rose to \$227 in summer 2026, after the airline's closure, from \$125 the summer before.
But price rises go beyond Spirit's network. Cirium analyzed roughly 37,000 city pairs without a Spirit route and found that the median increase from June 2025 to this year was 18.3 percent.
"Several pressures landed at the same time," David Krauter, the chief executive of Going.com, a service that finds cheap airfares, wrote in an email, noting the rise in costs for fuel and labor.
"Summer demand stayed strong, but airlines didn't add many seats to keep up," he added. "Then one of the country's biggest low-cost carriers disappeared completely. Any one of those would push fares up. All of them together is what travelers are paying for now."
---
Other Low-Cost Carriers
In the absence of Spirit, a handful of ultra-low-cost carriers remain, including the Denver-based Frontier Airlines, which offers a mix of city and leisure destinations, including in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
BOSS D. FRANKLIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Another, Allegiant Air, based in Las Vegas, focuses on domestic nonstop flights.
Both carriers charge for things like carry-on and checked bags, seat assignments and in-flight refreshments. Fees range from \$2.99 to board first on a Frontier flight to \$80 for a seat selection on Allegiant.
Spirit Airlines planes at the Phoenix Goodyear Airport in Arizona in May, a few days after the airline ceased operations.
A hybrid between low-cost and full-service carriers, Jet Blue Airways is strongest on the East Coast, especially in New York, Boston and Fort Lauderdale, with service to many other destinations in Florida and the Caribbean. It recently promoted flights from \$200 round trip between New York and Fort Lauderdale.
Smaller airlines, such as Breeze Airways, tend to fly point-to-point from secondary airports. Breeze flies to more than 90 cities, including some in the Caribbean and Latin America. Another small carrier, Avelo Airlines, concentrates its service on the East Coast between Connecticut and Florida.
Sun Country Airlines operates from its hub in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., largely to coastal destinations, including in Mexico and the Caribbean. It recently advertised one-way flights between Minneapolis and Orlando for \$49.
If you are considering a low-cost carrier, check its route frequency. Often, budget carriers don't fly to a destination daily, which could make it harder
to rebook in case of bad weather or a mechanical delay.
---
Consider Bigger Airlines
Among the legacy carriers, American, Delta and United offer some form of basic economy tickets. Originally designed to compete with the likes of Spirit, these are nonrefundable, no-frills tickets.
They are also inflexible. While most standard economy tickets allow passengers to retain a credit for the airfare should fliers cancel before departure, basic economy fares restrict any changes. They also prohibit seat reservations and limit carry-ons.
Southwest Airlines grew on the promise of cheap flying, including no bag fees and open seating. But its policies now push it closer to the legacy carriers, including fees for checked bags and seats reserved in advance.
Southwest's basic airfares have one perk that many lack: They are eligible for a flight credit if a flier cancels the reservation, though it is only good for six months from the initial date the reservation was booked.
Alaska Airlines has been making many upscale moves, including recently announcing lie-flat suites coming in 2028. But for frequent fliers in the West, it offers the subscription service Flight Pass. For \$69 a month, members can fly round trip once every other month on Alaska flights in Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah (taxes and fees are extra). For \$129, they can fly once a month.
---
Ticket Search Hacks
Finding cheaper airfares draws on tried-and-true strategies, including being flexible on when and, if possible, where to go.
"If you can shift your dates or keep an open mind about where you go, you'll find far more options than someone who's locked into one specific route and one set weekend," said Mr. Krauter of Going.com. "We recommend letting the deal decide. Instead of picking a destination and then checking prices, look at where fares are cheap from your airport first, then decide where to go."
Going.com also recommends booking in what it calls the "Goldilocks window": one to three months in advance for domestic flights, and two to eight months out for international. Peak travel periods, such as the holidays, expand those windows.
Airfares rise and fall with demand. The best fares are usually for flights on less busy days, such as Tuesdays and Saturdays.
"The days that you fly have a huge impact on how expensive your flight is," said Ms. Berg of Hopper.
She added that returning home on the Sunday after Thanksgiving this year will cost on average \$250 more than returning on Monday or Tuesday or even the Friday post-holiday.
Finally, consider alternative forms of payment. Now may be the time to break into your points bank or apply any credits from previous flights.
---
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After Delays, Meta Unveils A New Series Of A.I. Models
By ELI TAN
Meta on Monday unveiled a series of advanced flagship artificial intelligence models, as it tries to catch up to rivals like Anthropic and OpenAI in the A.I. race.
The two new models, called Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full, scored nearly as well as Anthropic's most advanced models on tests that measure reasoning, writing and coding, according to data provided by Meta.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive, revamped his company's A.I. division last year after setbacks in developing the technology. He has since made progress with new A.I. models and other A.I. products for the company's 3.5 billion users across Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. Muse, Meta's A.I. agent app that can operate software and apps on behalf of users, climbed to the top of the App Store after it was released last month.
Muse Wonder arrives amid growing concerns over advanced A.I. models and agents, some of which have gone rogue, hacking into companies and meddling with government websites. Mr. Zuckerberg has tried to market Meta's technology, which is built in a similar way to Anthropic's and
---
The first group that is meant to compete with 'frontier' agents.
OpenAI's models, with a different message than its rivals, saying that A.I. is meant to be useful and empowering, not dangerous.
Meta began developing Muse Wonder after hiring Alexandr Wang, a founder of the A.I. start-up Scale AI, to be its chief A.I. officer in June 2025. Muse Wonder is the second series of A.I. models released under Mr. Wang's A.I. division, and is the first that Meta has said is meant to compete with other cutting-edge "frontier" A.I. models, which typically require the most computing power to run.
Muse Wonder will soon power parts of Muse, the company said. Muse Wonder Full is the more powerful model, and will be available only for users who subscribe to Meta's premium A.I. coding tool, Muse Code.
The new models, which were internally referred to as Watermelon, are also significantly better at coding than Meta's previous models. The A.I. coding market is dominated by Anthropic and OpenAI, though Meta has been trying to grow its business selling A.I. services to other companies.
(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied those claims.)
Muse Wonder faced setbacks during development. In July, Meta paused a stage of A.I. development called "pre-training," which delayed the release of the models until this month, The New York Times previously reported.
In a livestream on Instagram over the weekend, Mr. Zuckerberg teased the new A.I. models while barbecuing meats. Also on the menu, Mr. Zuckerberg said: "A big watermelon."
---
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Two Share Nobel for Helping to Soothe Economic Shocks
HOOVER INSTITUTION/STANFORD UNIVERSITY, VIA REUTERS
The prize committee said that Michael Woodford, left, and Robert E. Hall had revitalized Keynesian stabilization policy. Mr. Woodford looked at companies' price-setting behavior; Mr. Hall studied consumer demand and spending.
FROM FIRST BUSINESS PAGE
FROM FIRST BUSINESS PAGE
mand and spending to develop his
economic models, while Mr.
Woodford considered the supply
side of the economy, looking at the
price-setting behavior of compan-
ies.
Because of their research, “we are better equipped to deal with shocks in the economy, such as energy crises or sudden changes in how much households consume,” said John Hassler, chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences.
COLUMINA UNIVERSITY, VIA REUTERS
Mr. Woodford said on the phone at the news conference announcing the award that he was elated. "It's a tremendous honor," he said. "It's a surprise but I feel very good about it."
"This is a wonderful surprise," Mr. Hall said in a statement. "I've spent my career trying to understand how the economy works, following interesting questions wherever they led," he said, and thanked his colleagues and co-authors for their support.
He also said that taxpayers in California and the federal government had given "an excellent education" in public schools and later graduate school. "I hope they will regard this as a satisfactory return on their investment," he added.
The recognition came at an apt moment, in which the global economy is experiencing frequent shocks and economists have warned that more volatility is likely. In the past few years, the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2022 energy crisis after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing turmoil generated by the war in Iran have all presented central bankers and finance officials with daunting challenges. They have responded to those shocks with policies that aim to stop unemployment from rising, incomes from collapsing or inflation from surging. Mr. Hall and Mr. Woodford built the economic underpinnings for these policies.
"Your research on economic stabilization has greatly improved our understanding of people's economic decisions and strengthened the foundations for effective policy," Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, wrote in a note of congratulations to the economists on social media.
The prize committee said that Mr. Hall and Mr. Woodford had revitalized so-called stabilization policy, which was pioneered by John Maynard Keynes, the early 20th-century British economist. Mr. Keynes, mostly famously after the 1930s Great Depression, pushed for governments to intervene to stimulate the economy in downturns and slow it down during booms. But this theory broke down during the 1970s oil crisis and led to high unemployment and high inflation, generating a lot of criticism of the Keynesian approach.
This year's award winners were able to make stabilization theory relevant again by developing models using microeconomic foundations, which is a bottom-up approach that considers how the decisions of individual households and businesses affect the economy as a whole.
By doing this, they showed the importance of how real-world behavior impacts policy and why it must be taken into account alongside broad economic variables like inflation and production. A critical aspect of their models rests on the idea that households and businesses make decisions based on what they believe will happen in the future, for example to their own incomes. When governments and policymakers communicate their economic plans, they can influence people's expectations and that, in itself, can help steer the economy.
The economists receiving the award are set to receive 12 million Swedish kronor, about \$1.2 million, split equally between them. The economics award, among the highest honors in the field, is not, technically, a Nobel Prize: It is called the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel because it wasn't among the original categories that Alfred Nobel set out in his will in 1895.
Mr. Woodford said his work was intended to “improve the foundations for discussion of economic policy,” contributing to the management of the economy as well as the public’s understanding of the economy. He added that one of the main themes of his work was helping policymakers to appreciate that it was important to understand the behavior of individuals: How they make decisions about spending and what they know about future economic policy.
"One of the key goals of trying to develop an analytical framework was not simply to use it on people," he said. "But to also talk to people about why the things that are being done are being done."
Consider the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, when central banks were scrambling to deal with an economic downturn. Policymakers quickly lowered interest rates, but it wasn't enough. Additional tools were developed, such as so-called forward guidance, in which central bankers made explicit statements about the likely future path of interest rates, Mr. Woodford said. "That was an important part of the policy response in the years from 2009 onward, and I think it did contribute to better stabilization," he added.
In the United States, the way that the Federal Reserve communicates its decisions and deliberations is under review. Kevin M. Warsh, the recently installed Fed chairman who has been skeptical of publicly sharing the central bank's next steps, convened a task force to review how the institution "conveys policy deliberations and decisions amid uncertainty."
Beyond the development of their models, Mr. Hall and Mr. Woodford have contributed to the day-to-day understanding and management of the economy. Mr. Hall spent more than three decades at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a body that estimates the start and end of U.S. recessions. Mr. Woodford has been influential in the development of monetary policy, including publishing work with Ben S. Bernanke, the former Fed chairman.
"These two are unequivocal giants" in economics, said Anil Kashyap, a professor of economics and finance at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, who was on the rate-setting committee at the Bank of England and has advised other central banks and finance ministries. The Nobel winners' influence is clear in central bank communications, where policymakers take a view on how their actions affect individuals and firms.
Their work will also be helpful as economists deal with larger data sets and the capabilities of artificial intelligence. "You're going to be able to measure everything." Mr. Kashyap said, "This helps you figure out what's worth looking at and how you can bring in all these data in a way that will be helpful and constructive, and not just drown you."
Timo Boppart, a member of the Nobel committee, said on Monday that a paper by Mr. Hall published in 1978 was a "pathbreaking" moment that showed that changes in consumption were unpredictable. "This was a huge surprise" for economics, Mr. Boppart said.
Mr. Woodford looked at how businesses set prices and, critically, the fact that prices weren't changed constantly. Instead, businesses have to set prices for the future. This work, which presented a "complete new Keynesian framework," Mr. Boppart said, was published in an influential 2003 book titled "Interest and Prices."
Policymakers were quick to adopt this framework, said Mr. Boppart: "We now see it being actively applied in many countries to tame the business-cycle beast."
States Face Few Limits on Spending \$17 Billion in Meta Settlement
FROM FIRST BUSINESS PAGE
The biggest settlement that states have won for public health dates to November 1998, when attorneys general ended their lawsuit against the major cigarette makers. The companies, which agreed to perpetual payments that shrink as cigarette sales fall, have paid more than \$176 billion, according to the National Association of Attorneys General.
But the agreement did not require money be spent on smoking prevention.
"The thing that I just hate about the tobacco settlement the most is that money went out to a lot of states, and they just didn't spend the money as we had anticipated," said Mike Moore, a former attorney general of Mississippi who initiated the first state lawsuit against the industry.
Attorney General Rob Bonta of California with Attorney General Philip Weiser of Colorado, left, and Attorney General Jennifer Davenport of New Jersey.
James Tierney, a former Maine attorney general who advised on the litigation, said the attorneys general had little leverage.
"We couldn't control the money legally," he said. The resistance to earmarking it "came from the governors, not the tobacco companies."
NOAH BERGER/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mr. Moore watched it happen in his own state. Mississippi put its settlement money into a trust fund and, while he was in office, paid \$20 million annually for prevention. After he left, he said, the Legislature "spent every penny of it on other things."
Niagara County, N.Y., put \$700,000 toward a golf course sprinkler system, Virginia spent \$12 million laying fiber optic cable and North Carolina handed \$41 million to tobacco farmers for equipment to cure their harvest. In the first six years of payments, states put just 3.5 percent of the money into tobacco control, the Government Accountability Office found; 23 percent went toward budget shortfalls.
Still, public health advocates point to other achievements of tobacco litigation. It forced millions of pages of internal documents into public view, banned cartoon mascots like Joe Camel and helped drive daily smoking among high school seniors from one in four to fewer than one in a hundred.
"The revelations of litigation change culture," said Nora Freeman Engstrom, a Stanford law professor who has written about the legacy of the tobacco settlement. "They change how we think about products, and they change how we interact with products."
But Matthew Myers, who ran the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids for more than two decades and was deeply involved in the negotiations, drew another lesson.
"If you want the money spent on the items that will have the greatest impact, you have to mandate it and specify it," he said.
"Otherwise, the political process will take over."
---
Principled Spending
Two decades later, when attorneys general won settlements totaling more than \$50 billion from opioid manufacturers, distributors and pharmacy chains, they took that lesson to heart.
Josh Stein, then North Carolina's attorney general and now its governor, said the agreements were designed to avoid the pitfalls of the tobacco settlements.
"We wanted to try to reduce the amount of human suffering that Americans were experiencing," he said, "so we were really explicit that the funds had to go to those express purposes."
In early 2021, with the first of those national deals still being negotiated, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health published principles for spending the money and warned states against using it to fill budget holes.
The agreement with the three largest opioid distributors declared that "in no event" may less than 85 percent of the money be spent on opioid remediation.
It named core strategies for states to prioritize, including naloxone distribution, medication-assisted treatment and care for women before and after childbirth. Expenses outside opioid remediation were discouraged and were required to be publicly reported.
Advocates have questioned use of the money for law enforcement, including recent reports of sheriffs buying license plate readers.
Of roughly \$2.7 billion spent or committed in 2024, some \$61 million went to police and sheriffs, according to a settlement database published by KFF Health News. But most of the money that can be traced went to the purposes the attorneys general laid out.
---
Fewer Requirements
By comparison, the Meta settlement with 47 states has fewer strings attached. The agreement lists possible uses, including crisis lines, after-school programs, phone-free school zones and training for doctors, but those are not requirements.
Unlike the opioid deal, the agreement sets no general requirement that states report how the money is spent.
Mr. Myers said that open-ended language cuts both ways. It lets a committed attorney general adapt as understanding of social media's harms change.
"But at the same time it means that the next attorney general, who might not be interested in this issue at all, is given the flexi-"
bility to do things that may be totally ineffective," he said.
Governor Stein agreed there was a risk of mission drift. "It is real easy to get distracted by other budgetary needs," he said.
He directed his team to identify "evidence-based strategies that move the needle on teen mental health," he said. Unlike tobacco or opioids, which have known prevention strategies, social media is a dynamic technology where no single intervention may be effective for long.
Mitch Prinstein, a psychologist at the University of North Carolina and former chief science officer of the American Psychological Association, put the problem plainly. "I wish we did have an evidence-based menu," he said, "but we don't."
Experts suggested mental health staffing in schools, getting phones and educational technology out of classrooms, a public health surveillance system tracking apps that harm children and a campaign to make social media less appealing.
Dr. Odgers of the University of California, Irvine, cautioned that the analogy with tobacco and opioids goes only so far. Those were toxins society could target. Technology is "more like a circulatory system" running through every part of society, and "we cannot ban our way" to a solution.
Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a Johns Hopkins public health professor who helped write the principles for spending the opioid money, said the missing playbook was a danger.
"Unless there's a robust effort to figure out what is going to help," he said, "it's likely that a lot of money will be spent on things that sound good but don't work."
Attorneys general made about 30 percent of the payment contingent on the adoption of similar protections by TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube, and Meta pointed to the agreement's product changes as the heart of the deal. When the settlement was announced, the company's chief legal officer, C.J. Mahoney, said the new time limits and nighttime blocks "set the right path forward for our whole industry," a statement Meta repeated in response to questions for this article.
New Mexico won its own verdict in an earlier case, and Florida is pursuing another. School districts and teenagers claiming injury are suing in federal court, allegations this settlement did not address. Meta said it would continue to defend itself in those cases.
"Meta is settling with the states," Ms. Engstrom said, "but it's nowhere near done with its public liability."
ENERGY
New Crop of Solar Panels Is the U.S.'s Best Hope of Catching China
FROM FIRST BUSINESS PAGE
At its German lab, Hanwha Qcells, which has spent billions on production lines in Georgia, has been testing its tandem solar panels, a technology that solar companies say will generate more energy.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY PATRICK JUNKER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
'It is the next frontier.'
Mike Carr, the director of a solar energy manufacturers group, about tandem panels. He says U.S. technology may surpass that of China.
FROM FIRST BUSINESS PAGE policies. Partly as a result, new factories have been built across the country in recent years. Hanwha, a South Korean company that bought the German solar manufacturer Qcells in 2012, has spent billions on production lines in Georgia, including in Cartersville, north of Atlanta.
Energy experts say perfecting tandem panels before the Chinese do would allow the United States, Germany and other countries to reclaim a big share of the global solar industry.
Qcells has been testing its tandem solar panels in its lab in Germany as well as in fields in the United States, Australia, Cyprus and South Korea to show that they are ready. Among other things, the company has been blasting panels with LED light to see how they will perform. It has also been firing balls of ice — some roughly the size of marbles, others as big as or slightly bigger than golf balls — at panels to see how they handle extreme weather.
The tests are designed to reassure energy companies, investors and lenders that the new panels will last 20 to 30 years once they are installed in baking deserts or in fields subject to torrential downpours.
The power industry is “quite conservative in accepting new technologies,” said Fabian Fertig, head of tandem research and development for Qcells, who is based in Leipzig, Germany. “We’ve been focused on stability. We have to convince banks that this new technology can deliver.”
Scientists developed early tandem panels decades ago, but it has taken time to ensure that they could withstand harsh conditions — from heat and humidity to pounding hail.
"There are all these questions around how long they actually last," said Chetan Krishna, a principal at RMI, a research organization that specializes in sustainability and was previously known as the Rocky Mountain Institute. "Are there degradation issues that we don't know yet?"
Mr. Krishna and other experts say they believe the tandem solar panels are very close to being ready.
But the technology remains expensive. By some estimates, these panels could cost three to three and a half times as much as conventional devices, which are typically made of one layer of silicon.
The cost of buying and installing conventional panels for solar farms ranges from about 93 cents to \$1.06 per watt, according to a report by the Solar Energy Industries Association.
Andrés Gluski, chief executive of AES, a big utility and power company, said price would be crucial to the success of tandem panels because Chinese manufacturers sold solar panels at very low prices. China "could probably supply the world twice over," he said.
The technology for modern solar panels was created at AT&T's Bell Labs in 1954. But broad use of it didn't take off until the 1980s as the devices became more efficient at converting sunshine into electricity. Improvements helped lower costs and have made the technology the cheapest way to generate electricity.
In recent years, energy companies have also figured out how to pair solar panels with batteries to supply energy hours after the sun has set. Solar and batteries accounted for 70 percent of the capacity added to U.S. grids in the first half of this year, according to Wood Mackenzie, an energy research firm. Solar energy made up nearly 9 percent of the electricity produced in the United States in 2025, up from 3 percent in 2020, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Widespread use of tandem panels could significantly increase solar's share of the country's electricity, helping to satisfy the surging demand for power from data centers used to develop artificial intelligence.
Energy analysts evaluate the dependability of different sources of power by measuring their capacity factors. In theory, a power source that can supply electricity 24 hours a day, 365 days a year would have a capacity factor of 100 percent. But no power plants operate at that level because they require maintenance, upgrades, refueling and so on.
Nuclear plants typically offer the highest capacity factors, in the low 90s. Large natural gas power plants generally operate at about
58 percent, while U.S. solar farms average roughly 24 percent, according to the E.I.A. That is primarily because they produce electricity only when the sun is shining and cannot convert all of the light they receive into usable energy.
Solar executives assert that tandem panels could have capacity factors of more than 31 percent. As a result, energy companies would be able to generate the same electricity on less land and with fewer materials.
"If you build a utility field, you need fewer cables," said Mr. Fertig of Qcells. "If you have a rooftop, you can get the same power out of less of your rooftop."
Qcells became the first manufacturer to make a tandem panel that has been independently certified under standards established by Underwriters Laboratories and the International Electrotechnical Commission, two groups that validate and set standards for various products.
Another company working on such devices — Tandem PV in Fremont, Calif. — says it has been testing panels under various conditions across the country for the last year.
"We're showing less than 1 percent degradation per year," Scott Wharton, chief executive of Tandem PV, a name that refers to the photovoltaic technology used to convert sunlight into electricity. He added that tandem solar panels would dominate the industry by the mid-2030s. "There's no debate in the industry that we will
At the Qcells center, the company has been firing balls of ice at panels to see how they handle extreme weather, above, simulating hail, left, and blasting panels with LED light to see how they will perform.
move to tandems."
The design of tandem panels favors First Solar, one of the few U.S. manufacturers that survived as Chinese producers became dominant. First Solar's products use a thin film material that other manufactures would most likely need to perfect to make the layers in tandem panels.
"We've invested over \$2 billion in thin film research and development, including this program," said Mark Widmar, chief executive of First Solar, in Phoenix.
Some energy companies have bought early versions of the tandem panels to ensure that they do not get left behind, said Wayne Li, a principal at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit research organization. How dependable and durable the panels are will require extensive third-party testing, he added.
"Manufacturers are not very open to share the details and the data," Mr. Li said.
The main building of the Qcells Technology and Innovation headquarters in Bitterfeld-Wolfen, Germany.
Solar modules are monitored under real environmental conditions at the expansive Qcells outdoor testing field.
Sports The New York Times
Look How Far
He's Come:
McKenna's Rise
From the Yukon
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'HOCKEY
SHUTTERSTOCK, LEFT INSET, RICARIO NAGAOKA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES, RIGHT INSET, NICK TURCHIARO/IMAGN IMAGES
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The No. 1 pick's journey to the Toronto limelight began under the Northern Lights.
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By JOSHUA KLOKE The Athletic
WHITEHORSE, Yukon — High above the sprawling forests that define one of the most remote stretches of Canada's Far North, Gavin McKenna was cracking jokes.
This was how the rising hockey star and his teammates calmed their nerves on yet another flight, ahead of yet another game. The team flew regularly with a local
Joshua Kloke covers the Maple Leafs for The Athletic. Jonas Siegel contributed reporting.
airline, ensuring timely arrival to face top competition — as is common for professional organizations.
McKenna, however, was no pro. He was just 10 years old.
Most of his teammates were only 13, but this had become something of a typical weekend for the team from Whitehorse.
An extraordinary itinerary of road games was born out of necessity. There simply was not enough competition close to home, so parents, coaches and a small airline came together to make these trips possible.
“Without that community,” McKenna, now 18, said last month, “I wouldn't be here.”
"Here" is Toronto, McKenna's new home after the Maple Leafs selected him at No. 1 in the 2026 N.H.L. draft.
Gavin McKenna, who grew up in Whitehorse, is the fourth N.H.L. player from the Yukon. "There's an inherent unwritten rule," the territory's premier said, "that none of us are going to go anywhere."
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Whitehorse's isolation creates travel challenges for teams.
It is hard to imagine two places more different than Whitehorse and Toronto. Whitehorse, with its single-road downtown, is closer to the Arctic Ocean than any hockey hotbed. It is a place few visit and even fewer leave.
So isolated is the city that its citizens have a term for leaving the territory: "going Outside."
"There's an inherent unwritten rule that none of us are going to go anywhere," Currie Dixon, the premier of Yukon, said about the area's aspiring young athletes. "We're so remote. We're so isolated. We're up here."
And yet the Maple Leafs' next great hope was forged in the rugged outdoors and against the odds. McKenna is just the second player from the Yukon this century, and fourth ever, to play in the N.H.L.
About 2,500 miles from where he grew up, he is facing the spotlight and pressure of hockey's biggest market.
Is he ready?
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Going Fast
It began in the bitter cold.
McKenna's parents, Willy and Krystal, wanted to share their joy for ice hockey. So Willy built a rink in the backyard. No one could have foreseen just how much McKenna would want to be on the ice, day after day, night after frigid night.
Not even the Cozens brothers — Dylan, destined for the N.H.L. himself with the Sabres and the Senators, and his younger brother, Luke, McKenna's close friend and youth teammate —
Continued on Page B9
PRO FOOTBALL | N.F.L. WEEK 5
ANALYSIS
Packers Coach Piles It On With a Purpose, Heating a Rivalry
By MICHAEL SILVER
The Athletic
PACKERS MarShawn Lloyd after scoring in a rout against the Bears. A late 2-point conversion and a 50-yard pass by Green Bay assured a spicy Christmas rematch.
JEFFREY PHELPS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
JAGUARS A miscalculation by the Eagles gave Cam Little the opportunity to kick a 57-yard field goal for the victory in London.
IAN WALTON/ASSOCIATED PRESS
PATRICK SMITH/GETTY IMAGES
CHARLES KRUPA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Matt LaFleur, the coach of the Green Bay Packers, did not have to do it.
But for tens of thousands of fans at Lambeau Field and millions of home viewers, it was a lot more entertaining that he did.
With a 22-point lead early in the fourth quarter, LaFleur could have trotted out his rookie kicker for a vibe-sustaining extra point. And when the Packers got the ball back two minutes later, he could have run the ball and bled the clock.
Instead, LaFleur was blood-
PATRIOTS Drake Maye kept rolling, with four touchdowns passing and one rushing in a decisive victory against the Raiders.
COMMANDERS Jayden Daniels didn't get out of bounds on the last play of overtime, bringing a tie.
thirsty. He went for a 2-point conversion and got it, and then had quarterback Jordan Love groove a deep ball to Matthew Golden for a 50-
Matt LaFleur
yard gain. It was clear the coach was sending a message: to his players, to the football-watching world and, yes, to his Chicago Bears counterpart, Ben Johnson.
