Aurelia Butler

Welcome to the Poetry Challenge A poem can lift the spirits and nourish the soul. This week, let’s all learn one together! More

Gene Louise de Vera makes his New York Times Crossword debut.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — The first play on words I ever made (as far as I can remember, anyway) was at the dinner table, at the age of 5 or so. We were having grilled salmon, and I had noticed a piece of fish on my plate that seemed to be shaped like a cigar. I picked it up and pretended to puff on it. “Look!” I shouted. “Smoked salmon!”Notwithstanding the disturbing notion of a kindergartner aspiring to a cigar habit, I’d say this was pretty clever. I couldn’t have known at the time that my sense of humor would lead to a career in crosswords, but an entry in today’s puzzle, constructed by Gene Louise de Vera, felt all too cosmic: At 5A, indeed, to be [Like cigar and salmon] is to be SMOKED. Just as the prophecy foretold.Today’s Theme[Early struggles for a new enterprise] are known as GROWING PAINS, and in this puzzle the phrase also serves as [a hint to the shaded squares] of entries at 28D, 29D, 32D and 34D. Here are those squares, in bold below:At 28D, the phrase [“You had your chance”] means that it’s TOO LATE NOW. At 29D, if you [Go berserk], you HIT THE ROOF. Starting to see a pattern? We’ve got “ow” and “oof,” both of which are expressions of pain. And we can confirm the hunch with the remaining entries — an [Instruction to improve posture] is DON’T SLOUCH at 32D, and at 34D, a typical [Cameraperson’s session] is a PHOTO SHOOT. Note that each shaded word “grows” by one letter as we move from left to right.My exclamations of pain also include “Oy!” and “Ack!” along with a number of grawlix-worthy terms I won’t share in this column. If you have any (clean) expressions of your own to add to our GROWING PAINS lexicon, feel free to do so in the comments. Also, at 34D: Is the growing pain “SHOOT” because it’s what one exclaims, or because it’s shooting pain? I welcome your opinions on this, too.Tricky Clues25A. This [Blues group, for short?] is political, rather than musical, and “blues” describes a color, not a type of music, associated with the group itself. The answer is DNC, short for Democratic National Committee.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

Filipinos in Vancouver returned to a neighborhood to mourn the 11 people killed in a weekend attack.On any ordinary day, the South Vancouver neighborhood bustles with the sounds of life, but Saturday was no ordinary day. It was a celebration of Filipino culture, and music from a live concert echoed through the streets as families lined up at food trucks and children played.On Sunday it was strangely silent.“It gives me chills,” said Franchesca Gabo, taking it all in.Ms. Gabo, 20, left the festival shortly before a driver rammed his SUV into the mass of people, killing 11 and injuring more than 30.Now, she had come back, joining an impromptu vigil of people peering over police tape and trying in vain to absorb the enormity of what had happened.“It was a happy day yesterday,” Ms. Gabo said. “Everyone was celebrating.”The authorities say the motive for the attack did not appear to be terrorism. But beyond that little had emerged about the suspect in custody other than that he is a 30-year-old man with a history of mental illness. Now, he is charged with murder.More was becoming known about the victims at the festival celebrating Lapu Lapu Day.The youngest was Katie Le, a 5-year-old girl who was killed along with her parents, Richard Le, 47, and Linh Hoang, 30, according to local news reports. Mr. Le’s 16-year-old son, Andy, survived because of a last-minute decision to skip the festival in favor of homework, relatives said.A school board in a nearby suburb said that a guidance counselor named Kira Salim was also among the dead. “The loss of our friend and colleague has left us all shocked and heartbroken,” it said in a statement.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

The move comes as President Trump has tried to abolish D.E.I. programs at universities.Harvard is revamping its diversity, equity and inclusion office in a move that seemed to accede to the Trump administration, even as the university has sued the administration and accused it of unlawfully interfering in the university’s affairs.An email to the Harvard community on Monday announced that the office had been renamed the Office of Community and Campus Life.The decision follows similar reorganizations across the country by universities, which appeared to be aimed at placating conservative critics who have attacked diversity offices as left-wing indoctrination factories.Harvard’s announcement stood out, though, because it came just hours after lawyers for the university and the Trump administration held their first conference in a lawsuit in which Harvard accuses the administration of invading freedoms long recognized by the Supreme Court.The Trump administration also opened another front in its fight with the university on Monday, accusing the Harvard Law Review, an independent student-run journal, of racial discrimination in journal membership and article selection. In a news release announcing that the law review was under investigation, Craig Trainor, the Department of Education’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said the journal “appears to pick winners and losers on the basis of race, employing a spoils system in which the race of the legal scholar is as, if not more, important than the merit of the submission.” Responding to the announcement, Harvard Law School emphasized its commitment to ensuring that programs it oversees comply with the law, but pointed out that the journal is legally independent. A similar claim against the Harvard Law Review was dismissed in federal court in 2019. In announcing that Harvard’s diversity office was being revamped, Sherri Ann Charleston, formerly the chief diversity officer, said the university should bring people together based on their backgrounds and perspectives and “not the broad demographic groups to which they belong.”Dr. Charleston’s title has been changed to chief community and campus life officer.The Trump administration included abolishing D.E.I. efforts in a long list of demands it sent to Harvard two weeks ago, which the university would have to meet to continue receiving federal funding. Among other requirements, the administration ordered Harvard to appoint an external overseer to monitor students, faculty and staff for “viewpoint diversity,” to ban international students hostile to “American values,” and to eliminate activist faculty. The list of demands was sent by mistake, according to two people familiar with the matter, but the White House has continued to stand by the requirements. Harvard responded to the demands by filing the lawsuit in federal court. “No government, regardless of which party, should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Harvard’s president, Alan M. Garber, wrote in a statement to the university.In retaliation, the administration has frozen more than $2.2 billion in university grants and contracts.Miles J. Herszenhorn More

