Aurelia Butler

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    Justice Dept. to Cut Gun-Sale Inspectors by Two-Thirds as It Moves to Downsize A.T.F.

    The move is part of the Trump administration’s effort to defang and downsize the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.The Justice Department plans to slash the number of inspectors who monitor federally licensed gun dealers by two-thirds, sharply limiting the government’s already crimped capacity to identify businesses that sell guns to criminals, according to budget documents.The move, part of the Trump administration’s effort to defang and downsize the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, comes as the department considers merging the A.T.F. and the Drug Enforcement Administration. It follows a rollback of Biden-era regulations aimed at stemming the spread of deadly homemade firearms, along with other gun control measures.The department plans to eliminate 541 of the estimated 800 investigators responsible for determining whether federal dealers are following federal law and regulations intended to keep guns away from traffickers, straw purchasers, criminals and those found to have severe mental illness, according to a budget summary quietly circulated last week.Department officials estimated the reductions would reduce “A.T.F.’s capacity to regulate the firearms and explosives industries by approximately 40 percent” in the fiscal year starting in November — even though the staff cuts represent two-thirds of the inspection work force. The cuts are needed to meet the White House demand that A.T.F. cut nearly a third from its budget of $1.6 billion.News of the plan came as a shock to a work force already reeling from months of disruption. Several frontline agency staff members, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said the cuts would lead to hundreds of layoffs and effectively end the A.T.F.’s role as a serious regulator of gun sales, if they are not reversed by the White House or Congress.“These are devastating cuts to law enforcement funding and would undermine A.T.F.’s ability to keep communities safe from gun violence,” said John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit advocacy group founded by the former mayor of New York Michael R. Bloomberg. “This budget would be a win for unscrupulous gun dealers and a terrible setback for A.T.F.’s state and local law enforcement partners.”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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    Katie Miller’s Washington Rise Takes a Musk Detour

    She is one half of a Trump-world power couple. But she’s on Team Elon. It’s gotten complicated.It was the three-word gavel-bang heard across Washington — the conversation-ender meant to cow colleagues and cabinet secretaries, deployed daily by a slight woman with a big job:“Elon wants this.”For months, Katie Miller, the all-purpose operative for the world’s richest man, had been entrusted to help execute Elon Musk’s merry rampage through the federal government, conveying his priorities, his vision, his likes and dislikes with the tacit force of an executive order.When she spoke, Ms. Miller implied to Trump acolytes high and low, they should proceed as if it were Mr. Musk’s mouth moving.Where he walked, Ms. Miller invariably followed, sometimes trailing him straight into Oval Office meetings — and occasionally finding herself gently redirected back out of the room by White House staff, an administration official recalled.Mr. Musk even held court regularly off the clock at the home Ms. Miller shares with Stephen Miller, President Trump’s most powerful policy aide, and their three young children, according to people familiar with the matter.Now, Mr. Musk is gone — or out of Washington, anyway — in a spectacular, market-moving, mutually vicious fireball of a breakup with Mr. Trump.And life in the home of Katie and Stephen Miller has gotten complicated.Mr. Miller is the millennial avatar of all that MAGA loves and liberals loathe about the Trump agenda. His loyalty to the president is unquestioned. Ms. Miller, a 33-year-old veteran of the first Trump administration, is a top lieutenant for Mr. Trump’s friend-turned-enemy-turned-who-knows-what-now. How and whether the present arrangement can be sustained is uncertain — and widely buzzed about in Washington, especially among the many Trump allies who do not entirely miss her.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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    Real Risk to Youth Mental Health Is ‘Addictive Use,’ Not Screen Time Alone, Study Finds

    Researchers found children with highly addictive use of phones, video games or social media were two to three times as likely to have thoughts of suicide or to harm themselves.As Americans scramble to respond to rising rates of suicidal behavior among youth, many policymakers have locked in on an alarming metric: the number of hours a day that American children spend glued to a glowing screen.But a study published on Wednesday in the medical journal JAMA, which followed more than 4,000 children across the country, arrived at a surprising conclusion: Longer screen time at age 10 was not associated with higher rates of suicidal behavior four years later.Instead, the authors found, the children at higher risk for suicidal behaviors were those who told researchers their use of technology had become “addictive” — that they had trouble putting it down, or felt the need to use it more and more. Some children exhibited addictive behavior even if their screen time was relatively low, they said.The researchers found addictive behavior to be very common among children — especially in their use of mobile phones, where nearly half had high addictive use. By age 14, children with high or increasing addictive behavior were two to three times as likely as other children to have thoughts of suicide or to harm themselves, the study found.“This is the first study to identify that addictive use is important, and is actually the root cause, instead of time,” said Yunyu Xiao, an assistant professor of psychiatry and population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medical College and the study’s lead author.Addictive behavior may be more difficult to control during childhood, before the prefrontal cortex, which acts as a brake on impulsivity, is fully developed.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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    See where Israeli strikes have damaged Iranian nuclear and military facilities so far.