"I thought it was good," Packers safety Xavier McKinney told me after the team's 31-7 victory against its longtime rival. "Not just for the fact of trying to embarrass or anything like that, but we've got 60 minutes and we're here to compete. We're not here to just be like, 'Oh, the game's over now,' because if it was flipped the other way around, they would do the same thing to us."
These storied franchises, and the spite and spice surrounding their 214th and latest clash, captured our attention on a day full of head-scratching and jaw-dropping moments. It is tempting to regard pro football, the nation's most popular spectator sport, as overdramatized and overhyped, but on the fifth Sunday of the 2026 N.F.L. season, we were reminded that there is seldom a shortage of riveting story lines.
It began early in the day, in London, for a game between the Jacksonville Jaguars and Philadelphia Eagles that resembled a full-fledged Noel and Liam Gallagher spat. From the fight that led to two ejections on the opening kickoff (after a touchdown return was called back) to the long snapper injury that affected Jaguars Coach Liam Coen's strategic decisions to quarterback Trevor Lawrence screaming at his center amid a barrage of presnap penalties in the red zone to the unhinged final sequence that featured back-to-back game-swinging field goals in the final eight seconds, Jacksonville's 19-17 victory was proper mental.
Back in the United States, the Washington Commanders and visiting New York Giants ran a three-legged race that ended in a 27-27 tie. The disjointed drama featured a Jameis Winston-fueled, 14-point fourth-quarter comeback, a Cam Skatebo fumble late in overtime with the Giants in field-goal range and an unconscionable brain lock that kept the Commanders from kicking a would-be game-winner before time expired.
When Magic Johnson, of all people, goes negative on social media — especially given that he happens to own a piece of the Commanders — it's not a good day in the nation's capital.
Later, across the continent in Seattle, the San Francisco 49ers' torrid start continued — on the strength of a 32-29 victory over the defending Super Bowl champion Seahawks decided by a matter of inches. Kyle Shanahan has never won coach of the year (neither did his two-time Super Bowl-winning father, Mike, for that matter), but he and his injury-ravaged 5-0 team have burst out of the gates with a vengeance, and it may take a yeoman effort to run them down.
On Sunday night in Atlanta, the Lamar Jackson-less Baltimore Ravens (4-1) staged an electric rally to take the Falcons to overtime, and then ground out a 30-23 victory to take sole possession of first place in the A.E.C. North. It was a clutch performance by Tyler Huntley, one of this decade's most capable backup quarterbacks, that was not clinched until Atlanta's second-string quarterback, Tua Tagovailoa, came off the bench to throw an interception to Kyle Hamilton.
Are you not entertained?
We also got to witness the regular-season debut of the No. 1 overall pick, Fernando Mendoza (in garbage time of the Las Vegas Raiders' 45-17 loss to the New England Patriots); quarterback J. J. McCarthy's first snaps for the Giants (in a cameo role, for now); and the usual array of scintillating plays, including Packers receiver Christian Watson's incredible end-zone pull-down of a 53-yard pass by Love in the third quarter.
"That's why he got the big bucks," McKinney said of Watson, who signed a four-year, \$110.5 million contract extension in June.
That LaFleur kept doubling down was not a surprise to McKinney, who felt certain that Johnson, given the chance, would have similarly rubbed it in. That belief stems from the aftermath of Green Bay's 31-27 playoff defeat to the Bears in January, when cameras captured Johnson, amid a postgame locker room celebration, shouting about and disrespecting the Packers.
It was a startling outburst from an extremely smart coach who leans into rivalry like no other N.F.L. contemporary — players and team owners included. To say it got the Packers' collective attention would be a vast understatement.
On Sunday, after a tepid start to the season, the underdog Packers (3-2) responded emphatically, with Love (367 passing yards), McKinney (two interceptions) and LaFleur (now 13-3 against Chicago) making the loudest statements of all.
Even after Watson's soaring scoring grab put them ahead, 20-7, the Packers were far from comfortable. Since last December, they have blown double-digit leads with glaring regularity, including two heartbreaking games against the Bears, one of which ended their season and led to Johnson's eruption.
His tweaking of LaFleur began a year earlier, at his introductory news conference, and he seemed poised to continue the unprovoked assault on Sunday. The Bears (3-2), even without the injured quarterback Caleb Williams, went into Lambeau as favorites for the first time in 20 years, which was also the last time Chicago won three straight in the rivalry.
Johnson's players felt the vibe, with receiver Luther Burden III saying the Bears wanted to beat the Packers "real bad and make them quit," a comment that drew a postgame rebuke from Green Bay linebacker Zaire Franklin, who said: "We see all the little weird stuff they be doing in the media and all the different stuff they be saying. You got guys that never really made a real play in this league talking about making somebody quit. That's weird. We don't do that."
So even with a big lead, LaFleur had no incentive not to try to keep scoring, and then to keep scoring some more. It recalled the apocryphal quotation by the Ohio State coach Woody Hayes, explaining why he went for a 2-point conversion while blowing out archrival Michigan in 1968: "Because I couldn't go for 3."
While emphasizing that winning Sunday's game against the Bears was a teamwide quest, McKinney told me he took pleasure in LaFleur's redemptive triumph.
There has been a lot of trash-talking, he said, "and we know how he feels about it."
Christmas at Soldier Field. It's the most merciless time of the year.
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Do bad decisions come in threes?
If you thought Tampa Bay Buccaneers Coach Todd Bowles's curious choice not to kick a chip-shot field goal that would have given his team a three-possession lead in Thursday night's game against the Dallas Cowboys would be the most scrutinized move of the week — well, it may go down only as the bronze medalist of baffling, thanks to a couple of not-so-smooth moves by men in headsets on Sunday.
First came Coach Nick Sirianni's decision to pass late in the Eagles' game against the Jaguars, with the ensuing incompletion ensuring that Jake Elliott's eventual go-ahead field goal would leave eight seconds on the clock, rather than none. Sirianni then chose to have Elliott kick the ball into the landing zone instead of out of the end zone, setting up Ameer Abdullah's 53-yard return and Cam Little's 57-yard walk-off field goal.
"I didn't make the right decision, and I lost us that game," Sirianni said, after Philadelphia (2-3) dropped its third straight. He wasn't wrong, but given that he entered the game with an N.F.L.-best record of 35-15 in one-score games, we will give him a little grace.
Besides, the embattled Washington coach Dan Quinn later accepted responsibility for an even more egregious collapse: With 12 seconds left, no timeouts and the ball at the Giants' 24, Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels inexplicably scrambled and went down inbounds, leaving no time for a field-goal attempt. Though Daniels clearly goofed, Quinn, who threw his headset to the ground in disgust, shouldered the blame for taking the risk of running another play, saying, "It falls on me."
Will something else soon fall on Quinn? With a Monday night road game against the undefeated 49ers coming up for the Commanders (1-3-1), followed by a bye week, he has ample reason to be concerned.
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The worst thing I saw on Sunday
OK, this was not as bad as the ending of the Jaguars-Eagles or Commanders-Giants game, but watching the past-his-prime Seahawks cornerback Trevon Diggs, a recent active-roster signee, try to taunt the six-time Pro Bowl receiver Mike Evans of the 49ers late in the first half of Sunday's game was somewhat painful. Then it became down-right comical: The incredulous Evans responded by spinning Diggs around to check out the name on the back of his jersey.
All I needed at that point was for the Who to blast out one of its classics: "Who Are You."?
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Over the moon
After snapping out of his slump a week ago, Patriots quarterback Drake Maye had a monster game against the Raiders, throwing for 374 yards and four touchdowns without an interception. But it was Maye's other scoring play, a 3-yard run punctuated by a subtle skip inside the left pylon, that moved me most. Let's just say that for Maye, who, in a radio interview recently, expressed his skepticism that the moon landings during NASA's Apollo program actually happened, it was one small step for Maye, one giant leap for Patriot-kind.
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Long live 'Da Coach'
Whatever the enmity between the two franchises and their fans, the Packers were classy enough to honor the Bears legend Mike Ditka, who died on Friday at 86, with a pregame moment of silence.
A Hall of Fame tight end who coached the Bears to their lone Super Bowl victory 41 seasons ago, Ditka lived an incredible football life. My favorite Ditka line came during the 1990 season, when the struggling kicker Kevin Butler, during a radio appearance, speculated that the Bears would draft someone to replace him the next spring.
"Did he make that prediction?" Ditka asked. "He's very clairvoyant."
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A good day for former Golden Bears
For those who have been tempted to write off 42-year-old Aaron Rodgers, you might want to avoid watching Pittsburgh Steelers highlights. The revived Rodgers threw three touchdown passes in the Steelers' 34-22 victory over the Indianapolis Colts, hitting that milestone for the third consecutive game — something that had not happened since 2021, when he won his fourth Most Valuable Player Award.
In his final season, Rodgers looks capable of enjoying a much less nauseating final act than the one he had seemingly endured last January.
His performance against the Colts was part of a noteworthy day for former California quarterbacks, as Jared Goff threw for 271 yards and three touchdowns, and ran for another, to lead the Detroit Lions (3-2) to a 45-21 victory over the Arizona Cardinals, and Mendoza (6 for 8, 48 yards), a Golden Bears standout before he transferred to Indiana, saw the field in a meaningful N.F.L. game for the first time.
DAVID DERMER/ASSOCIATED PRESS
STEELERS Aaron Rodgers is putting together a grand finale.
The two teams meet again on
PRO BASKETBALL
Fierce Competitor on the Court Turns His Focus to the Recovery Room
By JON KRAWCZYNSKI
Timberwolves guard Donte DiVincenzo after injuring an Achilles' tendon during last season's playoffs against the Nuggets.
ABBIE PARR/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Athletic
MINNEAPOLIS — The false bravado of an injured N.B.A. athlete is usually easy to spot. The words come out with certainty, the player assuring anyone who will listen that he will be back better than ever. The eyes often tell a different story.
Then there is Donte DiVincenzo, who is rehabilitating a torn Achilles' tendon, the injury many basketball players hope to avoid above nearly all others. About six months after going down in Game 4 of the Minnesota Timberwolves' first-round playoff series against the Denver Nuggets, DiVincenzo spoke about his return to form with unwavering certainty.
Because he was injured so late last season, and because an Achilles tear is among the trickiest and most grueling to recover from, it would be reasonable to believe that DiVincenzo could miss the 2026-27 season in an effort to come back as strong as possible. When he was asked at the start of training camp if his plan was to play this season, the look in his eye matched the incredulousness of his response.
"I wouldn't come in here with the mind-set of I'm going to play next year," he said. "No, the mind-set is to play this year."
He finished the statement with a chuckle as if to say, "How dare you even think that I won't be back?"
Publicly and behind the scenes, DiVincenzo has been operating with that assumption for months. Everything has been designed to get him back to his old self as fast as possible. He had surgery to repair the injury less than 18 hours after he was hurt, following the path Jayson Tatum of the Boston Celtics took in his own recovery.
DiVincenzo spoke to Tatum, Damian Lillard, Tyrese Haliburton and a host of others who have dealt with the injury, picking their brains on what worked and what did not as he tailored his own program. He said he has spoken to Tatum the most throughout the
Jon Krawczynski is a senior writer covering the Timberwolves for The Athletic.
process. They compare notes on their recoveries and provide motivation when the tough times arrive.
"It's been very, very helpful those days or weeks where you feel like you're not gaining so much ground as you should," Di-Vincenzo said. "You talk to those guys, and they kind of help push you along."
DiVincenzo is also collaborating with the Timberwolves' digital team on "Day Zero," a behind-the-scenes video series detailing an emotionally trying process for his return. His willingness to pull back the curtain speaks to the confidence he has in his ability to complete it. DiVincenzo said he wanted to serve as inspiration for any young player with a significant injury.
He also wants to show that it is OK to acknowledge the difficulties, both physical and mental.
There are “a lot of battles in sports that aren’t the physical ones,” he said. “It starts with the physical and then turns into the mental side. So just that there is light at the end of the tunnel. As vulnerable as I am, I can tell you I’m as driven and as confident.”
"I'm probably way more confident than my surgeon, the trainer, the coach, everybody. I will push that envelope as much as I possibly can."
DiVincenzo was essential to the Timberwolves' run last season. He averaged 12.2 points and 4.1 rebounds, and he shot 38 percent from 3-point range. Perhaps more important, he waGuars the crushed red pepper on a pizza that needed a little more flavor. He was the first one to dive onto the floor for a loose ball. He was the one who stuffed some gauze into a broken nose and got back out on the floor in Charlotte. And he did it for all 82 regular-season games.
That edge stood out for a team that often lacked it in the regular season. And now, even while he is on the sideline, DiVincenzo will be relied on for a team that got a whole lot younger this summer. Veteran voices like Mike Conley, Kyle Anderson and Joe Ingles have moved on. LaMelo Ball and Jonathan Kuminga are now in Minnesota alongside Anthony Edwards and Jaden McDaniels as important players who are 26 or under.
“Donte is one of our best competitors, one of our smartest guys," Minnesota Coach Chris Finch said. "We want to keep him at the center of everything that we're doing. We want him to stay connected with the team, and he's a guy that everyone really respects."
That was validated last post-season, when every Timberwolves player showed up for Game 6 against the Nuggets, the first home game since DiVincenzo's injury, with No. 0 jerseys on their backs.
While he is out, DiVincenzo said he would focus more on "being an ear" for his teammates. He knows that trying to lead with his voice right now is not the way to go. He has to be in the fray, mixing it up on the court, to lead that way. For now, he has to be someone they can vent to when they are frustrated. He played with new Timberwolves like Kuminga and Trey Lyles before any of the three got to Minnesota, so he is one of the few players in the locker room whose familiarity extends to everyone.
"Sometimes, you just want to get something off your chest and leave it alone and go forward from there," DiVincenzo said. "It doesn't need to have a resolution every single day. So just being that for them and whatever they need as the season evolves."
DiVincenzo said he has a date that he is targeting for a return. He is not ready to share it publicly, perhaps because it is sooner than anyone expects. He is in the final year of his contract, so the motivation to return is twofold. He will want to be there to give his team a lift. He will also want to show the Timberwolves, and the rest of the league, that he is recovered and ready for another long-term deal.
His future with the Timberwolves is uncertain. The new collective bargaining agreement forces teams to make hard decisions about valuable role players around their stars. Last year, the Timberwolves had to say goodbye to Nickeil Alexander-Walker not because they wanted to but because they had to manage their books.
DiVincenzo has a history as a quality two-way wing and a good veteran in the locker room; that will give him value on the trade market. Or the team could try to extend him at a manageable number while he is working his way back, then look for other ways to trim salary and stay under the second apron going forward.
DiVincenzo said he has had discussions with the team's president of basketball operations, Tim Connelly, and the front office about his future. He respects that no promises have been made either way and that the organization has been upfront with what it has to consider.
"I like to think of what I bring to the organization, yes, on the court, but off the court," DiVincenzo said. "Kind of invaluable stuff that you may not see on a stat sheet and just try to be a good person, a good human being. And when you do that every single day, I think they see that."
COMMENTARY
Reese Ends Up Right Where She Saw Herself All Along
By CHANTEL JENNINGS
The Athletic
Nearly all of the Atlanta Dream's players had left the floor. Angel Reese, too, was heading back to the locker room at Barclays Center in Brooklyn when, from across the court, she spotted a familiar figure behind the security rope. Reese took off in a sprint, as if she were chasing a rebound, as if she had not just played almost 38 minutes of a W.N.B.A. semifinals game.
From behind the rope, the former New York Liberty player Teresa Weatherspoon, Reese's coach during her first year in the league with the Chicago Sky, stretched her arms around Reese and pulled her tight.
This is what we talked about. This is what you talked about.
In Game 3 of the Dream's sweep of New York, which put Atlanta in the W.N.B.A. finals, Reese scored a team-high 22 points and pulled down nine rebounds in an 85-83 win.
But it wasn't just that.
She gave the visitors at Barclays Center the full Angel Reese experience. She blocked two shots, talked major trash, came to the defense of her teammates, and then motioned to the rowdy New York crowd to bring it. Yes, she wants all of the smoke.
She chest-bumped and fist-pumped, and when it was over, she put her head in her hands as the tears welled and reality set in. The game had felt extra-long to Reese, maybe because she had gone toe-to-toe with Liberty center Jonquel Jones all night, or maybe because when the moments we spend imagining for years finally arrive, time seems to bend in a way.
This is what Reese talked about. This is what she imagined.
Now, she gets a W.N.B.A. finals appearance against the Golden State Valkyries, who eliminated the Las Vegas Aces in three games in their semifinal series. Game 1 will be Saturday afternoon in San Francisco.
Even as a rookie in Chicago, with Weatherspoon as coach,
Chantel Jennings is a senior women's basketball writer for The Athletic.
with the Sky limping to a 13-27 season, and even last year, when the Sky, under a first-year coach, Tyler Marsh, went 10-34, Reese saw herself here.
Angel Reese with her Atlanta Dream teammates on Friday after ousting the host New York Liberty.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ISHIKA SAMANT/GETTY IMAGES
During the 2025 W.N.B.A. finals, as the Aces swept the Phoenix Mercury, and as Reese, for the second consecutive post-season-less year, watched from home, she texted Kahleah Copper, a friend who was on the losing side of that series. She wrote, "Give me one playoff game, and I'll make it to the finals."
And then she told the world exactly what she and Weather-spoon had discussed.
The player who had never sniffed a playoff game, let alone a winning record in the pros, was not just thinking about the first round. She was manifesting the finals. And she wanted everyone to know.
There is a risk in making the private public. In taking those dreams and allowing the world to see, to measure, to grade. Reese knows that better than most. One of the most famous players in a league never short on drama, Reese has been vilified and lionized, compared and doubted incessantly.
PRO BASKETBALL | W.N.B.A. FINALS
In college, in the lead-up to her W.N.B.A. career, she knew there was skepticism. As with every player, there were questions. But as with everything orbiting around Reese, they were louder. Was she strong enough? Could she develop an outside shot? Would her skill set translate to the pros because she is a bit of a tweener? Would the noise around her with her name, image and likeness presence distract her?
In April 2024, she sat at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, a stone's throw from Barclays Center, and watched as six players were drafted before her.
Finally, No. 7 came, and Chicago (with its second pick in that round) took Reese.
No. 7 hurt in the moment, but she could not be more grateful for it now. Hindsight has shown her that she needed it to get here.
"I think it was important for me to go through what I've been through," Reese said. "Going through adversity builds character, and I was able to learn from a lot of things. Being able to continue to be great but also learning to know that I can be better."
Those six players drafted in front of her? None has made it to a W.N.B.A. finals yet. The players who have been anointed, alongside Reese, as the future of the league — Caitlin Clark, Paige Bueckers and Olivia Miles — none have won in the postseason the way Reese has now.
She spent two years in Chicago before maneuvering an exit to Atlanta, a team that had just completed a 30-win season under a first-year coach, Karl Smesko. Atlanta, as a city, made sense, as did the existing roster — she filled a need for size and rebounding, and had existing relationships with several players.
The fit with Smesko was to be determined. Reese is a main character, the player who went from "Bayou Barbie" to simply "Barbie." She has reached the level of fame that when she posts on X about her love of a televi-
sion show, she is cast in it the next season. Smesko, on the other hand, exudes suburban dad energy. He is the kind of guy who you assume mows his lawn in a specific pattern and whose
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Through all of the pressure she faced, a vision of the finals.
most surprising trait is that he likes heavy metal.
And yet there has been no better fit for Reese at this point in her pro career. Smesko has challenged her and raised her up. He is her main workout partner and does every pregame shooting routine with her. When she came to Atlanta, she entrusted the staff to change her shot.
Smesko told her to be patient, which is not an inherent trait for
Reese. The results would come, he promised. Her range would extend. She needed to see that for herself, but she also needed to expect the journey (and know it wouldn't be easy).
"It's really hard for me to not want to rush success," Reese admitted.
So when Reese was growing impatient, Smesko, understanding her mentality, challenged her. Nothing like making that chip on her shoulder just a bit heavier.
He stopped a practice during training camp and said they could not continue until she knocked down two 3s in a row.
Reese got mad. Then she got better. If she could be comfortable shooting those shots in front of her teammates, she could shoot those shots in sold-out arenas (even if her misses ended up becoming videos that trolled her online). Eventually, she would hit them. Her first basket of Game 3 was a base line 3-pointer directly in front of the
Reese, going toe-to-toe with Jonquel Jones all night, had 22 points and 9 rebounds.
Liberty sideline. She then turned and pointed at the end of the bench.
Sure, many point to her 3-point percentage for the season: 19 percent. But Smesko will happily pull up her 3-point percentage in the playoffs: 39 percent.
Smesko knew she would get here, so did Reese.
"She's one of those people who puts her goals out there, and sometimes when you do that, you put it out there for people to criticize and judge," a Dream team owner, Renee Montgomery, who played in the W.N.B.A., said, "But she does it unapologetically, and now she's just checking goals off the list."
It was one year ago that the Aces took home the 2025 title in four games and Reese told the world she was manifesting to do the same. She saw herself here a thousand times before she stood in this moment.
Give me one playoff game, and I'll make it to the finals.
Reese has made it here faster than any of her peers, but anyone who knows Reese knows it's not just about making the finals. She's not a player who shows up wanting a participation trophy. She has undoubtedly dreamed up so much more.
When Reese finally let go of Weatherspoon after the game, she just smiled and nodded. This moment is what Reese envisioned, and Weatherspoon was there to see it all unfold. For a moment, they stood in silence before Reese rejoined her team.
Like a proud mother, Weather-spoon stayed on the base line and just admired the court that became Angel Reese's domain for one night in October.
This, here, is exactly what they talked about. This, and so much more.
ANALYSIS
Case Studies Show How Rays Discover Talent Others Miss
By WILL SAMMON
The Athletic
How do the Tampa Bay Rays keep finding these guys?
Contrary to popular belief, the Rays do not win every trade. They do, however, use their deep scouting department and analytic models to find under-the-radar additions. Their roster is full of castoffs from elsewhere who found success with Tampa Bay.
The back stories behind some acquisitions reveal what makes the Rays such a consistent winner despite their low annual payroll.
Here are tales of five such players who helped the Rays advance to the American League Championship Series.
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Victor Mesa Jr.
Acquired by trade, Feb. 6, 2026
In 2018, Kevin Ibach, now the Rays' vice president and assistant general manager, attended a workout featuring outfielder Victor Mesa Jr., his brother and fellow outfielder Victor Victor Mesa and pitcher Sandy Gaston at loanDepot Park in Miami. All three were pegged as big-bonus talents in the international market after leaving Cuba.
The Rays spent \$2.61 million on Gaston, who never panned out. Most teams eyed Victor Victor, whom the Miami Marlins signed for \$5.25 million. The Marlins also snagged Victor Mesa Jr. for \$1 million. Indeed, Mesa's lack of eye-opening tools outside of a powerful arm undersold his abilities in a workout.
"He was kind of an after-thought to a lot of teams," Ibach said.
Still, the club monitored Mesa, who began outperforming his older brother in the minor leagues. In 2022, Mesa played on the same Arizona Fall League team as the Rays' prospects. Tampa Bay's coaches appreciated Mesa's talent. In particular, they loved how cerebral he was about baseball and how he could recall at-bats from prior years.
Will Sammon covers M.L.B. for The Athletic.
He is the son of the Cuban baseball legend Victor Mesa, and it showed.
"We realized this was a player who had a lot of intangibles," Ibach said. "That didn't really shine in a showcase or a scouting report. But it became, 'Hey, this guy is probably going to play above his tools to some degree because his baseball I.Q. is off the charts.'"
Then the Rays experienced some good fortune. In early February, the Marlins designated Mesa for assignment. At the time, Mesa had not produced at a particularly impressive level outside a small sample (171 plate appearances) in Triple-A in 2025. He had a minor league option, however, and the Rays liked him.
When they expressed interest in Mesa, they were told a deal would require more than just cash. It was going to cost them. Ibach told his group, "OK, let's roll up our sleeves and get to work." They offered infielder Angel Brachi and jumped the line to get him.
Mesa started the year at Triple-A Durham. But when he joined Tampa Bay in May, he never looked back. He emerged as a starter, hitting 14 home runs with an .825 on-base plus slugging percentage, playing quality defense and stealing nine bases. He also became a connector in the clubhouse as a bilingual leader.
"At the beginning of the year, I started being designated for assignment, and look at me now," Mesa said last week after hitting a two-run home run in Game 3 of the Rays' American League division series. "Look at where I'm at."
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Nick Martinez
Acquired in free agency, Feb. 9, 2026
Despite already holding enough starters for a standard five-man rotation, the Rays, like many other clubs late in the off-season, coveted depth.
Tampa Bay differentiated itself by signing Nick Martinez to a one-year deal worth \$13 million.
BASEBALL | M.L.B. PLAYOFFS
WENDELL CRUZ/IMAGN IMAGES
From left: Victor Mesa Jr., Liam Hicks and Bryan Baker. The Tampa Bay Rays were able to unlock more from all three additions.
CALEB BOWLIN/GETTY IMAGES
While other teams acquired depth starters with minor league options remaining, the Rays paid for Martinez's versatility to pitch either in the rotation or from the bullpen.
As the Rays surveyed their options, Martinez stood out to them for his reputation as a veteran leader. The club took the same approach with other veterans as well, valuing soft skills and personality fits with short-term deals for pitcher Steven Matz and outfielder Cedric Mullins.
"It's part of our culture, this humility," Ibach said. "We did as good of a job as we have in a long time of targeting those selfless types of players who were willing to do whatever was best for the team to play in October."
For Martinez, who was coming off a subpar year with the Cincinnati Reds (4.45 E.R.A. in 165 $^{3/2}$ innings), Tampa Bay long stood out as a top destination. Martinez made the All-Star team this year and finished the season with a 3.10 E.R.A. after 31 starts.
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Bryan Baker
"I had a very good understanding that this team knows how to win without having to have six or seven superstars on a team," Martinez said. "They know how to communicate what they expect from their players. They know how to explain it. They know how to teach it."
Acquired by trade, July 10, 2025
A few days before the 2025 amateur draft, Erik Neander, the Rays' president of baseball operations, walked into a meeting and told a room full of scouts that he had just traded one of their picks.
The announcement did not go over well.
But in trading a compensationround draft pick (No. 37) to the Baltimore Orioles for the right-handed reliever Bryan Baker, Rays officials capitalized on an opportunity.
The Rays are one of baseball's best at threading the needle between buyer and seller. Over the off-season, they made a few trades with a look toward the future while holding an ability to backfill production. They made a similar bet in July 2025 when they acquired Baker, 31, who is under club control through 2028.
The Rays are also adept at juggling deadlines. At the time of the Baker deal, the draft and the trade deadline were coming within a three-week time frame. Tampa Bay likes to get ahead of those dates and make moves early. While teams were valuing picks as the draft approached, the Rays performed advance work analyzing Baker as a long-game fit.
Baker had decent numbers with the Orioles (3.52 E.R.A. in 38 $^{1/3}$ innings), but the Rays' information pointed to favorable results. Tampa Bay liked Baker's changeup and his ability to throw strikes.
