Aurelia Butler

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    Trump’s Focus on Ukrainian Nuclear Plant Is Partly Linked to Minerals Deal, Officials Say

    The U.S. is seeking access to Ukrainian minerals, which require extensive energy to process. The Zaporizhzhia power plant in southern Ukraine, which Russia controls, could help with that, Kyiv says.After months of worry over the possibility of nuclear accidents at the Zaporizhzhia power plant in Ukraine, the reactors were stopped in 2022 and the plant mainly dropped off as a topic of discussion. Until last weekend.That was when President Trump suddenly said he intended to bring up Ukrainian power plants in his planned call on Tuesday with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to discuss cease-fire proposals. While he did not specifically identify the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which has been under Russian control since early in the war, his administration has strongly hinted at it.Why did the plant re-emerge as a topic of discussion?According to a current Ukrainian official and a former one, both of whom have knowledge of talks between the United States and Ukraine, the plant may now be on the table because it is partly tied to negotiations over U.S. access to Ukrainian mineral resources.The possible carrot for the United States: the critical minerals deal with Ukraine that Mr. Trump wants is contingent on extracting and processing those minerals. And that takes a lot of energy, which the six-reactor Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe’s largest, could provide.Kyiv and Washington have been negotiating for weeks over U.S. access to Ukraine’s untapped deposits of critical minerals, including lithium and titanium, which are crucial for manufacturing modern technologies.Ukraine has told the United States that processing the minerals would be viable only if the Zaporizhzhia plant was back under its control, according to the two Ukrainians, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the talks. The currently serving Ukrainian official said the issue came up again last week during a top-level U.S.-Ukraine meeting in Saudi Arabia to discuss a potential cease-fire.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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    Adams’s Associates Under Federal Investigation Over Ties to China

    The Justice Department is pushing to drop corruption charges against Eric Adams in Manhattan while federal authorities in Brooklyn have been investigating his top fund-raisers.The Trump administration appears likely to succeed in having federal corruption charges dropped against Mayor Eric Adams in Manhattan.But in Brooklyn, a separate group of prosecutors has been conducting a long-running investigation involving Mr. Adams’s most prominent fund-raiser — and at one point searched her homes and office for evidence of a possible Chinese government scheme to influence Mr. Adams’s election, according to a copy of a search warrant, portions of which were read to The New York Times.Mr. Adams has known the fund-raiser, Winnie Greco, for more than a decade, and he appointed her to be his Asian affairs adviser after he became mayor in 2022. She has been a close collaborator with people and groups linked to the Chinese government over the years, and she has showed a willingness to steer politicians toward pro-Beijing narratives, The Times reported in October.The searches of her homes in the Bronx and office in Queens occurred early last year and were overseen by prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York. The agents conducting the searches were also seeking evidence of solicitation of illegal contributions from foreign nationals, wire fraud and conspiracy, the warrant said.On the day Ms. Greco’s homes were searched, and as part of the same investigation, agents also searched the mansion of another prominent fund-raiser for the Adams campaign, Lian Wu Shao, on Long Island, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The search of Mr. Shao’s home has not been previously reported.A wealthy Chinese businessman, Mr. Shao is the operator of the New World Mall in Flushing, Queens, which housed Ms. Greco’s office. Records show that hundreds of donors associated with his companies boosted Mr. Adams’s 2021 campaign.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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    UK Aims to Cut Billions in Welfare Amid Budget Crunch

