Aurelia Butler

More stories

  • 113 Shares189 Views

    in Elections

    Q&A With Dylan Bachelet of ‘Great British Baking Show’

    Dylan Bachelet lost in the finals of “The Great British Baking Show,” but he was a breakout star for his fashion as well as his baking. Now, he’s a professional chef.Dylan Bachelet, the 20-year-old finalist on “The Great British Baking Show,” generated plenty of buzz for the season with his good looks and his baking talent. He drew comparisons to all sorts of fictional characters: Captain Jack Sparrow of “Pirates of the Caribbean,” anime characters, cartoon cats. When asked about how his style choices were leading to those comparisons, Cristina Spiridakis, a Hollywood costume designer, said “Maybe he’s just a Gen Z kid with good style.”This turned out to be true, as Mr. Bachelet, self-described as “arty,” has always loved creative pursuits, including fashion and baking.“Baking is a creative outlet for me,” he said in a phone interview during a day off from his job as a chef de partie, or line cook, at The Five Fields, a Michelin-starred restaurant in London. “In the same way I have a vision of something I want to wear looking quite cool, I’ll have a dish in mind. I just try and work my way to that goal and learn from it.”He also discussed his fashion and his experiences on the show, the finale of which began streaming in the United States on Friday.This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.What were you were thinking about when getting dressed for the show: the weather, the baking, the cameras, the audience?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

  • 88 Shares189 Views

    in Elections

    NYT Connections Answers for Dec. 3, 2024

    Scroll down for hints and conversation about the puzzle for Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024.Good morning, dear connectors. Welcome to today’s Connections forum, where you can give and receive puzzle — and emotional — support.Be warned: This article includes hints and comments that may contain spoilers for today’s puzzle. Solve Connections first, or scroll at your own risk.Connections is released at midnight in your time zone. In order to accommodate all time zones, there will be two Connections Companions live every day, dated based on Eastern Standard Time.If you find yourself on the wrong companion, check the number of your puzzle, and go to this page to find the corresponding companion.Post your solve grid in the comments and see how your score compares with the editor’s rating, and one another’s.Today’s difficultyThe difficulty of each puzzle is determined by averaging the ratings provided by a panel of testers who are paid to solve each puzzle in advance to help us catch bugs, inconsistencies and other issues. A higher rating means the puzzle is more difficult.Today’s difficulty is 3.8 out of 5.Need a hint?In Connections, each category has a different difficulty level. Yellow is the simplest, and purple is the most difficult. Click or tap each level to reveal one of the words in that category. 🟨 StraightforwardTONY🟩 ⬇️GRAMMY🟦 ⬇️OSCAR🟪 TrickyEMMYFurther ReadingWant to give us feedback? Email us: crosswordeditors@nytimes.comTrying to go back to Connections?Want to learn more about how the game is made?Leave any thoughts you have in the comments! Please follow community guidelines:Be kind. Comments are moderated for civility.Having a technical issue? Use the Help button in the Settings menu of the Games app.Want to talk about Wordle or Spelling Bee? Check out Wordle Review and the Spelling Bee Forum.See our Tips and Tricks for more useful information on Connections.Join us here to solve Crosswords, The Mini, and other games by The New York Times. More

  • 88 Shares189 Views

    in Elections

    NYT Connections Answers for Dec. 2, 2024

    Scroll down for hints and conversation about the puzzle for Monday, Dec. 2, 2024.Good morning, dear connectors. Welcome to today’s Connections forum, where you can give and receive puzzle — and emotional — support.Be warned: This article includes hints and comments that may contain spoilers for today’s puzzle. Solve Connections first, or scroll at your own risk.Connections is released at midnight in your time zone. In order to accommodate all time zones, there will be two Connections Companions live every day, dated based on Eastern Standard Time.If you find yourself on the wrong companion, check the number of your puzzle, and go to this page to find the corresponding companion.Post your solve grid in the comments and see how your score compares with the editor’s rating, and one another’s.Today’s difficultyThe difficulty of each puzzle is determined by averaging the ratings provided by a panel of testers who are paid to solve each puzzle in advance to help us catch bugs, inconsistencies and other issues. A higher rating means the puzzle is more difficult.Today’s difficulty is 3 out of 5.Need a hint?In Connections, each category has a different difficulty level. Yellow is the simplest, and purple is the most difficult. Click or tap each level to reveal one of the words in that category. 🟨 StraightforwardDECLARE🟩 ⬇️CROQUET🟦 ⬇️LAUREL 🟪 TrickyHAIRFurther ReadingWant to give us feedback? Email us: crosswordeditors@nytimes.comTrying to go back to Connections?Want to learn more about how the game is made?Leave any thoughts you have in the comments! Please follow community guidelines:Be kind. Comments are moderated for civility.Having a technical issue? Use the Help button in the Settings menu of the Games app.Want to talk about Wordle or Spelling Bee? Check out Wordle Review and the Spelling Bee Forum.See our Tips and Tricks for more useful information on Connections.Join us here to solve Crosswords, The Mini, and other games by The New York Times. More