"It was a guy we valued a little bit more than the industry did," Ibach said. "We thought he could pitch leverage innings for us, and obviously, this year, he has shown that."
Baker became the Rays' closer. He made the All-Star team and finished 2026 with 41 saves. In the A.L.D.S., he secured saves in all three wins of the Rays' sweep over the New York Yankees without allowing a run.
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Kevin Kelly
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Acquired by trade, Dec. 7, 2022
Perennially one of the league's lowest spenders, Tampa Bay typically does not allocate money in free agency for bullpen help. The club is aggressive in the trade market for relievers with club control. It takes a lot of shots on players who often fail to help the major league team. When the Rays hit on a reliever, though, they sometimes score big.
Right-hander Kevin Kelly is another example.
The Rays acquired Kelly from the Colorado Rockies for cash after Colorado selected the right-hander in the Rule 5 draft. The Rays had scouted Kelly in 2022 while he was on the Cleveland Guardians' Triple-A roster. He had good minor league numbers, and the Rays' model liked him. But the team knew it would eventually want to alter Kelly's breaking ball and add a change-up. Ideally, Tampa Bay wants pitchers it acquires to pitch to their strengths before introducing improvements. The Rays are careful not to do that too quickly. They first get comfortable and build trust.
Kelly established himself as a solid reliever in 2023 and 2024. His numbers took a bad turn in 2025. Ahead of this season, the Rays added a changeup to Kelly's arsenal to improve against left-handed batters. In 2025, left-handed batters had a .905 O.P.S. against Kelly. In 2026, they had a .684 O.P.S. against him. Overall, it was Kelly's best season: In $73 \frac{1}{3}$ innings, he produced a 2.44 E.R.A.
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Liam Hicks
Acquired by trade, Aug. 3, 2026
Rays officials wrote Liam Hicks's name on a piece of paper at the Rule 5 draft in December 2024 and prepared to announce him as their pick. But before their turn, the Marlins selected him. The Rays appreciated Hicks's game
then, but they liked him even more later.
At this year's trade deadline, the Rays were looking for catching help. The asking price for players like Adley Rutschman, who went from the Orioles to the Boston Red Sox, and Hunter Goodman, who stayed put with the Rockies, was steep. Tampa Bay wanted to supplement its roster creatively without stripping too much from its farm system.
Hicks fit the Rays well. They parted with three prospects to get the 27-year-old under club control through 2030. His 89.4 percent contact rate ranked first among all major league catchers; Tampa Bay placed him in the lineup behind their big trio of Yandy Díaz, Jonathan Aranda and Junior Caminero.
One issue: Hicks was not a full-time catcher with the Marlins, who, unlike the Rays, call all their pitches from the dugout. Hicks said he wondered if his feel for selecting pitches behind the plate would deteriorate.
In an age when clubs are tethered to their information systems, teams loathe introducing a new catcher midseason to their pitching staff. But the Rays trusted their field coordinator, Tomas Francisco, to help Hicks get up to speed. The club leaned on what it learned in the previous year, when the Rays acquired catchers Nick Fortes and Hunter Feduccia midseason. The experience gave them confidence and a blueprint. In 41 games and 145 plate appearances with the Rays, Hicks slashed .288/.379/.440 with four home runs.
And the worries over him handling the pitching staff? After Drew Rasmussen held the Yankees to one hit over eight innings in Game 1 of the A.L.D.S., the right-handed pitcher said he didn't shake off Hicks once.
Look How Far He's Come: McKenna's Rise From the Yukon to the Maple Leafs
HOCKEY
Gavin McKenna's jacket at the draft included personal images. Justin Bieber later announced that McKenna was a Maple Leaf.
ADRIAN KRAUS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
From First Sports Page
could match him.
"Always freezing cold," Luke Cozens said. "If you're on in December and January — and really he's one of the only kids that will go out there and train — it'll drop to minus-35 Celsius."
The Northern Lights danced around McKenna as he skated past his bedtime. He loved gliding free of constraints and pulling ideas with the puck out of the big sky above.
"Gavin was always exceptional," said Mike Cozens, Dylan and Luke's father, a coach and retired judge. "Willy really worked with Gavin. He was teaching him the things that most kids aren't really taught."
Willy and Krystal McKenna declined to be interviewed for this article.
McKenna learned to skate with his head up, handle the puck with strength and to shoot when he was off balance. He was still too young to attend kindergarten.
"My family, they all grew up playing hockey. I was surrounded by the game," Gavin McKenna said. "Once I got a hockey stick in my hand, it never left."
Mike Tuton, a longtime youth coach, said everyone always knew McKenna was "special special."
It wasn't just skill. He displayed a daring style that reflected his surroundings.
"There's a grittiness," Tuton said. "Growing up here, it's just the way we are."
Snowmobiling, riding dirt bikes, fishing, hunting: McKenna wanted to be outdoors whenever he could.
swung open.
"It gives you freedom," he said of growing up in Whitehorse. "It helps you stay grounded. You realize there's more to life than phones, social media. I wanted to be going fast all the time. Maybe that translates to the ice. I like things going fast."
Before Dylan Cozens and McKenna came along, only two players from the territory had ever played in the N.H.L. Peter Sturgeon and Bryon Baltimore, born in the 1950s, combined to play eight games.
When Dixon, a friend of the Mc-
Kenna family, first heard Gavin was turning into quite the player, he was doubtful.
"No kid from the Yukon could be that good," he recalled thinking. Then he saw him play. It didn't change much: "Maybe he'll play Junior B, but we all know it's not going anywhere."
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An Airline Pitches In
By the time McKenna was 10, his teams were too good.
Whitehorse invited opposing teams from across British Columbia, Alberta and Alaska to its rink. No one wanted to come, citing travel costs.
Finding suitable competition meant flying to cities in British Columbia, including Kelowna, Kamloops and Vancouver, for tournaments. Otherwise, its players would be left behind.
Air North's chief executive, Joseph Sparling, saw an opportunity — and a way to help.
Sparling saw the talent emerging. He created flight schedules to cities based around the tournaments teams like McKenna's were participating in, and insisted fares be competitive and affordable. Only after entire teams booked would extra seats be sold.
"We would go wherever Air North was going to go," Tuton said.
Sparling was quick to clarify his actions were not charity.
"It was a business philosophy because we knew that the kids would travel, the teams would travel, more often if it was affordable for them," he said. "We felt that it was a growth market, and it's proven to be so."
He added: "The one ingredient that was missing was the ability to affordably go out and compete in bigger markets. And maybe we've played a small part in allowing that to happen."
McKenna's final season in the North was unique.
To play in a tournament league in British Columbia, the provincial hockey association allowed the eight best players from Whitehorse and Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories to combine into one team. They called themselves the Rivermen. Every weekend, the two groups would fly to cities like Kelowna on Friday mornings to play four games over three days.
"As soon as we were done on Sunday, we would race off to the airport," Coach Stu Impett said. "We made it work, but we were certainly at a disadvantage."
That was evident. The Rivermen did not win much.
McKenna still soared, scoring at nearly a two-points-per-game pace before the Covid pandemic cut the season short. Impett said it looked like McKenna was playing pond hockey: "You lost sight of the fact that he was three or four years younger than everyone else."
McKenna needed more: more competition, more games.
After he lost a season to injuries and the pandemic, he left Whitehorse. He was 13 when he began playing on an under-18 prep team based in Kelowna. He led the team and league in scoring, beating out the likes of Tij Iginla, taken sixth in the N.H.L. draft two years ahead of McKenna.
In 2023, McKenna illustrated his growing confidence at the Canada Winter Games. Before the Yukon played its first game, he asked about the tournament record for points. Tuton told him it was 27. He posted 28 in six games.
McKenna had taken his peers as far as he could. He again needed more, and he would have to keep moving farther from home
to find it.
A junior career with the Medicine Hat Tigers of the Western Hockey League vaulted McKenna to stardom — and to the top of most scouts' 2026 draft rankings. In his second full season in Medicine Hat, Alberta, he led the W.H.L. with 129 points in 56 regular-season games before adding 38 more in 16 playoff games on the way to a league title.
Then he made a move that shook the hockey world. He was among the first to take advantage of a rule change allowing Canadian Hockey League players to jump to the N.C.A.A.
On ESPN's "SportsCenter," McKenna announced his decision to join Penn State, procuring an name, image and likeness deal reportedly in the neighborhood of \$700,000. Now, he would face yet another new spotlight, this time in the United States.
In Whitehorse, those who knew McKenna watched closely.
"You get this feeling in your gut, you have these nerves just watching from Whitehorse on TV," said Ben McPherson, a longtime trainer.
After McKenna's slow start in the N.C.A.A., observers began raising questions about his place atop draft boards. But after a strong showing at the World Juniors for Canada, things began to turn around.
Then, in the aftermath of a particularly special occasion on the ice, McKenna's biggest headline-grabbing moment came off it.
On Jan. 31, the Nittany Lions hosted Michigan State in an outdoor game at Beaver Stadium, a 5-4 overtime loss in which McKenna scored a goal and set up two. That night, the team gathered at a pub with a pizza joint around back. Around 8:45 p.m., after leaving the bar, McKenna and his group, according to the police, got into an “exchange of words” with another group in front of a parking garage. Some of those words, The Athletic reported, were directed at a member of McKenna’s family.
McKenna allegedly punched a 21-year-old man, causing fractures that required surgery. A charge of felony assault was later dropped, but McKenna still faces a misdemeanor assault charge. The case continues to work its way through the court system.
"I think most people know what happened — why I did it," McKenna said in an interview this fall. "I don't think people hold that against me. I think a lot of people would do the same. I think people gained a bit of respect for me for that," he said, before adding, "Obviously not the way you want to handle it."
Krystal McKenna was later charged with furnishing alcohol to minors. In July, she was accepted into a program that could allow the misdemeanor charge to be dismissed. She was also ordered to complete one day of community service, court records show.
In his first game back at Penn State afterward, McKenna piled up a team-record eight points, including seven assists, in a blowout win over Ohio State. He finished the season with 51 points in 35 games.
Still, when he returned to the Yukon, the season appeared to weigh on him.
"He lost a bit of that fun attitude, that idea of being a kid. He was more here for business," observed Jeremy McCulloch, a trainer in Whitehorse.
The N.H.L. draft loomed.
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'He's Ours'
On June 26, the rusted doors of Takhini Arena in Whitehorse
It was under the rink's worn wooden beams that McKenna began his hockey journey. Now, fans and neighbors wanted to celebrate at a draft watch party held in his honor. The Yukon was ready to watch McKenna step into the brightest lights of the N.H.L.
McKenna sat with his family in Buffalo's KeyBank Center, home of the Sabres. Over his heart on his gray suit jacket, he wore two beaded pins his sister made to honor his Tr'ondek Hwech'in roots.
A pop star stepped onstage.
"Mr. McKenna," Justin Bieber said. "We would like to draft you to the Toronto Maple Leafs."
McKenna hugged his mother, then the rest of his family. Bieber's song "Yukon" rang through the arena as he walked to the stage.
"The No. 1 overall pick in the N.H.L., and he's going to the Maple Leafs," Tuton said. "But he came from here. He's ours."
A long way from the backyard rink in Whitehorse, the next leg of McKenna's journey has begun in Toronto. Wearing an unfamiliar number in an unfamiliar city, No. 92 is facing the pressure of hockey's biggest market.
"You talk about media market and pressure, that obviously blew up for him" at Penn State, McPherson said. "Having experienced that at Penn State, it surely wasn't pleasurable at times. But it definitely prepared him for playing in a big media market like Toronto and the pressure that comes with that."
Others said his personality and passion would be his key to success.
McKenna said it's about confidence and fun.
"When I know I'm doing all the little things right, it brings me that little boost of confidence," McKenna said. "And for me, it's about having fun with it. It's a game I've played my entire life, and I love doing it. I try to go out there with no stress knowing that I can hopefully be the best player on that ice."
More Sports news appears on Page B12.
SIMON & SCHUSTER
Jeffrey Archer, Novelist Whose Life Arc Rivaled His Thrillers, Dies at 86
By ALAN COWELL
Jeffrey Archer, a best-selling British author, politician, philanthropist, athlete and one-time jailbird whose résumé seesawed between achievement and disgrace, and who inspired abiding public fascination with headline-grabbing accounts, both fictional and personal, of ambition, self-promotion, misbehavior and scandal, died on Oct. 5 at his home in London. He was 86.
His publisher, HarperCollins, announced his death in a statement. His final novel, "Adam and Eve," about the intertwined des-
JONATHAN CAPE, LONDON
MACMILLAN
"Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less" was published after Mr. Archer was defrauded and resigned as a lawmaker. "Kane & Abel" kindled a recurrent story line: the rags-to-riches struggle. Even in nonfiction, he turned time in prison into a memoir.
tinies of the highborn and the humble, was scheduled for publication on Oct. 6.
Mr. Archer's thrillers and sagas of the rich and powerful sold hundreds of millions of copies worldwide. In his London apartment overlooking the Thames, the walls were adorned with paintings, including works by Monet and Picasso.
As a host there, he became known for annual parties at which celebrity guests were served top-end Krug Champagne and lowly shepherd's pie. He also maintained homes in Mallorca and in the village of Grantchester outside Cambridge, England, where he bought the 17th-century Old Vicarage, once the home of the poet Rupert Brooke. Routinely, he was reported to borrow the overseas homes of wealthy friends and acquaintances to compose the multiple first drafts of his novels.
In his days as a politician — both as a member of Parliament in the elected House of Commons and as deputy head of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party — he displayed a barely veiled hunger for the top job. His friendships and alliances eventually won him a place in the unelected House of Lords with the title Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare — his childhood hometown in southwest England.
A political Houdini, he survived many vicissitudes, including a perjury conviction in 2001, when he was found guilty of creating false diaries and concocting a story to win a trial over whether he had slept with a prostitute to whom he paid hush money.
He once said that politics was his first choice of career, but it was from his 40-plus books that he amassed wealth, starting with a novel titled "Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less," published in 1976 after he had been defrauded of his personal fortune and stepped down as a lawmaker. "I was so low I would have sold fake Gucci bags on street corners," he told The Chicago Tribune. "Once you've lost a million dollars, you may as well have lost a hundred million dollars."
A former public relations man, he turned to writing thrillers and found he had an immediate skill for quick action that connected with readers. "Where I come from in the West Country, we say, 'Tell 'em a yarn, m'dear, and make 'em keep turning the pages, and you won't be far wrong,'” he explained.
His first published novel told the story of four men who banded together to defraud a con man who had robbed them of \$1 million each. Like the works that were to follow, the novel drew condescending criticism from some writers boasting more elevated literary credentials and less padded bank accounts. Mr. Archer described himself as a storyteller, a qualification which he depicted as both unusual and the object of resentment.
"Storytellers are very rare, but they create a lot of envy," Mr. Archer said in an interview with a fellow author, Anthony Horowitz, for The Sunday Telegraph Magazine in 2011. "The people who survive are storytellers."
The interview evoked some of the ambiguities and passions surrounding Mr. Archer's work, which drew on themes such as power, rivalry, ambition and greed.
"I'm painfully aware that of the two writers in the room only one has an original Monet on the wall," Mr. Horowitz wrote, referring to the location of the interview in his subject's apartment. He noted that Mr. Archer's 1979 novel "Kane & Abel," which has sold more than 50 million copies since its publication, helped fund his art collection.
"I don't think Jeffrey is deliberately trying to trash me," Mr. Horowitz wrote, "but he does seem to have a strange reflex action that manifests itself as one-upmanship."
"Kane & Abel" kindled one of Mr. Archer's recurrent story lines — the rags-to-riches struggle. In this case, the two main characters were Abel Rosnovski, born in penury in a forest in Poland, who becomes a wealthy hotelier in the United States and an archrival to William Kane, born on the same day but thousands of miles away as the scion of a wealthy banking family in New York.
Mr. Archer paid particular attention to sales of his books in the United States and went so far as to rewrite some of them specifically for the American market.
According to an unauthorized Archer biography, "Stranger Than Fiction" (1995), by the British journalist Michael Crick, he felt a greater affinity for the showbiz aspects of American public life and once said, "If I was born today and wanted to go into politics, I would want to be born in the United States."
In later years, though, he vouchsafed a less flattering view of Americans in remarks that recalled his reputation for gaffes and blunt talking. During the 2024 presidential election campaign in the United States, for instance, he told The Daily Telegraph he believed Donald Trump would win because "three-quarters of Americans are not intelligent."
Jeffrey Archer and his wife, Mary, leaving court in London after winning record damages of 500,000 pounds in a libel case.
PA IMAGES. VIA GETTY IMAGES
EVENING STANDARD/HULTON ARCHIVE, VIA GETTY IMAGES
REBECCA NADEN/PA IMAGES. VIA GETTY IMAGES
RICK EGLINTON/TORONTO STAR, VIA GETTY IMAGES
Above left, Mr. Archer in an undated photo. As a writer, he found he had an immediate skill for quick action that connected with readers. Top right, in 1991 with former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. His friendships and alliances eventually won him a place in the House of Lords. Above right, in 1966 on the cusp of a career in public relations and fund-raising. He later entered politics.
Jeffrey Howard Archer was born in London on April 15, 1940, and grew up in Weston-super-Mare. His mother was Lola (Cook) Archer, a journalist with a column in a local newspaper; he described her as largely "pennisless."
Mr. Archer gave conflicting accounts of his father, William, who was 40 years older than his mother. He sometimes called him a "printer," although by some accounts he was a bigamist and a fraudster. Either way, he was not much of a presence in his son's life and died when Jeffrey was 11.
Mr. Archer was educated on a scholarship at a school in the county of Somerset and left with limited qualifications to train with the police and the army. He taught physical education at a school in the southeast and went on in 1963 to study for a diploma in education at the University of Oxford, where he was associated with Brasenose College.
At Oxford, he showed a flair for athletics as a sprinter and a hurdler — running both for the university and for his country — and for philanthropy, fund-raising on behalf of the nonprofit organization Oxfam. A photograph from the era showed him with the Beatles, whose members he had persuaded to endorse a campaign by visiting Brasenose College. The drummer, Ringo Starr, was widely quoted as describing him as "a nice enough fella, but he's the kind of bloke who would bottle your piss and sell it." Mr. Archer went into public relations and fundraising, and in 1966, he married an Oxford chemistry undergraduate, Mary Weeden. In addition to his wife, who became a chemistry
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An author who knew well the themes of scandal, misbehavior and self-promotion.
professor at the University of Cambridge, he is survived by two sons, William and James; and five grandchildren.
Mr. Archer began a political career as a Conservative Party member of the Greater London Council from 1967 to 1970. He became one of the youngest lawmakers in the House of Commons in 1969, at age 29, winning a special election for the district of Louth in eastern England.
While a member of Parliament, he was defrauded of a major investment in a Canadian company called Aquablast and emerged with debts of about 500,000 pounds, worth millions in buying power at current exchange rates. He stepped down from Parliament rather than contest the national elections in 1974.
"I had begun to believe that everything I did was bound to be a success," he later told The Times of London. "The downfall showed me that I wasn't a god. I was a normal mortal, well able to make a bloody fool of myself, which I did."
In 1985, he became deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, a high-profile, unelected position. Between the 1980s and the early 2000s he wrote three stage plays that received uneven notices. Such was his fascination with the stage that, in 1988, he bought a controlling share in a London theater.
In his books, Mr. Archer showed a liking for multivolume series of novels revolving around central characters, such as the seven-book Clifton Chronicles charting the life and times of Harry Clifton, the son of a dockworker in southwest England, and an equally ambitious series of books, such as "An Eye for an Eye" (2024), following the career of a Scotland Yard detective named William Warwick. Even in nonfiction, Mr. Archer turned two years spent in prison for perjury into a three-volume memoir called "A Prison Diary."
His jail term had its roots in a case in 1987, when Mr. Archer filed a libel suit against the tabloid
Daily Star after it reported that he had slept with a prostitute, Monica Coghlan. The judge, Bernard Caulfield, described Mr. Archer's wife, Mary, as having "elegance" and "fragrance" and asked whether the writer would have needed "cold, unloving, rubber-insulated sex in a seedy hotel room." Mr. Archer won the case and was awarded £500,000 in damages.
In 1992, with the support of Conservative backers including former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Prime Minister John Major, he was ennobled as Lord Archer. In 1999, he became the Conservative candidate in elections to choose a mayor of London despite never-proven allegations that he had used insider information in a deal to buy shares in Anglia Television five years earlier.
But before the vote was held, another newspaper, The News of the World, reported allegations that Mr. Archer had committed perjury at the original libel trial in 1987, forcing him to withdraw from the mayoral race.
Those charges came to trial in September 2000, and in July 2001, he was given a four-year jail term for perjury and perverting the course of justice. After two years in a variety of correctional institutions, he was released, resuming his career as a prolific writer. He kept his title and retired from the House of Lords in 2024.
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John Iliffe, Exacting Scholar Who Centered Ordinary Africans, Dies at 87
By ADAM NOSSITER
John Iliffe taught at St. John's College at the University of Cambridge for 55 years.
ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
John Iliffe, a historian of Africa whose intensively researched work focused on the struggles of ordinary citizens, influencing generations of scholars and students, died on Aug. 20 in Cambridge, England. He was 87.
His death, in a nursing home, was announced by St. John's College at the University of Cambridge, where he taught for 55 years.
For decades, Mr. Iliffe put in long hours in sweltering African archives for books that covered wars, nation-building, demography, disease, leaders and the poor. Fellow historians of the continent revered him because he placed the African at the center of his books. Not the king, the dictator or the guerrilla chief, but the African citizen, existing in the world's most hostile physical environment and fighting to preserve his or her dignity.
Africans merited gratitude from the rest of us for that alone, Mr. Iliffe believed. They were "the frontiersmen who have colonised an especially hostile region of the world on behalf of the entire human race," he wrote in his "Afri-cans: The History of a Continent," (revised edition 2017).
"That has been their chief contribution to history," Mr. Iliffe wrote in the book, still considered the standard text on African history, 30 years after it was first published.
"It is why they deserve admiration, support and careful study," he continued.
Mr. Iliffe spent his life's work engaged in all three.
In six major books — and especially in “The African Poor: A History” (1987) and “Honour in African History” (2005) — he cataloged the ways in which “suffering has been a central part of the African experience, whether it arose from the harsh struggle with nature or the cruelty of men,” as he wrote in “Africans.”
In "Honour," he chronicled Africans' endurance in the face of adversity, especially its latter-day manifestation, the tyrannical regime.
The code of African honor was many-sided, in Mr. Iliffe's view. It helped the ordinary citizen endure brutality but it also encouraged the dictator in vainglorious excess.
In Guinea's ghastly Boiro pris-on under the dictator Ahmed
Kieran Corcoran contributed research.
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
"Africans" is considered the standard text on African history, 30 years after it was published. In "Honour," Mr. Iliffe chronicled Africans' endurance in the face of adversity.
Sékou Touré, “prisoners measured courage by the number of torture sessions endured.” In Idi Amin's Uganda, students “marched through the capital” to protest a shooting, at huge risk. Peasants from Ouelessebougou in Mali in 1968 flooded the capital’s jail to free their neighbors, braving the then-regime’s forces.
The flip side of this everyday heroism was what Mr. Iliffe called "the heroic style of leadership," a "major obstacle to democracy," he wrote, citing Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah and Togo's Gnassingbe Eyadema, who was "the hero himself, depicted in statues in all the important towns," a dictator who "required even his ministers to display abject servility."
Mr. Iliffe was an old-fashioned scholar, colleagues said, interested in people and facts, not theory, and in filling hundreds of shoe boxes with index cards. Working in the state archives in Malawi, he wouldn't leave them to applaud the head of state's passing motorcade, as other researchers were told to do, "because he refused to sacrifice even a minute of precious time in the archive," a colleague, Megan Vaughan, recalled.
"He had a tremendous capacity to find his way through complex subjects and bring out the humanity of the African actors," Derek Peterson, a historian of Africa at the University of Michigan, said in an interview. "He took on a whole range of subjects and he always put Africans at the center of the story, even when they failed."
African demography — the waning and waxing of African population growth — was the "connecting thread, as a way of ordering the material" in his research, the German scholar Andreas Eckert said in an interview.
Underpopulation — the sparsity of population centers across Africa's vast expanses — explained the continent's relative lack of development in the centuries leading up to 19th-century colonization. Slavery was not a primary culprit, he wrote in "Afri-cans," contrary to others' interpretations. "In the economic field as probably in the demographic, the slave trade chiefly intensified rel-
An old-fashioned academic who was interested in people and facts, not theory.
ative backwardness," he wrote, referring to Africa's lag in technology and urbanization, among other areas.
Then, with advances in modern medicine cutting into mortality rates, Africa experienced “demographic growth of a scale and speed unique in human history,” he wrote in “Africans.” “This growth underlay the collapse of colonial rule, the destruction of apartheid, and the instability of successor regimes.”
John Iliffe was born in Luton, England, on May 1, 1939, the younger of two sons of Arthur Iliffe, a bank manager, and Violet (Evelyn) Iliffe. He was educated at Framlingham College, a boarding school in Suffolk.
He received his undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees from Peter-house College, Cambridge, in 1961 and 1965, with a thesis on colonial German East Africa.
He set off to teach at the University College of Dar es Salaam in newly independent Tanzania, becoming part of what was later celebrated as the "Dar es Salaam School of African History," a group of academics, caught up in idealistic nation-building, who worked to produce an anticolonial narrative of the recent African past.
He returned to Cambridge in 1971, becoming a fellow at St. John's College, and remained there for the next 55 years, producing his first major book, "A Modern History of Tanganyika," still considered a model national history by African historians, in 1979.
Mr. Iliffe leaves no immediate survivors.
He wasn't a sentimentalist about Africa and had no romantic notions about the continent, colleagues said, but nor was he what scholars and others call an Afropessimist. Mostly, he admired ordinary Africans, "the commoners, not the kings," Mr. Peterson said.
"African history owes John a staggering debt in his sheer curiosity, his extraordinary appetite for grueling hard work, his courage in publishing in so many areas of others' expertise," his Cambridge colleague John Lonsdale said after his death.
Curtis Flowers, 56, Man Whose Case Symbolized Racial Bias Among Juries
By TRIP GABRIEL
Curtis Flowers, a Black man whose six trials in the same Mississippi murder case became a national symbol of racial bias in jury selection, leading the Supreme Court to reverse his capital conviction in 2019, died at home last week in Winona, Miss. He was 56.
His sister Priscilla Flowers-Ward said that he had had advanced diabetes and that the family was awaiting an autopsy to identify the cause of death.
Mr. Flowers was transferred off death row in Parchman prison in Mississippi and released in December 2019 after nearly 23 years behind bars. His release followed the Supreme Court's ruling that Black people had been unconstitutionally excluded from the jury in his sixth trial.
In the 7-2 majority opinion, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote that the State of Mississippi had pursued a "relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of Black individuals."
Mr. Flowers was convicted in that trial of killing four people in 1996 at a furniture store where he had once worked in Winona, a small city in central Mississippi.
