Aurelia Butler

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    The Future of Baseball

    An interview with the M.L.B. commissioner. A new baseball season is underway, and the sport is enjoying a sort of renaissance.Baseball is making more money than it ever has. The addition of a pitch clock has made games quicker and created more action on the field. Attendance and ratings are on the rise.But the sport also faces a possible long-term problem: the widening gap between its haves and have-nots.Baseball’s future, both good and bad, is on display in California.It’s a glorious moment for the Los Angeles Dodgers, who won the World Series last year and have baseball’s biggest star, Shohei Ohtani. After winning the title, the Dodgers added even more talent to their roster — the team will spend well over $300 million this year on player salaries.A few hundred miles up Interstate 5, in Sacramento, that kind of money feels almost unfathomable. There the Athletics, who left Oakland after 57 years, are playing their home games at a minor-league ballpark as they prepare to move to Las Vegas in three years. The A’s entire payroll is only slightly more than what Ohtani alone is owed each year.Money doesn’t win games. It’s baseball, after all. And the A’s are scrappy. Even if they aren’t as well compensated, they can beat anyone on any given day. But the imbalance of resources, over time, tends to offer richer teams an advantage.For today’s newsletter, The Times spoke with the commissioner of Major League Baseball, Rob Manfred, about the state of the game.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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    Chevron Must Pay $745 Million for Coastal Damages, Louisiana Jury Rules

    The verdict will likely influence similar lawsuits against other oil companies over coastal damage in the state.A jury in Louisiana has ruled that Chevron must pay a parish government about $745 million to help restore wetlands that the jury said the energy company had harmed for decades.The verdict, which was reached on Friday, is likely to influence similar lawsuits filed by other parishes, or counties, in the state against other energy giants and their possible settlement negotiations.The lawsuit, filed by Plaquemines Parish, is one of at least 40 that coastal parishes have filed against fossil fuel companies since 2013.The lawsuit contended that Texaco — which Chevron bought in 2000 — violated state law for decades by failing to apply for coastal permits, and by not removing oil and gas equipment when it stopped using an oil field in Breton Sound, which is southeast of New Orleans.A state regulation in 1980 required companies operating in wetlands to restore “as near as practicable to their original condition” any canals that they dredged, wells that they drilled or wastewater that they dumped into marshes.Oil industry infrastructure in coastal waters in Plaquemines Parish, La.William Widmer for The New York TimesWe 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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    Trump Administration Revokes Visas of South Sudanese in Clash Over Deportees

    Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Saturday that he was revoking the visas of all South Sudan passport holders because the country’s transitional government had refused to accept in a “timely manner” citizens who were being deported by the Trump administration.Mr. Rubio also said in a social media post that he would “restrict any further issuance to prevent entry” of South Sudanese, blaming the “failure of South Sudan’s transitional government” to accept the repatriations. In a statement issued through the State Department, Mr. Rubio said, “we will be prepared to review these actions when South Sudan is in full cooperation.”Mr. Rubio’s action is similar to one that President Trump announced in late January, when he threatened Colombian officials with revocation of their visas and tariffs on the country’s exports because they were refusing to accept U.S. military flights with Colombian deportees. In that case, Colombia reversed its decision quickly.The decision by Mr. Rubio to approve such a sweeping action on the visas of South Sudanese travelers and immigrants is a further sign of the Trump administration’s intense focus on trying to deport as many foreign citizens from the United States as quickly as possible, an action that Mr. Trump promised he would take while on the campaign trail.Some of the potential deportees have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration, and several judges have issued temporary restraining orders as a result.Officials in South Sudan could not immediately be reached for comment late Saturday.Lucas Guttentag, a former Justice Department official during the Biden administration, called the move “another example of damning individuals based on nationality and upending the lives of innocent and law abiding visa holders instead of engaging in meaningful diplomacy.”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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    Israel Says Its Account of Rescue Workers Killed in Gaza Was Partly ‘Mistaken’

    The Israeli military had previously asserted that the workers had been “advancing suspiciously” toward its troops. A video obtained by The New York Times on Friday appeared to contradict that account.The Israeli military on Saturday acknowledged that the initial accounts from troops involved in the killing last month of 15 people in southern Gaza — who the United Nations said were paramedics and rescue workers — had been partially “mistaken.”The assessment, which was shared in a briefing with reporters by an Israeli military official, came the day after a video obtained by The New York Times appeared to contradict the military’s earlier version of events. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity under army rules.The Israeli military official said the internal investigation of the attack, which has drawn international scrutiny and condemnation, is ongoing.Briefing reporters on Saturday night on the military’s initial findings, the official said forces from a reserve infantry brigade had been lying in ambush along a road to the north of the Gazan city of Rafah in the pre-dawn hours of March 23 and, at 4 a.m., had killed what he described as two Hamas security personnel and detained a third one.Two hours later, as dawn was breaking, a convoy of ambulances and a fire truck approached the same spot. The Israeli forces were still on the ground and received a report from a surveillance aircraft that the convoy was moving toward them, the official said. When the rescue workers arrived and left their vehicles, he said, the forces believed that more Hamas operatives had arrived and opened fire on the occupants of the vehicles from afar.The Israeli military had previously asserted, repeatedly and erroneously, that the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously” toward the troops “without headlights or emergency signals.”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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    Justice Dept. Accuses Top Immigration Lawyer of Failing to Follow Orders