  • 138 Shares169 Views

    in Elections

    ‘Dune: Prophecy’ Season 1 Episode 3 Recap: The Meaning of Sacrifice

    “Sisterhood above all” is the motto of Valya and Tula’s secretive organization, but its meaning seems to depend on which sister is saying it.Season 1, Episode 4: ‘Sisterhood Above All’They share a last name and a mission, but Valya and Tula Harkonnen are two very different women. At least that’s what “Dune: Prophecy” primed us to believe until this week’s episode.Tula, played by Olivia Williams as an adult and Emma Canning as a young woman, is the sensitive one, the sister who goes along to get along. Her older sister, Valya (Emily Watson all grown up, Jessica Barden in flashbacks), is the one who rages against House Atreides for slandering her great-grandfather as a traitor. She is equally angry with her own family, especially her mother, Sonya (Polly Walker), and her uncle, Evgeny (Mark Addy), for meekly accepting their fate of exile on Lankiveil, a frozen wasteland of a planet. Sonya warns Tula and her brother, an aspiring politician named Griffin (Earl Cave), to stay away from their sister, a “wolf” who will devour them both with her ambition.But both siblings are fond of Valya. Why wouldn’t they be? For one thing, the three of them seem to be the only members of the family willing to show one another consistent affection. For another, Valya saved Griffin from drowning by using the Voice on him, forcing his muscles to swim through icy water to the surface.So when Griffin is murdered, allegedly by an Atreides, after Valya encourages him to get involved in Imperial politics, her thirst for vengeance consumes Tula as well. The younger sister poses as the lover of a young Atreides, then massacres him and the entire male side of his family the night before a big traditional hunt. She spares only a disabled young teenager named Albert (Archie Barnes, whom you may remember as the bold young Lord Oscar Tully from “House of the Dragon’), to whom she had been friendly the day before.Thus, House Harkonnen has its vengeance — not that Tula and Valya’s older relatives are anything but aghast. It’s not only the murders they object to; it’s also the involvement of Tula, of whom they clearly have a higher opinion than they do of Valya.But the Harkonnen sisters weren’t out to curry their family’s favor with this mission; Valya, at least, was more interested in scoring points with the Sisterhood’s mother superior, Raquella, who had encouraged her to go home and take care of family business so that she could fully commit to the order. Her disgraced surname hangs around her neck like a millstone — Raquella’s granddaughter and apparent successor, Dorotea, hates Valya for being a Harkonnen as much as for anything else. You can almost feel Valya’s defiance as she makes her move via Tula: Fine, Dorotea. I’ll give you something to hate me for.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

  • 163 Shares179 Views

    in Elections

    Hunter Biden Likely Wouldn’t Qualify for a Pardon Recommendation Under Justice Dept. Criteria

