Aurelia Butler

She wrote lovingly and often hilariously about her harrowing childhood in a working-class Southern family, as well as about the violence and incest she suffered.Dorothy Allison, who wrote with lyrical, pungent wit about her working-class Southern upbringing — and about the incest and violence that shaped her — and whose acclaimed 1992 novel, “Bastard Out of Carolina,” based on her harrowing childhood, made her a literary star, died on Tuesday at her home in Guerneville, Calif., in Sonoma County. She was 75.Her death, from cancer, was announced by the Frances Goldin Literary Agency, her longtime representative.Ms. Allison was flat broke in 1989 when she decided to try to sell “Bastard Out of Carolina,” the novel she had been writing for nearly a decade, to a mainstream publisher. “Trash,” a critically praised collection of short stories, had already been published by Firebrand Books, a feminist publishing house; so had her collection of poetry, “The Women Who Hate Me,” which she first published herself as a chapbook in 1983. In both books, she tackled lust, the scrum of feminist politics and her chaotic, beloved family. Feminism had saved her life, she often said, and she was certain that because of her political convictions, the mainstream press would not welcome her.“Bastard Out of Carolina” was published in 1992 to almost unanimous acclaim and made numerous best-seller lists.No creditMs. Allison liked to describe herself, as she told The New York Times Magazine in 1995, as a “cross-eyed, working-class lesbian addicted to violence, language and hope.”But at the time, she and her partner, Alix Layman, a trombone player who had been kicked out of the Army for being gay, were living on grits. Ms. Allison, who was legally blind in one eye, had numerous other health concerns and medical debt, and she could no longer support her writing with part-time clerical jobs.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

Gov. Kathy Hochul, facing pressure from supporters of the contentious tolling plan, is said to be exploring options for adopting it in some form.Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York is exploring options for reviving a congestion pricing plan for New York City before President-elect Donald J. Trump has a chance to kill it, according to four people familiar with the matter.Ms. Hochul’s move to salvage the contentious plan comes as she faces pressure from various corners, including a group that represents transit riders and is planning to start an advertising blitz on Monday in support of the tolling program.The plan that Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, is now exploring differs slightly from the one she halted in June. She is trying to satisfy opponents who had complained about the $15 congestion-pricing toll that most motorists would have had to pay as well as supporters who want to reduce car traffic and fund mass transit improvements.The governor has talked to federal officials about the possibility of a $9 toll and about whether such a change might require the lengthy, involved process of additional environmental review, according to a Metropolitan Transportation Authority board member familiar with the matter. The discussions were first reported by Politico.Mr. Trump, a Republican, has said he opposes congestion pricing, and his victory on Tuesday has apparently pushed Ms. Hochul to try to find a compromise.“The timing is everything,” said Danny Pearlstein, a spokesman for Riders Alliance, the riders’ group that is planning the ad blitz. If congestion pricing has not started by January, he added “it’s very unlikely it would start.”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