    The nuclear watchdog of the United Nations has confirmed Israeli strikes on multiple facilities in Iran.The International Atomic Energy Agency said Wednesday that Israel struck two centrifuge production facilities in Iran, the latest hit to the country’s nuclear and missile infrastructure amid ongoing strikes that began last Friday.Earlier attacks severely damaged Iran’s largest uranium enrichment center at Natanz. On Tuesday, the I.A.E.A. — the nuclear watchdog of the United Nations — confirmed “direct impacts” on the site’s underground enrichment halls.The Israeli military also struck laboratories that work to convert uranium gas back into a metal — one of the last stages of building a weapon — at a complex outside the ancient capital of Isfahan where Iran’s most likely repository of near bomb-grade nuclear fuel is stored. The stockpile has so far been spared from attack.Iranian missile capability has also been degraded by the strikes. Israel said it struck 12 missile launch sites and storage facilities on Tuesday alone.See a more detailed look at the damage to strategic infrastructure at the link below.See What Strategic Infrastructure Israel Has Damaged in IranIsrael has attacked nuclear, military and energy facilities in Iran. Here is a look at the destruction so far. More

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    The House Next Door Has Black Mold. Do I Tell Potential Tenants?

    The issue was serious enough to cause health issues for the previous residents.My wife and I live in a neighborhood of single-family homes, most of which are owner-occupied. The home next door, however, is rented out by an absentee landlord. We became friendly with the previous tenants, who moved out very abruptly a couple of weeks ago. We learned from them that the house is infested with black mold, as identified by a professional testing company, and they shared the results with us. The mold issue was serious enough to cause health issues for the previous tenants. To our knowledge, the landlord has done nothing to mitigate this issue, and now he has listed the house for rent again. Our concern is that we’ve seen families with small children looking at the house. We believe that we might be in legal jeopardy if we were to inform prospective tenants about the mold issue, but what is our moral obligation? — Name WithheldFrom the Ethicist:In the late 1990s, Stachybotrys chartarum — sometimes dubbed “toxic black mold” — became the subject of national alarm, with news stories linking it to devastating health effects. Much of that panic was later walked back after scientific review. Still, people with allergies can experience a stuffy or runny nose and the like from mold exposure, while for people with asthma, compromised immune systems or simply bad luck, mold exposure can be genuinely harmful. In children, mold exposure has been associated with an increased risk of developing asthma. In every state, a landlord implicitly promises that a rental property is habitable. What counts as “habitable” varies by jurisdiction, but a serious mold problem most likely violates that standard.If the previous tenants shared their testing results with you, try to get a copy, if you haven’t already. You’ll want to satisfy to yourself, too, that the company doing the mold inspection is on the up-and-up; notoriously, there can be a conflict of interest when the people doing the inspections are also in the remediation business. (“In most cases, if visible mold growth is present, sampling is unnecessary,” the E.P.A. advises, while the C.D.C. flatly says that it “does not recommend mold testing,” noting that “there are no set standards for what is and what is not an acceptable quantity of different kinds of mold in a home.”) Assuming the problem has been correctly identified, you might write the landlord, asking whether the issue has been addressed, and sharing your health concerns.If you’re convinced that the danger remains, you could share the documentation with the agent listing this rental property. Realtors have their own ethical and legal obligations: If they believe the home is uninhabitable, they can’t simply let tenants assume the risk. And they’re unlikely to want to expose themselves to legal jeopardy for concealing a defect. (Disclosing facts shouldn’t expose you to legal jeopardy, but that’s a question for a lawyer.)You’re not under a moral obligation to act, and you wouldn’t be wrong to stay out of it. But this is the kind of gesture that, when well-informed, can make the world a little better. If a child were to suffer because no one spoke up, you might wish you had said something. If you were the one about to move in, you would want to know. A decent society depends, in part, on people who choose to help when they don’t strictly have to.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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    When Humans Learned to Live Everywhere

