Aurelia Butler

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    Is Russia an Adversary or a Future Partner? Trump’s Aides May Have to Decide.

    On Tuesday, America’s top intelligence officials will release their current assessment of Russia. They are caught between what their analysts say and what President Trump wants to hear.When the nation’s intelligence chiefs go before Congress on Tuesday to provide their first public “Worldwide Threat Assessment” of President Trump’s second term, they’ll face an extraordinary choice.Do they stick with their long-running conclusion about President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, that his goal is to crush the Ukrainian government and “undermine the United States and the West?”Or do they cast Mr. Putin in the terms Mr. Trump and his top negotiator with Russia are describing him with these days: as a trustworthy future business partner who simply wants to end a nasty war, get control of parts of Ukraine that are rightly his and resume a regular relationship with the United States?The vexing choice has become all the more stark in recent days since Steve Witkoff, one of Mr. Trump’s oldest friends from the real estate world and his chosen envoy to the Mideast and Russia, has begun picking up many of Mr. Putin’s favorite talking points.Mr. Witkoff wrote off European fears that Russia could violate whatever cease-fire is agreed upon and a peacekeeping force must be assembled to deter Moscow. In an interview with Tucker Carlson, the pro-MAGA podcaster, Mr. Witkoff said the peacekeeping idea was “a combination of a posture and a pose” by America’s closest NATO allies.It is a view, he said, that was born of a “sort of notion of we’ve all got to be like Winston Churchill, the Russians are going to march across Europe.” He continued: “I think that’s preposterous.”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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    Hamdan Ballal, Palestinian Director of ‘No Other Land,’ Is Attacked in West Bank, Witnesses Say

    Hamdan Ballal was assaulted by masked attackers in his home village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, witnesses said. The Israeli military said he had been detained for questioning.A Palestinian director of the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land” was beaten bloody near his home by Israeli settlers and detained by the Israeli authorities in the occupied West Bank on Monday evening, witnesses said.The director, Hamdan Ballal, was set upon in Susya, his home village, by at least 20 masked people, mostly teenagers armed with rocks, sticks and knives, according to Joseph Kaplan Weinger, 26, who said he had come upon the attack after it began. Mr. Weinger is part of a volunteer initiative that provides protection in areas vulnerable to settler violence.It was not clear what prompted the attack, but Mr. Weinger, who is also a doctoral student in sociology at the University of California in Los Angeles, said the group had descended on Susya, which is south of Hebron, and assaulted West Bank residents as they were breaking the fast during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. Some mockingly shouted holiday blessings as they did so, he said.Mr. Weinger said that he began honking the car horn in an attempt to alert nearby Israeli soldiers to the attack, but that the Israeli forces prevented him and two companions from reaching Mr. Ballal’s home.“Soldiers just stood around,” he said. “Later, when we got there, we saw his blood on the ground.”Mr. Ballal, 37, was one of three Palestinians detained, according to witnesses and the Israeli military. Leah Zemel, a lawyer representing the detainees, said that she had been informed that they were being held in a military center for medical treatment ahead of questioning, but that she did not know the reason for their detention.The Israeli military said in a statement that “several terrorists” had hurled rocks at Israeli citizens, damaging their vehicles near Susya and prompting a “violent confrontation” that involved “mutual rock hurling between Palestinians and Israelis.” The military said that when its forces and the police arrived, “terrorists” threw rocks at them.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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    The Importance of Being SpaceX

    Tesla might be suffering, but SpaceX is poised to profit off billions in new government contractsMuch attention has been paid to how Elon Musk’s high-profile role in President Trump’s White House has hurt Tesla: Sales are falling, its stock price has slipped from its peak and embarrassed liberals are turning their cars back in.Some of that attention is being supplied by Trump himself. “I know you’ve been through a lot,” Trump told Musk during today’s cabinet meeting, at which Musk perched at one end of the table wearing a red hat that said “Trump was right about everything.” Trump portrayed him as stoically weathering the backlash against his businesses.“He has never asked me for a thing,” Trump said.Perhaps not. But even as Tesla suffers, another of his companies is poised to profit off billions of dollars in new government contracts. That company is SpaceX.My colleague Eric Lipton, an investigative reporter in The Times’s Washington bureau, has laid out the myriad ways that SpaceX stands to benefit from enormous sums in federal spending even as Musk, focused on cutting costs, slices his way through the government.SpaceX is positioning itself to win billions in new federal contracts from the Pentagon, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Communications Commission and NASA, Eric writes. The scale of the business is staggering, as is the potential for conflicts of interest.Conflicts could arise not just from Musk’s dual roles as the chief executive of SpaceX and an adviser to Trump. Current and recent employees of SpaceX also now hold government positions, some of which could allow them to steer work back to SpaceX.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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    Assessment Warns Against Conflating Legal Musk Protests With Tesla Vandalism

