Aurelia Butler

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    Summer Reading Contest, Week 3: What Got Your Attention in The Times This Week?

    To participate, submit your response here by June 27 at 9 a.m. Eastern. This week’s winners will be announced by July 8.Welcome to the third week of our 16th Annual Summer Reading Contest.Every week for 10 weeks this summer we’re asking students “What got your attention in The New York Times this week? Why?” To participate in Week 3, choose something to read, watch or listen to in The Times and submit a response that answers those questions by 9 a.m. Eastern on June 27.You can choose anything that was published in the print paper or on nytimes.com in 2025, including articles, photos, essays, videos, podcasts or graphics. We hope you’ll click around to find your own great pieces, but we also know that not everyone who participates has a Times subscription so, each week, you’ll find dozens of free links to interesting articles, features and multimedia below.Students are invited to submit responses in the form of a 1,500-character (about 250 words) comment OR a 90-second video. Please see the requirements for each type of response below and read the full rules and guidelines in our contest announcement before making your submissions.Your responses will be read by New York Times journalists and staff, as well as educators from around the world. We’ll choose at least one favorite answer to feature on our site each week. Winners from Week 3 will be announced by July 8.Here’s how to participate:1. Choose a New York Times piece.2. Whatever caught your eye, tell us about it in writing or video.3. Submit your response here by June 27 at 9 a.m. Eastern.1. Choose a New York Times piece.What did you read, watch or listen to in The Times this week? You can respond to anything that was published online at nytimes.com, including in The Athletic, or in the print paper in 2025, but, if you don’t have a subscription, here are some stories you can access through this page for free:This week you may have read front-page news articles, like:After an Israeli airstrike in Tehran on Wednesday. The conflict began on Friday, when Israel launched a surprise attack on dozens of targets inside Iran.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesSummer Reading Contest Written Submission Form, Week 3 More

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    A Way for People With Low Credit Scores to Raise Them

    A new study finds that tenants who pay their rent on time can see “significant increases” if the payments are reported to credit bureaus.People who pay their rent on time can establish credit scores or significantly raise low scores if the payments are reported to credit bureaus, new research found.A study published this month by the Urban Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C., looked at two groups of tenants recruited in 2021 and 2022. The members of one group began having their rent payments reported to credit bureaus immediately after signing up to participate in a program offered by their properties. The members of the other group had their rent reporting delayed by four months.The study found that rent reporting leads to “large, statistically significant increases” in the likelihood of having a score and of having at least a “near prime” score — a minimum of 601 on a scale of 300 to 850.The research was the first rigorous, randomized study of “positive” rent reporting, said Brett Theodos, a senior fellow at the institute and an author of the study, which enrolled 269 participants in affordable housing programs in five states and Washington. In positive rent reporting, only payments made on time are supplied to credit bureaus.The study used VantageScore, a competitor to the widely used FICO score. VantageScore, which uses a scale similar to FICO’s but assigns different weights to certain factors, was founded by the three big credit bureaus: TransUnion, Equifax and Experian.Still, some consumer advocates remain wary of rent reporting, saying it may pose risks to vulnerable renters.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 Markets Are Balancing on a Knife’s Edge

    The world has been anything but peaceful, but you wouldn’t know that from looking at the markets.The calm in the markets has been unnerving.You might think the world has been enjoying a season so tranquil that the stock, bond and currency markets have fallen asleep.Yet the world has been anything but peaceful lately, whether in the United States, Ukraine or the Persian Gulf. And the Federal Reserve gave the markets another reason for concern on Wednesday when it held interest rates steady. Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said that the economy faced the risks of both higher inflation and stagnating economic growth, but that the central bank needed more evidence before it could decide where the greatest dangers lay.“Right now, it’s a forecast in a foggy time,” he said. Even more than usual, the path ahead isn’t clear. Still, there was barely any reaction in market prices. Nor has anything else seriously disrupted major markets.That’s noteworthy, when you consider the crises that are looming: the highest tariffs in decades; a contentious crackdown on immigration and a swelling budget deficit in the United States; and, in the Middle East, an escalating war between Israel and Iran that could sharply reduce global oil supplies.This isn’t to say all markets have been entirely placid. The price of oil has oscillated since Israel launched a barrage of air attacks on Iran last Friday, setting off a new, heightened stage of conflict between the two longtime adversaries. President Trump has warned Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that the United States might intervene directly, saying, “Our patience is wearing thin.” The start of a much bigger war, with the United States joining the Israeli effort to eliminate Iran as a potential nuclear threat, would undoubtedly wake the markets from their apparent slumber.High StakesThe economic risks in the Persian Gulf are enormous. If Iran were desperate enough, in addition to targeting U.S. forces in the region it could throttle the oil supplies that pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Shipping through the strait encompasses one quarter of “total global seaborne oil trade,” according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and protecting that oil route has been a preoccupation of U.S. military planners since the days of the shah of Iran, who was deposed in 1979.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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    You Only Get Married a Few Times. Why Not Go All Out?

