Aurelia Butler

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    Attempted Theft and Poisoning of a Star Reindeer Leaves Anchorage Miffed

    Star VII, the unofficial mascot for the Alaska city, nearly died when a person sprayed it with air freshener, the animal’s owner said.Dressed in dark clothes and hiding behind a mask, a dark figure hopped over a six-foot-tall wooden fence and opened up Star VII’s cage to release perhaps the nation’s most famous reindeer into the dark Anchorage night at 6:30 on Feb. 20.Star was found roaming the city’s streets by a member of the Anchorage Police Department later that evening. But the next night, a disguised figure visited Star’s enclosure and sprayed him with what his owner believed was air freshener.Anchorage’s Star reindeer are the stuff of legend, serving as the unofficial mascots of the city and playing a vital role in parades, school field trips and cultural events — living the life of small-town celebrities. Like the Pope or the Dalai Lama, when one Star dies, another Star is named.In the hours after Star VII was assaulted with air freshener, the reindeer feel deeply ill, and the Anchorage Police Department began its investigation into who might have sought to steal and harm the animal. No arrests have been made, and the police have posted security camera footage of an assailant in an effort to get tips about the case.Albert Whitehead, 84, a retired technology entrepreneur and Star’s caretaker, said he did not know what the attacker who poisoned the reindeer looked like but noted that he had heard the attacker’s voice.“Stop!” Mr. Whitehead screamed at the attacker, whom he caught on his security footage spraying his animal.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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    Plane Fire at Denver Airport Forces Passengers to Evacuate Onto Wing

    The flight had been diverted to the airport after experiencing “engine vibrations,” the authorities said. Six passengers were taken to a hospital for evaluation.American Airlines, which operated the flight, said the plane had experienced an “engine-related issue.”Branden Williams/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAn American Airlines plane that was diverted to Denver International Airport on Thursday evening after experiencing “engine vibrations” caught fire while taxiing to a gate, prompting the evacuation of dozens of passengers, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.Six passengers were taken to a hospital for further evaluation, the airline said. Their conditions were not immediately known.The flight, a Boeing 737-800 with 172 passengers and six crew members, was traveling from Colorado Springs to Dallas but was diverted to the Denver airport, the airline said. Some of the passengers were evacuated from the aircraft using slides, the F.A.A. said.“After landing safely and taxiing to the gate at Denver International Airport, American Airlines Flight 1006 experienced an engine-related issue,” the airline said. Videos posted to social media showed passengers standing on the plane’s wing and climbing down a portable staircase to leave the plane. Light gray smoke filled the air. From other angles, black smoke poured out of the aircraft and orange flames could be seen at the base of the aircraft.A video taken by Mike Insalata, a Denver resident, showed a large fire under the plane’s left engine. The F.AA. is investigating.The episode at Denver International Airport was the latest in a recent string of aviation woes. On Feb. 25, two separate airplanes, one at Washington’s Ronald Reagan National Airport and another at Chicago’s Midway International Airport, had to abort landings to avoid collisions.Earlier last month, a plane at the Toronto Pearson Airport flipped over. And on Feb. 5, the wing of a plane was impaled on the tail of another plane during a collision on the ground at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. More

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    Andy Beshear Slams Gavin Newsom for Having Steve Bannon on Podcast

    “I don’t think we should give him oxygen on any platform — ever, anywhere,” the Democratic governor of Kentucky said of President Trump’s former chief strategist.Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky sharply disagreed with a decision by Gov. Gavin Newsom of California to host Steve Bannon, one of the architects of the MAGA movement, on Mr. Newsom’s new podcast this week, saying Mr. Bannon’s voice should not be elevated “on any platform ever, anywhere.”Mr. Beshear, a Democrat who was vetted to be former Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate in 2024 and who is considered a possible candidate for president in 2028, made his comments on Thursday, shortly before speaking to House Democrats gathered for a planning retreat in Northern Virginia this week.“I think that Governor Newsom bringing on different voices is great,” Mr. Beshear told a small group of reporters. “We shouldn’t be afraid to talk and to debate just about anyone. But Steve Bannon espouses hatred and anger and even at some points violence, and I don’t think we should give him oxygen on any platform — ever, anywhere.”Mr. Beshear was speaking to the conference along with two other Democratic governors who are considered possible 2028 contenders: Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.Mr. Newsom is also considered a potential 2028 candidate. He started a podcast this month, bringing on big-name conservatives including Mr. Bannon, a fierce Trump loyalist, and Charlie Kirk, who leads Turning Point USA, the conservative network.Mr. Newsom’s decision to host Mr. Kirk and especially Mr. Bannon has received some blowback. Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman who did not run for re-election in 2022 after becoming a vocal Trump critic, said in a video that hosting them was “insane.”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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    Postal Service Reaches Deal With Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency

