Aurelia Butler

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    I Was Sidelined by Illness. This Ghanaian Soup Got Me Back in the Kitchen.

    Brothy and bright, this Ghanaian light soup is the perfect summer balm, Yewande Komolafe writes.A good recipe offers a clear set of instructions and a satisfying result. A great one is much more, engaging our imagination with each step, offering a way to replicate a meal after it’s been considered, made, consumed.But what happens when our ability to cook the food we love suddenly changes? What does it look like to document a sensory experience through an intermediary?Recipe: Light Soup With MushroomsIn December 2023, after a lifetime in kitchens working on the line and then developing recipes for cookbooks and magazines, I experienced a health crisis that kept me from cooking for well over a year. During that time, I began to accept the fact that making new recipes — a balance of passive observation and active adjustments — would require careful planning and, because of physical limitations, even more steps in an already complex dance.The processes I undertook seamlessly before would have to be accomplished much more slowly, and collaboratively. I would have to watch as assistants cooked via my words, acting as more of a passenger than driver, and hand over tasks that had, before my illness, become second nature to me.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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    Supreme Court Backs Catholic Charity Denied Exemption in Tax Case

    The Wisconsin Supreme Court had ruled that the group’s activities in serving the state’s poor were not religious enough to qualify for the exemption.The Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Thursday that a Catholic charity in Wisconsin was entitled to a tax exemption that had been denied by a state court on the ground that its activities were not primarily religious.The Wisconsin Supreme Court had ruled that the group’s activities were “primarily charitable and secular” and that it did not “attempt to imbue program participants with the Catholic faith.” Indeed, the state court said, the group employed and served people of all religions.That meant, the state court found, that the group should be denied the tax exemption even as it accepted the charity’s contention that its services were “based on Gospel values and the principles of the Catholic social teachings.”The case was one of three concerning religion heard by the justices this term, and it extended a remarkable winning streak at the court for religious people and groups.Another case, about whether parents in Maryland have a religious right to withdraw their children from classes when books with gay and transgender themes are discussed, will be decided in the coming weeks.In the third case, the justices deadlocked in May by a 4-to-4 vote over whether a Catholic charter school in Oklahoma passed constitutional muster, letting stand a state court ruling against the school but setting no national precedent.The Wisconsin case, Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission, No. 24-154, concerned a state law that exempts religious groups from state unemployment taxes so long as they are “operated primarily for religious purposes.”Catholic Charities Bureau, the social ministry of the Catholic Diocese in Superior, Wis., has said its mission is to provide “services to the poor and disadvantaged as an expression of the social ministry of the Catholic Church.” But state officials determined that the charity did not qualify for the exemption because it “provides essentially secular services and engages in activities that are not religious per se.”When the case was argued in March, a lawyer for the state acknowledged that the charity would qualify for the exemption if it were part of the church rather than a separate corporation. But he said there must be principles that separate religious institutions from others. More

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    Top Democrat Warns Hegseth He Could Face Fines for Accepting Qatari Plane

    Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland urged the defense secretary to come to Congress for approval of the jet President Trump wants to use as Air Force One.Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, informed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday that he could face steep fines for having accepted a luxury jet from the Qatari government, arguing the gift violated the Constitution and a federal gifts law, and required congressional approval.Mr. Hegseth was the official who formally accepted a Boeing 747 jetliner from Qatar last month, according to a Defense Department spokesman. The Pentagon has directed the Air Force to upgrade its security measures so that President Trump can use the plane as a new Air Force One.The gift has raised a host of concerns among both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. Some have focused on national security risks, saying they worry the plane might have listening devices, or that Mr. Trump’s desire for a new plane before he leaves office might rush any security upgrade and lead corners to be cut on critical protection systems.But many lawmakers, especially Democrats such as Mr. Raskin, have focused on the ethical issues raised by a lavish gift to an American president from a foreign government. They have accused Mr. Trump of corruption and expressed fears that Qatar may be trying to improperly influence the Trump administration.In a letter on Wednesday, Mr. Raskin, a former professor of constitutional law, warned Mr. Hegseth that his acceptance of the plane violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which bars federal officials from accepting financial benefits from foreign governments without Congress’s approval.Congress has not yet taken any formal vote to accept the plane as a gift from Qatar. Officials in the Trump administration have said that the gift is to the U.S. government, not to him as president, and therefore that it does not violate the Constitution or ethics laws.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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    Ispace of Japan’s Resilience Lander Heads to the Moon: How and When to Watch