    Changing disability allowances is a particularly contentious move within Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s center-left Labour Party.Britain’s center-left government outlined plans on Tuesday to curb spiraling welfare costs as it attempts to juggle a difficult set of competing objectives: saving public money, incentivizing work and protecting the most vulnerable.The announcement follows weeks of tense internal debate within the governing Labour Party, led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, about how to cut Britain’s spending on welfare, which has risen sharply since the Covid-19 pandemic.“The status quo is unacceptable but it is not inevitable,” Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, said in Parliament, promising “decisive action” to get those who can work into employment, protect those who cannot, and save five billion pounds (about $6.5 billion) by 2030.For Labour, a party that sees itself as the creator and guardian of Britain’s post-World War II welfare state, cutting support for some of the most vulnerable in society is especially contentious.But Britain, with a total population of about 68 million, now has more than 9.3 million people of working age across England, Scotland and Wales who are not employed, a rise of 713,000 since 2020. Of those, 2.8 million receive long-term sickness payments or related welfare, according to the government, which expects the number to grow to more than four million if nothing is done. The government spent £65 billion on sickness payments last year.Facing mounting pressure to increase military spending, at a time when public services including the health system are badly underfunded, and economic growth is sluggish, Britain’s Treasury is searching for cuts to public programs.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 Unlikely Friendship That Saved Lucy’s, a Homey New York Tavern

    In the late 1970s, Ludwika Mickevicius left her native Poland for New York City in search of opportunity. She started tending bar in the East Village and became a beloved figure in the neighborhood.It wasn’t always easy — all those 4 a.m. nights, seven days a week, slinging boilermaker after boilermaker — but she had been working hard since she was a girl. While growing up on a farm about 50 miles from Bialystok, she milked the cows, tended the geese and helped with the potato harvest. After that she worked in a textile factory.In the East Village, she was an unlikely den mother to her regulars, who called her Lucy. That became the bar’s name after its previous owner sold the business to her in the 1980s. She ran the place for more than four decades.“I never thought I’d one day have a bar and end up selling alcohol,” Ms. Mickevicius, 84, said. “But you can’t control life.”As the East Village underwent a transformation from gritty hamlet to fashionable district, Lucy’s stayed exactly the same — a homey dive along Tompkins Square Park with two pool tables, a jukebox, a graffiti-covered bathroom and the occasional vodka shot on the house.Ms. Mickevicius operated the bar for years on a casual, month-to-month lease. But after the building was sold over a year ago for $19 million, the new landlord more than doubled the rent. Lucy’s sat dark and empty behind an iron gate.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 Pushes Back Against Judge’s Orders on Deportations

    The Trump administration has asked a federal judge to dissolve the orders he put in place this weekend barring it from deporting suspected members of a Venezuelan street gang from the country under a rarely invoked wartime statute called the Alien Enemies Act.The Justice Department also doubled down on its efforts to avoid giving the judge, James E. Boasberg, the detailed information he had requested about the deportations, asking the federal appeals court that sits over him to intervene and put the case on hold.Taken together, the twin moves — made in separate sets of court papers filed late on Monday — marked a continuation of the Trump’s administration’s aggressive attempts to push back against Judge Boasberg, the chief judge of the Federal District Court in Washington, who temporarily halted one of President Trump’s signature deportation policies.The Justice Department has now effectively opened up two fronts in the battle: one challenging the underlying orders that paused, for now, the deportation flights and another seeking to avoid disclosing any information about the flights that could indicate they took place after the judge’s orders stopping them were imposed.Mr. Trump attacked Judge Boasberg in a social media post on Tuesday morning, albeit without naming him, as “a troublemaker and agitator,” and called for his impeachment. Mr. Trump’s remarks came days after he declared during a speech at the Justice Department that criticizing judges should be illegal.The late night filings and Mr. Trump’s verbal assault followed a day of extraordinary tension between the Trump administration and Judge Boasberg, both inside and outside the courtroom.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 Carries Out ‘Extensive Strikes’ in Gaza, Imperiling Cease-Fire

