Aurelia Butler

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    Leonids Meteor Shower: When and How to Watch Its Peak

    The event produces some of the year’s fastest meteors, although the nearly full moon may make them challenging to spot.Our universe might be chock-full of cosmic wonder, but you can observe only a fraction of astronomical phenomena with your naked eye. Meteor showers, natural fireworks that streak brightly across the night sky, are one of them.The latest observable meteor shower will be the Leonids, which have been active since at least Nov. 6 and are forecast to continue through Nov. 30. They reach their peak Nov. 16 to 17, or Saturday night into Sunday morning.Meteors from the Leonids can be spotted in the constellation Leo, and they will be visible from both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The Leonids produce some of the fastest meteors each year, at 44 miles per second, with bright, long tails. But this year, spotting them may be difficult during the peak because of the nearly full moon.To get a hint at when to watch, you can use a meter that relies on data from the Global Meteor Network showing when real-time fireball activity levels increase in the coming days.Where meteor showers come fromThere is a chance you might see a meteor on any given night, but you are most likely to catch one during a shower. Meteor showers are caused by Earth passing through the rubble trailing a comet or asteroid as it swings around the sun. This debris, which can be as small as a grain of sand, leaves behind a glowing stream of light as it burns up in Earth’s atmosphere.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    A $190 Soap Dispenser Has Become the Hit Product at Gem Home

    The ceramic vessel made by a former fashion designer has become the hit product at a new shop in Downtown Manhattan.The soap dispenser could have looked like anything.Most important to Flynn McGarry was to have a stylish vessel in keeping with the aesthetic of Gem Home, his new store and cafe in Manhattan. Its customers can nibble on lentils and slabs of parsnip cake at communal farm tables lit by tapered candles or browse shelves bearing a tight selection of comestibles and products like antique cutlery, cloth napkins and glass tumblers imported from Britain.“My biggest thing was not just selling glass bottles of soap,” said Mr. McGarry, 25, a chef since his teenage years whom Vogue has called the Justin Bieber of food.He went with a ceramic dispenser produced by hand in small batches and made in saturated colors and abstract shapes. Each is filled with a quince-scented soap from Ffern, a luxury fragrance company in Britain, and comes with a refill. A 10-ounce dispenser costs $190, and a 12-ounce version costs $210.Since Gem Home opened in NoLIta three weeks ago, it has sold 24 dispensers, an average of one a day. (The product is currently sold out; new stock is expected this weekend.)“I didn’t know I wasn’t going to be able to keep them on the shelves for more than 25 minutes,” Mr. McGarry said. “They’re not cheap,” he added. But the dispensers have seemed to resonate with people willing to pay a premium for objects aimed at “elevating the most mundane elements of life,” as he put it.Created by Shane Gabier, a fashion designer turned ceramic artist, the dispensers are an offshoot of a version he made for the bathroom at Gem Home, which is attached to a wall to prevent people from stealing it. Mr. Gabier is also making a wall soap dispenser for the bathroom at Gem Wine, Mr. McGarry’s wine bar on the Lower East Side.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    A Tiny Gladiator Tells of the Reach of Roman Empire Celebrity

    A 2,000-year-old copper knife handle depicting a gladiator will go on display at Hadrian’s Wall, in the north of England, next year.The tiny copper gladiator stands ready for battle, decked out in a helmet and armor, an elaborate shield held in front as if bracing for his opponent’s blows.The figure, just three inches tall, is some 2,000 years old, and was once perched on the handle of a knife. It was found almost three decades ago by a diver in the river Tyne, near Hadrian’s Wall in the north of England, which was for hundreds of years the northern frontier of the Roman Empire.The knife handle remained in the diver’s private collection until it was recently offered on loan to English Heritage, a charity that manages many of the country’s historic monuments.It will go on display in the museum at Corbridge Roman Town at Hadrian’s Wall next year, the charity said on Friday in a well-timed announcement that coincided with the release in Britain of Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator II” film, starring Paul Mescal.Experts say the copper figure is evidence of how the celebrity status of gladiators reached into every corner of the once sprawling Roman Empire, including the far-flung outposts of Britain.The figure stands only 3 inches tall. English Heritage noted that because it appears to be left-handed, which would have been considered unlucky at the time, it may depict a specific person.English HeritageWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Book Review: ‘Lazarus Man,’ by Richard Price