    Hunter Biden likely would not have qualified for a pardon recommendation under the criteria used by the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, which is tasked with identifying and vetting worthy clemency recipients. The office mostly recommends full pardons for people who have already served their sentences.Hunter Biden has not been sentenced, let alone served his sentence.Presidents have unchecked authority to grant clemency to anyone they choose, regardless of the pardon attorney’s recommendations.During his first term in office, President-elect Donald J. Trump routinely granted clemency to people who had not been recommended by the pardon attorney, including to some who had been previously rejected by the office and others who had yet to be sentenced.“Before Trump, reaching into the middle of an ongoing case to give a full pardon was almost unheard-of,” said Margaret Love, who ran the Justice Department’s clemency process from 1990 to 1997 as the United States pardon attorney.Mr. Biden has been under pressure from groups supporting prisoners’ rights to issue more clemency grants at the end of his term.In a statement issued after the announcement of Hunter Biden’s pardon, Zoë Towns, the executive director of the advocacy group FWD.us, said, “It’s time to prioritize clemency for thousands of vetted cases. The President has the opportunity to extend mercy to those serving disproportionately long sentences in federal prisons. We absolutely must turn our attention there.”The pardon attorney has received nearly 12,000 petitions for clemency during President Biden’s term.Mr. Biden has so far issued 157 clemency grants — 25 pardons, which wipe out convictions, and 132 commutations, which reduce prison sentences — according to a tally kept by the pardon attorney. It is not clear if the tally includes the pardon to his son.Mr. Biden has issued fewer clemency grants so far than the 238 — 144 pardons and 94 commutations — issued by Mr. Trump during his first administration. More

  • 100 Shares99 Views

    in Elections

    Biden Pardons His Son Hunter, Citing ‘Political Pressure’

    President Biden blamed “political pressure” for the collapse of a plea deal for Hunter Biden, but it was the judge overseeing the case who questioned the agreement.Hunter Biden’s plea deal did fall apart in dramatic form at the last minute last year. But it did so after the judge overseeing the case at the time raised issues about its unusual construction, involving two separate agreements meant to work in tandem. That construction violated one of the basic tenets of federal guilty pleas: that any agreement not have any side deals.That the plea agreement fell apart once it faced basic questioning from the judge was an embarrassment to both the prosecutors and the defense lawyers who negotiated it. But that is a far cry from the president’s suggestion that the deal for Hunter Biden to avoid prison time and a felony conviction collapsed because of political pressure. More

  • 125 Shares179 Views

    in Elections

    Analysis: In Pardoning Hunter, Biden Sounds a Lot Like Trump

    President Biden and President-elect Donald J. Trump now agree on one thing: The Biden Justice Department has been politicized.In pardoning his son Hunter Biden on Sunday night, the incumbent president sounded a lot like his successor in complaining about selective prosecution and political pressure, questioning the fairness of a system that Mr. Biden had until now long defended.“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong,” Mr. Biden said in the statement announcing the pardon. “Here’s the truth,” he added. “I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.”Mr. Biden’s decision to use the extraordinary power of executive clemency to wipe out his son’s convictions on gun and tax charges came despite repeated statements by him and his aides that he would not do so. Just last summer, after his son was convicted at trial, the president rejected the idea of a pardon and said that “I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process.” The statement he issued Sunday night made clear he did not accept the outcome nor respect the process.The pardon and Mr. Biden’s stated rationale for granting it will inevitably muddy the political waters as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to take office with plans to use the Justice Department and F.B.I. to pursue “retribution” against his political adversaries. Mr. Trump has long argued that the justice system has been “weaponized” against him and that he is the victim of selective prosecution, much like Mr. Biden has now said his son was.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

  • 125 Shares99 Views

    in Elections

    Hunter Biden Faced Prison Time for Tax and Gun Charges

    President Biden not only spared his son Hunter the humiliation of two felony convictions — he also saved him from what might have been a significant stretch of time in a federal prison.Hunter Biden, 54, pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges in Los Angeles in September for falsifying records and failing to file returns dating to a period when he was hooked on crack, alcohol and easy cash.He faced up to 17 years in federal prison during a scheduled sentencing hearing in Los Angeles on Dec. 16, but would most likely have served no more than 36 months behind bars, according to sentencing experts.A jury in Wilmington, Del., in June found Mr. Biden, the president’s younger son, guilty of three felony counts for lying on a federal firearms application after an extraordinary seven-day trial. That trial made painfully public Mr. Biden’s crack addiction, reckless behavior and ruinous spending — narrated by three former romantic partners, including the widow of his brother, Beau Biden.The gun conviction came with a stiffer maximum sentence, 25 years, but he was expected to face a shorter sentence — of up to 16 months — during a hearing scheduled in Delaware on Dec. 13.The sentences would most likely have run concurrently, with Hunter Biden serving the longer stretch.On Sunday, Hunter Biden’s legal team filed paperwork in both jurisdictions informing both judges that the pardon had rendered the hearings moot. More