    President Trump has suggested attacks against Tesla are a coordinated effort to intimidate the billionaire Elon Musk, but an internal intelligence assessment did not support that claim and warned against conflating legal protests against Mr. Musk with vandalism to his property.The attacks on Tesla vehicles and facilities “appear to have been conducted by lone offenders, and all known incidents occurred at night, making identification and arrest of the actors difficult,” officials with the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security wrote in an intelligence bulletin dated March 21 and obtained by The New York Times.The initial assessment, shared with law enforcement agencies across the country and subject to change as investigations proceed, was based on an analysis of vandalism investigations in nine states over the past two months. It concluded that the attacks, which included firing gunshots, spraying graffiti, smashing windows and setting vehicles on fire, were “rudimentary” and not intended to injure people.The people taking these actions “may perceive these attacks as victimless property crimes,” but their “tactics can cause accidental or intentional bodily harm” to bystanders and first responders, the officials wrote in the report.While law enforcement agencies should aggressively pursue people committing those acts, they should not investigate “constitutionally protected activity” directed at Mr. Musk, who has overseen a far-reaching effort to reduce the size and function of the federal government, they added.Last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi described the Tesla attacks as “domestic terrorism.” The director of the F.B.I., Kash Patel, reiterated that assessment on Monday, saying it was investigating what he described as an increase in violent activity.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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    Teen Who Set Off Avalanche Is Fourth Person Killed on Alaska Slopes This Month

    A 16-year-old was riding a snowmobile in the Kenai Mountains when he was swept away and buried, officials said.An Alaska teenager who was riding a snowmobile was killed on Saturday when he set off an avalanche and was buried, becoming the fourth person in the state to lose their life in a mountain slide this month, the authorities said.The number is high for Alaska, which forecasters say in recent years has been averaging three avalanche deaths annually.The 16-year-old, whose body was recovered on Sunday, was identified by the Alaska State Troopers as Tucker Challan of Soldotna, Alaska. He was buried under about 10 feet of snow while riding in Turnagain Pass in the Kenai Mountains, about 60 miles south of Anchorage.The avalanche occurred on the backside of Seattle Ridge, in a popular recreation area known as Warmup Bowl, the Chugach National Forest Avalanche Information Center said.At the time, the center reported, there was a weak layer of frost about two to three feet beneath the snow surface, which experts say can easily collapse and cause an avalanche. The layers form when the weather is clear and present a hidden danger with each new winter storm.“It’s like a layer cake,” Wendy Wagner, the center’s director, said in a phone interview on Monday. “It has been causing many avalanches.”According to the center, a group of people who were riding snow machines — often referred to as snowmobiles outside Alaska — dug Tucker out of the snow in about an hour, but he had died from his injuries.On the afternoon of his death, the center held an avalanche awareness program in a parking lot on the other side of the ridge, which it said was a coincidence. It is continuing to warn that people should avoid traveling on or below steep terrain.Noting that avalanches can reach speeds over 60 miles per hour, Ms. Wagner said that snowmobile riders and skiers should not assume that the snowpack is stable because other people have crossed it.“There can be a sense that if you trigger something that you can outrun it,” she said. “Just because there have been tracks on a slope doesn’t mean that slope is safe.”On March 4, three people who were part of a helicopter skiing excursion were killed when they were swept away in an avalanche near Girdwood, Alaska, about 20 miles from where Saturday’s slide happened.The authorities identified the three men as David Linder, 39, of Florida; Charles Eppard, 39, of Montana; and Jeremy Leif, 38, of Minnesota.Despite deploying their avalanche airbags, according to the helicopter skiing company that the skiers had hired, they were buried beneath 40 to 100 feet of snow and could not be reached.Ms. Wagner said this year had been particularly treacherous in Alaska.“It’s been an unusual year,” she said, “tragically.” More

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    Trump Campaign Aide Chris LaCivita Sues The Daily Beast for Defamation