    “Lazarus Man” follows several characters in Harlem in the wake of a building collapse.LAZARUS MAN, by Richard PriceWe first meet Anthony Carter in a barroom, and the first thing he does is tell a lie. “I went there too,” he says to a woman he’s vaguely interested in picking up, referring to her Fordham Rams sweatshirt.The gambit goes nowhere — the woman borrowed the shirt from her cousin — and anyway Anthony never went to Fordham but to Columbia, where he was kicked out after a few months for dealing drugs. The expulsion was a waste, since he didn’t need the money. But it is the first of a long string of disappointments that have brought Anthony, now in his 40s, unemployed and separated from his wife and stepdaughter, to this bar on Lenox and 123rd in Manhattan because “it was one of those nights,” as the book’s first line has it.After tying one on at the bar, Anthony stops at a second-floor church where he is entranced and repulsed by a charismatic female preacher: “HE CAME IN BECAUSE HE HEARD THE NOISE, GOD.” He goes home and to bed, with a job interview for a retail position the next day.Anthony is one of four central characters Richard Price follows in his 10th novel, “Lazarus Man,” a book difficult to categorize because its tone and action are neither comic nor tragic. Unlike previous Price novels, it’s not a police procedural, though there is a detective looking for a missing person. A specific place and a broad sociological interest in its residents tie the book together, as do the Lower East Side in Price’s “Lush Life” (2008) and the fictionalized Jersey City (called Dempsey) in “Clockers” (1992) and other novels.In the Harlem of “Lazarus Man” it is the spring of 2008, a temporal interzone before the catastrophe of the financial crisis, the political ascent of Barack Obama (mentioned only once, near the end) and the advent of the smartphone. You might say, “It was one of those years.”The novel’s unifying event is the collapse of a tenement building that kills six residents and draws its protagonists to the smoldering rubble. Detective Mary Roe is among the police officers who report to the scene to account for the dead, the survivors and the missing. Felix Pearl hears the early-morning noise from around the corner and shows up with his camera. He’s a young man with an obsessive vocation as a photographer but only hazy notions of how to make a living at it, and how and why to become an artist: He at least knows he should be looking for the action. Royal Davis, a funeral director, is looking for clients because business has hit a rough patch, so he sends his young son Marquise to the collapse site to hand out business cards to the possibly bereaved.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Nuclear Power Was Once Shunned at Climate Talks. Now, It’s a Rising Star.

    Growing worldwide energy demand and other factors have shifted the calculus, but hurdles still lie ahead.For years at global climate summits, nuclear energy was seen by many as part of the problem, not part of the solution.Sama Bilbao y Leon has been attending the annual United Nations climate change talks since 1999, when she was a student of nuclear engineering. And for most of that time, she said, people didn’t want to discuss nuclear power at all.“We had antinuclear groups saying, ‘What are you doing here? Leave!’” she said.These days, it’s a very different story.At last year’s climate conference in the United Arab Emirates, 22 countries pledged, for the first time, to triple the world’s use of nuclear power by midcentury to help curb global warming. At this year’s summit in Azerbaijan, six more countries signed the pledge.“It’s a whole different dynamic today,” said Dr. Bilbao y Leon, who now leads the World Nuclear Association, an industry trade group. “A lot more people are open to talking about nuclear power as a solution.”The list of countries pledging to build new nuclear reactors, which can generate electricity without emitting any planet-warming greenhouse gases, includes longtime users of the technology like Canada, France, South Korea and the United States. But it also includes countries that don’t currently have any nuclear capacity, like Kenya, Mongolia and Nigeria.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Why States Are Offering Workers at Private Companies Access to I.R.A.s