Daniel Lurie is a man in a hurry.He said in his first speech as San Francisco’s mayor-elect on Friday that he would declare a state of emergency on fentanyl on his first day in office in January.In brief, clipped remarks, he said he intended to shut down the open-air fentanyl markets that had proliferated in the city’s Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods and had infuriated many residents.“We are going to get tough on those that are dealing drugs, and we are going to be compassionate, but tough, about the conditions of our streets, as well,” Mr. Lurie, 47, said at a gathering in Chinatown that lasted just a few minutes.Fentanyl, a cheap opioid, is responsible for most of the 3,300 drug deaths that have occurred in San Francisco since 2020, killing far more people in the city than Covid-19, homicides and car crashes combined.Mr. Lurie, a 47-year-old heir to the Levi Strauss fortune who has never held elected office, appealed to an electorate that was tired of rampant drug use and property crime in the city and was looking for a mayor who could revitalize the struggling downtown area. He was effective in getting his message out to voters, spending $8.6 million of his own money on his campaign and receiving another $1 million from his mother, the billionaire Mimi Haas.Mr. Lurie, a Democrat, addressed reporters the morning after Mayor London Breed, also a Democrat, called him to concede. He did not provide additional details about what his emergency declaration would do.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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Media outlets across the political spectrum offered very different explanations about why Donald J. Trump won the presidential election this week.On the right, some media outlets said Mr. Trump had won because of the left’s embrace of what they called extreme political views, while others focused on how Americans were deeply dissatisfied with the economy under President Biden, which Vice President Kamala Harris defended.Outlets on the left were more divided in their explanations. Some said American voters had chosen to “burn it all to the ground” by choosing Mr. Trump. Others blamed the Democratic Party as a whole, arguing that Democrats had failed to connect with voters on key issues, and that Ms. Harris had lost by defending what those commentators saw as a broken system.Here’s how a few outlets have covered the last few days in political news:FROM THE RIGHTBreitbart-Breitbart, a conservative outlet, highlighted that Americans were upset with how Democrats had handled the economy, and argued that Mr. Trump’s victory was a “mandate for Trumponomics.”In one article, the reporter John Carney ticked through what he saw as the reasons behind Mr. Trump’s victory. He pointed to the costs of basic necessities like groceries, housing and health care, all of which had soared over the last four years, as well as fears surrounding high levels of immigration. Americans, in Mr. Carney’s view, wanted “less inflation, more economic nationalism and an economy they could feel great about again.”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

and committed out of the jurisdiction of any particular State or district of the United States,
FARHAD SHAKERI, CARLISLE RIVERA, a/k/a “Pop,” and JONATHAN LOADHOLT, the
defendants, and others known and unknown, at least one of whom is expected to be first brought
to and arrested in the Southern District of New York, knowingly and willfully did combine,
conspire, confederate, and agree together and with each other to commit murder-for-hire, in
violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1958.
6. It was a part and an object of the conspiracy that FARHAD SHAKERI,
CARLISLE RIVERA, a/k/a “Pop,” and JONATHAN LOADHOLT, and others known and
unknown, would and did knowingly travel in and cause others to travel in interstate and foreign
commerce, and would and did use and cause another to use a facility of interstate and foreign
commerce, with intent that a murder be committed in violation of the laws of the State of New
York or the United States as consideration for the receipt of and as consideration for a promise or
agreement to pay anything of pecuniary value, to wit, SHAKERI, RIVERA, and LOADHOLT
participated in an agreement whereby RIVERA and LOADHOLT would kill Victim-1 in exchange
for payment, and used cellphones and electronic messaging applications to communicate in
furtherance of the scheme.
(Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1958 and 3238.)
COUNT FIVE
(MONEY LAUNDERING CONSPIRACY)
7. From at least in or about December 2023, up to and including the date of
this Complaint, in Iran, the Southern District of New York, and elsewhere, and in an offense begun
and committed out of the jurisdiction of any particular State or district of the United States,
FARHAD SHAKERI, CARLISLE RIVERA, a/k/a “Pop,” and JONATHAN LOADHOLT, the
defendants, and others known and unknown, at least one of whom is expected to be first brought
to and arrested in the Southern District of New York, knowingly and willfully did combine,
conspire, confederate, and agree together and with each other to commit money laundering, in
violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1956.
8. It was further a part and an object of the conspiracy that FARHAD
SHAKERI, CARLISLE RIVERA, a/k/a “Pop,” and JONATHAN LOADHOLT, the defendants,
and others known and unknown, in an offense involving and affecting interstate and foreign
commerce, knowing that the property involved in certain financial transactions represented the
proceeds of some form of unlawful activity, would and did conduct and attempt to conduct such
financial transactions which in fact involved the proceeds of specified unlawful activity, to wit,
the proceeds of the murder-for-hire offenses charged in Counts Three and Four of this Complaint,
knowing that the transactions were designed in whole and in part to conceal and disguise the
nature, location, source, ownership, and control of the proceeds of said specified unlawful activity,
in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1956(a)(1)(B)(i).
9. It was further a part and an object of the conspiracy that FARHAD
SHAKERI, CARLISLE RIVERA, a/k/a “Pop,” and JONATHAN LOADHOLT, the defendants,
and others known and unknown, would and did transport, transmit, and transfer, and attempt to
transport, transmit, and transfer, monetary instruments and funds to a place in the United States
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Residents had to dig through rubble in search of their neighbors after the main emergency service in Gaza said it had stopped operations in the north because it had come under Israeli attacks.When an Israeli airstrike hit a home in northern Gaza early Thursday, residents said, there were no paramedics or first responders around to help pull out people trapped in the rubble.Instead, Mazen Ahmed, said he and other neighbors in Beit Lahia had to dig through the debris by themselves. They found at least one body.“We went out to try to rescue on our own to the extent of our abilities,” Mr. Ahmed said on Thursday, speaking by voice message from a cemetery where those killed in the latest Israeli airstrikes were being buried. “There were no stretchers, there were no rescuers, there were no emergency responders.”More than two weeks ago, Gaza’s Civil Defense, the main emergency service in the Palestinian territory, said it was forced to cease rescue operations in the north because of attacks by the Israeli military on its members and destruction of its equipment.Israel stepped up a military offensive in northern Gaza over the last month and ordered widespread evacuations of the area, saying it was trying to eliminate a regrouped Hamas presence there. Troops, tanks and armed drones have bombarded the area almost daily, sending tens of thousands of residents fleeing.On Thursday, the Israeli military said it was operating against what it called “terrorist infrastructure” in Beit Lahia, an agricultural and residential area on the Israeli border where the Israeli military has been fighting for the last four weeks.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