The white district attorney, Doug Evans, who tried all of Mr. Flowers's six cases, spent two decades employing the same tactic: ensuring that few or no Black residents in the majority-Black county were seated on Mr. Flowers's juries.
Curtis Flowers with his sister Priscilla Flowers-Ward leaving a prison in Louisville, Miss., in 2019.
ROGELIO V. SOLIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Across the half-dozen trials, 61 of the 72 jurors were white. Two of the prosecutions ended in mistrials, and four in convictions that were overturned on appeal.
Mr. Flowers's ordeal gained broader attention through a 2018 podcast, "In the Dark," which identified holes in the prosecution's case. One witness who had testified at four of Mr. Flowers's trials, and who had said that Mr. Flowers had confessed to the crime in jail, recanted to the podcast reporters.
Along with other high-profile examples, among them the 2020 killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, Mr. Flowers's wrongful convictions contributed to a national assessment of bias in the justice system.
Mr. Evans never conceded any prosecutorial misconduct. After the Supreme Court ruling, he recused himself from trying Mr. Flowers a seventh time and turned the case over to the state attorney general.
"I have personally prosecuted the defendant in all six of his prior trials," Mr. Evans said in a court filing at the time, "While I remain confident in both the investigation and jury verdicts in this matter, I have come to the conclusion that my continued involvement will prevent the families from obtaining justice and from the defendant being held responsible for his actions."
The shock waves of the 1996 quadruple-murders at the Tardy Furniture store in Winona rippled through the small community for years. The owner and three employees, ages 16 to 59, died in a robbery-homicide that prosecutors tied to Mr. Flowers largely through circumstantial evidence. They said he was a former employee seeking revenge after be-
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Tried six times for the same murder, with few or no Black people on the juries.
ing fired. The "In the Dark" podcast chipped away at elements of the case.
The attorney general's office dropped all charges in 2020.
Curtis Giovanni Flowers was born on May 29, 1970, one of six children of Archie and Lola (Gibson) Flowers. His father managed a store, and his mother was a home health aide.
His mother spoke on the phone almost daily with her son, and with her husband drove every two weeks to visit him on death row in prison for more than two decades. She died in July 2018, just days after the final episode of the original "In the Dark" podcast. Mr. Flowers's father died last year.
Besides his sister, Ms. Flowers-Ward, he is survived by a daughter, Crystal Flowers, who was 3 at the time of her father's arrest and was raised by an aunt; three grandchildren; his brother, Archie R. Flowers; and his sisters Cora Tyson, Angela Jones and Charita Moore.
In 2021, Mississippi agreed to pay Mr. Flowers \$500,000 over 10 years as compensation for wrongful imprisonment.
developed and developing countries, first studying hepatitis-B vaccination programs, providing important insights of the 1980s. He had a strong, chronic later. He advocated for balance between global health and healthcare. He also needs of local programs. Somewhat controversially, he is a major role in developing a few-grams' multi-billion dollar cost could more useful fund to support the national health. He will wrote eight books, two on Black society in America, his own country, who is an analyzing and critiquising public health efforts around the United States. He has been a strong Kappa from the University of California, Berkeley, he also supported the National Columbia, completing his Ph.D. of Berkeley in 1970. He was born in Jamaica and has close friends there often. He grew up in Jamaica Estates, which was a great deal with the Iles (Liegner) Muraskin, both predeceased him, as did the U.S. state that he had twice, to Lanka (Brown) Muraskin and later to Merry (Rath), which had been a good man. He had a son, Michael. Both mortgages ended in divorce. In advance, he was writing, White, Zhang; and a grand deal. He is survived by his life port
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Deaths
ner, Richard Gottlieb, and three nephews, Seth, Dan, and David. A celebration of his life was held December 7, 2025, in person and on Zoom.
Mary Mulligan, age 92, died peacefully at her home in La Conner, Washington, on October 3, 2026. Born in the Bronx to Edward J. Mulligan and Elizabeth I. Murphy on February 12, 1934, she graduated from Saint Bamabas High School and worked at NBC, Young & Rubicam and other firms in her career. She is survived by her three children, Ashley, Philip and Blair, seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
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In Memoriam |
Heating Degree Days |
An index of fuel consumption that tracks how far the day's mean temperature fell below 65 | Yesterday | 5 | So far this month | 48 | So far this season (since July 1) | 79 | Normal to date for the season | 92 | # DP World Tour Will Bar LIV Players, Who Are Facing Dwindling Options
By BRODY MILLER
The Athletic
LIV golfers will not be allowed on the DP World Tour in 2027, a major blow to LIV Golf's hopes of gaining player commitments after its bankruptcy filing.
The move means any LIV golfers who remain with the league will not be eligible for the Ryder Cup. The decision marks a strong shift from the European tour's previous stances, which have included fines for golfers playing in conflicting events before an eventual minimum event agreement in 2026.
The Saudi Public Investment Fund's departure from LIV in April changed the calculus, especially after LIV filed for bankruptcy in September. Guy Kinnings, the DP World Tour's chief executive, indicated he would not have the same leniency for players who recommit to LIV even after they have the chance to leave.
"Players need to make a
Brody Miller is a staff golf writer for The Athletic.
choice," Kinnings said on Monday. "As we have said for many years, we have rules and regulations which are there to protect our tour and which our members must all abide by. Players who are not willing to comply with our rules and regulations should not be seeking to join our tour."
This news comes days after the golfer Jon Rahm's lawyer said Rahm would not participate in LIV 2.0. David Puig and Adrian Meronk have also confirmed they do not plan to stay with the league.
European tour sources, speaking anonymously because they were not authorized to do so publicly, say players will be asked to disclose which tours they intend to play on when membership applications open later this month.
Those sources say LIV 2.0's proposed new structure — with player equity stakes — changes the landscape from when the DP World Tour granted conditional releases to LIV golfers earlier this year.
When the Saudi Public Investment Fund initially pulled out of
GOLF
LIV in April, LIV's chief executive, Scott O'Neil, immediately focused his survival efforts toward a global league that teamed with national opens and capitalized on LIV's success in underserved markets. His comments in April hinted at hopes of teaming with the DP World Tour, and LIV already had a strong relationship with the Asian Tour.
In the months that followed, the PGA Tour's chief executive, Brian Rolapp, made deals with all of those potential LIV partners. He started a partnership with the Australian Open. He strengthened the PGA Tour's "strategic alliance" with the DP World Tour. And then a July deal with the Asian Tour seemed to be a crushing blow to LIV's options.
Even outside of teaming with the European tour, O'Neil pitched to players a plan of 10 worldwide LIV events while they filled out their schedules with DP World Tour events using the previous conditional releases. After August reports of Kinnings threatening not to allow those releases going forward, O'Neil requested mercy from his fellow tours.
David Puig, left, joined Jon Rahm and Adrian Meronk in deciding not to remain with LIV Golf.
DCTAVIO PASSOS/GETTY IMAGES
"It's complete, not compete," O'Neil said before LIV's season finale in Indianapolis. "Golf doesn't need one tour to win and everyone else to lose."
The DP World Tour, though, lost \$85.3 million in 2025. Those losses coincide with the PGA Tour moving to nearly triple its investment in the DP World Tour, from \$28.4 million to \$77.7 million, as European Tour purses increase.
As it stands, any LIV golfers who choose to stay with the tour are running out of paths to play a full schedule (roughly 20 or more events) and to have any chance of qualifying for major championships.
Weather Report
Highlight: Heavy Rain in Central States This Week
Residual moisture from Hurricane Simon will combine with tropical moisture from the Gulf over the southern United States this week, fueling rounds of drenching showers and thunderstorms from Texas into parts of the Midwest. Very heavy rain rates may cause low visibility and disrupt travel, especially during the Wednesday and Thursday evening commutes. The greatest flooding potential extends from southwestern Texas through central Oklahoma into southwestern Missouri.
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Metropolitan Forecast
TODAY....Partly sunny
High 71. It will be dry but humid through the day while sunshine mixes with some clouds. Winds will be from the south-southeast at 3-6 miles per hour. Temperatures will be 5 degrees above normal.
TONIGHT ....Showers around early Low 64. There will be a couple of evening showers, mainly north and west of the city. Otherwise, it will be partly cloudy and warm. The low will be over 10 degrees above average.
TOMORROW ....Warm with some sun High 79. Dry weather will return, and it will be very warm and humid. The sky will be mainly clear with some clouds mixing in. The high will be nearly 15 degrees above normal.
THURSDAY ....Sunshine, not as warm High 66. It will be mostly sunny and not as warm with lower humidity across the area. Winds will be from the north at 7-14 m.p.h.
SATURDAY ......Some rain Friday
Friday will bring occasional rain. High 66.
On Saturday, dry conditions will return. It
will be partly sunny, windy and cooler.
High 53.
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📦 已折叠版面非核心信息：气象、潮汐与天文时刻表（《Meteorology by AccuWeather》— 点击展开）
Meteorology by AccuWeather
A quick-moving storm will bring rain from the Great Lakes to New England today. A few thunderstorms could occur on the southern edge of the rain across New York.
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National Forecast
Meanwhile, drenching showers and thunderstorms will occur across Nevada and Utah. Lighter precipitation will dampen parts of Arizona and Wyoming. There may be flooding in any heavier downpour, especially in low-lying areas.
Additionally, gusty thunderstorms will form across the Plains late in the day and into the overnight. Wind gusts of 60-70 miles per hour could develop in any storm. | N.Y.C. region | Yesterday | Today | Tomorrow | New York City | 66/54 0 | 71/64 PC | 79/58 PC | Bridgeport | 70/53 0.02 | 67/63 PC | 77/55 S | Coldwell | 69/54 0 | 75/64 F | 80/56 PC | Danbury | 65/53 Tr | 67/60 PC | 79/52 PC | Islp | 68/54 0.01 | 69/63 PC | 78/57 PC | Nowark | 70/55 Tr | 75/66 PC | 82/57 PC | Trenton | 68/54 0.02 | 78/62 F | 79/56 PC | White Plains | 66/52 Tr | 70/62 PC | 76/54 PC | ---
Cities
The rest of the United States will have largely dry weather. Warm air will stretch from the Southeast north to the Great Lakes. Cooler air will stretch from the Southwest to the Midwest. It will be sunny across the Southeast and West Coast. | C | Clouds | S | Sun | F | Fog | Sn | Snow | H | Haze | SS | Snow showers | I | Ice | T | Thunderstorms | PC | Partly cloudy | Tr | Trace | R | Rain | W | Windy | Sh | Showers | - | Not available | High/low temperatures for the 16 hours ended at 4 p.m. yesterday, Eastern time, and precipitation (in inches) for the 16 hours ended at 4 p.m. yesterday. Expected conditions for today and tomorrow. |
Precipitation (in inches) | Yesterday | 0.00 | Record | 4.26 |
For the last 30 days | Actual | 6.35 | Normal | 4.40 |
For the last 365 days | Actual | 47.18 | Normal | 49.52 | United States |
Yesterday | Today | Tomorrow | Albany | 67/55 | T/I | 67/62 Sh | 67/49 C | Albuquerque | 78/54 | 0.0 | 74/54 P/C | 72/45 S | Atlanta | 47/53 | 0.07 | 74/54 P/C | 74/51 S | Atlanta | 84/61 | 0.0 | 87/63 S | 88/64 S | Atlantic City | 72/58 | 0.0/1 | 74/65 P | 80/61 PC | Boston | 90/77 | 0.08 | 87/65 P/C | 87/61 S | Baltimore | 76/52 | 0.0 | 83/63 S | 87/64 S | Baton Rouge | 93/63 | 0.0 | 90/62 S | 90/64 S | Birmingham | 88/60 | 0.0 | 90/60 S | 90/62 S | Boston | 56/60 | 0.08 | 82/58 P/C | 82/58 S | Boston | 69/52 | 0.0 | 92/58 C | 75/53 PC | Buffalo | 67/61 | 0.0/1 | 78/58 P/S | 65/49 C | Buffalo | 63/59 | 0.0/1 | 80/58 P/S | 84/58 C | Caspar | 56/37 | 0.0/1 | 59/40 Sh | 49/48 S | Charlotte | 83/53 | 0.0 | 96/58 S | 87/61 S | Charlottesville | 80/63 | 0.0 | 98/63 P/S | 88/63 S | Chicago | 86/69 | 0.0 | 81/64 C | 67/57 C | Cincinnati | 81/63 | 0.0/1 | 86/66 S | 82/64 Sh | Cleveland | 77/65 | 0.7/1 | 85/63 PC | 68/52 Sh | Cincinnati Springs | 78/69 | 0.0 | 73/64 P/S | 72/63 S | Columbus | 77/63 | 0.0 | 86/64 C | 78/56 Sh | Concord, N.Y. | 71/47 | 0.0 | 53/49 Sh | 70/46 C | Delaware, West | 91/74 | 0.0/1 | 97/72 P/S | 87/72 S | Denver | 82/46 | 0.0 | 58/42 PC | 68/39 Sh | Des Moines | 88/57 | 0.0 | 73/52 PC | 65/58 Sh | Detroit | 86/60 | 0.0 | 84/59 PC | 81/51 PC | El Paso | 86/65 | 0.0 | 85/64 PC | 84/62 S | Fargo | 56/42 | 0.2/1 | 52/40 C | 58/42 S | Hartford | 72/51 | 0.0 | 63/58 C | 78/51 PC | Istanbul | 86/55 | 0.0 | 87/52 S | 84/74 S | Houston | 87/77 | 0.0/4 | 90/77 T | 91/73 T | Indianapolis | 86/65 | 0.0 | 89/68 S | 79/62 Sh | Jacksonville | 92/61 | 0.0 | 89/61 P/S | 87/63 S | Jacksonville | 87/61 | 0.0 | 88/61 S | 87/65 S | Kansas City | 89/69 | 0.0 | 88/62 T | 66/61 R | Key West | 96/69 | 0.0/4 | 90/65 PC | 80/63 Sh | Kansas City | 74/57 | 0.08 | 65/55 PC | 75/57 PC | Lexington | 81/63 | 0.0/1 | 86/65 S | 85/67 Sh | In Central Park, for the 13 hours ended at 1 p.m. yesterday.
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Metropolitan Almanac | Little Rock | 92/69 | G | 89/74 | 88/71 | Los Angeles | 68/55 | 0.09 | 75/57 PC | 81/60 | Louisville | 84/66 | G | 88/70 | 84/69 | Memphis | 90/68 | G | 90/73 | 86/70 | Maryland | 90/77 | 0.17 | 91/75 | 89/71 | Milwaukee | 84/67 | G | 75/59 PC | 62/55 C | Mly St. Paul | 81/53 | 0.04 | 62/48 Sh | 61/48 PC | New York City | 89/65 | G | 91/85 | 88/72 | New Orleans | 89/66 | G | 88/65 | 89/69 | Norfolk | 73/60 | T | 83/65 S | 87/69 S | North Carolina | 90/62 | T | 91/73 PC | 90/70 PC | Omaha | 94/53 | G | 70/50 PC | 62/54 Sh | Orlando | 88/68 | G | 87/70 | 88/71 Sh | Philadelphia | 74/57 | G | 71/66 | 70/67 PC | Porto | 83/67 | 0.09 | 80/59 Sh | 80/61 S | Pittsburgh | 71/59 | G | 82/65 | 74/54 Sh | Portland, Me. | 69/44 | G | 54/49 | 63/46 PC | Omaha, Ch. | 68/63 | G | 68/64 | 61/50 PC | Providence | 71/54 | G | 63/60 PC | 77/53 PC | Raleigh | 82/56 | G | 87/61 | 90/65 S | Romey | 56/50 | G | 56/54 | 64/60 S | Richmond | 77/56 | G | 85/63 S | 91/66 S | Rochester | 69/58 | G | 80/58 | 63/48 C | Santo | 74/40 | G | 77/50 | 74/40 S | Salt Lake City | 57/46 | 0.50 | 51/45 T | 58/44 Sh | San Antonio | 90/77 | 0.04 | 93/78 PC | 91/75 PC | San Diego | 71/60 | 0.09 | 73/57 S | 77/58 S | San Francisco | 70/49 | G | 73/51 S | 77/52 S | San Jose | 71/49 | G | 77/50 S | 80/52 S | San Juan | 90/79 | 0.05 | 89/79 T | 90/79 R | St. Louis | 63/57 | G | 63/62 S | 60/60 S | Sioux Falls | 77/46 | G | 62/42 C | 62/47 PC | Spokane | 53/31 | 0.02 | 58/36 S | 61/36 S | South Dakota | 90/12 | G | 73/73 PC | 80/69 S | St. Thomas | 90/80 | 0.05 | 89/80 T | 89/81 T | Syracuse | 66/57 | T | 77/59 S | 63/45 R | Tampa | 89/70 | G | 88/71 S | 89/72 S | Tucson | 82/65 | G | 85/75 PC | 81/61 PC | Tucson | 82/66 | 0.05 | 81/59 Sh | 88/54 S | Tulsa | 91/75 | G | 91/76 PC | 81/70 T | Tulsa, New Orleans | 73/69 | 0.01 | 70/65 S | 88/69 S | Washington | 75/57 | G | 82/65 S | 88/67 T | Wichita | 90/70 | G | 93/65 T | 69/64 T | Wilmington, Del. | 75/53 | G | 79/62 T | 83/59 PC | Africa |
Yesterday |
Today | Cape Town | 81/58 | G | 82/56 S | 87/57 S | Cape Town | 85/65 | G | 86/69 PC | 90/69 S | Cape Town | 64/55 | G | 70/50 PC | 67/54 PC | Delaware | 88/59 | 0.12 | 90/80 PC | 90/80 PC | Delaware, Desanaburg | 83/56 | G | 80/63 S | 88/69 S | Neairobi | 84/58 | G | 80/60 T | 82/62 S | Tunica | 82/61 | G | 81/62 R | 80/61 B | Asia/Pacific |
Yesterday |
Today | Baghdad | 98/78 | G | 100/76 PC | 105/83 C | Baltimore | 91/61 | G | 90/70 S | 90/78 S | Beijing | 74/56 | G | 73/40 S | 73/48 PC | Demascus | 88/59 | G | 84/61 PC | 85/61 PC | Daliana | 90/60 | G | 91/73 PC | 90/70 PC | Jakarta | 94/79 | G | 95/78 Sh | 95/77 Sh | Jerusalem | 76/66 | G | 78/62 PC | 81/63 PC | Jahari | 99/62 | G | 93/68 PC | 93/69 S | Manila | 88/78 | 0.06 | 92/79 T | 92/79 A | Mumbai | 100/84 | G | 98/61 PC | 99/83 PC | New Delhi | 90/69 | 0.01 | 92/73 | 83/73 | Riyadh | 99/75 | 0 | 99/75 PC | 100/73 | Seoul | 82/63 | 0 | 72/48 Sn | 67/49 S | Shanghai | 81/64 | 0 | 72/48 Sn | 62/56 PC | Singapore | 90/79 | 0.07 | 90/80 Sn | 91/79 Sn | Sydney | 93/66 | 0.10 | 69/59 Sn | 65/56 Sn | Johari City | 86/60 | 0.10 | 92/83 Sn | 71/79 Sn | Thunyi | 79/61 | 0 | 83/66 PC | 85/67 PC | Tokyo | 77/68 | 0 | 77/68 Sn | 83/65 W | Europe | Yesterday | Today |
Tomorrow | Amsterdam | 61/43 | 0 | 67/52 Sn | 63/50 C | Athens | 79/64 | 0.01 | 70/59 Sn | 64/58 W | Brisbane | 67/45 | 0 | 61/50 Sn | 63/50 C | Brussels | 64/43 | 0 | 68/50 Sn | 64/49 PC | Budapest | 63/43 | 0 | 61/35 S | 57/44 S | Buenos Aires | 54/60 | 0.14 | 61/47 Sn | 67/47 C | Dublin | 70/57 | 0.12 | 61/49 Sn | 63/58 C | Edinburgh | 63/34 | 0 | 60/46 Sn | 62/58 W | Edinburgh Midstrut | 62/34 | 0 | 58/42 Sn | 62/50 PC | Geneva | 63/41 | 0 | 63/48 PC | 70/70 PC | Helsinki | 43/41 | 0.18 | 46/40 PC | 51/43 W | Istanbul | 73/52 | 0 | 46/40 Sn | 64/56 W | Jakarta | 66/50 | 0.31 | 54/46 C | 57/41 PC | Lisbon | 75/61 | 0 | 79/60 PC | 85/64 PC | London | 64/50 | 0 | 70/49 PC | 67/54 PC | Madrid | 81/52 | 0 | 84/58 Sn | 84/57 PC | Moscow | 57/55 | 0.06 | 51/44 Sn | 64/41 PC | Nice | 75/63 | 0 | 73/62 PC | 74/61 PC | Rio de Janeiro | 46/50 | 0 | 47/41 Sn | 44/45 S | Paris | 70/45 | 0 | 73/50 Sn | 67/47 S | Prague | 59/41 | 0.01 | 59/49 S | 61/39 PC | Santiago | 77/51 | 0.01 | 51/41 Sn | 51/41 PC | St. Petersburg | 49/46 | 0.23 | 46/40 Sn | 49/42 C | Stockholm | 46/41 | 0.18 | 46/42 PC | 48/35 W | Tatirim | 61/42 | 0.18 | 61/42 Sn | 61/42 W | Warsaw | 52/41 | 0.06 | 54/41 C | 55/43 PC | | North America | Yesterday | Today | Tomorrow | Acapulco | 86/77 0 | 89/77 PC | 88/76 R | Bermuda | 84/77 0 | 84/75 Sh | 83/75 PC | Edmonton | 38/76 0 | 54/75 S | 60/75 PC | Gundezers | 73/56 0:01 | 82/60 T | 82/60 T | Havana | 90/76 0 | 88/73 Sh | 89/73 R | Kingston | 88/79 0:02 | 91/80 Sh | 90/79 R | Martinique | 90/78 0 | 91/77 Sh | 91/77 T | Mexico City | 69/58 0 | 76/56 R | 77/56 Sh | Monterrey | 81/69 0:06 | 89/71 R | 89/71 T | Montreal | 62/55 0:01 | 49/43 R | 53/43 C | Naseau | 88/79 0:01 | 96/78 T | 88/78 Sh | New York City | 88/73 0:03 | 86/74 Sh | 87/74 R | Quebec City | 52/45 0:07 | 42/37 R | 46/41 Sh | Santo Domingo | 91/73 0 | 89/74 PC | 89/75 C | Toronto | 68/57 0 | 79/57 Sh | 65/45 C | Washington | 50/70 0 | 57/57 S | 58/56 C | Winnipeg | 44/41 0:24 | 48/34 C | 54/40 B | South America | Yesterday | Today | Tomorrow | Buenos Aires | 57/ 52 0.03 | 64/ 56 PC | 65/ 56 PC | Caracas | 91/ 78 0.09 | 89/ 78 R | 91/ 77 R | Lima | 78/ 71 0 | 81/ 72 PC | 82/ 72 S | Quito | 63/ 51 0.32 | 65/ 50 R | 67/ 50 R | Racilla | 86/ 79 0 | 87/ 79 PC | 87/ 77 PC | Rio de Janeiro | 81/ 75 0.02 | 81/ 72 PC | 83/ 72 T | Santiago | 57/ 53 0.07 | 64/ 46 R | 71/ 47 R | Avg. daily departure from normal this month......+0.8" | Avg. daily departure from normal this year......-0.3" | Reservoir levels (New York City water supply) | Yesterday | 83% | Est. normal | 77% | ---
Recreational Forecast
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Heating Degree Days
Sun, Moon and Planets |
|
Sun | RISE | 7:05 a.m. |
Moon | R | 10:20 a.m. | SET | 6:19 p.m. | $ | 7:33 p.m. | NEXT R | 7:06 a.m. | R | 11:23 a.m. |
Jupiter | R | 2:09 a.m. |
Mars | R | 1:06 a.m. | S | 4:01 p.m. | $ | 3:28 p.m. |
Saturn | S | 6:21 a.m. |
Venus | R | 8:45 a.m. | R | 6:03 p.m. | $ | 6:19 p.m. | ---
Boating
From Montauk Point to Sandy Hook, N.J., out to 20 nautical miles, including Long Island Sound and New York Harbor.
Winds will be from the east at 5-10 knots, shifting to the southeast in the afternoon. Waves will average 1-2 feet on New York Harbor and Long Island Sound and 3-5 feet on the open ocean.
Last | 10 days | 30 days | 90 days | 365 days | Chart shows how recent temperature and precipitation trends compare with those of the last 30 years.
Northeast Foliage
Much of northern New England, the Catskills, northern Pennsylvania and the central Appalachians is at peak fall color. There is widespread color across central and southern portions of the Northeast. Patchy color exists away from the coast. Far-northern New England is past peak color.
ROJ DAVIDSON
NEWS | CRITICISM
Arts The New York Times
JASON ZINOMAN | ON COMEDY
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2026 C1
+ N
LILA BARTH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
A 'Nancy' Funnies Fan Has Cool Cred
Tom Gammill, whose credits include 'S.N.L.,' has written a play about the comic strip.
TOM GAMMILL'S comedy credentials are hard to beat.
Part of the first generation of Harvard Lampoon alumni who packed writers' rooms, he, along with his writing partner, Max Pross, wrote for the original cast of "Saturday Night Live" before helping start "Late Night With David Letterman." They moved on to write for, among other seminal shows, "Seinfeld" and "The Simpsons," where Gammill worked for 22 years.
He has also written for Steve Martin, Bill Murray, Garry Shandling and Larry David. Now, at 69, Gammill is stepping into the spotlight, playing the comic artist who has perhaps mattered to him most of all: Ernie Bushmiller, author of "Nancy," once a staple of daily newspaper comic pages going back to the 1930s.
Over the years, Gammill's love of "Nancy" has puzzled some comedy writer peers. How could someone whose fingerprints are on such a broad swath of cutting-edge, irreverent comedy be devoted to an old-fashioned strip about a resourceful girl and her friend Sluggo, a series rooted in wholesome jokes about dropped ice cream cones and water-gun fights?
The cartoonist was “like Chaplin or Keaton because his sensibility is like a silent movie star,” Gammill said, speaking in his apartment near Union Square in Manhattan, where he is also rehearsing the debut play he wrote and stars in, “A Morning With Ernie Bushmiller” (at the Mark O’Donnell Theater in Brooklyn through Saturday). CONTINUED ON PAGE 65
Lauren Servideo and Tom Gammill star in "A Morning With Ernie Bushmiller," a play about the "Nancy" comic strip and its creator.
Ambiguity Is a Hallmark Of This Director's Career
The films of Cristian Mungiu, a two-time Palme d'Or winner, test viewers' ethical compass.
By THOMAS ROGERS
BUCHAREST, ROMANIA – The most devastating scene in "Fjord," a new movie by the Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, comes about a third of the way through. In a lengthy sequence, Lisbet, a Christian living with her husband in a small Norwegian town, gets an unexpected visit from local officials who suspect them of abusing their children.