    The lawsuit accuses the news site of knowingly publishing false information about how much Chris LaCivita, a Trump campaign manager, was paid by the campaign.One of President Trump’s former campaign managers, Chris LaCivita, on Monday filed a defamation lawsuit against The Daily Beast over its reporting on how much he was paid by the campaign.The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, accuses The Daily Beast of creating “the false impression that Mr. LaCivita was personally profiting excessively from his work on the campaign and that he was prioritizing personal gain over the campaign’s success.”It centers on an article published Oct. 15, 2024, with the headline: “Trump In Cash Crisis-As Campaign Chief’s $22m Pay Revealed.” The article was written by Michael Isikoff, a freelance journalist, who was not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.The article stated that Mr. LaCivita, a manager of Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign, had negotiated a series of contracts and was paid millions of dollars over two years from the campaign. The allegations were repeated in several follow-up articles and discussed on a Daily Beast podcast.According to the complaint, Mr. LaCivita’s lawyers on Nov. 5 demanded a correction and a retraction, saying public records from the Federal Election Commission conflicted with statements in the article.The Daily Beast corrected its article a few days after the demand by changing the amount to $19.2 million from $22 million and clarified that the funds went to Mr. LaCivita’s consulting firm rather than to him personally. The headline was modified, and an editor’s note was appended to the article.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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    West Virginia Bans 7 Artificial Food Dyes, Citing Health Concerns

    At least 20 other states are considering bills restricting the use of certain food dyes and additives.In the most sweeping move of its kind, West Virginia has banned foods containing most artificial food dyes and two preservatives, citing their potential health risks.The legislation, signed into law Monday by Gov. Patrick Morrisey, will go into effect in 2028. At least 20 states are considering similar restrictions on food chemicals, but West Virginia is the first to ban virtually all artificial dyes from foods sold statewide. The new law will also prohibit products containing the dyes from being served in school meals starting this August.“Everybody realizes that we’ve got to do something about food in general,” said Adam Burkhammer, a Republican state representative who introduced the bill in February. It quickly passed both legislative houses with broad bipartisan support. Mr. Burkhammer said he hopes the law will improve the health of children in his state and spur other states to take similar actions.California has passed similar measures, though they were narrower in scope. One, passed in 2023, banned four food additives statewide. And in 2024, state lawmakers banned artificial food dyes from school meals.Jennifer Pomeranz, an associate professor of public health policy and management at New York University, said the California measures likely led state lawmakers to realize they could move faster than the Food and Drug Administration to act on food additives that carried health concerns.She added that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was confirmed as health secretary last month and has spoken frequently of his concerns about food dyes, has also brought more attention to the issue. Earlier this month, at a meeting with executives from large food companies including PepsiCo and General Mills, Mr. Kennedy said that it was an “urgent priority” to eliminate artificial dyes from foods and drinks sold nationwide. At another meeting, he encouraged people to call Gov. Morrissey in support of the West Virginia law.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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    Israel’s Internal Conflicts Return as Fighting in Gaza and Lebanon Continues

    For months, Israelis put aside their deep rifts to fight a common enemy. Now, amid a renewed government push for power, they are battling one another.Eighteen months ago, in the aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel, Israelis suspended their internal conflicts to form a united military front against a shared external threat.Now, that semblance of common cause has been cast aside. Beyond its borders, Israel has resumed fighting on four fronts — in Gaza, Lebanon, the occupied West Bank and Yemen. And internally, Israel’s citizens have returned to the bitter domestic feuds that once again, pose existential questions about their country’s future.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition has revived its contentious efforts, frozen after the attack in 2023, to expand its control over other branches of government. The moves have set off mass protests after the government tried to fire the head of Israel’s domestic intelligence service as well as the attorney general — two powerful gatekeepers who are overseeing investigations into both Mr. Netanyahu and his aides.This week, Parliament will vote on the government’s plan to give itself greater control over the selection of justices on the Supreme Court, an institution that has long thwarted the ambitions of Mr. Netanyahu’s ultranationalist and religiously conservative allies. “The foundations of the state are shaking,” Ehud Olmert, a former Israeli prime minister, said in an interview. “In Israel, Netanyahu is ready to sacrifice everything for his survival and we are closer to a civil war than people realize. In Gaza, we have returned to fighting — and for what? And overseas, I never remember such hatred, such opposition, to the state of Israel.”To Mr. Netanyahu and his supporters, the moves are a legitimate effort to rein in unelected bureaucrats and judicial officials who have stymied the will of an elected government. “The leftist Deep State weaponizes the justice system to thwart the people’s will,” Mr. Netanyahu wrote on social media last week.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