    Ispace crashed on the moon in 2023. Its second spacecraft, Resilience, aims in the hours ahead to succeed where its predecessor failed.Video posted by iSpace showed the Hakuto-R Mission 2 lander circling the moon on Wednesday.iSpaceA Japanese company is hoping that the second time’s the charm for putting a robotic lander on the moon.Ispace of Tokyo is among the private companies that have emerged in recent years aiming to establish a profitable business by sending experiments and other payloads to the surface of the moon.Its first spacecraft made it to lunar orbit in 2023, but crashed as it attempted to land. Its second spacecraft, named Resilience, launched in January and has been taking a roundabout path to the moon, entering orbit last month.Resilience is now ready to descend to the lunar surface, and Ispace hopes that it will arrive there intact.When is the moon landing, and how can I watch it?Resilience, also known as the Hakuto-R Mission 2 lander, is scheduled to land at 3:17 p.m. Eastern time Thursday. (It will be Friday at the company’s mission control in Tokyo.)Ispace will provide live coverage of the landing beginning at 2:10 p.m. Eastern time.What is Ispace, and what happened during its last moon mission?Ispace emerged from a Japanese team that had aimed to win the Google Lunar X Prize, which offered $20 million for the first privately financed venture to land on the moon. None of the X Prize teams got off the ground before the competition expired in 2018. Takeshi Hakamada, the leader of the Japanese X Prize team, raised private financing to push forward and is the chief executive of Ispace.Do You See Craters or Bumps on the Moon’s Surface?A picture taken recently by a Japanese company’s spacecraft shows how your interpretation of objective reality can be tested by the power of illusion.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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    Supreme Court Unanimously Rules for Straight Woman in Workplace Discrimination Suit

    The justices rejected an appeals court’s requirement that members of majority groups meet a heightened standard to win employment discrimination cases.The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously ruled in favor of a straight woman who twice lost positions to gay workers, saying an appeals court had been wrong to require her to meet a heightened burden in seeking to prove workplace discrimination because she was a member of a majority group.The decision came two years after the Supreme Court struck down race-conscious admissions programs in higher education and amid the Trump administration’s fierce efforts to root out programs that promote diversity and could make it easier for white people, men and other members of majority groups to pursue claims of employment discrimination.The standards for proving workplace discrimination under a federal civil rights law, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote for the court, “does not vary based on whether or not the plaintiff is a member of a majority group.”The case was brought by Marlean A. Ames, who had worked for the Ohio Department of Youth Services, which oversees parts of the state’s juvenile corrections system. After a decade there, in 2014 she became the administrator of a program addressing prison rape. Five years later, she applied for a promotion.Her supervisors turned her down, saying she lacked vision and leadership skills. They eventually gave the position to a gay woman who had been at the department for a shorter time and, unlike Ms. Ames, lacked a college degree.Not long after denying her the new position, her supervisors removed her from her existing job, telling her that they had concerns about her leadership and offering her a demotion that came with a substantial pay cut. She was replaced by a gay man with less seniority.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 Orders Investigation of Biden and His Aides

