Aurelia Butler

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    5 Books on Healing From Trauma

    Neuroscientists, psychologists and other experts share the titles they recommend most.When Gabor Maté was in his 40s and a successful doctor in Vancouver, Canada, he struggled with depression and strained relationships. Picking up “The Drama of the Gifted Child,” by Alice Miller, was the first step to understanding the root of his problems.“A good book gives you a map to yourself,” said Dr. Maté, now a trauma researcher and author of “The Myth of Normal.”While reading Dr. Miller’s book, his experiences started to make sense. “My depression, my self-loathing,” he explained, were a result of early childhood trauma.Trauma is a deeply distressing experience that leaves lasting effects on a person’s thoughts, emotions and behavior. It rewires both the body and mind and shapes overall health. Research shows, however, that the right tools can help us regulate our emotions and rebuild a sense of safety.Many people are hungry for books that explore trauma: Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s “The Body Keeps the Score” has sold more than three million copies globally and spent more than six years total on the New York Times best-seller list. But there are other works that can help us make sense of negative experiences.The five titles below were recommended by neuroscientists, psychologists and trauma specialists as sources to help you understand and process trauma.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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    Trump Administration Deals With Signal Group Chat Leak Fallout: What to Know

    The Trump administration is dealing with the fallout of an extraordinary leak of internal national security deliberations, disclosed in an encrypted group chat that mistakenly included a journalist from The Atlantic.In the group message among cabinet officials and senior White House staff, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth disclosed war plans two hours before U.S. troops launched attacks against the Houthi militia in Yemen. Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, inadvertently added Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, to the group chat on Signal, a commercial messaging app.Here’s the latest.What has the White House said?President Trump told NBC News on Tuesday that the leak was “the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one.”Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, posted on social media that “no ‘war plans’ were discussed” and “no classified material was sent to the thread.” But Mr. Goldberg wrote that he had not published some of the messages in the thread because he said they contained sensitive information.Mr. Goldberg’s report also raised concerns about administration officials using Signal, a nonsecure messaging platform, and setting the messages to automatically delete. Ms. Leavitt pushed back against those concerns.“The White House Counsel’s Office has provided guidance on a number of different platforms for President Trump’s top officials to communicate as safely and efficiently as possible,” she wrote.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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    ‘Being Maria’ Review: The Muse’s Side of the Story

    Starring Anamaria Vartolomei and Matt Dillon, this French drama chronicles the life of the actress Maria Schneider after her traumatic experience on the set of “Last Tango in Paris.”When it comes to telling stories about the victims of abuse, filmmakers are often faced with a dilemma: to show or not show the act of violence. Showing could mean exploiting the victim’s pain to satisfy viewers’ curiosity; not showing could mean hedging around a hard truth.Jessica Palud’s “Being Maria” — a biopic of Maria Schneider, a French actress perhaps best known for playing the mistress of Marlon Brando’s character in “Last Tango in Paris” — chooses to show.In 1972, when the 19-year-old Schneider was shooting one of the film’s many sex scenes, Brando (with the director Bernardo Bertolucci’s blessing) improvised without telling her his intentions, using a stick of butter to perform what on-screen looks like anal penetration.“Being Maria” recreates the scene — and it’s a tough watch. Anamaria Vartolomei, who plays Schneider, conveys shock, discomfort, fear and shame in distressing close-ups. When the scene cuts, Brando (Matt Dillon), who had previously been chummy with Maria, looks sheepish. Bertolucci (Giuseppe Maggio) is unapologetic; he tells Maria the scene was meant to be intense.Loosely adapted from the memoir “My Cousin Maria Schneider,” by Vanessa Schneider, the film doesn’t stick around too long on Bertolucci’s set. Benjamin Biolay’s treacly string score adds an unsavory sentimental touch, but the rest of the film is quite sober as it moves through the decade of Schneider’s life after “Last Tango.”Showing how Schneider’s trauma festered over time — and eventually calloused over — the film moodily weaves together scenes of her struggles with addiction, nights at the discothèque and experiences on other movie sets, relying on Vartolomei’s edgy, delicate performance to signal Maria’s underlying anxieties. If the meandering nature of the film makes the psychic fallout seem tonally scattered, it nevertheless conveys the sense that she’s sleepwalking through life — and always fighting to snap out of it.Being MariaNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. More

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    Israeli Police Question Palestinian Director Hamdan Ballal After West Bank Incident

    Witnesses said that Hamdan Ballal was assaulted by masked settlers in his home village. The Israeli military said he was detained on suspicion of throwing stones, which he denies.The Israeli police questioned a Palestinian director of an Oscar-winning documentary on Tuesday, according to the authorities and his lawyer, after witnesses reported that Israeli settlers attacked him near his home in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.The police were holding Hamdan Ballal, 37, one of the directors of the film, “No Other Land,” and two other Palestinians on suspicion of hurling stones at Israeli vehicles and injuring a settler — accusations they all deny, according to Leah Tsemel, a lawyer representing the detainees.One settler, a minor, was also detained, but he was released for medical treatment and would be questioned later, according to the Israeli police.The details of the episode are not entirely clear. But Palestinian witnesses and a group of American activists on the scene said that before he was arrested, Mr. Ballal was set upon as a group of assailants, many of whom were masked, attacked his home village of Susya.The episode drew attention to rising settler violence in the West Bank. During the past year, Jewish extremists have thrown rocks at Palestinians, set cars on fire and defaced homes. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs recorded more than 1,000 incidents of settler violence in 2024.President Trump has taken a softer stance on settler violence, canceling sanctions imposed by the Biden administration against individuals accused of carrying out violent acts against Palestinians. On Tuesday, a confirmation hearing for Mike Huckabee, Mr. Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel and an outspoken supporter of settlement building, is set to begin.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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    Frank Bisignano, Trump’s Pick to Lead Social Security Administration, Faces Senators