When Lisbet — played by the Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve of “Sentimental Value” and “Backrooms”—realizes that the visitors aim to take away their children before their investigation begins, she vaults excruciatingly from shock to fury to anguished despair. Filmed in Mungiu’s signature observational style, with long takes and without close-ups, the scene leaves viewers to judge for themselves who is a victim and who is a perpetrator.
CONTINUED ON PAGE C4
DAMIEN MALONEY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
The filmmaker Cristian Mungiu. "Fjord," set in Norway, is his first movie filmed outside Romania.
Orchestral Mastery on Display
DAVID ALLEN | CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
The Berlin Philharmonic played brilliantly at Carnegie Hall. It could be even better.
THE BERLIN PHILHARMONIC opened Carnegie Hall's season on Thursday night, and it did so with its typical gobsmacking brilliance.
There were three programs, all under chief conductor Kirill Petrenko: on Thursday, a gala of Italian music, with the tenor Jonas Kaufmann singing arias alongside Respighi's "Fouffmann of Rome" and "Pines of Rome": on Friday (and repeated on Sunday), a billing of German heavyweights with Brahms's First Piano Concerto and Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra"; and, on Saturday, Elgar's "Enigma Variations" as a preface to Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony.
The last time the Philharmonic came to New York, in 2024, it came bearing the bad news of cuts in its subsidy from the city of Berlin. This time, it came with gladder tidings, including a recent announcement that the German federal government would not only increase its funding for culture in Berlin, but also provide 225 million euros (about \$250 million) for a needed renova-CONTINUED ON PAGE C2
The acclaimed conductor Kirill Petrenko led the Berlin Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, which opened its season with four concerts by the orchestra.
New Horror Comics Deliver Dark Tales
By GEORGE GENE GUSTINES
October brings an assortment of ghoulish comic books and graphic novels, some of them starring familiar heroic characters in creepy situations. The legend of Dracula is explored; nine decades after her film debut, the Bride of Frankenstein gets an in-depth origin story; and Marvel Entertainment is introducing a line of horror comics: Midnight Marvel. Dig in, True Believers!
KEY WALKER (FANTASTIC FOUR), SCETRONC (SPIDER-MAN) AND MATTED DELLA FONTE (X-MEN)/MARVEL ENTERTAINMENT
CAITLIN SOLIMAN/ONI PRESS
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Haunted Comic Club
This graphic novel, by Josh Tierney and Caitlin Soliman, is aimed at readers ages 8 to 12 and accomplishes a lot with its characters in 240 pages. The action is set at the Tween Zone, an after-school club. There, Will, who is struggling to fit in socially, meets Anita, who is mourning her grandmother. They join forces to investigate the legendary ghost of a teenage counselor haunting the club, and they create their own comic book based on what they learn. Their friendship helps them through a rough time in their lives. The book includes a couple of blank pages for readers to experiment with making their own comics. (Oni Press)
KELLEY JONES/DARK HORSE COMICS
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Dracula, Book Three: The Count
This is the penultimate installment of Matt Wagner and Kelley Jones's retelling of the story of Dracula, told from his point of view. The first book focused on the title character's seduction to the dark arts by Satan, while the second examined the women Dracula cursed with immortality: Their bloodlust and boredom made him sometimes rue his decisions. Here the court brings his reign of terror to Victorian London. Some of the city's residents make interesting observations. One character remarks, upon meeting Dracula: "That was like shaking hands with an icicle! And his breath could knock an elephant dead!" (Dark Horse Comics. Available Oct. 20.)
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Midnight Marvel
In Midnight Fantastic Four No. 1, by Benjamin Percy and Kev Walker, Reed Richards is familiar: so obsessed with his scientific experiments that everything else suffers. The rest of the usual characters are different. Susan Storm is a corporate mogul, not an aspiring actress; Ben Grimm is her bodyguard, not a test pilot; and her happy-lo lucky brother, Johnny, has been hurt in an accident. They unite because of a menace in outer space, which in the past has instilled them with superpowers.
Phillip Kennedy Johnson and ScieTronc take
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Horror Picture Book
VIZ Media is bringing Japan's popular Horror Picture Book series, which began in 2011 and was created by Masao Higashi, a horror and fantasy critic, to the United States. The series pairs renowned authors and illustrators on eerie picture books with spare prose and detailed drawings. Three books will be published this month: Horror Picture Book: Is It There or Not, by Natsuhiko Kyogoku and Naoko Machida, in which a child
Spidey's familiar slogan about ability and responsibility and corrupt it to "power makes monsters" in Midnight Spider-Man No. 1. The comic instills a feeling of impending doom: Will something dampen Peter Parker's glow? What will he become? Finally, in Midnight X-Men No. 1, Jonathan Hickman and Matteo Della Fonte depict a battle between mutants, vampires and mutant vampires, with civilians in the crossfire. The X-Men are used to being hated and feared, so they lend themselves well to this bleaker lens. (Marvel Entertainment)
HESANORI YOSHIDA (A BAD BOOK), NAORD MACHIDA (IS IT THERE OR NOT), JUNJI ITO (LOOKING AT ME)/VIZ MEDIA
worries about something hiding in the rafters of his home; Horror Picture Book: Looking at Me, by Soshichi Tonari and Junji Ito, about a boy haunted by faces everywhere he turns, both on Oct. 20; and Horror Picture Book: A Bad Book, by Miyuki Miyabe and Hisanori Yoshida, about a book trying to seduce its reader down a nefarious path, available on Oct. 27. (VIZ Media)
STIPAN MORIAN/DC
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Bleeding Hearts, Vol. 1: Out-Break
Deniz Camp and Stipan Morian have created a sympathetic zombie nicknamed Poke in a world in which mankind has dwindled and the undead rule. Poke wants to be friends with some humans he meets, not hunt them. Another surprise — his heart is suddenly beating again. There is a lot to enjoy here: watching the zombies partake in rituals like celebrating Out-Break, the day the first of the undead emerged, and watching Poke and a little girl named Rabbit have a tea party and try to communicate. (DC. Available Oct. 20.)
MATTIA DE JULIS/SKYBOUND
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Universal Monsters:
The Bride of Frankenstein Lives
This four-issue series by Kelly Thompson and Mattia De Iulis tells the story of the Bride of Frankenstein, based on the 1935 horror film. The first issue sets up the Bride's escape from the castle where she was created and how she must learn how to live in a world filled with dangers. As she puts it: "Man bad, Fire bad. River bad. Animal bad." Things get more complicated when a man searching for his wife recognizes the Bride's face. As the story unfolds, readers and the Bride will learn about the women who make up her patchwork body. (Skybound. Available Oct. 27.)
DAVID ALLEN | CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
Orchestral Mastery at Carnegie Hall's Season Opening
ROB DAVIDSON
Vikingur Olafsson appeared as the soloist in Brahms's First Piano Concerto.
CONTINUED FROM PAGE CI
tion of the Philharmonic's concert hall. Reports suggest that the project could be arduous, with one study putting the cost at \$900 million, with an additional \$400 million to make Tempelhof Airport fit for concerts during the eight-year refurbishment.
Still, the Philharmonic's players looked as though they were having fun over the weekend. The orchestra is a lot of things at once, but always striking is its visual contrast with the almost mechanical style of American ensembles. The Berliners perform more conspicuously as a collective of individuals than, say, the musicians of the Cleveland Orchestra, who are more of a singular corporate entity. But they pair off, form groups, notice one another, compare notes under their breath. If the timpanist Vincent Vogel has the same rhythm as the double basses far to his left, he will fix them with a stare; wind players turn to one another as they play, then break into a smile.
But your eyes, and the attention of the players, keep being drawn back to Petrenko. Seven years into his tenure, it might not yet be clear what defines his leadership of the Philharmonic, except that he so patently has the trust of his players, and that he so palpably enjoys being himself. He isn't interested in becoming a celebrity, and he gives no impression of being a visionary. He isn't even trying to make a thing of not being a thing. The most enduring image he left in these concerts came during the gala: While Kaufmann was feasting on a long and sympathetic ovation, Petrenko stood next to him, quietly rearranging the scores on his
music stand.
Nothing about Petrenko suggests anything except a focus on the music. He is a busy if not terribly stylish conductor. If he makes a movement, it is intended to do something specific. So responsive is the Philharmonic now that the tiniest adjustment in how his baton moves through the air changes the sound rushing past it, sending a shock through a section of the strings, or drawing one brass instrument out more than another. Chords begin exactly as his body would imply, and they end that way, too.
On Saturday, Petrenko made sure that
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Berlin Philharmonic
Berlin Philharmonic
Performed Thursday through Sunday at Carnegie Hall in Manhattan.
the Tchaikovsky did not get too carried away. Yet you felt the desperate pain of a first movement that sometimes drew perilously close to inertia, as if it were curling into the fetal position and refusing to move, and you felt the deliverance of a manic, exhilarating finale. He treated the "Enigma Variations" as though it were Strauss, and if the outright virtuosity was tremendous in "Troyte" and the golden flow in "Nimrod" almost liquid, the characteristic Elgarian sense of certain things being left unsaid went, well, unsaid.
The actual Strauss on Friday's program was ideally effective, each section of the piece poetically filling out its own character but contributing to the whole. Brahms's concerto, with Vikingur Olafsson as the soloist, was sensible and interesting, like everything Olafsson does. If some of it was rather severe and square in its phrasing, the slow movement was a marvel of delicate touch. The Respighi pieces on Thursday had about as much depth as anybody could find in them; Kaufmann was in unfortunate form.
All in all, then, this was another sensational display of orchestral mastery. But did anybody really need such a plain reminder of how good the Berlin Philharmonic is? Is the usual Brahms, the usual Strauss, the usual Tchaikovsky, plus the usual Elgar and the usual Respighi, really the best that we can do when the Philharmonic comes to town, drawing sellout crowds whatever the ticket prices, whatever the repertoire?
Scroll through Carnegie's archive, and you will find that this was the 25th time that the Philharmonic has toured to the hall. On its first visit, in 1955, it was met with protests outside the hall and a trio of pigeons flying inside; the orchestra played three programs, and they contained, among other things, a Strauss tone poem, a Tchaikovsky symphony and some Brahms. The Philharmonic has performed Brahms on another 11 visits since.
Obviously, the Berlin Philharmonic should perform Strauss and Brahms; the orchestra should be savored on its own terms. But one of the many oddities about the classical music industry is that the negotiations and the practicalities involved in touring tend to lead to programs that present an orchestra at its least creative, not at its most ambitious.
If we are going to burn all that jet fuel, could we hear the Philharmonic as Berliners do? Where on this visit, for example, was the orchestra that recently came out with an amazing series of Schoenberg recordings, the one that in a few months will release a survey of Josef Suk? The one that places Brahms in dialogue with Scriabin, or with Pascal Dusapin and Bernd Alois Zimmermann; that puts Bruckner in the context of Wolfgang Rihm? The one that holds a biennale?
The Philharmonic, in other words, as it actually is?
How 'Da Bears' Immortalized Ditka
RAYMOND BONAR/NBCU PHOTO BANK, VIA GETTY IMAGES
A 'Saturday Night Live' sketch raised the football coach's stature to a mythical level.
By MIKE PEED
In the cold open that began the Jan. 9, 1993, episode of "Saturday Night Live," the actor George Wendt, portraying the fictional Chicago Bears superfan Bob Swerski, writes a letter to the team's owner.
After decrying “one of the most monstrous acts of betrayal ever committed in the annals of man” — in real life, the team had just fired its revered coach, Mike Ditka — Wendt’s character reassures himself: “We do not fear for Ditka. We know Ditka will rise again. Ditka is like the sun, only smarter.”
In truth, when Ditka was let go, he hewed much closer to a fallen star. He may have led the Bears to a Super Bowl championship in 1985, but he had just overseen the team's worst record, 5-11, since 1975.
Still, to those who watched "S.N.L." in the 1990s or, really, were vulnerable in any way to popular culture, Ditka, who died last week at 86, was, now and forevermore, a giant — a mythical, infallible, indomitable leader of men. He was, as Wendt's Swerski put it: "a man whose courage and good grooming set a standard for an entire city," adding, "His hairstyle was like the man himself — sharp, unmovable, water-resistant."
In Midwestern superfanese, Ditka was "Da Coach," which translates to something like "Indisputably the Greatest Sports Legend of All Time."
The skit debuted on "S.N.L." in 1991. It's four guys sitting around a table creaking under the weight of beer, brats and heavy Chicago accents, debating the fate of their beloved team and its luminous, if hard-bitten coach.
"Debating" is a stretch: Da Bears never lose. Will they beat the Giants in a playoff game? "Da Bears, 62-3," a guy named Pat (played by Mike Myers) predicts. Chris Farley's Todd agrees: "Bears, 79-zip." But what if the Bears' plane is delayed and only Ditka makes the game? "Ditka 17, Giants 14," Myers's character foretells. "He just barely gets by."
"Swerski's Superfans" was created by the comedian and Illinois native Bob Odenkirk and the "S.N.L." writer Robert Smigel, a New Yorker who, like Odenkirk, had honed his talents on the Chicago improv circuit. As it happened, Smigel found the kernel of the sketch at a Chicago White Sox baseball game.
“Almost every guy was wearing aviator shades and was overweight, and had the walrus mustache,” he once recalled. “It was like a badge of virility.” (Last year, when Robert Francis Prevost, a noted White Sox fan, was appointed the head of the Catholic Church as Leo XIV, Chicagoans christened him “Da Pope.”)
The skit was satire, of course, mocking a certain kind of hardheaded, volatile masculinity that Ditka seemed to embrace. But it was wrapped in love, tilting heavily toward envy — and not just for Chicago or football or cured meats.
“Da Bears” was far less about championships or dynasties (Ditka may have loved winning, but he took the Bears to just the one Super Bowl) and far more about what it means to be a fan — that is, a member of a community, where one can fall into the comfort of rituals and uniforms and unqualified friendship, even if the price is choking on a pork chop. Such tribes can be problematic but also beneficial.
That the sketch so quickly found its way into pop culture made it difficult to discern where the art ended and reality began. Were fans in Bears sweater vests and aviator sunglasses dressing up like Ditka or like Swerski? Or maybe Swerski was dressing up like the fans? Was Wendt even acting?
"He did not have to search for a commitment to the team by any means, nor to Mike Ditka, really," Wendt's wife, Bernadette Birkett, told The Chicago Tribune. "I mean, it was genuinely felt."
"Superfans" cemented Ditka as myth, arguably more than anything the coach ever did on the field. It led him to portray an ex-
From left, Chris Farley, Robert Smigel, Mike Myers and George Wendt in a "Saturday Night Live" sketch on Sept. 28, 1991.
acting, no-nonsense version of himself in a host of TV commercials, hawking, for instance, fast food, insurance and erectile dysfunction medication. At Ditka's restaurant, a fan could order, and maybe finish, the "Kick Ass" Paddle Steak (a 19-ounce bone-in rib-eye).
And when the "S.N.L." alum Will Ferrell needed a proven winner to help him coach a youth soccer team in "Kicking and Screaming" (2005), he called Ditka. "Some of you are going to wish I was dead," Ditka, of course wearing a Bears sweater vest, tells the kids at his first practice.
The result of all this was a gleeful delight in the myth of Ditka that extended far beyond Chicagoans, and even sports fans.
Or maybe it wasn't mythmaking at all. After Ditka was fired by the Bears, he sounded a lot like Bob Swerski, abetted by his proclivity to speak in the third person.
"The Bears will come back," he said. "Mike Ditka will survive."
Baron Cohen And Tarantino Join Forces
By ALEX MARSHALL
LONDON — Sacha Baron Cohen, the comedian and actor best known for "Borat," will star in Quentin Tarantino's debut play, "The Popinjay Cavalier," when it opens here next spring, the show's producers announced on Sunday.
The play, a swashbuckling comedy written and directed by Tarantino, will open for previews at the Phoenix Theater in the West End on Feb. 23. It is scheduled to run through June 13.
Baron Cohen said in the release that he had accepted the role without asking Tarantino any questions about it.
"I am beyond delighted that we will be losing our West End virginity together," Baron Cohen said.
Tarantino's move into theater comes more than seven years after the release of his most recent movie, "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood." The director's fans have been waiting for him to release his next film ever since, but Tarantino has long expressed a desire to write for the stage.
In 2024, Tarantino told Bill Maher that he was "leaning more toward" writing for theater than film, partly because it "could be really neat" to see multiple actors interpret a role. Last summer, he told "The Church of Tarantino" podcast that the play was "all written" and "absolutely my next project."
In those interviews, Tarantino revealed few details about the play. But in March, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sonia Friedman, the British theater producer, announced that it would go ahead in 2027. They described it as a "rambunctious comedy of deception" set in 1830s Europe and inspired by old movies filled with swashbuckling characters.
In July, Friedman said in an interview with The Times of London that the “very funny” show was “a big nod to the 1930s movies like ‘Zorro’ and ‘The Count of Monte Cristo,’” while also paying homage to theater and actors. The show will feature onstage fencers, acrobats and musicians, the news release on Sunday said.
Theater is "a completely new world" for Tarantino, Friedman said. But the writer-director of "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction" was seeing numerous plays in London, she added.
Friedman said the most refreshing thing about Tarantino was his interest in the audience experience.
"He wants the audience to have the best freaking night out in the theater they've had all year," she said.
Quentin Tarantino, left, and Sacha Baron Cohen collaborate on a new play in London.
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Two Not Touch
Put two stars in each row, column and region of the grid. No two stars may touch, not even diagonally.
YESTERDAY'S ANSWER An oil spill last fall totaled eleven million gallons, all told.
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KenKen
Fill the grid with digits so as not to repeat a digit in any row or column, and so that the digits within each heavily outlined box will produce the target number shown, by using addition, subtraction, multiplication or division, as indicated in the box. A 4x4 grid will use the digits 1-4. A 6x6 grid will use 1-6.
Play all of our games plus over 10,000 past puzzles for Wordle, Spelling Bee, The Crossword and more online at http://nytimes.com/games. For puzzle talk, visit http://nytimes.com/wordplay.
Russell Brand's Trial Begins
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The entertainer faces rape and sexual assault charges.
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By ALEX MARSHALL
LONDON — Russell Brand, the firebrand YouTuber, comedian and actor, appeared in court here on Monday for the start of a weekslong trial on charges of rape, sexual assault and indecent assault.
Mr. Brand, 51, faces seven charges related to incidents that the prosecution says involved six women. Prosecutors say the events occurred from 1999 to 2009, a period when Mr. Brand became a star in Britain as a standup comedian and television and radio presenter.
In two previous hearings, he pleaded not guilty to all of the charges, and last year he said in a video posted to his social media channels that he had "never engaged in non-consensual activity."
After entering the courtroom on Mon-
day, Mr. Brand briefly knelt as if in pray-
er and then took his seat in a glass box at
the back of the room.
Here is what to know as the trial begins.
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What are the accusations?
Prosecutors accuse Mr. Brand of raping a woman in a hotel room during a 1999 British political party conference, orally raping another woman in 2004 and raping a third woman in 2009.
Mr. Brand is also charged with sexual assault and indecent assault over incidents that prosecutors say took place in Britain. Full details of those accusations are expected to emerge during the trial.
HANNAH MAKAY/REUTERS
Russell Brand has repeatedly denied ever having non-consensual sex.
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What has Russell Brand said in his defense?
Mr. Brand has repeatedly denied ever having non-consensual sex, and has already pleaded not guilty to the charges.
On Sunday, Mr. Brand published a video to his YouTube channel, where he has over 6.6 million subscribers, in which he discussed the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. At one point, Mr. Brand said that he himself was on trial for "sexual allegations that I deny in the strongest possible terms."
He did not say whether he would continue to publish videos during the trial.
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How will the trial proceed?
On Monday, the trial began with the judge, Joel Bennathan, asking potential jurors if they had any reason they could not sit for its likely duration. He said he would swear in a 14-person jury on Tuesday.
Later in the week, prosecutors are expected to set out their opening arguments and call their first witnesses.
The trial is scheduled to last up to 10 weeks, so the jury might not give any verdict until December.
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How does British law affect reporting of the trial?
In Britain, anyone who makes sexual assault accusations has the right to lifelong anonymity, which means the news media is not allowed to report details that might identify the accusers. Under strict British laws aimed at preventing jury bias, reporters may report only what happens in the courtroom during a trial.
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JEOPARDY! CLUE OF THE DAY
'80s MUSIC
A POSTED SIGN TOLD
THE ARTISTS TO
"CHECK YOUR EGOS
AT THE DOOR" BEFORE
THE RECORDING OF THIS
1985 SINGLE
FOR THE CORRECT RESPONSE, WATCH JEOPARDY! TONIGHT OR LOOK IN THIS SPACE TOMORROW IN THE TIMES.
Yesterday's Response: WHO IS DAVID HOCKNEY?
Watch JEOPARDY!
7 p.m. on Channel 7
Ambiguity Is a Hallmark of His Films
CONTINUED FROM PAGE CI
DANIEEN MALONEY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
This openness to interpretation is the point of “Fjord,” which won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival this year and arrived in U.S. theaters on Friday. Should the state be allowed to confiscate children with only thin evidence of abuse? Or should parental rights prevail? The answer, Mungiu, 58, said in a recent interview, depends on the “values you come into the film with.”
That ambiguity is a hallmark of Mungiu's career. One of Romania's most accomplished directors, he first attracted global attention in 2007, when his searing drama about abortion, "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," also won the top prize at Cannes. (Only eight other directors or directing pairs have won that award, the Palme d'Or, twice.) Mungiu's films since then have shared an observational distance, formal rigor and willingness to test his audience's ethical compass.
Sitting in his office here in Romania's capital, the chatty, soft-spoken director explained that "Fjord" was a "nonjudgmental" invitation for viewers to scrutinize their own capacities for empathy and open-mindedness. "The aim is to understand that there are people who think differently than you," Mungiu said.
The story, which centers on the couple's quest to get their children back from the Norwegian authorities, is complicated by larger questions of belonging and culture. Lisbet is Norwegian, but her husband, Mihai, played by Sebastian Stan (of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and "A Different Man"), is from Romania. When he says he occasionally spanked the children, investigators consider that an admission of abuse, though he protests that this is a common punishment in his homeland.
“Fjord,” Mungiu’s first movie filmed outside Romania, is based on real-life cases in which the Norwegian authorities took children from parents accused of abuse (including a 2015 situation involving a Romanian Norwegian family). Mungiu said he saw the movie as a way to explore how liberal societies handle people with less liberal views.
In the film, Lisbet and Mihai's progressive Norwegian neighbors are unnerved by what they see as the couple's strict religious beliefs, which include daily prayer, a ban on secular music and the view that homosexuality is a sin. The film's central conflict — between a state that claims to be inclusive and a family shaped by conservative Christian ideals — reflects Mungiu's belief that immigrants "don't just come with their luggage, they come with their cultural values," he said.
Mungiu argued that "little by little," such differences "create a lot of tension in society." The inability to resolve differences through discussion and empathy, he said, caused rifts that could become dangerous.
Although he was loath to define a through line in his films — “I don’t think of them as a body of work, or sit on the couch and think, ‘Why?’” he said — he did say that he was interested in exploring conflicts in people’s everyday lives.
"4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," for example, follows a young woman grappling with the physical and moral costs of getting an illegal abortion in Ceausescu-era Romania. In "Graduation," from 2016, a man becomes embroiled in corruption as he tries to secure an international scholarship for his daughter. "R.M.N." from 2022, centers on a xenophobic backlash after foreign workers arrive in a village in the Transylvania region.
Stan, who partly grew up in Romania, said that he had long been impressed by the "authenticity" of Mungiu's Romanian characters. "It's like he picked them off the street and put them in his films," he said.
Stan also acknowledged the challenge of recording Mungiu's trademark long takes, which can last up to 17 minutes (in a climactic scene in "R.M.N."). The technical demands of the approach require an average of 20 takes per shot, though, at times, Mungiu said, he has needed more than 50.
Reinsve said that she was daunted by the 12 pages of script she had to learn for the scene in "Fjord" when the officials visit Lisbet. "By take three, I was already kind of exhausted, and he had just started building the mise-en-scène," she wrote in an email. The scene, which was shot on the first day of filming, required 14 more takes. "It was intimidating going into it," she wrote, "and it was so different from anything I'd done before."
A background in theater and music is helpful for working with Mungiu, said Anamaria Marinca, who starred in "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days." "People commented on the number of takes, but for me it was never a problem," she said. "I studied classical music, so I'm used to repetition," she said, adding that Mungiu "knows exactly what he wants."
According to Mircea Olteanu, Mungiu's longtime editor, the naturalism of his films camouflages an intense attention to detail. The director's exacting ideas about the cadence of his dialogue, he said, can be particularly intense. "I've been on set, and if the actors go out of the rhythm," Olteanu said, "he would just say, 'Cut.'"
Mungiu said maintaining such levels of control was one reason that he decided to stay in Romania instead of working in the United States. "I don't want to be someone else's employee," he said.
Mungiu, born in 1968 in Iasi, a city in northeastern Romania, to a doctor and teacher, said he initially became a journalist because he lacked the connections in the communist system to become a filmmaker. He enrolled in film school in Bucharest after the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, then began working as an assist-
The Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, top. Above, Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve as a religious couple suspected of abusing their children in his latest movie, "Fjord." Below, Mungiu and Reinsve in May at the Cannes Film Festival, where "Fjord" won the top prize.
ant director for American and French productions in Romania.
After his first feature film, "Occident," was shown at Cannes in 2002, Dennis Hopper invited him to collaborate on a film about the revolution that swept Ceausescu from power. The film was never made and the experience of living in Los Angeles during this time convinced Mungiu that he would be better off staying in his homeland. (He also later recalled being asked by Dustin Hoffman to teach filmmaking to his children.)
"Graduation," which earned him the best director award at Cannes in 2016, was a way of grappling with that choice. The film, which centers on a doctor who trades favors with officials to help his daughter get a scholarship at a prestigious British university, was inspired by his own concern about whether his children could thrive in Romania, he said.
Mungiu compared life in his homeland to a 2015 fire in a Bucharest nightclub that killed scores of people. (It was the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary, “Collective.”) “The people who survived were the ones who crawled over the bodies in order to get to the exit,” he said. “I’m worried my children aren’t tough enough to do that.”
ANTONIN THULLIER/AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
More recently, however, he has grown more worried about tribalism and political polarization. He said that "R.M.N.," his sprawling portrait of a village whose inhabitants are outraged by the arrival of South Asian migrants, was about "this very angry and basic animal that pops up inside of you" when fighting for "survival, for your land, your tribe."
"Fjord," on the other hand, was more about exploring the boundaries of free expression, Mungiu said. Although he emphasized that he knew the "limits of conservative values," he said he had grown worried about the ways progressive movements had begun dictating social norms while stymying debate.
"It got to be a bit concerning for us who lived and experienced communism," he said. "We lived through the period when somebody will tell you that they know better what's best for you," he said. "We don't want to get back to that."
Nevertheless, he said, he had been shocked by the "violence" of a small number of negative reviews after the movie's Cannes premiere. One critic in Les Inrock-uptibles, a French magazine, said that Mungiu's attempt to "strike a balance" in the movie was like putting "fascists and anti-fascists, racists and anti-racists" on equal footing. Cahiers du Cinéma, the vaunted French film publication, described it as a "reactionary film."