    The leader of the U.S. Postal Service said in a letter to lawmakers on Thursday that he had reached an agreement with Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team allowing it to help in “identifying and achieving further efficiencies.”The Postal Service has long struggled with its finances, and Mr. Musk and President Trump have both suggested it should be privatized. But Mr. Musk’s cost-cutting group, the Department of Government Efficiency, has not targeted the Postal Service’s roughly 635,000 workers.Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who took his position during the first Trump presidency and moved to shrink the agency’s ranks during the Biden administration, said he had signed an agreement with Mr. Musk’s group on Wednesday.Mr. DeJoy, a Republican megadonor, wrote in the letter that Mr. Musk’s initiative was “an effort aligned” with his efforts.He said that the Postal Service’s work force had shrunk by 30,000 since the 2021 fiscal year, and that the agency planned to complete a “further reduction of another 10,000 people in the next 30 days” through a previously established voluntary-retirement program.Last week, Mr. Musk said at a tech conference organized by the bank Morgan Stanley that the Postal Service should be privatized, declaring, “We should privatize anything that can reasonably be privatized.”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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    Anne Kaufman Schneider, 99, Ardent Keeper of Her Father’s Plays, Dies

    She shepherded the works of George S. Kaufman from the 20th century into the next, encouraging regional theater productions and helping to steer two of them to Broadway.Anne Kaufman Schneider, who shepherded the plays of her father, George S. Kaufman, a titan of 20th-century American theatrical wit, into the 21st century with an acerbic sagacity all her own, died on Thursday at her home in Manhattan. She was 99.Her executor, Laurence Maslon, confirmed her death.“Headstrong girls are difficult,” Ms. Kaufman Schneider once told The New York Times, “but that was the source of my good relationship with my father. And it started early. Because there wasn’t any baby talk. We went to the theater together starting when I was 4. Now I have made his work my agenda in life.”George Kaufman’s stellar career as a hit-making playwright and stage director included winning two Pulitzer Prizes — one, in 1937, for “You Can’t Take It With You,” a comedy he created with his most constant collaborator, Moss Hart; the other, in 1932, for “Of Thee I Sing,” a satirical political musical co-written with Morrie Ryskind to a score by George and Ira Gershwin.George S. Kaufman, left, with Moss Hart, his most constant collaborator, in 1937, the year their play “You Can’t Take It With You” won the Pulitzer Prize.Underwood Archives/Getty ImagesEven so, after his death in 1961 at the age of 71, Kaufman was a hard sell for theatrical revivals.“Very little happened at all,” Ms. Kaufman Schneider once recalled, “until Ellis Rabb revived ‘You Can’t Take It With You’ for the A.P.A./Phoenix Theater in 1965. Ellis proved that these are classic American plays.” (Founded by Mr. Rabb, an actor and director, the A.P.A., formally the Association of Producing Artists, was a Broadway entity notable for mounting revivals after it merged with the Phoenix Theater, another Broadway house.)Ms. Kaufman Schneider proceeded to oversee her father’s renaissance over the next 50-plus years — a term of service that outdistanced his own living stewardship of his career.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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    JD Vance Is Booed at a Kennedy Center Concert After Trump’s Takeover