    Frank Bisignano, the Wall Street veteran being considered to lead the Social Security Administration, will go before the Senate on Tuesday morning, where lawmakers will demand answers about his plans for an agency recently thrown into tumult.The plans being laid by the Trump administration for the typically staid agency — long viewed as a third rail of government — have prompted widespread outcry given its crucial work: It delivers billions of dollars in retirement, survivor and disability payments to 73 million people each month. The agency typically evolves slowly, aware that missteps could potentially cut off cash to people who rely on it.But in the month or so since a team from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency arrived at the agency, it has taken a series of rapid fire actions, including significant job cuts and policy changes that have rattled many advocates and employees, who fear the changes could make it difficult for vulnerable people to access benefits.Some concerned Democratic lawmakers recently sent a letter to Mr. Bisignano asking him to promise not to privatize any of the agency’s components.“We are gravely concerned about the current trajectory of the S.S.A. and more specifically, that those charged with leading it might profit off its destruction,” Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote.Mr. Bisignano, who described himself in an interview on CNBC as “fundamentally a DOGE person,” has spent much of his career as a fixer for major financial institutions hoping to improve their back-end processes. He said he planned to bring the same approach to Social Security.“The objective is not to touch benefits,” he said in the interview. “The objective is to figure out, there could be fraud, waste and abuse in there. And we build A.I. to find fraud, waste and abuse for a living. It’s going to be a tech story.” More

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    Samsung Electronics Executive Han Jong-Hee Dies at 63

    Mr. Han, a longtime Samsung executive, oversaw the company’s consumer electronics business since 2021.Han Jong-Hee, the co-chief executive of Samsung Electronics and a nearly four-decade veteran of the South Korean consumer technology giant, died on Tuesday.Mr. Han, who was 63, suffered a sudden heart attack, according to a company spokeswoman.Mr. Han had shared chief executive duties with the head of Samsung’s semiconductor business since 2022, and was also a member of the board. He had run Samsung’s consumer electronics business since 2021 and a year later added the digital appliance operation to his brief. Previously he oversaw the group that makes the visual displays for Samsung’s wide variety of electronic devices.Mr. Han graduated from Inha University in Incheon, South Korea, with a degree in electrical engineering. He joined Samsung in 1988 shortly after the death of its founder, Lee Byung-chull, during a pivotal period in the company’s history.Mr. Lee’s son and successor pushed Samsung relentlessly to weather the technological changes of the 1990s and 2000s to dominate the market for flat-screen displays and mobile phones.Samsung is the largest and most successful of the conglomerates known as chaebol that transformed South Korea’s economy into a global export powerhouse. Samsung Electronics accounts for a significant portion of the country’s exports. Samsung is one of the most popular brands in the global smartphone market, where it competes with Apple and Xiaomi. It is also the world’s largest maker of memory chips used in everything from electric cars and smart watches to advanced artificial intelligence servers.Mr. Han is survived by his wife and three children, the company said.There were no plans in place yet for who would succeed him at Samsung, it added. More

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    NYT Crossword Answers for March 25, 2025

    Bob Benson makes his New York Times Crossword debut.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — In 2021, AMC released a melodramatic ad to encourage people to return to movie theaters. Nicole Kidman starred in the ad, and she has yet to outlive the jokes about her opening line: “We come to this place for magic.”Whether or not you seek magic in movies, you may be enchanted by today’s crossword, constructed by Bob Benson in his New York Times debut, which plays cleverly on certain film titles. As I invite you to solve it, I’d like to paraphrase Ms. Kidman: Shall we go somewhere we’ve never been before, to be not just entertained but somehow reborn, together?Today’s ThemeWhen you can’t find a revealer clue — which usually describes the puzzle itself — it means that the theme is somewhat plain to discern. In this grid, the pattern is made up of movie descriptions that double as common expressions. You might refer to [“The Lego Movie”?] (17A), for instance, as a PLASTIC FILM, while [“Star Trek”?] (23A) is a SPACE PROGRAM.I won’t spoil the fun by giving away the full answers, but here’s a hint if you’re stuck: Each entry uses a word that can also serve as a synonym for “movie” or “TV show.”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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    U.N. to Pull International Workers From Gaza Amid Israeli Strikes

    The United Nations is withdrawing about one-third of its international work force in Gaza, with the reduction coming after an Israeli tank shell hit a U.N. compound.The United Nations announced on Monday that it would reduce its presence in Gaza by withdrawing about one-third of its international workers there, following repeated strikes of its facilities by Israel.Secretary General António Guterres said in a statement that the decision to reduce the organization’s footprint in Gaza was “difficult” at a time when humanitarian needs were soaring and as a resumption of Israeli attacks were killing hundreds of Palestinians, including women and children.The drawdown announced Monday would be the first time since the start of the Israeli-Hamas war in 2023 that the United Nations has reduced its work force in Gaza, but it will retain a presence there.“The U.N. is not leaving Gaza. The organization remains committed to continuing to provide aid that civilians depend on for their survival and protection,” Mr. Guterres said in the statement.At least 280 U.N. staff members have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, the organization’s largest loss of life in any conflict in its history, Mr. Guterres has said.Stéphane Dujarric, the U.N. spokesman, said that about 30 percent of the organization’s 100 or so international staff members from different agencies would be leaving Gaza over the next week and that likely more would depart in the coming weeks.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