    The executive order is the latest effort by President Trump to stoke outlandish conspiracy theories about his predecessor and question the legality of his actions in office.President Trump ordered his White House counsel and the attorney general on Wednesday to investigate former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his staff in Mr. Trump’s latest attempt to stoke outlandish conspiracy theories about his predecessor.In an executive order, Mr. Trump put the power and resources of the federal government to work examining whether some of Mr. Biden’s presidential actions were legally invalid because his aides had enacted those policies without his knowledge.The executive order came after Mr. Trump shared a social media post over the weekend that claimed Mr. Biden had been “executed in 2020” and replaced by a robotic clone, following a pattern of suggestions by the president and his allies that Mr. Biden was a mentally incapacitated puppet of his aides.The former president called such claims “ridiculous and false” in a statement on Wednesday after the order’s release.“Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency,” he said. “I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation and proclamations.”The order comes after disclosure in recent weeks that Mr. Biden, 82, had received a diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer and in the wake of renewed scrutiny of his health during his presidency.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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    Harvey Milk’s Name Is Not Going Anywhere in San Francisco

    Mr. Milk’s name adorns numerous sites in the city, where he became a trailblazer for gay rights before he was killed in 1978. The Pentagon is considering stripping his name from a Navy vessel.In San Francisco, children attend elementary school at Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy. Travelers pass through the Harvey Milk Terminal at the airport. At Harvey Milk Plaza at Castro and Market streets, a giant rainbow flag dedicated to him can be seen for miles.Mr. Milk is the gay rights figure who won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, becoming California’s first openly gay elected official. Just 11 months after taking office, he was assassinated in his City Hall office. Sean Penn played him in the 2008 movie “Milk,” and California celebrates Harvey Milk Day every year on May 22, his birthday.Thousands of miles from San Francisco, in the body of water President Trump calls the Gulf of America, sits another tribute to Mr. Milk.For now, anyway.The United States Naval Ship Harvey Milk, a tanker currently moored in Mobile, Ala., may soon lose its name to, as the Pentagon put it, better reflect the country’s “warrior ethos.”One of the lesser-known chapters in Mr. Milk’s biography was his four-year stint in the U.S. Navy. He served during the Korean War on a submarine rescue ship and later as a diving instructor. He was issued an “other than honorable discharge” in 1955 after his superiors learned he was gay.In 2021, the Navy christened a tanker in the name of Mr. Milk, the first Navy ship to be named for an openly gay man. At the ceremony, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said he felt compelled to be there to make amends for the wrongful treatment of L.G.B.T.Q. people in the military “and to tell them that we’re committed to them in the future.”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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    ‘Carol,’ Whose Detention Rattled Her Small Missouri Town, Is Released

    Ming Li Hui’s detention by the immigration authorities brought the reality of President Trump’s immigration crackdown to rural Missouri, where supporters rallied for her freedom.An immigrant waitress from Hong Kong whose looming deportation brought home the reality of President Trump’s immigration crackdown to her conservative Missouri hometown was freed on Wednesday after more than a month in jail.“They released me,” the waitress, Ming Li Hui, better known as Carol to everyone in Kennett, Mo., said in a voice mail message left for her lawyer and relayed to The New York Times.Her lawyer, Raymond Bolourtchi, said Ms. Hui, 45, had been released under a federal immigration program that offers a “temporary safe haven” to immigrants from Hong Kong and a handful of other countries who are concerned about returning there. The so-called deferred enforced departure gives Ms. Hui a reprieve but does not guarantee her future in the United States.“By no means are we in the clear,” Mr. Bolourtchi said. “But at this point I’m optimistic. It’s an immediate sigh of relief.”Ms. Hui, who was born in Hong Kong, entered the United States 20 years ago on a short-term tourist visa and stayed long past its expiration, in the process building a life, having three children and becoming a beloved waitress serving waffles and hugs to the breakfast crowd at a diner in Kennett, a rural farming town in the Bootheel of Missouri.She was ordered deported more than a decade ago but had been able to stay in the country through a series of temporary permissions from the immigration authorities that ended abruptly with her arrest in late April.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