    With the plans, workers are automatically enrolled and contribute through payroll deductions. The goal is to help more Americans save for retirement.Traditional pensions are increasingly rare. About half of employees at private companies don’t have access to a retirement plan. And retirees themselves say they haven’t saved enough.That is why states have decided to step in and offer retirement accounts for private-sector employees, helping workers to save more and, new research shows, perhaps even spurring companies to offer their own workplace retirement plans.Automatic individual retirement account programs, known as “auto-I.R.A.s,” typically require private employers that don’t offer workplace retirement plans like 401(k)s to register for state-run plans.Workers are automatically enrolled in I.R.A.s, often with 3 to 5 percent of their income deducted from their paychecks, but can change the amount or opt out if they prefer. The employers — typically small businesses and nonprofits — provide access to payroll deductions to ease worker contributions, but don’t oversee the plan or pay fees.Auto-I.R.A.s are now available in 10 states, including New Jersey and Delaware, which started plans this summer, and soon will be in seven more, according to the Georgetown University Center for Retirement Initiatives. At the end of October, there were more than 930,000 accounts with $1.7 billion in savings for the eight plans for which data was available, according to the Georgetown center.Workers can, of course, open an I.R.A. on their own at a bank or brokerage. But few workers do so, perhaps because of inertia or because they are intimidated about making investment choices.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Pete Hegseth, Trump’s Pick for Defense, Faced Sexual Assault Claim in 2017

    Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to lead the Defense Department, was the subject of a sexual assault complaint in 2017 in Monterey, Calif., according to public records and Mr. Hegseth’s lawyer. No charges were filed.In a statement issued late Thursday, Monterey Police Department said had it investigated an allegation of sexual assault involving Mr. Hegseth at the address of the Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel and Spa.“An allegation was made and was fully investigated and he was cleared,” Timothy Parlatore, Mr. Hegseth’s attorney, said. “This should have no effect whatsoever on the nomination process.”Mr. Hegseth, a Fox News host and veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is a controversial choice for secretary of defense. Former Pentagon officials have questioned whether he can win Senate confirmation because of his lack of experience for the job. His support for combat veterans accused of war crimes has also drawn criticism.Mr. Hegseth was a speaker at a conference of the California Federation of Republican Women at the Monterey hotel in early October 2017 when the encounter that led to the investigation occurred. According to the police statement, the complaint was filed four days after the encounter, and the complainant had bruises to her thigh.The police report itself was not released. The complaint was reported earlier by Vanity Fair. More

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    Argentina Mulls Exiting Paris Climate Deal

    The South American nation says it is considering withdrawing from the landmark agreement, which aims to limit carbon emissions and slow global warming.Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, is considering withdrawing the South American nation from the Paris climate agreement that aims to curb planet-warming emissions, a drastic move that only one other world leader has made in the past: former President Donald J. Trump, who withdrew the United States during his first term.The South American country is considering leaving the 2015 agreement as part of a broad reassessment of its climate policies, Argentina’s foreign minister said on Thursday.Argentina’s review of the landmark climate deal comes as the world braces for an intended second withdrawal from the accords by President-elect Trump. If Mr. Milei also abandons the agreement, some worry it could set off a domino effect, prompting other countries to reconsider their own participation.The country has not yet made a decision on whether it will leave the accords, according to the foreign minister, Gerardo Werthein. But it is reconsidering its participation in a deal that “has a lot of elements” that Mr. Milei’s government does not agree with.“We’re re-evaluating our strategy on all matters related to climate change,” he said in an interview with The New York Times. “And so far, we haven’t made any other decision beyond standing down until things are clearer.”A day earlier, Mr. Milei unexpectedly pulled out Argentina’s delegation from the annual United Nations climate conference, which is being hosted in Baku, Azerbaijan, and is known as COP29 this year. In the past, Mr. Milei, a right-wing libertarian, has called the climate crisis a “socialist lie.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More