    A senior Justice Department immigration lawyer was put on indefinite leave Saturday after questioning the Trump administration’s decision to deport a Maryland man to El Salvador — one day after representing the government in court.Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche suspended Erez Reuveni, the acting deputy director of the department’s immigration litigation division, for failing to “follow a directive from your superiors,” according to a letter sent to Mr. Reuveni and obtained by The New York Times.Mr. Reuveni — who was praised as a “top-notched” prosecutor by his superiors in an email announcing his promotion two weeks ago — is the latest career official to be suspended, demoted, transferred or fired for refusing to comply with a directive from President Trump’s appointees to take actions they deem improper or unethical.“At my direction, every Department of Justice attorney is required to zealously advocate on behalf of the United States,” Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in a statement sent to The Times on Saturday. “Any attorney who fails to abide by this direction will face consequences.”Under questioning by a federal judge on Friday, Mr. Reuveni conceded that the deportation last month of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who had a court order allowing him to stay in the United States, should never have taken place. Mr. Reuveni also said he had been frustrated when the case landed on his desk.Mr. Reuveni, a respected 15-year veteran of the immigration division, asked the judge for 24 hours to persuade his “client,” the Trump administration, to begin the process of retrieving and repatriating Mr. Abrego Garcia.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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    U.K. Labour Lawmaker Suspended From Party After Arrest

    Dan Norris, a lawmaker who won a seat in Parliament last year, was swiftly suspended from Britain’s governing party.Britain’s governing Labour Party on Saturday said it had suspended Dan Norris, one of its lawmakers in Parliament, after he was arrested by the police.Mr. Morris “was immediately suspended by the Labour Party upon being informed of his arrest,” the party said in a statement, adding that it “cannot comment further while the police investigation is ongoing.”The party did not specify why Mr. Norris, 65, had been arrested, and he did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday. In Britain, the police typically do not disclose the name of suspects unless they are charged. The BBC said that Mr. Norris was arrested on suspicion of rape, child sex offenses, child abduction and misconduct in a public office.In a statement that did not give any names, the Avon and Somerset Police said that a man in his 60s was arrested on Friday on suspicion of sexual offenses against a girl, rape, child abduction and misconduct in a public office. The police said he had been released on conditional bail.“In December 2024, we received a referral from another police force relating to alleged non-recent child sex offenses having been committed against a girl,” the police statement said.“Most of the offenses are alleged to have occurred in the 2000s, but we’re also investigating an alleged offense of rape from the 2020s,” it added. The police said that the investigation was “ongoing and at an early stage.”The Labour Party’s move is expected to mean that Mr. Norris will, pending the investigation, be effectively suspended from representing the party in the House of Commons.Last year Mr. Norris won a seat in Parliament representing North East Somerset and Hanham, near the city of Bristol, defeating a former Conservative cabinet minister, Jacob Rees-Mogg.Mr. Norris is also the mayor of the West of England, responsible for the administration of several cities in a western region, a position he has held since 2021, though he is not running for re-election when that post is contested on May 1.His political career goes back more than two decades. Mr. Norris was a lawmaker from 1997 to 2010, representing the seat of Wansdyke, in the west of England. He was an assistant whip in the government of Tony Blair from 2001 to 2003, and a junior minister in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs from 2009 to 2010, under Prime Minister Gordon Brown. More

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    After Trump’s Tariffs, Stocks Plunged but Penguin Memes Ticked Up

    The internet poked fun at the Trump administration’s decision to impose new tariffs on Heard Island and McDonald Islands, Australian territories near Antarctica where many penguins but no people live. The Trump administration this week levied sweeping tariffs across the globe, provoking retaliation from other countries and sending the stock market tumbling. An unexpected consequence? Penguin memes.Images of the flightless birds have waddled their way across the internet this week after President Trump imposed tariffs on Heard Island and McDonald Islands, Australian territories near Antarctica that are home to many penguins but no people.One meme featured an altered photo of the explosive February White House meeting in which Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance publicly clashed with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. Instead of a fiery confrontation with the wartime leader, however, Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance sit next to a black-and-white bird.One person who posted the meme wrote, “Maybe it didn’t say thank you?” in a possible reference to Mr. Vance’s accusation that Mr. Zelensky had not appropriately thanked the United States for the military support Washington had provided Kyiv throughout the war.A different meme showed a penguin teaching sea gulls to aim their waste at Teslas, an apparent nod to Mr. Trump’s billionaire adviser, Elon Musk. Yet another showed a huge gathering of penguins with a caption citing “Unprecedented protests” on Heard Island and McDonald Islands, “as the population rises up” against Mr. Trump’s imposition of across-the-board tariffs.The UNESCO World Heritage Convention notes the islands’ “complete absence of alien plants and animals, as well as human impact.” Still, Mr. Trump included the desolate islands on his list, imposing the 10 percent base-line tariff he placed on nearly all goods imported into the United States.The Wednesday announcement, which Mr. Trump described as America’s “Liberation Day,” sent shock waves across the world as both allies and adversaries scrambled to make sense of the new and hefty tariffs. The move has shot U.S. import duties to the highest levels in over a century.Also slotted for new tariffs were the British Indian Ocean Territory, a collection of mostly uninhabited islands, save for U.S. and British soldiers stationed on joint military bases.Other islands subjected to tariffs included Tokelau, a territory of New Zealand that has fewer than 2,000 inhabitants; the Norwegian islands of Svalbard, which has about 3,000 residents; and Jan Mayen, where the only humans are the military personnel who operate a weather and coastal services station.Mr. Trump has said little about the methodology behind the new system of calculations, but each country’s new tariff rate appeared to come from a formula that takes the trade deficit America runs with a nation and divides it by the exports that country sent into the United States. The White House explained its methodology in this post, which essentially confirms that formula.Then, because Mr. Trump said he was being “kind,” the final tariff number was cut in half.It is not clear how the administration decided to add Heard Island and McDonald Islands to the list of tariffs. The White House did not immediately respond to request for comment.Jenny Gross More