"People are irritated if you don't take a position from the beginning," he said. "I know it's irritating that I'm trying to position myself in the middle, but that's the stake of this film."
The village in “Fjord,” he noted, is rocked by two avalanches that threaten to envelop its inhabitants. The scenes, he said, were a metaphor for the dangers posed by unresolved political tensions. “There’s a third avalanche,” he said, “which is the one that is going to come in our real lives and wipe everything away.”
EMILY LaBARGE | ART REVIEW
Salman Toor: Someone Like You Through Jan. 10 at the Courtauld Gallery in London; courtauld.ac.uk.
SALMAN TOUR VIA LUHRING AUGUSTINE, NEW YORK, AND THOMAS DANE GALLERY. PHOTOGRAPH BY GENEVELE HANSON
A Seductive Invitation to a Painter's World
LONDON – Perhaps your eye will be drawn by the infinite shades of green on green — sea foam, viridian, chartreuse, mint, pine, you name it — that make Salman Toor's canvases radiate an otherworldly luminosity.
Or maybe you're pulled in by how the figures, alone or in groups, seem to undulate softly. If you're an art buff, you might delight at how gestures and compositions are borrowed from historical works, suggesting that to paint is always to participate in a kind of quotation.
Whichever way, "Salman Toor: Someone Like You," an exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery in London, contains many seductive visual worlds: personal and painterly, past and present. It is the New York-based Pakistani artist's first solo show in Europe and a rare dedication of the Courtauld's modest temporary exhibition spaces to a living artist.
The presentation focuses on narratives, and the accompanying descriptions frequently describes the paintings as "stories." Toor himself, born in 1983, has emphasized the importance of knowing that his subjects are queer immigrants with tales behind how they appear. In his paintings, figures not usually given prominence in Western portraiture are in the forefront, attaining the dignity and solemnity that the genre affords.
Across 19 paintings of varying scale that Toor produced from 2019 to 2026 — a period during which the artist's star has been on the rise — we see predominantly young men: together, alone, drinking, dining, carousing, opining.
In "Lunch," a buoyant tondo (a round format popularized in the Italian Renaissance), three bons vivants in elegant, dandyish clothing sit together over a modest meal. I want to say it's plates of spaghetti, but Toor's line is so fluid that as soon as you think you see something, it slips away.
The men are painted in a similar palette of murky greens and yellows, shades that continue in two other works on show, "Man With Face Creams and Phone Plug" and "Citizens." Those portraits, which are also of slender, brown-skinned men, at first seem similar — but their bodies are rigid and self-aware, and the atmosphere is more alienated.
The man with the face creams is looking down at his possessions that resemble a still-life tableau but have — the wall text tells us — been emptied from his bag for enhanced scrutiny at airport security. In "Citi-
Salman Toor's first major solo show in Europe borrows from art history to put modern-day outsiders in the forefront.
SALMAN TOUR VIA LUHRING AUXUSTINE, NEW YORK, AND THOMAS DANE GALLERY, PHOTOGRAPH BY FAIZAD OWARIANG
SALMAN TOOR VIA LUHRING AUGUSTINE, NEW YORK, AND THOMAS DANE GALLERY, PHOTOGRAPH BY FARZAD OWRANG
Top: "The Bar on East 13th Street," on display at the Courtauld Gallery in London as part of the exhibition "Salman Toor: Someone Like You." Above, "Citizens." Left, "Fag Puddle With Carriers," "a camp comedy of parts and things that don't make sense together," in Toor's words from a wall text. All of the paintings in the show were made from 2019 to 2026.
zens," two men, one in a biker cap and the other wearing a clown nose, stand with hands on hearts — a romantic pledge to each other, I thought at first, though the title suggests an oath of citizenship. One clutches a small black flag — a minor protest?
As viewers of Toor's images, we find our position constantly shifting. Sometimes we behold at a friendly distance; other times, we look on officiously from the perspective of agents of the state — border guards, civic registrars. Often, we are inexorably pulled, by composition, scale and perspective, into the space of the tableau.
It is in the larger and visually messier works that Toor is at the height of his powers. These are also more narratively enigmatic, prompting viewers to see that the how of the painting — the style, palette, texture, brushwork and idiosyncratic highlights — is as essential as the what.
"Three Friends in a Cab" puts the viewer in the back seat, heading out (or home?), with a full moon through the window and three passengers merging in one excited mass. In "The Joke," a busy restaurant scene with gaping mouths and a drunk guest passed out on the table, shades of Impressionist Paris merge with Weimar-era social critique — or maybe it's a present-day gallery dinner.
“Fag Puddle With Carriers” is a roiling but eye-pleasing scene, filled with curves and swags. On closer examination, it is dark and strange: It shows a cluster of people carrying a large platter heaped with what appears to be three heads and a tangle of limbs. To tell a story is not only to present something whole, but also to offer an image that is potentially fractured — “a camp comedy of parts and things that don’t make sense together,” in Toor’s words from a wall text.
The painting is inspired by "The Entombment" by Lorenzo Lotto, a 16th-century painting on display in the Courtauld's permanent collection. There, you will also find Manet's renowned "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère" (1882), on which Toor has based his "The Bar on East 13th."
Yet the point of this exquisite proximity seems less about comparison than saying that we see ourselves through art, including through a canon that shapes whether we see ourselves as worthy subjects, or not. Toor's paintings present this knowledge with love and levity, wearing the past just lightly enough that they seem familiar and yet entirely new.
Stolen Renoirs Recovered by Museum in South of France
By SÉGOLÈNE LE STRADIC
PARIS — Two Renoir paintings that were stolen from a museum in southern France last month have been recovered, and six suspects have been arrested in the case, the city where the theft took place said in a statement on Friday.
The artworks — a portrait of the French actress Colonna Romano, painted around 1910, and "Young Woman at the Well," an oil painting from around 1886 — were stolen from a museum that is a former home of the Impressionist artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir in the town of Cagnes-Sur-Mer.
The robbery, which the authorities said at the time was carried out by two people, was the latest in a series of brazen thefts from cultural and religious sites in France, including a heist in which royal jewels worth over \$100 million were taken from the Louvre about a year ago.
The thieves at the Renoir museum initially took four paintings, but left two behind in the garden as they scrambled to evade the police, who arrived at the scene five minutes after the security alarm went off.
The mayor of Cagnes-sur-Mer, Bryan Masson, said in the city's statement, that the recovered paintings were "part of our city's history, our cultural heritage and the legacy Auguste Renoir left to Cagnes-sur-Mer."
Details from Renoir's "Young Woman at the Well" (circa 1886), near right, and "Madame Colonna Romano" (circa 1910).
"Their recovery is a tremendous relief for the people of Cagnes-sur-Mer and for everyone who cares deeply about our museum," he added.
Catherine Pégard, the national culture minister, said on social media that the recovery was a "huge relief."
"These paintings are part of our collective memory," she said. "They will now be able to return to Renoir's final resting place, a site steeped in history and dear to both residents and visitors from around the world."
MUSÉE HENOIR, VIA REUTERS
A 'Nancy' Funnies Fan Has Cool Cred
CONTINUED FROM PAGE CI
"No one could craft a funnier comic strip." At "S.N.L.", the longtime writer James Downey thought Gammill's fandom was an Andy Kaufman-like prank. "I still insist Tom doesn't really think Ernie Bushmiller is . . ." Downey said on a phone call, pausing before backtracking. "Maybe he does, I don't know. Even as a kid, I thought 'Nancy' seemed antique."
Steve O'Donnell, former head writer at "Late Night" who is producing Gammill's play, told me he originally thought Gammill's love of "Nancy" was an eccentricity, because the strip seemed so "elementary."
“Nancy” isn’t just a popular comic strip. It is, in some ways, the quintessential one. For years, the American Heritage Dictionary included a thumbnail of it alongside its definition of “comic strip.” But this play is part of a critical re-evaluation over the past few decades pushed along by books like “Three Rocks” (by Bill Griffith, author of the strip “Zippy the Pinhead”) and “How to Read Nancy” (an exegesis of one three-panel strip).
"I don't know a hipster cartoonist who doesn't love 'Nancy,' Matt Groening, a creator of "The Simpsons," told me, before noting, "Nancy' is polarizing. There are people who think it's horrible, the worst."
There's something absurd about such a gentle, inoffensive strip being divisive, which "A Morning With Ernie Bushmiller" leans into. Gammill's play was initially aimed at fellow fans, staged at cartoonist conventions and at his Los Angeles home, surrounded by original prints of "Nancy" that he bought for \$40 each in the early 1980s.
With the latest version, however, he said he was looking for converts. "Bushmiller is like Jerry Lewis," he told me. "Looks stupid at first, but the closer you examine it, the more brilliance you find."
Gammill has the unfailingly cheerful, slightly dorky presence of a popular high school Latin teacher. In a recent run-through of scenes, mixing jokes, songs and plenty of cartoons on a video screen, Gammill, wearing a tie owned by Bushmiller, hustled through a monologue with vaudevillian energy. His Bushmiller periodically spouts theories, nurses grudges and explicates various comics. This is the cartoonist late in life, grumpy about nightclub comedy and fashionable politics. (He mocks Garry Trudeau as "Mr. Bell-Bottoms.")
The Bushmiller character emphasizes that comics must be simple enough for anyone to understand and rely on visual humor, and Gammill's show lives up to this mandate, with plenty of prop comedy. At one point, Gammill crashes cymbals together and puts a metal bucket on top of his head.
This clown car of energy only slows when Bushmiller's wife (played by Lauren Servideo, a popular character comic online who takes multiple roles here, including Nancy) tells him that he has been mentioned on "Saturday Night Live." In 1976, at the height of its cultural cool, the sketch show ran a scroll written by the acerbic Michael O'Donoghue that read: "These people are definitely not as smart as dolphins." The list included Gerald Ford, Cher and Bushmiller.
The author was in his 70s, toward the end of his career. Gammill told me we don't know what he thought about the "S.N.L." insult, though Gammill did find a letter from a friend taking umbrage. In his play, Gammill's Bushmiller is confused by the slight, then angry ("TV stinks") and forlorn. A few minutes later, Servideo enters playing Tom Gammill in a scene with the real Gammill as Bushmiller. The Gammill character explains that he worked for "Saturday Night Live." Gammill as Bushmiller looks disappointed.
It's one of many moments that suggest "Nancy" may actually share some DNA with the comedy institutions Gammill helped create. The meta-humor that powered "Late Night," "The Simpsons" and "The Garry Shandling Show" was a hallmark of "Nancy," which broke the fourth wall more often than many of its peers.
After rehearsal, the director Owen Kline (the movie "Funny Pages") discussed how the combination of smart and dumb in "Nancy" can also be found in Gammill's work. Gammill (and Pross) are responsible for what is regarded by many writers as the greatest sketch in the history of Letter-
JASON ZINOMAN | ON COMEDY
PHOTOGRAPHS BY LILA BARTH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Tom Gammill, above, and Lauren Servideo, above left and left, on the set of his play "A Morning With Ernie Bushmiller," about the cartoonist behind the comic strip "Nancy."
man's shows, the after-school special parody "They Took My Show Away," in which the host uses the clichés of the birds and the bees to explain to a boy how sometimes a beloved show can be canceled.
"Nancy" is polarizing. There are people who think it's horrible, the worst.' MATT GROENING A 'SIMPSONS' CREATOR
Groening said Gammill's sensibility involved a pivot you find in "Nancy" panels. "It's a switcheroo," Groening explained. "He loves sophisticated comedy but is an aficionado of cornball straight-down-the-middle jokes, of which Nancy has some. It's also very surrealistic on one level and completely square."
Like Bushmiller, Gammill is drawn to visual plot devices. He came up with the idea of killing off George Costanza's fiancée on "Se infeld" by licking a toxic adhesive off an envelope. What is simple to some people looks like minimalism to others.
"I really do think of 'Nancy' as being the comics version of the Ramones or the Three Stooges," the graphic novelist Adrian Tomine said in an email, "something so simple and unchanging and basically pointless that, for those very reasons, ends up achieving some level of the sublime."
Gammill is more likely to make the comedian case that “Nancy” is focused on nothing else but getting to the joke. When I asked if it could be considered a comic strip about nothing, echoing the famous line about “Seinfeld,” Gammill considered the point. "If you asked Ernie Bushmiller, he'd say it's all about the gag," he said.
Gammill made the point in a comparison with "Peanuts": "If Charlie Brown dropped an ice cream cone, you're going to hear 'Oh good grief, woe is me,'" he said. "Nancy just licks it off a globe. I mean, I think that's funnier."
Gammill said he wrote the play at a time in his life when he understands and even identifies with the cartoonist. "Look, in 1976, no one was cooler than Chevy Chase and now look at him," Gammill told me. "I'm sure Chevy is at the Ernie Bushmiller stage. He doesn't know why people are goofing on him."
VIVIAN DEHNING
3 TOUCHING GRASS
The autumn leaves are falling. Maybe it's best to put down the rake and let them be.
SCIENCE | MEDICINE | TECHNOLOGY | HEALTH
3 LONGEVITY
What the DNA of Jonathan, a 194-year-old giant tortoise, can tell us.
8 A CONVERSATION WITH
The Belgian scientist Dr. Peter Piot has been fighting ebola for 50 years.
ScienceTimes
The New York Times
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2026 D1
Sister, How Old Am I? It Depends On How You Lived.
A pair of siblings took a new test that says it can measure how quickly a person is aging. The results surprised them.
BY EMILY BAUMGAERTNER NUNN
PAGE 4
Observatory FINDINGS, EVENTS AND MORE
LOUDMOUTH
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No Bigger Than a Dove, but With an Elephant-Size Voice
Deep in the Serra do Mar mountains of Brazil, a curious call echoes from high in the jungle canopy. The sound is practically deafening, a loud metallic pang that cuts through the forest's thick foliage.
The bare-throated bellbird (shown at left), which produces such calls to attract female mates, is no larger than a dove. And yet his song is louder than a jackhammer or a chain saw. It's louder than an elephant's trumpet.
It is, according to a new scientific study, one of the loudest birdsongs ever recorded. "They can even exceed elephants and lions and wolves and bison," said João Menezes, an evolutionary biologist and lead author of the study, recently published in the journal Evolution.
Joining the bellbird at the top of the volume charts, the researchers found, is another Brazilian species: the red-legged seriema.
The two birds now join a previously identified bellbird species as the loudest avians known to science.
The study also uncovered anatomical traits that allow these birds to belt such powerful songs, answering many of the questions underlying the mysteries of birdsong. The new work focuses specifically on amplitude, a measure of the height of a sound wave, which helps determine how far a sound can travel. Amplitude is a major component of loudness and is crucial to our perception of sound.
To accurately measure amplitude, researchers have to be able to distinguish one bird from many and pinpoint its exact distance from where they are recording. Because of that difficulty, birdsong amplitudes have remained a black box for researchers. Even the Canada goose, one of the most well-known bird species alive today, has not had its amplitude measured. TAYLOR MITCHELL BROWN
COUNTING ON NUCLEAR
TU THORSTEN.SCHUMM/TU WIEN
Does the Clock Need Resetting? Not for a Few Million Years or So.
Telling time is an affair of counting ticks and tocks. Whether it's the dulcet swoosh of a pendulum in a grandfather clock, or the rapid oscillations of electrons in an atomic clock, the principle is the same.
Two independent teams in Vienna and Beijing have now simultaneously built the first clocks that keep time by counting the squishing and unsquishing of the atomic nuclei of thorium, a heavy radioactive element. These nuclear clocks are so precise they would lose one second
once every few million years or so. The findings were reported in the journal Nature. (Above, the nuclear clock in Vienna.)
Experts lauded the results as a major breakthrough for the emerging field of nuclear clocks.
The first nuclear clocks are not going to immediately supplant the worldwide network of atomic clocks, whose ticking we rely on for GPS and the definition of a second. And the best atomic clocks are many times more reliable and would take more than 100 billion years to lose one second.
But one day, nuclear clocks could become more reliable than the atomic versions, and they could be made more portable. They even hold the ability to search for certain kinds of dark matter — the invisible stuff whose clumps make up 83 percent of the matter in the universe. If a particle of dark matter passed through the thorium nuclei, it could register as a wobble in the nuclear clock's otherwise steady ticktock. DAN GARISTO
HIDDEN FIGURES
Buried in NASA's Old Files, a New Cosmic Object Emerges
Even within our cosmic neighborhood, the unexpected still turns up. The latest surprise is a new class of X-ray beacons in nearby galaxies, a discovery that could prove key to solving some astronomical mysteries.
"They are very luminous," said Mustafa Muhibullah, a graduate student at the University of Alabama who led the research. "They are numerous in galaxies."
Some of these newly discovered objects could be precursors of certain types of exploding stars, or supernovas. Others could be exotic combinations like a triple-star system in which two of the stars have collapsed into black holes. (Right, a composite image of the galaxy M101 with the hypersoft X-ray sources circled in orange.)
Remarkably, the finding had sat, waiting to be discovered, in data collected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory between 1999 and 2017. Jimmy Irwin, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Alabama, began looking at that data a dozen years ago. X-rays are a form of light, but at shorter wavelengths than ultraviolet light and the visible-wavelength colors that we see. Higher-energy X-rays are called "hard"; ones at the lower end of the spectrum "soft."
Chandra collects X-rays over a wide range of energies, and astronomers had generally ignored the softest X-rays because the detectors are not well calibrated to detect the few photons in this range.
"Nearly everyone kind of universally chops off the very-low-energy channels and says, 'I don't care about them,' Dr. Irwin said. "I thought, 'Why not look?'" He found known X-ray sources like neutron stars and black holes, but he also spotted some that were emitting X-rays at only the lowest energies. KENNETH CHANG
Reflections in Brooklyn on the underappreciated benefits of leaving castoffs where they lie.
TO LEAVE THE LEAVES or not to leave the leaves? That is the question — for October, anyway, which is Leave the Leaves month, a yearly campaign encouraging property owners and managers to let fallen leaves remain on their yards and in their gardens.
One eager adherent is Matthew Morrow, director of landscape operations at Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. The cemetery, with 478 rolling acres and stirring views of New York Harbor, is a national historic landmark; in the mid-19th century, only Niagara Falls saw more tourists annually. It has half a million human “residents” and is also an accredited arboretum, with 8,000 trees, spanning 700 species and hybrids, that together drop 34 tons of leaves every year for Mr. Morrow to manage. The leaves, he said on the phone, “are mostly a love but sometimes — how to phrase this — I guess a chagrin, dealing with the sheer volume.”
I ventured out to Green-Wood on a warm morning in late September, thinking vaguely of Thoreau: "When the leaves fall, the whole earth is a cemetery pleasant to walk in," he wrote. "Here are no lying nor vain epitaphs." But the leaves were still green and firmly affixed.
To be clear, even fallen leaves are not truly dead, any more than the feathers shed by a bird are dead, as they were never truly alive. The tree, the bird are living things; the leaf, the feather are hangers-on of sorts. They gain their dynamism from being connected to a flow of nutrients but, unattached, cannot sustain themselves.
"I do not think of them as dead matter," Mr. Morrow said, referring to leaves.
Obviously, there's a transition from alive-ish to deadlike, a glorious one visible as autumn foliage. The leaves of deciduous trees are made to be shed, prompted by changes in temperature and daylight. The cellular machinery of photosynthesis falls apart, and the tree recalls the nutritional crumbs to store in its roots. As the green chlorophyll dissipates, other pigments, like orange carotenoids, appear. Finally, the stems are walled off and the leaves are cast free. It might look like a resplendent form of dying, but it's just the way trees dismantle their solar panels for winter.
Of course, other trees work on a longer time scale, retaining their leaves for two to 10 years. (The needles of the great bristlecone pine can hang on for 45.) Evergreen needles are sturdier than, say, maple leaves, so they require a higher upfront cost to build. They're also less efficient at photosynthesis — they're needles, after all. But year over year they offer solid return.
The gradient from deciduous to very evergreen represents what ecologists call the "leaf economic spectrum." To a tree, a leaf is a financial instrument, providing a return on investment in the form of glucose, generated through photosynthesis. There's no one optimal strategy for maximizing R.O.I.; elevation, latitude, the local climate, the life span of the tree and the size and surface area of the leaf all factor in. Some trees in-
The leaf economy continues to thrive post-tree.
Touching Grass is a series that explores the natural world around us.
vest in long-term leaves. Others opt for the seasonal cash grab, with flimsy, disposable, high-yield leaves.
Mr. Morrow was unaware of the leaf economic spectrum concept but found it "amusing that we had to go prove our money-doesn't-grow-on-trees adage incorrect." Regardless, every leaf faces the same bottom line: When its R.O.I. drops below its operating cost — from damage, fungus, dwindling daylight — its days are done.
But the leaf economy continues to thrive post-tree; that's one impetus behind Leave the Leaves Month, which was first observed in 2023. (It's also a bid to keep leaves out of landfills; according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, leaves and other yard debris account for more than 13 percent of the nation's solid waste.) Left alone, fallen leaves represent a rich secondary market, notably for the countless beetles, spiders, butterflies and vital pollinators seeking housing or a safe place to lay eggs before winter. A 2025 study found that removing the leaves from suburban lawns in Maryland reduced the next year's crop of moths and butterflies by 45 percent.
But leaving the leaves can chafe the suburban mind. When I mentioned the concept to a fellow suburbanite, I was met with a tirade about a neighbor who lets leaves blanket her yard through the fall, winter and, unattractively, well into spring. Also her lawn, where not covered in leaves, is weedy and scruffy. Also the leaves keep blowing onto my friend's lawn, spreading unkemptness.
Mr. Morrow counseled moderation; leaving your leaves in a soggy, unbroken layer could lead to "smothering and fungal issues," he said. Better to mulch them, or at a minimum rake them into scattered piles, as invertebrate real estate.
I went to Green-Wood partly in hopes of catching sight of a mourning cloak, a large, dark-winged butterfly that Mr. Morrow considers one of the cemetery's more remarkable (living) inhabitants. Unlike other butterflies, which overwinter as eggs or larvae, the mourning cloak hides out in fallen leaves and in tree nooks as an adult and reappears in late winter or early spring. It survives by converting its body's store of glycogen (a sugar) into glycerol, an alcohol that serves as an antifreeze, protecting the cells while the animal continues in suspended animation. In effect, it overwinters by becoming one with winter; fallen leaves offer extra insulation.
The mourning cloak enjoys tree sap, often sipping upside-down. So I wandered for a while among the older trees, inspecting their trunks: a tremendous eastern white pine, a grand northern red oak with bark as crumpled and thick as the hide of a rhinoceros. Eventually, with nothing to report, I emerged from the trees and found a bench by a pond, near a row of turtles warming themselves in the sun.
Brooklyn was near but far away, its traffic muted by foliage. It took sitting still for a few moments to appreciate all the other life teeming close at hand. Gnats circled on invisible thermals. A small lizard skittered in the twigs. Here and there a strand of spider's silk, strung between stems, lit up in the sun. And there was every other busy thing underground; springtails and millipedes, earthworms and beetles, microbes and mites, detritivores and decomposers.
Lately, news headlines have been warning of an artificial-intelligence apocalypse: swarms of digital agents breaking their gates and, by hook or crook, subjugating our species and eliminating us from the physical world. Suddenly I wondered: What if A.I. is the tree and we are the leaves? Another thought followed too naturally: If we are the leaves, how does the A.I. tree calculate our R.O.I.?
(My chatbot, when I queried it, gave a discomfitingly long and technical reply that involved our species' "cellular depreciation schedule" and ended with "work force defoliation." Then it reassured me that humanity's accomplishments — our hard-won grasp of art and science, our centuries of effort to articulate our "purpose" in life, our energy grids and fiber-optic networks — would remain vital. "Even post-mortem, human existence leaves behind distinct layers of value that directly shape, sustain and give purpose to A.I. systems," it said. We won't truly be dead, just dead-ish.)
At the cemetery, sitting among the dead and the living, I wagered that A.I. has little chance against biology as a whole. Some of the simplest organisms exhibit behaviors that could be regarded as a kind of thinking, if not intelligence or consciousness. Mycorrhizal fungi, which fill every inch of soil, connect the roots of plants and trees in an astonishingly sophisticated marketplace of carbon and nutrients. Slime molds are so good at path-finding that scientists have enlisted their help in designing transportation systems. The core algorithm of life — survive long enough to reproduce — has succeeded for four billion years and counting.
I stood up and made another search for mourning cloaks, but, finding none, I headed back to the subway. Maybe they had migrated south, as some mourning cloaks do. Maybe their camouflage was too clever for me. I'll try again at the bright end of winter, when they'll be among the first to emerge — crawling from the crevices and leaf litter, clambering to the peaks of last autumn's rotting cash and taking flight across the fading snow.
At 194, Jonathan the Giant Tortoise Knows About Aging
Scientists have sequenced the genome of the world's oldest land animal for the first time.
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By MONIQUE BROUILLETTE
Dr. Joe Hollins slides a thick welding glove onto his left hand and grips a cotton swab tightly in his right. He squats down to eye level with a 400-pound giant tortoise, cradles its head with his gloved hand and carefully wedges a finger into its mouth to prop open its razor-sharp beak. With his other hand, he tries to swab its cheek.
Dr. Hollins, a veterinarian, has only about five seconds to get the DNA he's after before he risks getting punched with a thick, scaly leg.
The first swab comes back covered in half-chewed carrot — a favorite snack. He tosses it aside and tries again. The tortoise, named Jonathan, looks mildly annoyed.
At about 194 years old, Jonathan is the world's oldest known land animal. He's an Aldabra giant tortoise living 1,200 miles off Africa's west coast on the remote island of St. Helena, spending his days on the sundappled grounds of the official home of the governor. (At the time of his arrival on St. Helena, he was at least 50 years old, a determination his keepers made based on size.)
Although he shows some signs of aging, like cataracts that have left him mostly blind, he still has excellent hearing and a strong libido. He enjoys greeting visitors, having his neck petted and delivering loud belches for the crowd that gathers around his paddock during mealtimes.
In June, after Jonathan was erroneously declared dead by some media organizations, the Guinness World Records added him to its list of global icons, honoring his superlative status. And last week, he reached another milestone when a study announced that his genome had been sequenced for the first time.
"We almost never get to study an animal this old while it is still alive," said Steve Horvath, a biologist who studies aging at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an author of the study, which was published in the Journal Science Advances.
Jonathan gave scientists the rare opportunity to study what happens to an animal's genome over the course of nearly 200 years. But obtaining the DNA wasn't easy: The researchers were not permitted to take a blood sample, the gold standard in
DNA sequencing, because of the risk of infection. And because the island is served by only one often delayed commercial flight per week, the swabbed saliva had to travel by boat.
The researchers were committed to the idea, though, because they were curious if Jonathan's DNA held secrets about aging or longevity. Just think: When this tortoise was presumably born in 1832, Charles Darwin was only 22 years old and hadn't yet visited the Galápagos Islands, where he would dream up his theory of natural selection.