“Us Fools,” by Nora Lange, is a tale of two sisters living through the diseased expanse of the country’s recent history.US FOOLS, by Nora LangeJoanne’s voice has always been in Bernadette’s head. The Fareown sisters can’t escape each other, even if they can escape their roots. Growing up on their Illinois farm in the 1980s, Jo and Bernie have learned to fend for themselves, largely by sticking together.Their parents, distracted by the farm crisis that is burying their neighbors and much of rural America with them, spend most of their time “lovingly fondling each other like a set of keys.” The girls are restless and hungry, sick of the bland food their chain-smoking mother serves them. Instead, they devour Nietzsche and Woolf, home-schooling each other in their attic.In “Us Fools,” Nora Lange’s tender, exquisitely funny and supremely strange debut novel about these sisters, nothing much happens. Also, everything happens. The story opens in 1987 with Jo, age 11, taking a leap from the family’s roof, to “experience falling.” She’s the charismatic older sister, prone to violence and performance art, and Bernie, our narrator, is nearly effaced by her sister’s outsize shadow. Bernie dreams of a different life, one in which she can afford vitamins and other modern luxuries, and she tries to fight the designation her sister gives them: “junk kids.” But, like most of Jo’s forceful visions, it proves irresistible.The opening pages inform us that we are looking back at their childhood from 2009, as Bernadette holes up in a Super 8 in Bloomington, Minn., to make sense of her family’s history, “examining the contents of our lives like receipts.” The sisters are grown, and Joanne, still unpredictable as ever, wants a baby.In between these two coordinates, we travel with the Fareowns from the farm to Chicago and then to Deadhorse, Alaska, as Bernie tries to cure herself of “love-loathing” her sister. Bernie goes to college, Jo goes to an institution. But these and other medium-size events — deaths, moves, breakups, jobs, the stuff of most novels — take place between commas. They are the clauses dependent on Bernadette’s enduring interests: grand observations and minute movements. “Back in the Midwest,” she recalls in an early chapter, “the rate of suicide rose, so too did the number of New Coke haters.”In almost every exhilarating sentence, Lange tries to plug the vast, diseased expanse of our country’s history into this particular set of characters it has doomed: “The term ‘nuclear family’ had been installed in America like the questionable electric wiring in our house, which would fail.”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