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he had ordered the attack early Tuesday, saying Israel would “act against Hamas with increasing military strength.”A camera in Israel captured explosions over Gaza early Tuesday.Associated PressIsraeli forces launched a large-scale attack across the Gaza Strip early Tuesday, in the first major strikes on the territory since Israel’s cease-fire with Hamas began roughly two months ago. Dozens of Palestinians were killed, according to Gaza’s health ministry.The Israeli military said on Telegram just before 2:30 a.m. local time that it was “conducting extensive strikes on terror targets belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip.” The attack was ordered by Israel’s political leadership, it said.Shortly afterward, Hamas said in a statement that the Israeli government had “resumed their aggression” in the Gaza Strip. Gaza residents reported intense strikes across the territory.Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Israel had consulted the White House before launching the strikes.“As President Trump has made clear, Hamas, the Houthis, all those who seek to terrorize not just Israel but also the United States of America, will see a price to pay,” Ms. Leavitt said on Fox News on Monday night. “All hell will break loose.”It was unclear whether the attack effectively ended the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas that took effect in mid-January. Hamas, in its statement, accused Israel of deciding to “overturn the cease-fire agreement, exposing the prisoners in Gaza to an unknown fate,” referring to the remaining hostages seized in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.The office of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a statement that he and the defense minister, Israel Katz, had instructed the military to act, citing “repeated refusal” by Hamas “to release our hostages” and saying the militants had rejected all proposals from Steve Witkoff, the U.S. envoy to the Middle East, and other mediators.“Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength,” the statement said.At least 44 Palestinians, including five children, were killed in the wave of Israeli strikes and more than 50 others were wounded, according to the Gazan Ministry of Health.Gaza’s Civil Defense, the main emergency service in the Palestinian territory, said on Telegram that its teams were facing significant operating difficulties because of “multiple targets being struck at the same time.”Mediators, including the United States, Qatar and Egypt, have been involved in negotiating the next steps in the cease-fire agreement, which would involve a permanent end to the war. But they have made little headway, given the entrenched disagreements between the two sides. Israel began attacking Gaza shortly after the October 2023 attack.Since the cease-fire took effect, Israel has conducted a string of smaller strikes on Gaza, which Hamas says have killed more than 150 people, at least some of them civilians. It has accused Israel of repeatedly violating the truce agreement by continuing military operations.Raja Abdulrahim More

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    ‘Purpose’ Review: Dinner With the Black Political Elite

    A family not unlike Jesse Jackson’s gets barbecued on Broadway by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.You may have trouble catching your breath from laughing so hard during the first act of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s sophomore Broadway outing, “Purpose,” which opened Monday at the Helen Hayes Theater. Deeply imagined and grave beneath its yucks, it unspools like a brilliant sitcom.Then, also like a sitcom, it jumps the shark.Ah well, mixed emotions go with the territory. If “Purpose” is primarily a merciless dissection of hypocrisy in an important religious-political Black American family — the Jesse Jackson dynasty comes to mind — it is also a grudging love letter to them in all their God-praising, backroom-dealing, self-promotional glory. The problem is that in the constant switchback of perspectives, the play, directed by Phylicia Rashad, grows too hectic and attenuated to maintain a line of conviction.The same could be said of the family, the Jaspers. Chicago-based like the Jacksons — the play originated at the Steppenwolf Theater Company in that city — they, too, are headed by an oratorical pastor who, in his youth, worked closely with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Also familiar are several possible unauthorized offspring, hushed up but not quite silent. Jacobs-Jenkins cannot help noting that among that generation of Bible-quoting civil rights worthies are enough sins of the father to burden a host of sons.Indeed, approaching 80 and withdrawn from the front lines, Solomon Jasper (Harry Lennix) now reserves most of his thunder for his family. His formidable wife, Claudine, a honeyed matriarch with a law degree, is tough enough to shape it to her own ends as needed. But on their disappointing sons falls the brunt of Solomon’s biblical disapproval.The older son, named for his father, is the more obviously wayward. Raised to uphold Solomon’s political legacy, Junior (Glenn Davis) instead tarnished it when, as a state senator, he was convicted of embezzling campaign funds. These he spent, according to his embittered wife, Morgan, on “cashmere drawers and betting on racing pigeons.”From left, Jackson, Hill, Young and Alana Arenas.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe 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