    As the Jeff Bezos-Lauren Sánchez nuptials approach, a look at how second weddings went from low-key to lavish. They were one of the world’s most famous couples, their future sealed when he renounced his throne for her and she renounced her husband for him. But so much disapproval surrounded the audacious affair between King Edward VIII of England and the American socialite Wallis Simpson that their eventual marriage, before a handful of guests in France in 1937, felt more like a perp walk than a wedding.“It was a sad little service,” Lady Alexandra Metcalfe, a wedding guest known as “Baba Blackshirt” because of her reputed Nazi sympathies, wrote in her journal. “It could be nothing but pitiable and tragic to see a King of England of only six months ago, an idolized King, married under these circumstances.”It seems quaint to remember the days when second weddings were typically quiet and modest affairs, especially after a bit of adultery. Perhaps there was a sense that everyone was allowed just one public spectacle-style wedding in a lifetime. Maybe it was considered indecorous to declare “til death do us part” once again, when death had clearly not parted you the first time you said it.That’s why former monarchs fled to France and commoners had small, tasteful celebrations, perhaps at City Hall, the brides wearing outfits like “a gray suit and a pillbox hat,” as the high-end event planner Bryan Rafanelli described it in an interview.In contrast, let us consider the 2025 version of a royal wedding: the forthcoming marriage in Venice between Jeff Bezos, the billionaire king of Amazon, and the ex-TV host and helicopter pilot Lauren Sánchez. Having entered public consciousness when their racy texts were leaked to the tabloids during their previous marriages, their relationship — buoyed and insulated by Mr. Bezos’ estimated $228 billion fortune — has always had the feel of an extended P.D.A. victory lap.Depending on what you read, the wedding will cost $15 million, or $20 million. Or maybe it will be scaled back to under $10 million because of the couple’s supposed decision to be “less ‘Marie Antoinette’” after the Blue Origin spaceflight this spring featuring Ms. Sánchez and a group of her famous female friends. The 11-minute mission suffered from a bit of a P.R. problem when the women donned sexy space outfits, discussed their extraterrestrial makeup routines and, in the case of Katy Perry, declared the intention to “put the ‘ass’ in astronaut.”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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    Appeals Court Lets Trump Keep Control of California National Guard in L.A.

    A panel rejected a lower-court’s finding that it was likely illegal for President Trump to use state troops to protect immigration agents from protests.A federal appeals court on Thursday cleared the way for President Trump to keep using the National Guard to respond to immigration protests in Los Angeles, declaring that a judge in San Francisco erred last week when he ordered Mr. Trump to return control of the troops to Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.In a unanimous, 38-page ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the conditions in Los Angeles were sufficient for Mr. Trump to decide that he needed to take federal control of California’s National Guard and deploy it to ensure that federal immigration laws would be enforced.The panel — made up of two appointees of Mr. Trump and one of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. — rejected a lower-court judge’s conclusion that the protests were so unruly that they could trigger a rarely-used law that Mr. Trump invoked when he claimed the power to federalize the National Guard over Mr. Newsom’s objections.“Affording appropriate deference to the President’s determination, we conclude that he likely acted within his authority in federalizing the National Guard,” the court wrote, in an unsigned opinion on behalf of the entire panel.The ruling was not a surprise. During a 65-minute hearing on Tuesday, the panel’s questions and statements had telegraphed that all three judges — Mark J. Bennett, Eric D. Miller and Jennifer Sung — were inclined to let Mr. Trump keep controlling the Guard for now, while litigation continues to play out over California’s challenge to his move.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 Is Charged With Trying to Kidnap Memphis Mayor, Police Say