After sequencing the sample, the scientists compared Jonathan's genome with those of tortoises 100 years his junior and found some molecular differences, especially in genes involved with DNA repair and the maintenance of the protective caps on chromosomes, called telomeres. As organisms age, DNA accumulates damage and the telomeres shorten, a process thought to drive aging. The results hint that this species may have evolved to be more resilient to age-related decline, but further testing is needed.
The team also discovered that Jonathan shared some genes with other long-living species like naked mole rats, which can live to 40 and rarely get cancer.
Perhaps most interesting is what they found when they looked at the tortoise's epigenome, which is a map of the chemical tags that regulate the genome. These tags change with age and can lead to erratic gene activity. As expected, Jonathan had age-related changes in his epigenome similar to older humans, but there was an exception. Notably, the control switches linked to mitochondria were well preserved, similar to those of a young tortoise. Mitochondria, the molecular power plants inside cells, have long been linked to healthy aging.
The potential for learning from the biology of animals that live extraordinarily long lives is exciting for scientists who study aging. "Each of these long-lived species has some kind of special trick," said Steve Austad, a biologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "And some of those may turn out to be relevant to human aging."
"The results integrate very well in the wider puzzle of what longevity is," said Björn Schumacher, who studies aging at the University of Cologne in Germany. He urged caution, though, in concluding that Jonathan would help us understand why humans age and what we can do about it.
Jeanne Calment, for example, was the world's oldest person at the age of 122. She attributed her long life to a diet rich in olive oil and port wine. She also smoked cigarettes. Does that mean we should all smoke and drink red wine? Probably not, Dr. Schumacher said, and we should use similar caution when drawing conclusions from Jonathan.
Jonathan's advanced age could be an outlier because of his round-the-clock veterinary care, diet of fresh vegetables and
Dr. Joe Hollins, a veterinarian, getting a DNA sample with a cheek swab from Jonathan, an Aldabra giant tortoise.
'Each of these long-lived species has some kind of special trick.'
protected lawn at the governor's house.
The molecular results offer tantalizing clues, however — ones that scientists are keen to explore further. "If we had 1,000 animals like Jonathan, it would be easier to understand his longevity," said Dr. Stephen Clark, lead author of the study and the founder of Kallel, a nonprofit dedicated to studying the genetics of aging. In the future, Dr. Clark hopes to analyze more Aldabra tortoises and other long-lived species by gathering data that offers some hints for us spry chickens, too.
A Tale of Two Sisters, and the Age Test They Took
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What happened when two siblings tried a new technology that examined their genes.
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By EMILY BAUMGAERTNER NUNN
The notification lit up Michelle's phone at 5:25 a.m. on the West Coast: a text from her older sister, Deb, who had an idea.
Deb had heard on a longevity podcast about a new technology that claimed to measure how quickly a person was aging. For \$399, each sister could submit a blood sample and learn how her habits and experiences had affected the ways her genes behaved. The test, called TruAge, could supposedly tell them the functional ages of their brains, hearts, lungs and bodies overall.
"I think it would be super interesting to look at test results between siblings," Deb, 56, had written. "You interested?"
"Yes, I would love to," Michelle, 54, replied. "I fear the results, though."
When it came to their genetics, the sisters seemed remarkably alike. (They asked to be identified using only their first names to discuss sensitive medical information.) They had the same deep-set, iceblue eyes, the same prominent cheekbones, the same blond hair that swirled from a cowlick on the back-right corner of their heads. They both had astigmatism and night blindness; neither could roll her tongue or sing on pitch. And they had the same unusual variant of a gene called ABCC11, which meant their armpit sweat never had any odor.
Deb and Michelle, raised together in Detroit, knew they shared roughly half their DNA, but sometimes they had a hard time believing it. Deb, who now lived in Virginia, had always been hyper-disciplined, pragmatic and outgoing. A former Air Force nurse, she had traveled the world and raised three children, and seemed to exercise nonstop. Michelle was sensitive and bookish — so introverted that she didn't even own a calendar. She had settled into the central valley of California after high school and never married. She lived a quiet, contented life with one companion: her Herder-Pit mix, Merlin.
There was another key difference: Deb had always been healthy, aside from mild joint pain and high cholesterol that medication kept under control. But Michelle had been obese in her teens and 20s and later struggled with autoimmune issues that no doctor had been able to fully explain. Every day was some constellation of extreme fatigue, nerve pain and tachycardia from low blood pressure. When Deb's text arrived, Michelle was dealing with swollen lymph nodes, bumps all over her hands and a rash that stretched into her ear canals and nostrils.
Deb told her sister that maybe the test could help her better understand the causes and effects of her ailments. After years of feeling dismissed by doctors, maybe Michelle would feel validated if her biological age reflected her suffering.
Deep down, Michelle had a feeling that Debbie — she would always be Debbie to Michelle — just wanted to outperform Michelle. Still, Michelle wasn't going to miss the first opportunity in years to do something with her sister. As adults, the two had grown distant, and then, after a bitter fight, stopped talking at all for almost two decades. They had reconnected only a few years ago, and even now, only through texts.
"Do you have a website so I can look at it?" Michelle asked.
The test's marketing materials promise "the most complete picture of how your body is aging." It analyzes almost one million chemical tags on DNA that make up a person's epigenetics, the layer of biological instructions that controls how someone's genes are expressed. By comparing a person's unique pattern against large databases of other people's results and health outcomes, its models try to assign an "age" that reflects the person's predicted level of health.
Many aging test algorithms have proved effective for comparing large groups of people in scientific studies. But critics — and even some scientists who have developed the algorithms — say that they are not meant to evaluate individuals, and that with so much statistical noise and potential for error, these tests are far too premature for commercial use. Most doctors believe a comprehensive blood panel is, for now, far more actionable.
And yet, biological aging tests like Tru-Age have in recent years exploded into an industry worth nearly \$3 billion, a mark of a world that cannot resist the allures of personal wellness data. As with a personality test — or even a horoscope — proven accuracy is hardly a requirement. People crave new ways to define themselves.
When Deb's test package arrived by mail, she arranged the contents neatly across her kitchen table. She pricked her middle finger with the lancet and squeezed dozens of drops of blood onto a paper card. Before she had even applied a bandage, she was using her other hand to text advice to Michelle, who had pricked her own finger but couldn't seem to generate enough blood to fill the card.
"Wash hands in warm water," Deb wrote her. "Do a few jumping jacks. Make fists. Really squeeze."
"I bet this is a low blood pressure issue," Michelle texted. "I'm trying."
"Keep trying," Deb replied.
Michelle pricked a second finger and eventually filled her card. Then both sisters packaged their samples and dropped them at their post offices, the envelopes addressed to the same lab in Kentucky.
Deb sent another text: "And now we wait."
DEB WAS AHEAD of schedule, even for Deb. She stood at the kitchen counter of her glass-paned house, chopping vegetables for her homemade microbiome mix. She would combine them with plant-based protein powders and fiber mixes for her meal-replacement smoothie at lunch.
Deb and her husband, Steve, had become empty nesters in recent years, and Deb was often alone in a four-bedroom house so quiet she could hear the insects in the woods out back. Steve, a military contractor, typically worked 18-hour days, so Deb had taken on shifts as a nurse at a local aesthetic medicine practice, but she still had a lot of time to fill.
Years ago, to stay healthy, she had started walking 15,000 steps per day, strength-training at the gym and keeping a sugar-free diet. But as Deb became more interested in longevity, she added more habits, until she was using red light therapy daily, taking pills to increase antioxidant production and mitochondrial function, and experimenting with acupuncture and herbal patches.
She didn't have a primary care doctor, and she didn't think she needed one. All of her biohacks were already based on personalized insights. She had done a test to check for calcium buildup in her heart's arteries, multiple scans to measure the strength of her bones, and a mail-order analysis called the 3X4 Blueprint that supposedly revealed which genes made her more susceptible to dementia, chronic inflammation and connective tissue decay.
Deb fed all her health information into ChatGPT, which then guided her to the best vagus nerve stimulators and chemical peels and fiber gummies — and also more assessments. It was ChatGPT that had persuaded Deb to order the TruAge test in
Above, a childhood picture of Michelle and Deb. Below, Deb at home. Bottom, Michelle at her home. Top right, Michelle's refrigerator, left, and Deb's.
the first place.
"You've spent the past year optimizing almost every major longevity lever," the chatbot told her after she asked it about the test's value. TruAge, it said, "can help answer whether the protocol you've assembled is changing your biological trajectory."
After she finished preparing her microbiome mix, Deb stopped by a refrigerator in her home office where she kept her vials of peptides. She injected one for tissue repair, another to reduce inflammation, another to help detox her skin and liver.
Then she reached for a small container of old photographs. Inside were snapshots of the life she and Michelle had once shared: a photo labeled "APRIL '78" of the girls at ages 6 and 8, standing side by side in their grandparents' house. Another marked "FEB. '79," of the two in matching white jackets, with identical bobs and wide, toothy grins that crinkled the corners of their eyes.
They were convincing portraits of a happy childhood, and Deb, a master compartmentalizer, preferred not to think about the chaos they elided: her mother's erratic outbursts; their parents' volatile fights; the constant extramarital affairs, which the girls often knew about. Sometimes the adults would disappear for long stretches of time, leaving the sisters to forge notes to their teachers and fend for themselves.
Increasingly, their paths had differed: Deb grew long and thin and gregarious, while Michelle withdrew behind more and more weight. Deb became a cheerleader, earned straight A's and spent more time with her boyfriend's family than her own. In the final photo of the sisters, taken on a Florida pier in "JULY '84." Deb's arms were draped over a friend's shoulders while Michelle stood off to the side, shorts bunched between her thighs, smiling alone.
"I've had a good life," Deb said, tucking away the photos. "And Michelle really struggled."
Deb couldn't remember the details of their estrangement, but Michelle had long been a painful reminder that Deb, as the elder sister, needed to be the adult in the house, even when she was still a child. She was pretty sure the breaking point had taken place in their 30s, when Michelle got wrapped up in a horrible relationship with a guy Deb couldn't stand. Deb had always been able to cut anyone out of her life without a second thought, so she did.
Then, after almost 20 years, Michelle reached out in a text message, apologizing for her role in the conflict. They began messaging again, but when Michelle called, Deb sent it to voice mail and texted her instead. Something about the thought of actually speaking to Michelle set off panic in Deb's chest, even now.
Deb had always expected that her biological age would be younger than Michelle's. But in the silence of her empty house, she began to consider other possibilities. What if Deb's heavy partying in her 20s had super-aged her liver? What if her natural cholesterol levels, which were beyond her control, were causing vascular damage? What if her younger sister "had been able to trick her body in some way," Deb wondered, and prove that all of Deb's protocols were for nothing?
"I'm not going to crawl into bed and die," she reassured herself. No, she would simply need to do more research.
IN A SUN-BAKED agricultural town across the country, less than two weeks before the TruAge results would arrive, Michelle arose before dawn with no agenda at all.
She curled up in an armchair in her sweatpants to watch the sunrise, then drew the blinds, blasting the air-conditioner and multiple industrial-grade fans to ward off her symptoms of heat intolerance.
Michelle watched a women's basketball game and nuzzled her dog, Merlin, and decided not to worry about all the chores piling up during this latest bout of fatigue: the cobwebs in the ceiling corners, the listing side-yard fence, the suitcase she hadn't found the energy to unpack. She had taken that trip a month ago.
Michelle wandered over to a shelf overflowing with tubs of salves and took her medicine. Then she donned her dark sunglasses, which helped her deal with extreme photophobia outdoors. "Come on, Bubba," she said to Merlin, who leaped toward the door. Michelle wanted to go on one of their long drives — the road seemed to help her think.
Michelle had not dwelled much on the test since she'd taken it. A part of her thought the whole thing might be pseudoscience. Michelle had at least seven specialists in a regular rotation, including an allergist, a neurologist, a podiatrist and a dermatologist — almost two centuries' worth of collective clinical experience that still left her "playing connect-the-dots," she said. She was dubious that a few drops of blood were going to finally reveal the full picture.
But Michelle had a mental health counseling degree and read more than 200 books a year, many of them about psychology. She had been thinking lately about the ways toxic stress might leave lasting scars on human DNA. Now she couldn't help but wonder if the kit's algorithms might be programmed to measure something deeper.
As a child, Michelle had internalized the turmoil in their home — a factor she believed contributed to her rashes and sinus infections and overeating. She remembered the way their mother would throw items like screwdrivers and books at them; the tree Michelle climbed to hide herself on the roof of their detached garage; the maggots in the food when she and Deb were routinely left alone for weeks.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANNIE FLANAGAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
With every year, Michelle felt increasingly unstable, but somehow Debbie just became more capable, focused solely on the tasks at hand. When Michelle was 8 and came down with scarlet fever, Debbie put her on her bicycle's handlebars and pedaled her to the corner store for medicine. When Michelle was 10 and broke her arm, Debbie taped two rulers together to hold it straight.
Michelle could tell that Debbie's recollection of all those shared years was spotty
— and that Debbie preferred it that way. It seemed as if Debbie mostly just remembered that she had managed the house, gone off to college and kept on thriving, in part because of her ability to simply choose what to forget.
But the trauma of their childhood had colored the first half of Michelle's life. She ate addictively until she was 342 pounds and needed weight-loss surgery. She gravitated toward abusive relationships, staying in one for 14 years. And then, one night in 2007, Michelle was attacked by three men in a Walmart parking lot and sustained a traumatic brain injury, broken facial bones and a blown-out eardrum that left her partly deaf.
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They shared roughly half their DNA, but sometimes they had a hard time believing it.
That was when Michelle decided to invest in "holistic healing," she said. She earned her counseling degree, took a job with a disability advocacy group and started volunteering at a homeless shelter. She also eventually reached out to Debbie. Michelle finally found her stability — not in her physical being, but her emotional one.
Sometimes she suggested that Debbie consider therapy. "Seeing our younger selves is not reliving the childhood," Michelle explained. But Debbie had no interest. "The trail is my therapy," she would say. Now Michelle wondered: Could all that compartmentalization have done something to Debbie's cells?
Driving along the California Delta, with Merlin's paws perched on the center console beside her, Michelle felt at peace with most of her predictions for the test's results. Her immune cell composition would not score well, and her brain had most likely undergone accelerated aging from the attack.
But Michelle couldn't shake her worry that maybe it was Debbie who had not been able to outrun their childhood. There were 11 days until the reveal, and the test was starting to feel like a kind of ledger of their lives, both together and apart. She desperately hoped her own biological age would be older than Debbie's — to protect her sister and maybe their newly mended relationship.
But if Michelle fared younger, then what? "Should I lie?" she asked herself as she pulled back into her driveway.
Perhaps this would be her way of finally taking care of the sister who had tried to take care of her. Maybe a "little white lie" — just for Debbie — would be worth it.
DEB HAD BEEN REFRESHING her TruAge online portal every couple of days, but Michelle's results landed first.
They ran to 73 pages of data, including stress markers, nutrient levels and toxin exposures. Plastered across the top were three key metrics: an overall score that encompassed a lifetime of chemical tags; another that measured the "pace" at which the body was supposedly aging; and, finally, a score that focused on the body's organs, looking at markers associated with 11 different systems. Michelle leaned back in her recliner and began to scroll.
There was no sugarcoating the first score: Though Michelle was just 54, the test declared her overall "biological age" to be 62.
She threw back her head and laughed, "They're saying I'm a senior citizen at this point," she said. "If I was unstable mentally, this would not be a good thing!"
But the other two delivered what seemed like good news. Her aging "pace" score said that for every year that passed, she would age only 0.98 years — an indicator of a healthy lifestyle in recent months.
And her organ ages surprised her even more: All 11 organ systems together averaged to a relatively youthful 53.4. Her lungs were 53.6; her brain was 53.8, despite her traumatic brain injury. And even with all of Michelle's autoimmune issues, her inflammation system was, inexplicably, 52.4. The report had even marked some of Michelle's organ systems with mint green smiley-face icons to indicate slow aging.
"This is getting more interesting," she said. But she had yet to hear from Deb.
"Your TruAge results are probably in your email," she texted.
"Nope," Deb replied. She had even checked her spam folder.
Michelle had not anticipated this scenario, but she didn't feel she could withhold her results. Soon, Deb was scouring through Michelle's packets, taking in all the diagrams.
"I think considering all you've been through, the results are pretty darn great," Deb texted. "It will be interesting what mine says."
She waited another day — then another, and another. At the end of Week 4, she received an alert from the company that the laboratory needed to reprocess her sample because the results "did not meet one of the laboratory's quality standards."
"Now I'm anxious," she texted Michelle.
On the last day of the sixth week, Deb had just returned from a morning walk when her inbox pinged: "Your full results are ready now." She clicked into the portal and pressed "View My Results."
Deb leaned closer to the screen and swallowed. The 56-year-old's overall score was 58.3 — higher than she would like, but still younger than her sister's, she reminded herself. And she was aging at a pace of 0.90 each year — good news.
But then she scrolled down to the organ results. She covered her mouth. "What the hell?"
Every result seemed astronomical — they averaged out to 63.5, more than a decade older than Michelle's. Many were even scarier: Her lungs were 64.7. Her heart was 64.3. Her liver was 63.9. Her immune system was 66.7, compared with her immune-deficient sister's 57.8.
Deb had longed to see those mint green smiley faces throughout her report. Instead, TruAge had marked Deb's overall score and all 11 organ systems with magenta sad faces: "Aging Faster."
Deb closed her laptop and got ready for work, but she spent the day in a private vortex of grief. Had she exercised too hard the day before she took the test, or not slept enough? Or maybe the results were accurate, and no amount of effort could override her unlucky DNA. Either way, she didn't know what to do next.
That was the problem many health experts had with biological age test results: There was no consensus on how to act on them. A doctor would have told Deb not to worry much about her scores, to focus instead on age-old advice: Stay active, eat healthfully and enjoy her years. But the emotional undertow of the wellness era seemed to suggest that was no longer enough.
Were Our Guts Much Healthier In Ancient Times?
MICHELLE WAS CONCERNED for her sister. She pinged Deb with encouraging text messages about all the reasons her results were probably skewed. Perhaps Deb should consider finding a primary care doctor, Michelle suggested, who could help put everything in perspective.
But Deb did not want to wait. She asked ChatGPT for advice instead, and it helped her choose a host of new biomarker tests she could order from a website that didn't require a doctor's visit and reported results using an A.I. assistant named Barry.
Deb texted Michelle a screenshot from the site, where she had spotted a host of new blood panels that the company planned to roll out. There was one focused on "genetic health insights," another to detect brain changes related to Alzheimer's disease and a third to measure PFAS, or "forever chemicals," that might have accumulated in the body over time.
"Look what's coming," Deb wrote. "Fascinating."
Michelle was happy for any excuse to correspond with Debbie. There still weren't any phone calls — too emotionally triggering, Michelle guessed — and she assumed that when they ran out of wellness metrics to talk about, her sister's texts would dry up. But for now, Michelle and Debbie wrote back and forth about lab orders they would place together and chatted about all the ways their genes must be expressing themselves: the same antibody deficiencies, the same pattern of graying hair. Together, they marveled at how much two sisters could share.
Researchers found 848 species of bacteria that were shared by the Tsimane in Bolivia, above, and the Hadza of Tanzania but were rare or absent from industrialized countries.
MICHAEL GURVEN
A study finds modern humans are missing important bacteria that our ancestors carried.
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By CARL ZIMMER
The human microbiome — the trillions of microbes that live in our guts — was a stable ecosystem for tens of thousands of years before rapidly changing in industrialized countries, raising possible health concerns for modern people, scientists reported last week
In a study of Africans and South Americans, researchers identified more than 600 species of bacteria that may once have been common in the gut but are now rare or missing entirely from people in most societies today.
Many of these microbes may have benefited people's health, said Justin Sonnenburg, a microbiome scientist at Stanford University and an author of the new study, published in Nature.
The changing microbiome, he speculated, may have helped increase some disorders that are common in the industrialized world, from allergies to dementia.
"How bad could this be, the fact that we changed our microbiomes so much?" Dr. Sonnenburg said. "This study, I think, points to the fact that it could be pretty bad."
Our early apelike ancestors had a microbiome adapted to a diet of raw plants and meat. Its composition shifted hundreds of thousands of years ago when early humans started cooking with fires, scientists suspect.
As humans expanded from Africa about 50,000 years ago, they were still living on the animals they hunted and the wild plants they gathered. It was only about 10,000 years ago that farmers began domesticating crops, precipitating another likely shift in the microbiome.
In recent decades, an even more substantive change took place, as billions of people began eating food rich in sugar and refined grains. And modern medicine also may have had a profound effect: Antibiotics have saved countless lives, but the drugs can also destroy beneficial microbes in the gut.
To chart the history of the human microbiome, Dr. Sonnenburg and his colleagues have studied societies around the world at different levels of industrialization. Some of the most striking results have emerged from the Hadza, a small group of hunter-gatherers in Tanzania.
Studying stool samples from Hadza volunteers, Dr. Sonnenburg and his colleagues found a wide range of bacteria. "There are around 270 species in the average Californian, and around 730 in the average Hadza," Dr. Sonnenburg said.
Even more striking is the diversity of those species. Many are rare or missing entirely from the United States and other industrialized countries.
Dr. Sonnenburg and his colleagues wondered how similar today's Hadza microbiome is to the microbes that early hunter-gatherers carried.
They decided to compare the Hadza with other people who continue a similar lifestyle. The scientists began collaborating with anthropologists who study a Bolivian group called the Tsimane.
The Tsimane live in remote Amazon villages, where they maintain small farms while continuing to hunt and forage. While the Hadza and Tsimane have somewhat similar cultures, they have very different histories.
The Tsimane descend from people who left Africa 50,000 years ago and crossed to the Americas about 15,000 years ago. The Hadza's ancestry, on the other hand, is restricted entirely to Africa.
Dr. Sonnenburg and his colleagues used powerful new methods to detect bacterial
DNA in stool samples from the Tsimane and compared the findings with those from the Hadza.
The researchers found 848 species that were shared by the two groups but were rare or absent from industrialized countries. They then analyzed 636 species that were especially abundant in the samples.
The scientists found that each species tended to carry distinct mutations, depending on whether they were found in the Hadza or the Tsimane. That pattern suggested to the team that these microbial species inhabited the guts of hunter-gatherers tens of thousands of years ago.
The Hadza continue to carry them today, thanks to their lives as hunter-gatherers. But the ancestors of the Tsimane migrated over the Bering land bridge to the Americas 15,000 years ago, perhaps earlier.
That geographic separation made it impossible for microbes to spread from people in the Old World to the Americas. The hunter-gatherer ancestors of the Tsimane continued to carry some of the same species as their ancestors, but their bacteria gained distinctive mutations over thousands of years.
In all, the findings hint that hunter-gatherers shared a distinctive ecosystem of gut microbes for tens of thousands of years. "Our biology has probably been shaped by these microbes to a large degree," Dr. Sonnenburg said.
The ancestral bacteria might have been important for training our immune systems, for example, or synthesizing compounds our bodies need. And as some microbes vanished in modern societies, new ones took their place.
That shift may be affecting our health. "You end up with a microbiome that's very different than what your human genome has come to expect," perhaps triggering inflammation and other unhealthy changes, Dr. Sonnenburg said.
Michael Gurven, an anthropologist at the University of California, Santa Bar-
'How bad could this be, the fact that we changed our microbiomes so much? This study, I think, points to the fact that it could be pretty bad.'
bara, and an author of the new study, said that the ancestral microbiome might help explain why the Tsimane appear to be protected from heart disease and other chronic diseases.
But Marie-Claire Arrieta, a microbiome scientist at the University of Alberta who was not involved in the research, cautioned that people in industrialized countries should not try to culture a hunter-gatherer microbiome.
Scientists don't know much about the 636 gut microbes on Dr. Sonnenburg's list and the possible harms they might cause. "There's a lot of infectious potential," she said.
Instead, Dr. Arrieta favored learning about the helpful things that the ancestral microbes can do in the human body, and finding ways to restore those particular functions.
"The message that we should go back to ancient microbiomes doesn't make a lot of sense," Dr. Arrieta said. "But, for sure, they're important to study to understand some of these microbial functions that have been lost."
Monitoring Menopause With Tools
BAQI WANG
Tech companies are adding features for women in midlife, with varied tracking results.
By LIZ BAKER PLOSSER
Tonya Kuxhausen began wearing an Oura ring in late 2021. A 55-year-old nurse in Minneapolis, she kept the band on her finger nearly all the time: during emergency-room shifts, overnight while she slept and everywhere in between.
She came to rely on it even more after she developed long Covid in 2022. A few years later, when her periods became erratic as she approached menopause, the ring's alerts felt less helpful. "You better take it easy today," Ms. Kuxhausen recalled the app warning, as if "something really awful's going to happen."
"I'm not dying," she recalled thinking. Still, when Oura introduced a 22-question menopause survey in its app this May, Ms. Kuxhausen decided to give it a try. Oura is among a handful of technology companies that have turned their attention to women in midlife like Ms. Kuxhausen: Whoop and Apple also announced new menopause-related features this year.
What these tools measure, and how much meaningful or actionable information they can give women about their bodies, varies widely. Here's what to know about them.
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What the Health Trackers Measure
The features differ across devices, but they all rely on women's own reports of their cycles and symptoms.
Apple's is a simple alert, notifying women they may have entered perimenopause. Oura offers a symptom score based on the questionnaire and Whoop aims to predict when women can anticipate certain menopause symptoms.
Apple's feature started last month: The Health app now sends notices to women 40 or older whose cycles begin to vary. It uses the data women have logged, according to Apple, not data the watch's sensors have picked up.
The app asks women to confirm that their cycles have become irregular, then tells them that this can happen for many reasons, including perimenopause. It suggests women talk to their doctors within the year, and offers a PDF of their last 12 months of cycles they can bring to an appointment.
Oura's score, based on the menopause questionnaire, represents the degree to which symptoms may be disrupting a woman's daily life. Sleep and temperature trends are displayed alongside the score to help explain it, said Chris Curry, an obstetrician-gynecologist and Oura's clinical director of women's health.
The ring cannot determine whether a woman is in perimenopause, she said, but it can "make the path to conversation easier," including by generating a report women can download and share with their doctors.
With Whoop, a woman logs her symptoms — cramps, bloating, headaches, mood swings, fatigue and brain fog are on the list; hot flashes and night sweats are not — and the app predicts when she might expect that symptom again.
As a woman's cycles become less regular, the app gives a predicted time range for her next period instead of a specific date, said
Emily Capodilupo, Whoop's senior vice president of research, algorithms and data.
Beyond these features, some devices promote other paid services aimed at women in midlife. With a member's permission, Oura can share their survey results and sleep data with telehealth companies like Maven and Wisp, and Whoop sells a \$299 blood panel through Quest Diagnostics.
Dr. Stephanie Faubion, medical director of The Menopause Society and director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Women's Health, wears an Oura ring and a Whoop band and said she sees value in the patterns health trackers can uncover. In some cases, she said, a wearable might help reveal a health condition a woman had incorrectly attributed to menopause, like obstructive sleep apnea. But the menopause features generally do not track anything the devices were not already monitoring, she said, and they are mostly built around menstrual cycles.
