Aurelia Butler

If someone you know is the subject of a nationwide manhunt and the authorities are desperately trying to learn the person’s name, are you under any legal obligation to come forward with it?The answer is, in a word, no.“There’s no legal duty to report,” said Rachel Barkow, a professor at New York University Law School. “That’s why they offer rewards, to try to entice people to do it.”The New York Police Department offered $10,000 for information about the killing of the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, outside a hotel in Midtown Manhattan last week. The F.B.I. posted a $50,000 reward.Photos of the man with distinctive eyebrows wanted in connection with the killing were circulated by the police and viewed by millions of Americans, making it likely that at least a few people who saw them recognized the subject.Ms. Barkow said it can be illegal to harbor a wanted felon, and some people are mandated to report if they learn of certain crimes — like teachers who are required to report child abuse.There is also a federal offense called “misprision of felony,” which requires someone who has “knowledge of the actual commission” of a federal felony to report that felony to the authorities.But the killing of Mr. Thompson is likely to be prosecuted under New York State law, not federally, and New York has no such reporting requirement.In any event, knowing the identity of someone who is believed to have committed a crime is not the same as knowing that the person committed the crime. In such situations, average citizens — including the suspect’s family and friends — are free to keep their mouths shut.“We might have moral objections to people who don’t do things,” Ms. Barkow said, “but they’re not subject to criminal prosecution.” More

President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Monday that he would nominate Harmeet K. Dhillon, a California lawyer who has long championed Mr. Trump in public, in court cases and on social media, to run the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.In declaring his choice on social media, Mr. Trump said Ms. Dhillon “has stood up consistently to protect our cherished civil liberties.” He praised her legal work targeting social media companies, restrictions on religious gatherings during the pandemic and “corporations who use woke policies to discriminate against their workers.”Ms. Dhillon has been a conservative activist so devoted to Mr. Trump that she was willing to attack not only Democrats but also fellow Republicans, including her ultimately unsuccessful challenge last year to the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee at the time.She was also the co-chairwoman in 2020 of a group, Lawyers for Trump, that challenged the results of that year’s presidential election.It is not unusual for Republican administrations to significantly scale back the work in the Civil Rights Division. In Ms. Dhillon, however, Mr. Trump has chosen a lawyer active in the culture wars whose firm specializes in championing the right’s causes.“I’m extremely honored by President Trump’s nomination to assist with our nation’s civil rights agenda,” Ms. Dhillon posted on social media. “It has been my dream to be able to serve our great country, and I am so excited to be part of an incredible team of lawyers led by” Pam Bondi, Mr. Trump’s choice for attorney general.The division, which enforces voting rights laws, investigates police departments and brings charges for violations of people’s civil rights, is spending the final days of the Biden administration finishing as much work as possible on cases involving patterns or practices of police misconduct.Earlier on Monday, the division announced findings highly critical of the police department in Worcester, Mass. Such findings, however, may not amount to much, given that those investigations will soon be handed over to the Trump administration.During the first Trump administration, the Justice Department walked away from several high-profile cases involving misconduct by major city police departments, and lawyers who specialize in such cases have said they expect the second Trump administration to do much the same. More

A day after the regime of President Bashar al-Assad fell, civilians poured into the streets of Damascus, weeping in disbelief. Many sought word of relatives held in a notorious prison on the outskirts of the city.Syrian security checkpoints sat empty on Monday across Damascus. Abandoned tanks were scattered across the roads, along with stray pieces of military uniforms stripped off by soldiers when opposition forces stormed into the city a day earlier.Rebels with rifles slung over their shoulders drove around, many seemingly shocked at just how quickly they had ousted Syria’s long-entrenched president, Bashar al-Assad. Damascus residents, too, were walking around the city’s streets in a state of disbelief.Some rushed to a notorious prison on the outskirts of Damascus, the capital, desperate to find loved ones who had disappeared under Mr. al-Assad’s brutal reign. Others clambered on top of cars and screamed curses at the Assad family, words that days ago could have meant a death sentence.By day’s end, with Mr. al-Assad and his family having fled on a plane to his ally Russia, thousands of Syrians had converged at Umayyad Square in the city center to revel in the fall of the regime and their newfound, if uncertain, sense of freedom.“We’re shocked; all of us are just shocked,” one woman, Shahnaz Sezad, 50, said. “It’s as if we’re all coming back to life after a nightmare.”She watched, tears welling up, as a scene unimaginable just days ago played out in front of her. One rebel shouted into a microphone: “The Syrian people want to execute Bashar! The Syrian people want to execute Bashar!” A deafening “paw-paw-paw” of gunfire sounded as others shot into the air.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