    It was supposed to be a moment of celebration: Vice President JD Vance was attending a concert at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington on Thursday evening for the first time since President Trump’s stunning takeover of the institution.Instead, as Mr. Vance took his seat in the box tier with the second lady, Usha Vance, loud boos broke out in the auditorium, lasting roughly 30 seconds, according to audience members and a video posted on social media. Mr. Vance was shown in the video waving to the audience as he settled into his seat.The incident put on display the outcry over Mr. Trump’s decision last month to purge the Kennedy Center’s once-bipartisan board of its Biden appointees and have himself elected its chairman. (The president, who broke with tradition during his first term by not attending the Kennedy Center Honors after some of the artists being celebrated criticized him, complained that the center had become too “wokey.”)Mr. Vance attended Thursday’s performance by the National Symphony Orchestra, one of the Kennedy Center’s flagship groups. The ensemble, under the baton of its music director, Gianandrea Noseda, performed Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 2, with Leonidas Kavakos as the soloist. After an intermission, the orchestra played Stravinsky’s “Petrushka.”The Vances stayed for the entire concert, audience members said. Ms. Vance was recently appointed by Mr. Trump to serve as a board member at the Kennedy Center, alongside other Trump allies like Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff; and Laura Ingraham, the Fox News host.The concert started about 20 minutes late because of added security measures, audience members said.Roma Daravi, a spokeswoman for the Kennedy Center, said she had no comment on the episode.A White House spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment.In February, President Trump ousted the Kennedy Center’s longtime chairman, the financier David M. Rubenstein, the center’s largest donor. His new board of loyalists elected him chairman and fired Deborah F. Rutter, the center’s president for more than a decade. At least three other top staff members were also dismissed.Performers, including the actress Issa Rae and the musician Rhiannon Giddens, have dropped out in protest amid fears that Mr. Trump’s calls to rid the center of “woke” influences, drag shows and “anti-American propaganda” would result in a reshaping of programming. The musical “Hamilton” recently scrapped a planned tour there next year.While Mr. Trump has not yet articulated his vision for the center, his appointees have provided some hints. Richard Grenell, whom Mr. Trump named as the center’s new president, recently said that the center planned “a big, huge celebration of the birth of Christ at Christmas.” More

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    NYT Crossword Answers for March 14, 2025

    Brandon Koppy provides us with small pleasures.Jump to: Tricky CluesFRIDAY PUZZLE — Something happens when I’m solving a really good puzzle, and I’m curious whether it happens to you, too.I smile when I write in a particularly lively entry or read a fun clue. For me, this happened in today’s puzzle at 21- and 44A, which were Brandon Koppy’s seed entries, as he mentions in his constructor notes. They are both making New York Times Crossword debuts. I also liked 3-, 7-, 19- and 26D. That last one makes a return to the Crossword after not appearing for 57 years. Oh, and Mr. Koppy has tucked a whopping eight debut entries into his grid.The smile is involuntary, but it’s a response I wouldn’t trade for anything. The joy is real. It’s a small pleasure in a fractious world, and I’m grateful that Mr. Koppy is here to share that with us.Tricky Clues13A. The clue [Knight shtick?] is a pun on the phrase “night stick,” and the answer is HONOR, because it’s a knight’s obligation to behave honorably.15A. It’s funny how the mind works. The clue [Wonderland directive] made me hum Taylor Swift’s “Wonderland (Taylor’s Version)” while trying to solve. It turns out that the answer is EAT ME, the label on the cake that made Lewis Carroll’s Alice grow or shrink.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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    Florida Mayor Threatens Cinema Over Israeli-Palestinian Film

    The mayor of Miami Beach wants to end the lease of a group renting a city-owned property because it is screening the Academy Award-winning “No Other Land” there.The mayor of Miami Beach is seeking to oust a nonprofit art house cinema from a city-owned property for showing “No Other Land,” the Oscar-winning documentary that chronicles the Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes in Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank.The mayor, Steven Meiner, introduced a resolution to revoke the lease under which O Cinema rents the space, he announced in a newsletter this week. He described the film as “a false, one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people that is not consistent with the values of our city and residents.”Kareem Tabsch, the co-founder of O Cinema, said that the threat of losing its physical location in Miami Beach was “very grave and we take it very seriously.”“At the time, we take very seriously our responsibility as a cultural organization that presents works that are engaging and thought provoking and that foster dialogue,” he said. “And we take very seriously our responsibility to do that without interference of government.”The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, which is now co-counsel for the theater, criticized the mayor’s move, as did the makers of the film, which won the Academy Award for best documentary earlier this month but has not been acquired in the United States by a traditional distributor for either a theatrical or streaming release. Distributors in two dozen other countries had picked up the film even before it won the award.Daniel Tilley, the legal director of the Florida branch of the ACLU, said in an interview that “what’s at stake is the government’s ability to use unchecked power to punish those who dare to express views that the government disagrees with.”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