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Where Trackers May Fall Short
Despite all the data these devices collect, most of the metrics they report are still estimates. When a wearable tells a woman how much REM or deep sleep she had during the night, "that is not equivalent to measuring what's happening in the brain," said Fiona Baker, who directs the human sleep research program at SRI International, a nonprofit research institute in Menlo Park, Calif.
Some of the tools also lean heavily on heart-rate variability, the small differences in timing between heartbeats, as a gauge of how much stress the body is under. But when heart-rate variability shifts, the number says nothing about why, Dr. Baker said: "Was it due to age? Was it due to menopause? Was it due to unhealthy lifestyle behaviors?"
Kelly Baron, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Utah who is studying treatments for perimenopausal sleep problems, said some people are worse off with more sleep data, because they can develop an unhealthy preoccupation with it.
The sleep-stage charts are "a really pretty picture," Dr. Baron said. "But there's not a lot that we do with that."
There is also the risk that a symptom may be labeled menopause-related too quickly. Palpitations, for example, could have other causes that need evaluation, Dr. Faubion said.
Women don't need a device to know when they are experiencing hot flashes and mood changes. And some of the metrics that might be most useful for menopausal women can't be reliably tracked by wearables yet: Dr. Faubion gave the example of blood pressure, which "hockey sticks up at menopause." Heart disease is the leading cause of death among women in the United States, and high blood pressure is one of its biggest drivers.
Ms. Kuxhausen, the nurse, still wears her Oura ring. It has helped her understand how food, alcohol and late nights affect her sleep. But it did not reveal much about menopause that she did not already know.
"You already feel betrayed by your body," she said. The last thing she wanted, she said, was a reminder "that you're not doing well enough."
Ask Well
I just learned that I have fibroids. What are they, and why are they a problem?
By the time they turn 50, as many as 80 percent of women will develop fibroids, noncancerous tumors that grow in the uterus.
Not all women have symptoms. But fibroids can cause heavy menstrual bleeding, pelvic pain and pressure, constipation and a need to urinate more frequently, said Dr. Vanessa Jacoby, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. They can cause miscarriages or prevent women from getting pregnant.
Some women live with symptoms for years without seeking care. But there are several options for treating and managing fibroids, Dr. Jacoby said.
Fibroids can form inside the uterus, within its walls or on its outer surface. They can also be attached to the uterus by a stalk, said Dr. Taraneh Shirazian, a gynecologist and the director of NYU Langone Health's Center for Fibroid Care.
Dr. Jacoby said that what causes fibroids to form and grow is unknown, but it's probably a "mix" of biological, genetic, environmental and hormonal factors. The tumors are generally slow-growing and can range from as small as a pea to larger than a watermelon, she added.
They are affected by the hormones estrogen and progesterone, and research suggests that they grow when hormone levels are higher, as in pregnancy, and shrink when the levels decline, as during menopause.
You may be more likely to get fibroids if other women in your family have them, Dr. Shirazian said. Black women are about three times as likely to have fibroids as the general population. They're often diagnosed at younger ages and have more significant symptoms, Dr. Jacoby said. Hispanic and Asian women are also at elevated risk for a fibroid diagnosis, research shows.
Fibroids are typically diagnosed through imaging tests like ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging (M.R.I.) or CT scans, said Dr. Arleen H. Song, a minimally invasive gynecologic surgeon at Duke Health in Durham, N.C.
When fibroids are small and asymptomatic, doctors typically monitor them over time and may recommend a yearly ultrasound, Dr. Shirazian said.
When the growths cause heavy bleeding, however, doctors often start with medications, like hormonal birth control pills, patches, rings or hormonal IUDs, which, besides providing contraception, can decrease bleeding, Dr. Jacoby said. Another treatment is a non-hormonal medication called tranexamic acid, taken on days with heavy bleeding, she said.
Dr. Shirazian said treatment with gonadotropin-releasing hormone antagonists can minimize bleeding and reduce the volume of fibroids.
For patients who experience pelvic pain and pressure, doctors typically recommend procedures to shrink the growths. One of these is uterine artery embolization, in which tiny particles are injected into the arteries to the fibroid, blocking its blood supply and causing it to shrink. Another is radiofrequency ablation, which uses high heat to destroy tissue and reduce the growth's size.
However, Dr. Song said, more research is needed to show that these procedures are safe for women who want to get pregnant.
Fibroids can also be removed through a surgery known as a myomectomy, Dr. Song said.
In about 10 percent to 30 per-cent of women who have had a myomectomy or another procedure to shrink their fibroids, the growths return, and another treatment will be needed at some
ERIC HELGAS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
point, Dr. Jacoby said.
A hysterectomy, which removes the uterus, is the only sure way to prevent fibroids from returning, Dr. Shirazian said. But too often, Dr. Jacoby said, women are told that a hysterectomy is their only option for treating fibroids and they are not offered less invasive treatments. She suggested getting a second opinion. "In most cases, there's a variety of options," she said. ERICA SWEENEY
When the Best Medicine Might Be Exercise
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JEFF SWENSEN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Lee Colker goes through his weekly virtual exercise routine with Olivia Masten, an oncology exercise physiologist.
Research shows that it helps cancer patients, so doctors are pushing for better support.
By NINA AGRAWAL
Lee Colker powered on an iPad in the basement of his Pittsburgh home and logged into a virtual exercise session with Olivia Masten, a trainer who specializes in working with cancer patients.
Mr. Colker, 66, had been dealing with unpredictable fatigue and brain fog since beginning a clinical trial for metastatic kidney cancer this year. When the staff at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center told him an exercise program could improve his energy, he jumped at the opportunity. "That was a clincher for me," he said.
The program is part of a growing effort around the country to help cancer patients exercise, as the benefits of doing so become increasingly clear.
Observational research has long suggested that exercise improves cancer survival, particularly for breast cancer patients. Last year, a landmark randomized controlled trial showed that colon cancer patients who participated in a structured exercise program with a trainer-coach over three years were less likely to see their cancers come back and had a better quality of life. Among those in the program, 90 percent were alive after eight years, compared with 83 percent in the control group.
A later study showed the program, which altogether cost \$3,000 per person, also saved the health system money — “a home run,” said Dr. Scott Ramsey, a cancer researcher and health economist at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center in Washington state.
That combination of benefits is rare among cancer therapies: The new pancreatic cancer drug daraxonrasib, for example, costs \$480,000 annually, has unpleasant side effects and, while it prolongs life by several months, does not increase overall long-term survival.
"If we had a drug with this magnitude of benefit, it would immediately become standard of care and funded" by insurance companies, said Dr. Christopher Booth, an oncologist and professor at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and the leader of the exercise trial.
While guidelines now recommend that oncologists help colon cancer patients achieve at least 150 minutes of moderate to rigorous exercise per week, many patients need support in the form of a structured program, with a trainer and supervised sessions, to get to that level and stick with it. But there's not yet an insurance pathway to pay for such programs — a major barrier to rolling them out more widely.
"You can tell patients that if you do this, you may survive longer," Dr. Ramsey said. But unfortunately, he added, "we just don't have the infrastructure."
Current programs are largely limited to major cancer centers and dependent on phi-'Exercise is not just biology. It is also behavior.'
lanthropy or individual out-of-pocket payments to cover costs, leaving poorer patients and those who live far from these centers without access.
Dr. Jeff Meyerhardt, a gastrointestinal oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, refers his patients to the hospital's center for alternative therapies, where they can consult with a trainer and access in-person and online exercise classes. But the trainer can't continue supporting patients over time.
At the University of California, San Francisco, doctors refer eligible patients for physical therapy and rehabilitation, which can be reimbursed by insurance, while many Y.M.C.A. branches offer a free or low-cost 12-week program for cancer survivors.
Improving outcomes among cancer patients isn't as simple as telling them to exercise more, said Kathryn Schmitz, an exercise oncology researcher at U.P.M.C. Hill man Cancer Center. "Exercise is not just biology," she said. "It is also behavior."
Dr. Schmitz is the founding director of Moving Through Cancer, the program in which Mr. Colker is participating. It is tailored to each patient: Some need more support, while others "are well enough to go out and play some pickleball," she said.
Kimberly Barker, 68, suffered from low back and hip pain and fatigue after treatment for bladder and uterine cancer. A quilter who used to bicycle with her husband on trails near their home in Butler County, Pa., Ms. Barker lost the motivation to do the things she loved.
"I was just so tired, no energy, no stamina," she said.
She met with Ms. Masten, the trainer, once a week for 12 weeks, and also did the suggested exercises between meetings. She continued doing them after the program ended, and now feels back to her normal self. She and her husband have resumed their bike rides.
Because of the success in people like Ms. Barker, U.P.M.C. has decided to offer the program through its employee health plan for breast cancer patients beginning next year.
The health system will be the first in the country to offer insurance coverage for exercise oncology, Dr. Schmitz said. She and her colleagues argued for it based on randomized trials that showed it saved costs by reducing hospitalizations, emergency room trips and unplanned office visits.
"This U.P.M.C. rollout is a giant experiment," Dr. Schmitz said. If it's successful, the hospital plans to expand it to all cancers in 2028. Dr. Schmitz also pushed to incorporate exercise into standards that cancer hospitals must follow to receive certain accreditation, which will happen later this year.
"This is no longer just something that would be nice to have," Dr. Schmitz said. "This is a therapeutic intervention, it needs to be done — and it needs to be done for all patients."
PHOTOGRAPHS BY THEODORE TAE/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Exercises to Counter A Workday in a Chair
When you sit for hours, your entire body takes a hit — from your neck to your glutes. Our bodies crave movement variety, said David Jou, a physical therapist in New York City. But when you spend all day at a desk, your body starts to conform to the position it knows best, a process he calls “creep.”
“Once your tissues start to assume a shape, it becomes really hard to get out of,” he said. Eventually, an overly sedentary lifestyle can lead to muscle imbalances, joint issues and chronic pain.
It's important to counteract long periods of sitting with exercises that take your body out of that hunched position, said Katie Hillary, a physical therapist and strength and conditioning coach in Chappaqua, N.Y. That means opening up areas along the front of your body, including your chest and hip flexors, while engaging and strengthening muscles along the back of your body.
This 20-minute routine, designed with Mr. Jou and Ms. Hillary, combines mobility and strengthening exercises to move your neck, back and hips through ranges of motion you don't experience at a desk. HANNAH SINGLETON
---
Overview
TIME 20 to 25 minutes
INTENSITY Light
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What You'll Need
\- Chair or bench
A mat
\- A long resistance band and a short resistance band
\- Light to moderate dumbbell (optional)
Foam roller (optional)
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Chin Tucks
REPETITIONS Two sets of 10 TARGETS Activates the deep neck muscles
Start seated with your shoulders relaxed and spine upright. Look straight ahead and gently draw your head straight back, as if you were trying to make a double chin. Keep your gaze level rather than dropping your chin toward your chest. Hold for three seconds, then relax.
---
Neck Rolls
REPETITIONS One minute, each direction
TARGETS Stretches the mus-
cles along the front, side and
back of the neck
Start sitting or standing with your spine straight and shoulders relaxed. Slowly lower your chin toward your chest. Roll one ear toward your shoulder, and continue in a circle, tilting your head back before bringing your other ear toward your shoulder and returning your chin toward your chest. You should feel a stretch but no pain — go only as far as feels comfortable. If any spots feel particularly tight, hold the stretch and take a deep breath. Repeat in the opposite direction.
---
Thoracic Extension on Foam Roller
REPETITIONS Three sets of eight
TARGETS Stretches the chest and mobilizes the midback
Lie on your mat and position the foam roller horizontally beneath your shoulder blades. Place your hands behind your head, keeping your elbows wide. Slowly extend your upper back over the foam roller, allowing your chest to open. Keep your hips on the floor and avoid arching excessively through your lower back. If you need to release pressure, keep more weight on your feet. Hold for five seconds, and then return to the starting position.
---
Seated Row
REPETITIONS Three sets of 15
TARGETS Strengthens the upper back muscles
Sit on the mat with your legs extended in front of you, keeping a slight bend in your knees. Loop a light to medium resistance band around the soles of your feet and hold one end in each hand. Engage your core and sit tall. Pull the ends of the band toward your hip bones, drawing your shoulder blades back and together. Avoid shrugging your shoulders to your ears. Slowly extend your arms and control the movement back to the starting position.
---
Seated Thoracic Windmills
REPETITIONS Two sets of eight per side
TARGETS Stretches the chest and mobilizes the midback Sit on a chair or a bench. Reach down with your left arm and grab your right leg as far down as is comfortable. Rotate your torso to the right as you reach your right hand toward the ceiling, opening your chest. Aim to stack your shoulders, but go only as far as your mobility allows. Return to the starting position and repeat. Switch sides.
---
Half-Kneeling Hip Flexor Stretch
REPETITIONS Two sets of 30 seconds per side
TARGETS Stretches the hip flexors
Kneel on the mat with one knee on the ground and the opposite foot planted in front of you. (Place a pillow or cushion beneath your knee if needed.) Put your hands on your hips or on top of your knee, tuck your pelvis and tighten the glute on your kneeling side. Keeping that position, shift your hips forward until you feel a stretch in the front of the hip on the kneeling side. Rock in and out of the stretch for the allotted time. Switch sides.
---
Banded Hip Flexor March
REPETITIONS Two sets of 20 (10 per side)
TARGETS Strengthens the hip flexors and engages the core Stand tall with your feet hip-width apart and loop a short resistance band around both feet. Keeping your torso upright, raise one knee until your thigh is parallel to the floor. Keep your foot flexed and avoid leaning back. Lower your foot with control and repeat on the other side. You can keep your hands on your hips or swing the opposite arm as you march.
---
Seated Good Mornings
REPETITIONS Three sets of eight
TARGETS Strengthens and stretches the hips
Sit on a bench or chair with your feet wider than your hips and your toes out in front of your knees. Slightly angle your feet outward. Hold a light to medium dumbbell in both hands between your legs. Keeping your back flat, hinge forward from your hips and lower as far as you comfortably can, until you feel a stretch through your glutes and hamstrings. Press through your feet and squeeze your glutes to return to sitting.
---
Sit-to-Stand Squat
REPETITIONS Three sets of eight
TARGETS Strengthens the glutes and thighs
Stand in front of a bench or sturdy chair with your feet hips-width apart. Bend your knees and lower into a squat until you tap the chair. Press into your feet to stand back up and squeeze your glutes at the top, being mindful not to arch through your lower back. To make this movement more challenging, you can hold a dumbbell at your chest.
Scientists Warn That Fires Spread Dangerous Ozone
ANGELA WEISS/AGENCE FRANCE/PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
At ground level, the gas is an invisible pollutant that is harmful to human health.
---
By CLAYTON DALTON
In July, as smoke drifted down from Canadian wildfires, New York City officials initiated an emergency response to what was expected to be historically poor air quality.
Outreach workers fanned across the city. Police officers handed out masks. For a period on July 16, New York City had the third-worst air quality in the world.
Then the skies began to clear, and the response was concluded. But in a way, the emergency wasn't really over. A series of studies have found that even after the orange-gray smoke has disappeared, wildfires worsen air pollution in subtle and unexpected ways.
Researchers have quantified the risks over time, and over wide geographic areas, posed by small particulates called PM2.5, a constituent element of wildfire smoke. But scientists are now pointing to another, invisible hazard on the rise: ground-level ozone.
Ozone gas occurs naturally, and in the upper atmosphere it is protective, shielding the planet from solar radiation. But at ground level, ozone is toxic to the lining of human airways and has been linked to increased rates of asthma in children as well as heart disease and lung problems in adults.
"There's very little doubt that ozone exposure can cause premature mortality," said Dr. John Balmes, a physician and epidemiologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied ozone.
Ground-level ozone is monitored at about 1,200 locations. But these measurements cover only about 2 percent of the country, and most of the sensors are concentrated in cities.
Jun Wang, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Iowa, set out with his colleagues to make a better map. It was an ambitious undertaking.
Dr. Wang worked with a team that used machine learning, a kind of artificial intelligence, to crunch enormous amounts of data from satellites, surface measurements and atmospheric models to calculate ozone levels down to the square kilometer, across the entire country.
The results, published in June in Science, were sobering.
Like PM2.5 levels, ozone levels steadily declined through the early 2000s. But in 2015, they started climbing again, a shift that had "gone undetected by the sparse monitoring network," the authors wrote.
No one had noticed that fires had been steadily erasing progress made on ozone for over a decade. "The trend actually reversed solely due to wildfire," said Meng Zhou, a researcher at NASA and an author of the study. "We did not expect that the impact would be that big."
The researchers estimated that from 2022 to 2024, 43 million people were exposed to potentially hazardous levels of ozone because of wildfires.
The magnitude of the effect surprised even Dr. Balmes. "It's on the order of three to six years of progress reversed," he said. "That's pretty dramatic."
Minghao Qiu, an atmospheric scientist at Stony Brook University, led a team that used a similar machine-learning approach to study the interaction of smoke and ozone.
Their results, published in April in Science Advances, independently confirmed that ozone levels spike on smoky days, supporting the conclusion that wildfires have been driving the ground-level ozone increases.
"The E.P.A. has done a tremendous job in reducing ozone since the Clean Air Act," Dr. Qiu said. "But now we've introduced a new source, and it's changing really quickly."
Dr. Qiu's paper identified another unnerving trend: While Western fires primarily affected particulate levels in Western states, their effects on ozone occurred mostly in the East. The fires were worsening ozone levels thousands of miles away, where there was no smoke in the sky at all.
Because changes in air quality can be subtle, and are spread over huge geographic areas, they can be difficult for us to perceive. But the impacts on health are consequential.
Each of us breathes about 40 pounds of air each day, according to Dr. Wang. The surface area of our lungs dwarfs the body's other points of contact with the outside environment.
It is twice that of the gut, and 30 times that of the skin. Our bodies meet more of the world through the act of breathing than any other way.
"People pay attention to their diets, but do they pay as much attention to air quality?" Dr. Wang said. "The amount of air we consume is much greater, but we don't think about it."
Daniel Jaffe, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, said that it
Manhattan's skyline obscured by Canadian wildfire smoke in 2023. New fires darkened the city again in July. Researchers say that from 2022 to 2024, about 43 million people were exposed to potentially hazardous levels of ozone because of wildfires.
was important to recognize that most ozone still came from industrial emissions, and that regulation of those sources remained critical.
But global warming is accelerating, and a hotter, drier future will bring ever larger fires and more smoke.
Last year, Dr. Qiu and Marshall Burke, at Stanford, led a team that also used machine learning to predict the future toll from wildfire smoke. Under a high-warming scenario, they projected that smoke could cause around two million deaths in the United States over the next 30 years.
The economic impacts were even harder to grasp: Costs associated with smoke-related deaths exceeded all other climate damages combined.
"This whole field is evolving very rapidly, because wildfire itself is evolving very rapidly," Dr. Qiu said. "We didn't have such massive fires even five years ago."
A CONVERSATION WITH
PETER PIOT
He Helped Discover Ebola in 1976. He's Still Worried.
The absence of bad luck is the most important thing in life.
DANIEL BEREHULAK/THE NEW YORK TIMES
A Belgian scientist reflects on a five-decade career spent fighting two deadly pathogens.
By APOORVA MANDAVILLI
In the fall of 1976, a plastic blue flask holding two glass vials arrived at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium.
One vial had broken en route, spilling its bloody contents into the half-melted ice in the container. The other still held blood from a Flemish nun who had died of a mysterious disease in Yambuku, Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. A small handwritten note accompanying the vials, the writing half bled into the icy water, read: "Fièvre jaune?" ("Yellow fever?")
The task of identifying whether the woman had indeed died of yellow fever fell to the youngest member of the institute's team, a 27-year-old Belgian scientist, Dr. Peter Piot.
He was far from the only one involved, though. Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe, a Congolese doctor who had trained in Belgium, had collected the samples and sent them to the lab. And several others in Antwerp and Yambuku had helped to isolate the virus from the sample and characterize the outbreak.
Exactly 50 years ago on Sunday, Dr. Piot and two others became the first people to get a look at the culprit: a large, spindly virus that would turn out to be among the most terrifying pathogens nature can produce.
The team named it Ebola, after a river near the center of the outbreak that had already killed the nun and dozens of others. Over the years, scientists would determine that Ebola has several forms, which together have killed tens of thousands of people. A current outbreak of the Bundibugyo species, also in Congo, has sickened nearly 9,000 people and claimed more than 4,200 lives as of Oct. 6.
Less than a decade after his Ebola discovery, Dr. Piot became a notable player in the history of a second deadly virus: H.I.V. In the early 1980s, his work in Africa revealed that H.I.V. was not only a disease of gay men, as many people at the time believed. In 1995, he became the first director of UNAIDS, the United Nations program, and is credited with helping the world understand that the disease was ravaging some of the planet's poorest and most marginalized people.
Now 77, Dr. Piot is a chair of the Accra Reset, a multinational effort to reform global health around sovereignty of nations.
During an interview in New York last month, he spoke volubly about the persistent threat of infectious diseases and the need to transform how the world tackles them.
These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Walk us through your discovery in 1976, which you have described as an "aha-arleb-
nis," or aha moment.
In those days, they could not isolate the virus in what was then called Zaire. There was no lab that could do it. We had no clue that was what was in there. We had the name of the patient and the doctor, and that was all.
Under the microscope, we saw something we'd never seen. Normally, viruses are spheres or square, and here we saw something more like spaghetti or worms. We were baffled, and we knew only one virus up to then had been described in that way, and that was Marburg [a virus that caused severe and often fatal hemorrhagic fever]. But we needed more certainty. So we sent it to [the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in] Atlanta, and there, in two days, they proved it was not Marburg.
What I find interesting, compared to my later experiences with H.I.V., is we never fought with each other. Afterwards, I discovered in science it's not always like that.
When you handled the specimen, you wore only simple, thin gloves, not the elaborate protective gear you now know you need when handling Ebola.
This is a very big lesson for my whole life and for everybody. You never know what's in a specimen from a patient. It can be nothing. It can be Ebola.
Dr. Peter Piot, 77, has over the years been deeply involved in fighting both Ebola and H.I.V. He is a chair of the Accra Reset, a multinational effort to reform global health around sovereignty of nations.
'But we still don't have a cure for H.I.V. We still don't have a vaccine.'
I was once infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis Bovis [which causes tuberculosis in cattle]. With Covid, I ended up in intensive care. But that's it. I'm not a risk taker. I'm too scared to ski, for example.
I'd like to challenge that notion. You were the first to volunteer to go into the epidemic zone, and you later took your young children deep into Congo's Virunga forest.
Excitement was bigger than risk, than fear, let's put it that way. I like to go where the problem is. But is that risk? Yeah, maybe. I'm very careful. I mean, we all were. But retrospectively, if anything had gone wrong, we could have — yeah, it could have been bad.
I put curiosity maybe first, and problem-solving. I usually get scared afterwards.
---
What about that first trip to Congo — what was that like?
I had never been to Africa and had zero experience in outbreak investigation. But I had chosen this career because I was passionate about it.
We drove to the hospital in Yambuku. It took nearly a day, and I think it's only 150 kilometers [about 93 miles]. It was rainy season, and there was hardly any road. So that was my first confrontation with that environment, which, from a perspective of epidemic control, is good and bad. It's good in the sense that people are not very mobile. It's bad to get there to organize a response.
My biggest fear was mosquitoes, because how do you protect yourself? We didn't know how the virus spread. Is it water? Is it food? Is it sex? Since I was the most junior, I had to do the boring work, looking closely at the hospital records. Within 48 hours, we had a pretty good indication that it required close contact.
That seems really fast, especially for 1976. Even without sophisticated epidemiology tools, you can figure out in a very short time how an unknown new pathogen is transmitted by listening to people.
When I arrived, I would just talk to people. They would sometimes come up to me with some local drink, and some local something to smoke. And then you can start talking. I would come back at 10 or 11 at night, and my colleagues would have been long back already. But you know what? This is how you find out things.
You seem to like talking to lots of different kinds of people: Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro and Rahul Gandhi, the scion of India's most powerful political dynasty. You have also talked to members of rebel groups. I try to see who is part of the solution, and it doesn't have to be people you love or that you would like to drink with.
---
You founded UNAIDS, yet you believe the organization should shut down.
When I founded UNAIDS, I always thought it had a limited life. On the one hand, it's a bit emotional because I spent 12 years of my life on it, seven days a week, nonstop. But I also think we need to take a cold and hard look at what the world really needs today.
We should not mix up the existence of UNAIDS and the AIDS response. I'm as passionate about the AIDS response as I was 20 years ago. But it has to be done differently now. We're at a time where we need to go for a far more integrated type of approach to health, and not purely each disease with its own organization. We need to think of the people and the cause, and not about institutions.
---
It's been 50 years since you spotted Ebola, and 40 since your initial work on H.I.V. But both are still major threats.
In 1973, when I was in my last year in medical school, I went to talk to the professors, for what today you call career counseling. They said there was no future in infectious diseases. We have vaccines, we have antibiotics, we have water and sanitation and so on — that was their verdict.
We've made incredible progress, but we can do better. A turning point for me was that H.I.V. became treatable. There are 30 million-plus people whose daily life depends on taking a pill — isn't that incredible?
But we still don't have a cure for H.I.V. We still don't have a vaccine. And there will always be spillovers; we cannot wish that away. But we have to do everything we can so that it doesn't degenerate into an epidemic.
---
The current Ebola outbreak is growing faster than any before it. Do you think it's possible to bring it under control?
Ebola, in theory, should be one of the easiest outbreaks to control because it requires such direct contact with body fluids. It's very unlike Covid, because all you need to do is isolate people who are sick, and wear protective gear. In a resilient, well-off society, you have all these systems in place.
It's the context that makes it so difficult in Congo. This is a region that has been terrorized by armed conflict for decades. You can't go from one place to another. There's also sexual violence. The health care system is not functioning; it is not ready to isolate, to treat, to inform people. There's a lot of misinformation. But then there are also customs and rituals, like funerals, which are very dangerous when someone with Ebola dies.
We also know that more people die from other causes that are treatable than from Ebola itself. It really paralyzes the whole health care system. We have much higher maternal mortality, kids dying from malaria, or accidents. We need to make sure that we can also provide this kind of regular care, not only to save people, but also to restore that confidence and that trust in the system.
That's why I'm very concerned that this outbreak is going to last for quite a while. But one day, it'll be contained.\*
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💡 驻外文化与社会背景解码： 该报道刊发于《The New York Times》要闻版面，折射出当地社会在日常生活与观念层面的真实关注点。
2026 诺贝尔经济学奖得主罗伯特·霍尔（Robert E. Hall）与迈克尔·伍德福德揭示了现代消费的核心规律：约 80% 拥有资产的家庭根据『对未来长期收入的预期』平稳消费；而底层 20% 缺乏储蓄的『月光家庭（Hand-to-mouth）』则完全受制于当期账单，解释了为何高通胀下美国会出现一边高端消费旺盛、一边底层生存焦虑的 K 型分化。
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