Preliminary estimates showed that the quake had a magnitude of 5.8, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, though the intensity was still changing.Residents of Northern Nevada and the Lake Tahoe basin were rattled on Monday afternoon by an earthquake that struck southeast of Reno, Nev. Preliminary estimates showed that the quake had a magnitude of 5.8, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, though the intensity was still changing.There were no initial reports of major damage. The temblor struck just after 3 p.m. and was centered about 14 miles north-northeast of Yerington, Nev., a small town of about 3,000 residents. It was followed by more than 10 aftershocks, according to the U.S.G.S.At the Boys & Girls Clubs of Mason Valley in Yerington, children dove under their desks but nothing fell over, said Nick Beaton, 30, the center’s director of development.“The biggest thing that stuck out to me was it felt like the ground was rolling,” Mr. Beaton said. “You could feel the waves of the ground shaking while you were on your hands and knees.”In Carson City, Nev., dozens of miles west of the epicenter, the manager of the local Trader Joe’s grocery store, Brian Garland, said the quake was “just a little bit of a rumble — not enough to knock anything down, but enough so you knew what it was.”“Everybody just kind of looked at each other like: ‘Was that what we thought it was? Or are we all having some kind of mass vertigo?’” Mr. Garland said with a laugh.The earthquake struck during what experts say could be a period of increased seismic activity in the region, after decades of relative quiet. But its occurrence does not signal that a larger, catastrophic quake is any more likely.An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck off the coast of Northern California last week, causing little damage but setting off a tsunami warning that affected five million people.Seismologists have long warned that an overdue “Big One,” the likes of which the region has not experienced since 1906, could happen at any time. They have urged residents to prepare as much as possible by assembling emergency supplies and practicing “drop, cover and hold on” exercises with their children.It has been three decades since a significant quake struck the region.The Loma Prieta earthquake, with a magnitude of 6.9, shook the Santa Cruz Mountains in California in 1989, leaving 63 people dead and more than 3,700 people injured.A magnitude 6.7 quake in the Northridge neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1994 left 60 people dead, about 7,000 injured and more than 40,000 buildings damaged. The catastrophe also revealed a major defect in some steel-frame buildings, including many high rises, which under extreme shaking could collapse.Alex Hoeft More

Samuel R. Bateman, 48, of Colorado City, Ariz., who claimed to have more than 20 “wives” including 10 “brides” under 18, pleaded guilty in April to two felony conspiracy charges.The self-proclaimed leader of a polygamist sect in Arizona who amassed more than 20 “wives,” including 10 “brides” under 18, was sentenced on Monday to 50 years in prison in connection with what prosecutors described as an interstate child sexual abuse ring, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona.Federal prosecutors said that the man, Samuel R. Bateman, 48, of Colorado City, Ariz., led a group that victimized girls as young as 9.Using his status as a self-declared prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Mr. Bateman forced his child “brides” to participate in sexual activities with him and with other adult men and women, prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.Mr. Bateman was arrested in August 2022 when he was driving on a highway in Flagstaff, Ariz., pulling a box trailer with three young girls inside, along with a makeshift toilet, no air-conditioning, and a door that was not latched, prosecutors said.In April, he agreed to plead guilty to two federal charges: conspiracy to commit transportation of a minor for criminal sexual activity, and conspiracy to commit kidnapping.Under the plea agreement, he had faced a sentence of 20 to 50 years in federal prison. But prosecutors had argued that the “only appropriate sentence” would be 50 years.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 the end, it was the simple act of distributing photos — not sophisticated facial recognition technology — that led the police to a man they are calling a “person of interest” in the fatal shooting of a health care executive in Midtown Manhattan last week.After the shooting of Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, last Wednesday, the New York Police Department began releasing a steady drip of images. The photos, taken together, appeared to show a young man with light skin and dark features. One photo — crucially — showed his entire face.Even as the police recovered what they called an “enormous amount” of forensic evidence and video, it was that specific photo that led to the arrest of a man on Monday morning about 300 miles from New York City, according to Joseph Kenny, the Police Department’s chief of detectives.Just after 9 a.m. on Monday, in a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa., an employee spotted a man who looked like the person in the photos, and then called the police, who detained the man for questioning.The man, whom the police identified as Luigi Mangione, 26, of Maryland, was carrying a gun, a silencer and some kind of manifesto, the police said.Chief Kenny said that it was hard to credit the break in the case to any one moment or piece of evidence, but that if he had to, “it would be the release of that photograph to the media.”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

Donald Trump will take office with weakened checks on his power.When the makers of “Schoolhouse Rock” set out in the 1970s to explain how the federal government works, they likened it to a three-ring circus. It was more than just a comment on the chaos of Washington — it was a metaphor for the three coequal branches of government that make our democracy what it is.“Each controls the other, you see,” the song went, “and that’s what we call checks and balances.”I’m an investigative reporter for The New York Times, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how those three branches — the basic building blocks of government — will fare with President-elect Donald Trump returning to power. He has promised to upend the system and use its power to prosecute his political enemies, and Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans warn that means he will use his second presidency to rule like an autocrat, putting extraordinary pressure on the nation’s democratic experiment.Some people I have spoken to about this, including top officials from Trump’s first administration, have faith in the three branches of government, a system built to keep presidents’ power in check.But the country’s three branches of government are in a weaker position to hold a president accountable than they were when Trump first took office in 2017, in part because of the stranglehold he has over his own party. And some of the change he has promised to bring to Washington would only further erode checks and balances.“He’s enjoying unified government but, just as importantly, the party itself has been remade in his image,” said William Howell, the dean of the new Johns Hopkins School of Government and Policy in Washington.A matter of civicsThe founders wrote the Constitution purposely to prevent any single person from amassing too much power. To do this, they set up three branches of government intended not just to check each other, but to be rivals for power.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 2000’s “The Return of the Light: Twelve Tales From Around the World for the Winter Solstice,” Carolyn McVickar Edwards collects traditional stories from China, India, Africa, Europe, Polynesia and the Indigenous Americas. In the Northern Hemisphere, which day does the winter solstice usually fall on or near? More