Aurelia Butler

More stories

  • 63 Shares129 Views

    in Elections

    Mario Vargas Llosa: An Appreciation

    The Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa was the world’s savviest and most accomplished political novelist.Once upon a time, during the last quarter of the 20th century, it was possible to argue that one person was America’s best novelist and best literary critic. I am talking about John Updike, whose long and elegant reviews in The New Yorker set reading agendas.Such was Updike’s influence that readers paid heed when, in the mid-1980s, he developed a sustained literary man-crush on the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who died on Sunday at 89.More than once in his reviews of Vargas Llosa’s novels, Updike took note of the author’s handsomeness and urbanity. He was more impressed by Vargas Llosa’s substantial intelligence, his learning, his versatility and his imagination, which could conjure the comic fussiness of a tiny left-wing splinter group in solemn session, or the nauseated feelings of a young wife who discovers that her husband is gay, or the mixed feelings of a citified idealist engaging in a gun battle in the Andes while beset with altitude sickness.Vargas Llosa “has replaced Gabriel García Márquez” as the South American novelist North American readers must catch up on, Updike wrote in 1986, four years after García Márquez received the Nobel Prize in Literature and 24 years before Vargas Llosa himself would.Even Updike was two decades late to the writer’s work. Vargas Llosa had already published most of his major and enduring novels, including “The Time of the Hero” (1963), “The Green House” (1966), “Conversation in the Cathedral” (1969) and “The War of the End of the World” (1981). These grainy, raunchy, politically minded and mind-expanding books found a worldwide audience but were slower to catch on in the United States.Vargas Llosa had helped start, in the early 1960s, a movement that became known as the Boom, a term applied to a freewheeling and socially conscious new generation of Latin American writers: García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Julio Cortázar, Juan Rulfo, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, José Donoso and Miguel Ángel Asturias, among others.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

  • 88 Shares169 Views

    in Elections

    Stocks Notch Gains After More Tariff Whiplash

    After exempting Chinese imports of smartphones, chips and other electronics, President Trump said on Sunday the carve outs were only temporary.Markets in Asia moved higher on Monday after a weekend that brought more shifts in strategy from President Trump about tariffs.Stocks in Japan rose a little over 1 percent while benchmarks went up 2 percent in Hong Kong and less than 1 percent in mainland China. S&P 500 stock futures, which let investors bet on how the index might perform when it opens in New York, were about 0.50 percent higher.The modest rally followed another chaotic week on Wall Street, with the S&P 500 starting with losses but ending with its best weekly performance since November 2022. The gains were driven by Mr. Trump’s announcement on Wednesday that he would pause for 90 days the “reciprocal” tariffs he had imposed on dozens of countries just a week earlier.On Friday night, after Mr. Trump had repeatedly said he would spare no industry, U.S. customs officials exempted a host of technology products imported from China. That means smartphones, semiconductors, computers and other equipment would not face most of the 145 percent tariffs Mr. Trump has imposed on China.The carve outs were viewed as a win for Apple and other American tech giants because tech products and components are a key part of American imports from China. A spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Commerce on Sunday called it a “small step” in “correcting” the tariffs Mr. Trump has put on China.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

  • 88 Shares189 Views

    in Elections

    How to Tell a Dumb American Story

    On This Week’s Episode:A couple devises a strategy to get their daughter’s killer prosecuted and to get attention for other Native American families.Laurie ChildsNew York Times Audio is home to the “This American Life” archive. Download the app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. More

  • 163 Shares159 Views

    in Elections

    Teenager Charged With Killing Mother and Stepfather in a Plan to Assassinate Trump

    A Wisconsin teenager was arrested last month on several charges, including two counts of first-degree murder. Federal investigators said he had a broader plot to kill the president.A Wisconsin teenager has been charged in the killing of his mother and stepfather in what the federal authorities described as an attempt to obtain the money and autonomy he believed was necessary for a plot to kill President Trump and overthrow the government.The teenager, Nikita Casap, 17, was arrested last month in the deaths of his mother, Tatiana Casap, 35, and stepfather, Donald Mayer, 51, according to the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department.Sheriff’s deputies found the bodies at the family’s home in Waukesha, about 17 miles southwest of Milwaukee, after receiving a call on Feb. 28 requesting a welfare check, the department said.According to federal documents unsealed on Friday, the fatal shootings were part of a plan by Mr. Casap, who identified with a right-wing terrorist network known as the Order of Nine Angels, to assassinate President Trump in what he believed would “foment a political revolution in the United States,” federal investigators said.Mr. Casap also paid, at least in part, for a drone and explosives that he planned to use in an attack, according to the documents, which were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.Mr. Casap’s lawyers could not be immediately reached on Sunday for comment.A self-described “manifesto,” found on Mr. Casap’s phone and detailed in the federal documents, contained images and praise of Adolf Hitler, as well as instructions to others to make bombs.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

  • 175 Shares169 Views

    in Elections

    Trump officials renew opposition to ruling on Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador

    The Trump administration on Sunday evening doubled down on its assertion that a federal judge cannot force it to bring back to the United States a Maryland man who was unlawfully deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador last month.In a brief legal filing, the Justice Department reiterated its view that courts lack the ability to dictate steps that the White House should take in seeking to return the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, to U.S. soil, because the president alone has broad powers to handle foreign policy.“The federal courts have no authority to direct the executive branch to conduct foreign relations in a particular way, or engage with a foreign sovereign in a given manner,” lawyers for the department wrote. “That is the ‘exclusive power of the president as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations.’”The position taken by Trump officials was not the first time they had tried to defy efforts compelling them to seek Mr. Abrego Garcia’s return from El Salvador. Still, their continued recalcitrance meant that Mr. Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old father of three, would for now remain at the CECOT prison in El Salvador, where he was sent with scores of other migrants on March 15.The administration’s stubbornness was also likely to heighten tensions between the White House and the judge overseeing the case, Paula Xinis. Judge Xinis has scheduled a hearing to discuss next steps in the matter on Tuesday in Federal District Court in Maryland.The conflict has persisted even though the Supreme Court last week unanimously ordered the administration to “facilitate” Mr. Abrego Garcia’s release from Salvadoran custody. Trump officials have in fact already admitted that they made an “administrative error” when they put Mr. Abrego Garcia on the plane to El Salvador in the first place.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

  • 175 Shares169 Views

    in Elections

    UK Laws Are Not ‘Fit for Social Media Age,’ Says Report Into Summer Riots

    Outdated legislation prevented the police from rapidly correcting misinformation after a stabbing attack on a Taylor Swift-themed dance class last summer, lawmakers said.British laws restricting what the police can say about criminal cases are “not fit for the social media age,” a government committee said in a report released Monday in Britain that highlighted how unchecked misinformation stoked riots last summer.Violent disorder, fueled by the far right, affected several towns and cities for days after a teenager killed three girls on July 29 at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, England. In the hours after the stabbings, false claims that the attacker was an undocumented Muslim immigrant spread rapidly online.In a report looking into the riots, a parliamentary committee said a lack of information from the authorities after the attack “created a vacuum where misinformation was able to grow.” The report blamed decades-old British laws, aimed at preventing jury bias, that stopped the police from correcting false claims.By the time the police announced the suspect was British-born, those false claims had reached millions.The Home Affairs Committee, which brings together lawmakers from across the political spectrum, published its report after questioning police chiefs, government officials and emergency workers over four months of hearings.Axel Rudakubana, who was sentenced to life in prison for the attack, was born and raised in Britain by a Christian family from Rwanda. A judge later found there was no evidence he was driven by a single political or religious ideology, but was obsessed with violence.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

  • 88 Shares189 Views

    in Elections

    NYT Crossword Answers for April 14, 2025

    Ken Cohen and Stacy Cooper make their New York Times Crossword debuts.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesMONDAY PUZZLE — Having at last recovered from a mild mystery illness in an undisclosed location, I make my triumphant return to Wordplay. Fanfare! Trumpets! Applause, applause! That’s what I was imagining, anyway. In reality, my triumphant return consisted of scooting into my desk chair and opening my laptop.Far greater ADO (24A) is in order for today’s crossword, because it’s a rare treat to have a collaboration between two first-time constructors in the New York Times Crossword. Collaborations tend to feature one new constructor alongside a more experienced one, but Ken Cohen and Stacy Cooper have pulled it off. Applause, applause, indeed!Today’s ThemeSalute any of today’s themed entries with the [Slangy greeting] at 51-Across, and you’ll realize that WHAT’S CRACKING applies, wittily, to the starts of each one. At 20A, the [Rules on how to behave] would be a CODE OF CONDUCT, and one tends to “crack” a code. And at 25A, [Baba ghanouj, e.g.] is a kind of EGGPLANT DIP — an egg is what’s cracking here.The last one gave me a visceral wince: At 45A, a [Goofball] is a KNUCKLEHEAD, since knuckles can be cracked. But must they? Can’t those people pick up a noiseless tic instead, like hair twirling?Tricky Clues50A. When crossword clues hint at two things that can be described by the same adjective, there’s usually lateral thinking involved. In the case of [Like diamonds and calculus problems], both are HARD — but one in a physical sense, and the other in a conceptual one.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

  • 113 Shares99 Views

    in Elections

    Read the Report on President Trump’s Annual Physical Exam

    PHYSICIAN TO THE PRESIDENT
    THE WHITE HOUSE
    MEMORANDUM
    TO: KAROLINE LEAVITT
    WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY
    FROM: CAPT SEAN P. BARBABELLA, D.O., MC, USN
    PHYSICIAN TO THE PRESIDENT
    DO
    April 13, 2025
    SUBJECT: PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP’S ANNUAL PHYSICAL EXAMINATION
    RESULTS
    On April 11, 2025, President Donald J. Trump underwent his annual physical examination at
    Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. I performed and supervised the comprehensive
    exam, which included diagnostic and laboratory testing, as well as consultations with fourteen
    specialty consultants, all in accordance with U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF)
    recommendations. The President has consented to release the physical exam findings to the
    public.
    VITAL STATISTICS:
    Age: 78 years, 10 months
    Height: 75 inches
    Weight: 224 pounds
    Resting Heart Rate: 62 beats per minute
    Blood Pressure: 128/74 mmHg
    Pulse Oximetry: 99% on room air
    • Temperature: 98.6 °F
    PHYSICAL EXAMINATION AND DIAGNOSTIC SUMMARY:
    Eyes: Normal visual acuity, visual fields, and eye pressure. Dilated eye exam was
    normal.
    Head/Ears/Nose/Throat: Examination of the head, ears, nose, and throat revealed no
    significant abnormalities with the exception of scaring on the right ear from a gunshot
    wound. Hearing was normal.
    Neck: The thyroid and lymph nodes were normal. A July 2024 ultrasound of the carotid
    arteries showed normal results, and a repeat study was not indicated.
    Pulmonary: Lungs were clear on examination and a computed tomography (CT) scan of
    his chest showed no abnormalities. More