    The 25-year-old man told the police that he had gone to the home of Mayor Paul Young to confront him about crime. The police later found a stun gun, rope and duct tape in the man’s car, they said.A 25-year-old man who said he was angry about crime in Memphis and wanted to confront the city’s mayor scaled a wall at the mayor’s home late Sunday night and, armed with a stun gun, knocked on the front door, according to the Memphis Police Department.The man, Trenton Abston, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with attempted kidnapping, stalking and aggravated criminal trespass in connection with the episode at the home of Mayor Paul Young. The police said that they had later recovered the stun gun, as well as gloves, rope and duct tape, from Mr. Abston’s car.Mr. Young was home, along with his wife and two young children, when he saw the man knock on his door through his doorbell camera, the police said.“Paul Young reported that he did not know the male and his presence at his door at a late hour wearing a hoodie and gloves put him, his wife and children in fear for their safety,” according to a criminal complaint filed on Wednesday.According to the complaint, in footage recorded by the mayor’s doorbell video camera, the man appeared to have “a lumpy bulge” in the pocket of his hoodie when he knocked on the door. Mr. Young did not open the door, and the man fled.Mr. Young recounted the events of Sunday night in a Facebook post on Wednesday under a family portrait in which he, his wife and their two school-age children are smiling.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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    Juneteenth Goes Uncelebrated at White House as Trump Complains About ‘Too Many’ Holidays

    President Trump made no statement about the federal holiday that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States, other than saying there were too many like it. Lesser occasions routinely garner official proclamations.Juneteenth, the holiday that marks the end of slavery in the United States, has been celebrated at the White House each June 19 since it was enshrined into law four years ago. But on Thursday, it went unmarked by the president — except for a post on social media in which he said he would get rid of some “non-working holidays.”“Soon we’ll end up having a holiday for every once working day of the year,” Mr. Trump said in mangled syntax, not mentioning Juneteenth by name nor acknowledging that Thursday was a federal holiday. “It must change if we are going to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, indicated to reporters earlier in the day that she was not aware of any plans by Mr. Trump to sign a holiday proclamation. In the past week alone, he’d issued proclamations commemorating Father’s Day, Flag Day and National Flag Week, and the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill — none of which are among the 11 annual federal holidays.In response to a reporter’s question about Juneteenth, Ms. Leavitt acknowledged that Thursday was “a federal holiday,” but noted that White House staff had shown up to work during a briefing that focused primarily on the matter of whether Mr. Trump would order strikes on Iran.Mr. Trump, who has often used holidays as an occasion to advance his political causes and insult critics and opponents on social media, chose the occasion of Juneteenth instead to float the idea of reducing the number of federal holidays, claiming that they are costing businesses billions of dollars. While most federal employees get those holidays off, private businesses have the choice to close or remain open. Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, the day when a Union general arrived in Galveston, Texas, nearly two and a half years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, to finally inform enslaved African Americans there that the Civil War had ended and that all enslaved people had been freed. Months later, the 13th Amendment was ratified, abolishing slavery in the final four border states that had not been subjected to Lincoln’s order.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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    NYT Crossword Answers for June 20, 2025

    Adrianne Baik makes her New York Times Crossword debut with some dynamic, grid-spanning stacks.Jump to: Tricky CluesFRIDAY PUZZLE — I’m not going to take up too much of your time today, because I would rather let you read about Adrianne Baik, a rising junior at Harvey Mudd College. Ms. Baik makes her New York Times Crossword debut today, and I can already tell that I am going to be a fan.Today’s puzzle was accessible to those who are just starting to solve late-week puzzles, or maybe Ms. Baik was just tuned into my particular wheelhouse. Even so, the grid-spanning stacks sizzle, and her clues covered a wide range of topics, which kept me engaged.Tricky Clues19A. The [Medical drama sites, for short] are not Hollywood sets but E.R.S., or emergency rooms.26A. In this puzzle, THOU is short for thousand. So is the clue [K], as in $10K for $10,000.49A. I love the quotation [“You can no more win a ___ than you can win an earthquake”: Jeannette Rankin]. The answer is WAR. In 1917, Ms. Rankin became the first woman in Congress.3D. Hand up if you mentally followed up AYE CAPTAIN, the answer to [Mate’s reply], with “I can’t hear you!” because your children watched a lot of “SpongeBob” when they were young. (The lyrics are actually “Aye, aye, captain!” but it matters not to my brain’s filing system.)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