Aurelia Butler

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    Amazon Plans $1 Million Donation to Trump’s Inaugural Fund

    Amazon said on Thursday that it was planning to donate $1 million to President-elect Donald J. Trump’s inaugural fund, part of a pattern in which tech companies and their leaders are taking steps to repair their relationships with Mr. Trump.Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said on Wednesday that it was putting $1 million into the inaugural fund, just weeks after Mr. Zuckerberg met with Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago.Amazon and its founder, Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, have had a rocky history with Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump had long harbored frustration with Mr. Bezos over reporting in The Washington Post. During his first administration, Mr. Trump had also questioned whether the U.S. Postal Service gave Amazon a sweetheart deal, and Amazon accused Mr. Trump of improperly pressuring the Pentagon to deny the company a major cloud computing contract.But over the summer, Mr. Bezos spoke with Mr. Trump after the former president was shot at a campaign event, and on social media he praised Mr. Trump’s “grace and courage under literal fire.” More recently, Mr. Bezos has said that he is “very optimistic” about the incoming Trump administration.At the DealBook Summit in New York on Dec. 4, Mr. Bezos said that Mr. Trump “seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. And my point of view is, if I can help him do that, I’m going to help him, because we do have too much regulation in this country.”Amazon also said it would livestream the inauguration next month, as it has done with previous inaugurations. The donation was previously reported by The Wall Street Journal.Mr. Trump said on Thursday that Mr. Bezos, who chairs Amazon’s board, was meeting him next week. Mr. Trump said he wanted to get ideas from Mr. Bezos and other tech leaders.Gifts to inaugural committees, which do not have contribution limits, are popular among businesses and individuals eager to curry favor with an incoming administration. Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee is offering top-tier benefits to donors who contribute $1 million.Amazon gave $57,746 to Mr. Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks political donations. The company said the Biden campaign did not accept donations from tech companies in 2020. More

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    U.S. Charges Ex-Syrian Prison Official With Torture

    The indictment was the second time in a week that the Justice Department announced that it had charged top Syrian officials with human rights abuses.A federal grand jury in Los Angeles charged a former Syrian government official on Thursday with torturing political dissidents at a notorious prison in Damascus.The former official, Samir Ousman al-Sheikh, 72, ran Adra prison, according to federal prosecutors, where he was personally involved in torturing inmates in a bid to stifle opposition to its recently deposed authoritarian president, Bashar al-Assad.Prosecutors said Mr. al-Sheikh ordered prisoners to be taken to a part of the prison known as the “punishment wing,” where they were beaten while hanging from the ceiling. Guards would forcibly fold bodies in half, resulting in terrible pain and fractured spines.The indictment was the second time in a week that the Justice Department announced that it had charged top Syrian officials with human rights abuses. The moves underscore its efforts to hold to account the top reaches of the government for a brutal system of detention and torture that flourished under Mr. al-Assad.The charges against Mr. al-Sheikh on Thursday add to earlier charges in July that accused him of attempted naturalization fraud in his effort to seek U.S. citizenship, according to a criminal complaint. He was arrested attempting to fly to Beirut.The U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, Martin Estrada, cast the new charges against Mr. al-Sheikh in a grim light. “The allegations in this superseding indictment of grave human rights abuses are chilling,” he said.Mr. al-Sheikh was charged with three counts of torture and one count of conspiracy to commit torture.Mr. al-Sheikh immigrated to the United States in 2020 and applied for U.S. citizenship in 2023, lying on federal forms about the abuses, the authorities have said.Prosecutors said he was appointed governor of the province of Deir al-Zour by Mr. al-Assad in 2011. Mr. al-Assad’s authoritarian government crumbled over the weekend after rebels routed his forces and took control of swaths of the country.On Monday, federal prosecutors unsealed charges against two top-ranking Syrian intelligence officials, accusing them of war crimes. The pair, Jamil Hassan and Abdul Salam Mahmoud, oversaw a prison in Damascus during the Syrian civil war, prosecutors said.That indictment signaled the first time the United States had criminally charged top Syrian officials with human rights abuses used to silence dissent and spread fear through the country.Mr. Hassan was the head of the Air Force Intelligence Directorate, and Mr. Mahmoud served as a brigadier general in the Air Force’s intelligence unit. Their location is unknown. More

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    Humpback Whale Sets Record for How Far It Traveled

    The adult male swam more than 8,000 miles from South America to Africa, most likely in search of a mate, researchers said.A humpback whale set a record by traversing at least three oceans and more than 8,000 miles — most likely in search of a mate, according to a new study.A team of scientists identified the adult male, which swam 8,106 miles from breeding grounds in Colombia in South America to breeding grounds in Zanzibar in Africa from 2013 to 2022.The unusual odyssey is the longest recorded distance traveled by the species and is the subject of a study published Wednesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science, potentially providing new insights into the migration patterns and behaviors of humpback whales.The study suggests that mating and environmental factors could have influenced the whale’s long voyage.According to the study, scientists looked at pictures on Happywhale, an online platform that collects photos of whale flukes — or tails — from scientists and members of the public from around the world. The platform uses artificial intelligence-powered photo-matching algorithms to help automatically identify the whales in submitted photos. Those matches were confirmed or rejected by data mangers, the study said.The whale was first photographed in July 2013 off the coast of Colombia in the Pacific Ocean, where it was part of a “competitive group” that included seven humpbacks. 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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    Match the Taylor Swift Song to the Poem Inspired By Her Music

    In honor of Madison Cloudfeather Nye Somehow the voices twined around a young mind encouraging gentle stanzas, open endings, even in a Texas town where they wanted you to testify before cashing a check. Heck with that, boys. I’m heading out in my little gray boots, slim volumes of poetry in my holster, William of […] More