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A joint agreement appeared to avert a threat by President Trump of tariffs and sanctions in a long-running dispute over water rights in the border region.Mexico has agreed to send water to the United States and temporarily channel more water to the country from their shared rivers, a concession that appeared to defuse a diplomatic crisis sparked by yearslong shortages that left Mexico behind on its treaty-bound contribution of water from the borderlands.Earlier this month, President Trump threatened additional tariffs and other sanctions against Mexico over the water debt, amounting to about 420 billion gallons. In a social media post, Mr. Trump accused Mexico of “stealing” water from Texas farmers by not meeting its obligations under a 1944 treaty that mediates the distribution of water from three rivers the two countries share: the Rio Grande, the Colorado and the Tijuana. In an agreement announced jointly by Mexico and the United States on Monday, Mexico will immediately transfer some of its water reserves and will give the country a larger share of the flow of water from the Rio Grande through October.The concession from Mexico averted the threat of more punishing tariffs and diplomatic enmity with the United States amid the rollout of Mr. Trump’s new trade policies. But fulfilling the agreement is expected to significantly strain Mexico’s farmlands and could revive civil unrest triggered by previous water payments to the United States. Much of the Mexican borderlands are enduring extreme drought conditions, according to Mexico’s meteorological agency and water commission, and Mexico’s water reserves are at historic lows.Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has taken a conciliatory approach in negotiations with the Trump administration. Hours after Mr. Trump’s threat of tariffs over the water dispute earlier this month, Ms. Sheinbaum acknowledged that her country had fallen short of its treaty commitments, citing the extreme drought and saying that Mexico had been complying “to the extent of water availability.”In a statement on Monday, the State Department lauded Ms. Sheinbaum “for her personal involvement” in negotiating the agreement, and spoke of “water scarcity affecting communities on both sides of the border.” A statement from the Mexican foreign ministry on the agreement noted that the United States had agreed not to seek a renegotiation of the 1944 water treaty.Longstanding tensions over water have simmered between Mexico and the United States. In 2020, those tensions exploded into violence in Mexico, as farmers rioted and seized control of a dam in the border region in an effort to shut off water deliveries to the United States.Rising temperatures and drought have made the water from rivers Mexico and the United States share all the more valuable.According to data provided by the International Boundary and Water Commission, which mediates water disputes between the two countries, Mexico has fallen well short of its treaty commitments on water delivery in the last five years. Between October 2020 and October 2024, Mexico provided just over 400,000 acre-feet of water, far less than the roughly 1.4 million acre-feet called for under treaty stipulations. The debt has only grown since.Emiliano Rodríguez Mega More

Lawyers say the families wanted the children to remain in the United States. The Trump administration says the mothers requested the children’s removal. The dispute has constitutional stakes.The removal of three children with U.S. citizenship with their families to Honduras last week has prompted alarm that President Trump’s strict immigration enforcement may have crossed “illegal and unconstitutional” lines, as a federal judge in one of the cases put it.Lawyers for the two families involved said the mothers were not given an option to leave their children in the United States before they were deported. But Mr. Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, said the mothers requested the children’s removal.The cases have added to growing concerns that the Trump administration may be violating the Constitution in its increasingly stringent crackdown on immigration, including removing U.S. citizens, a desire that Mr. Trump has expressed in the past but that legal experts say runs against longstanding prohibitions.Here is a look at the cases and what is at stake.What happened?Three children who are U.S. citizens were removed to Honduras last week as part of the deportation of other members of their families.Two of the children, ages 4 and 7, belong to one Honduran family. The mother of those children had an outstanding deportation order and had shown up to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement check-in on Thursday, said Gracie Willis, the raids response coordinator with the National Immigration Project, who is helping the family’s immigration lawyer with the case.The 4-year-old, Ms. Willis said, has cancer. The mother had shown up to the check-in with a lawyer but was quickly thrust into the deportation process. Her lawyer had no meaningful chance to try to stop the deportation in court, Ms. Willis 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

In a foreword to a book, he articulated the church’s position on marriage.In the days since his death, Pope Francis has been called a reformer, outsider, influencer and modernizer. He was all of these things. But he was also the steward of the oldest institution in the Western world. He protected the Roman Catholic Church’s doctrine — even if he did so in his own style.That is evident in one of Francis’ last writings, which was provided to The New York Times and has not previously been published. It’s a short foreword to a book, written for young Catholics, about the church’s teachings on love and marriage. The book is from the YOUCAT Foundation (short for youth catechism, or doctrine), an organization approved by the Vatican to publish the church’s teachings in a way that young people can understand. The foundation distributes books in 70 languages around the world.In the foreword, Francis articulates the church’s position on marriage: that it is a priority, one of sacred importance, and is only between a man and a woman. He breaks no new doctrinal ground. Still, the letter illustrates who Francis was as a pope: a pragmatic and compassionate communicator who skillfully repackaged, without necessarily changing, the church’s doctrine for a modern era. (Read the full text here.)“It’s a confirmation of a legacy,” Raúl Zegarra, a professor of Catholicism at Harvard, said. “It’s really a classic text by the pope.”His rhetorical styleIn his opening lines, Francis captures much of his approach to the papacy.“In my homeland of Argentina, there is a dance I love very much, one that I often participated in when I was young: the tango,” Francis, the first Latin American pope, writes. He then compares the tango, in all of its “discipline and dignity,” to marriage.“I am always touched to see young people who love each other and have the courage to transform their love into something great: ‘I want to love you until death do us part.’ What an extraordinary promise!”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