    About 70,000 years ago in Africa, humans expanded into more extreme environments, a new study finds, setting the stage for our global migration.Geography is one of the things that sets apart modern humans.Our closest living relatives — chimpanzees and bonobos — are confined to a belt of Central African forests. But humans have spread across every continent, even remote islands. Our species can thrive not only in forests, but in grasslands, swamps, deserts and just about every other ecosystem dry land has to offer.In a study published on Wednesday, scientists pinpoint the origin of our extraordinary adaptability: Africa, about 70,000 years ago.That’s when modern humans learned to thrive in more extreme habitats. We’ve been expanding our range ever since. The finding could help resolve a paradox that has puzzled researchers for years.Our species arose in Africa about a million years ago and then departed the continent a number of times over the past few hundred thousand years. But those migrants eventually disappeared, with no descendants.Finally, about 50,000 years ago, one last wave spread out of Africa. All non-Africans can trace their ancestry to this last migration. The new study might explain why the final expansion was so successful.In the new study, Eleanor Scerri, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany, and her colleagues sought to understand what sort of habitats early humans lived in across Africa.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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    Scientific Study Shows Bogong Moths Use Sky For Migration

    A new study suggests that these Australian insects may be the first invertebrates to use the night sky as a compass during migration.In the summer, the walls of the caves in the Australian Alps are tiled with Bogong moths.Months before, billions of these small, nocturnal insects migrate about 600 miles to this destination — a place they have never visited before. Seeking refuge from the summer heat, they travel across southeast Australia to these cool alpine caves. Then, in the fall, they migrate back to their breeding grounds, where they eventually die.This remarkable journey has long puzzled scientists like Eric Warrant, a neurobiologist at Lund University in Sweden. “How on earth do these moths know where to go?” he said.Now, a study in the journal Nature by Dr. Warrant and his colleagues reveals the details of the insect’s impressive feat, showing that the Bogong moth may be the first invertebrate to use the starry night sky for migration. The findings suggest the insects use a set of internal compasses, one guided by the Earth’s magnetic field and the other by the night sky, to reach their destination.“That an insect brain that is smaller than a grain of rice is able to do this is just remarkable,” said Basil el Jundi, a neuroscientist at the University of Oldenburg in Germany who was not involved in the study.The Australian Bogong moth could fit in the palm of your hand. It has a two-inch-long wingspan, a small set of eyes and a brain that is roughly a tenth of the volume of a grain of rice. Despite their small size, they have played a big role in Australia. Once an important source of food for Indigenous Australians, the insect also holds a strong cultural value because of its impressive migration.Few insects undertake long-distance migration from dispersed breeding grounds to meet in a single, specific destination. The most famous example is the monarch butterfly, which relies on the sun as a visual compass. Like monarchs, Bogong moths use the Earth’s magnetic field for their long journey. They combine the magnetic compass with visual cues or markers, though researchers did not know what these were.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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    5 Highlights From the Pianist Alfred Brendel’s Sprawling Career

    Brendel, who died on Tuesday at 94, concentrated on a small number of canonical composers, mainly Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert.The classical music industry valorizes sweeping range, favoring artists whose programs cross centuries. But the magisterial pianist Alfred Brendel, who died on Tuesday at 94, was of the old school, focusing his long career on a small number of canonical composers from the same era: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert.He nurtured their works with almost spiritual diligence, performing and reperforming, recording and rerecording. Scholarly and eccentric, acute in essays as well as in concert, Brendel rose from obscurity in Austria to become a best-selling, hall-filling star. His extended period under the radar perhaps contributed to his confidence in his idiosyncrasies: both his rumpled onstage manner and his fearless deployment of a sound that could be cool, even hard.That sound was part of Brendel’s resolutely lucid approach to music. Avoiding the impression of milking scores for excess emotion, he gained a reputation for intellectual, analytical performances. Some found his playing a little dry, but others heard a kind of transcendently austere authority.Here are a few highlights from his enormous discography.HaydnBrendel championed Haydn’s and Schubert’s sonatas at a time when not everyone placed those pieces at the center of the pantheon. You can hear some of his flintiness of tone in the Presto from Haydn’s Sonata in E minor, the feeling that he’s poking at the notes. But the livelier passages alternate with slightly, alluringly softened ones, for an effect of unexpected complexity in fairly straightforward music. His fast playing never seems dashed off; he is always palpably thinking. And his diamond-sharp pointedness in the opening of the sonata’s Adagio second movement eventually travels toward mysterious tenderness.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