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    After Biden Commutes 1,500 Sentences, Some Celebrate and Plan

    Among those whose sentences were commuted was Rebecca Parrett, an Arizona woman who now hopes to travel to meet her great-grandchildren for the first time.Early on Thursday morning, Rebecca Parrett received a phone call from her former hairdresser.“Have you heard the news yet?” he asked her.She hadn’t.President Biden was commuting the sentences of nearly 1,500 people, he told her, and perhaps Mr. Parrett might be among them, suddenly free to travel to see her family.But at that early hour, it was just a headline, the White House telling news organizations that it was the most commutations in a single day by an American president. It would be a couple of hours until the White House released the list of those being offered clemency — and until Ms. Parrett, 76, found her name.All day, she said, “I have just been in tears.”Like many of those whose sentences were commuted by President Biden on Thursday, Ms. Parrett had been released from prison during the pandemic to serve her sentence on home confinement. While that was a relief, she has lived in constant worry that she would be sent back to prison — and Republican lawmakers had been threatening to do just that, by pushing legislation that would have forced people who had been released to home confinement during the pandemic back behind bars.Now, Ms. Parrett, who receives Social Security benefits and recently moved into an apartment in Prescott Valley, Ariz., is hoping she can travel to Indiana to celebrate Christmas with her son, who recently had open-heart surgery. She has five great-grandchildren who live in Florida and Indiana and whom she has never met. As soon as she learns the details of her commutation — which could take a few days, her case manager told her — she will be making travel plans.“I’m certainly praying for just a complete release, time served,” she said.For Ms. Parrett, the commutation is a joyous turn in a journey that she almost didn’t survive. After being convicted of securities fraud and other financial crimes in 2008, Ms. Parrett, still on bond, fled to Mexico, where, she said, she planned to commit suicide. “I thought life would be better if I was gone,” she said.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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    Why Christopher Wray’s Resignation May Signal a Shift in FBI Tradition

    Mr. Wray’s voluntary departure could usher in a new era at the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, one in which the job of director changes with the administration.Christopher A. Wray had considered resigning as F.B.I. director before. More than once, confronted with angry demands from President Donald J. Trump and his allies, he contemplated calling it quits.When Mr. Wray on Wednesday announced his intent to do so, it was because he believed staying on the job into a second Trump term risked significant disruptions to the work force and its mission.Mr. Trump had already declared his plan to replace him with Kash Patel, a tough-talking loyalist who has vowed to force out bureau leaders and empty its Washington headquarters.In conceding to the reality of raw power, Mr. Wray’s voluntary departure could usher in a new era at the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, one in which the job of director is more of a political post that changes with the administration. For decades, F.B.I. directors have been appointed to 10-year terms to insulate them from the shifting winds of politics. Few F.B.I. directors stay a full decade, and the circumstances of Mr. Wray’s departure after seven years suggest that insulation has worn thin.“We are now in a position in which no F.B.I. director may be expected to serve for 10 years, and every time a new president comes in, that new president is likely to signal that the director will be replaced,” said John C. Richter, a Republican and a former U.S. attorney who served in the Justice Department with Mr. Wray.By several measures — agent recruitment and retention, arrests, and disrupted plots — the F.B.I. has been successful during Mr. Wray’s tenure, even as its politically charged cases consumed most of the public attention.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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    Man Found in Syria Appears to Be a Missing American

    Syria’s new authorities said on Thursday that an American citizen who had been imprisoned while Bashar al-Assad was in power had been found outside Damascus and handed over to the rebel group that now controls the capital.In interviews with international news media, the man appeared to identify himself as Travis Timmerman, an American who is believed to have gone missing from Budapest, Hungary, this year. In a video aired on Thursday by the news channel Al Arabiya, someone is heard asking the man if his name is Travis Timmerman. The man says, “That’s right.” Hisham al-Eid, the mayor of Al-Thihabiyeh, a poor, partly rural town east of Damascus, said that the man had been found on Thursday morning on a main road. He was barefoot and cold but otherwise seemed to be in good health, Mr. al-Eid said.The man told reporters that he had entered Syria from Lebanon on a Christian pilgrimage, and had been detained for several months. He said he had received food and water while in detention, and was allowed to go to the bathroom three times a day.In another video posted by Al Arabiya, the man, wearing a beard and a gray hooded top, said that he had been held in a cell alone. When asked how he was freed, he said that on Monday, someone “took a hammer and they broke my door down.”It was not immediately clear where the man had been held. The fall of the authoritarian Assad regime over the weekend to rebel forces led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has prompted the release of many prisoners held in a sprawling network of detention centers operated by the former government.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 Best Memorable Wines of 2024

    The scarcity and fragility of rare old bottles makes them naturally memorable, but these 12 younger wines had their own unforgettable charms.I’ve had the privilege of drinking some wonderful wines this year, including a few rare, breathtakingly gorgeous old bottles.Those are often the ones that stick in the memory, the experiences that you carry around as benchmarks of beauty.But I drank a lot of memorable wines that were not so rare, old or hard to find. This year, as I considered which bottles to include in my year-end list, I decided to focus on 12 younger, more accessible bottles along with a couple of middle-aged examples.Perhaps for that reason, every bottle is from the 21st century, the first time for me since I’ve been writing year-end lists. Time passes quickly.Here they are, in order of their age.Kelley Fox Dundee Hills Dux Vineyard Chardonnay 2022Each year, Oregon chardonnays seem to get better, more precise and more interesting. One that I’ve enjoyed several times this year was the 2022 Dux Vineyard chardonnay from Kelley Fox in the Willamette Valley.Ms. Fox tends to float under the radar compared with the more well-known Willamette producers. She offers quirky, sometimes pointed opinions. Referring to her own wines, she said, “These are living things and quite inscrutable.”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