Aurelia Butler

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    Oil Prices Surge and Stock Markets Stumble After Israel Strikes Iran

    The military strikes jolted investors, raising concerns that a broader Mideast conflict would disrupt the world’s energy supplies.Israel’s military strikes against Iran shook global markets, as oil prices surged and stocks tumbled on worries that the attacks could set off a broader Mideast conflict that would disrupt the world’s energy supplies.Prices of Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, jumped nearly 9 percent to almost $78 a barrel in the hour following the Israeli strikes. As investors worried that rising oil prices might lead to more inflation and hurt the economies of oil-importing nations, stock markets fell broadly.The Nikkei 225 Index in Japan fell 1.3 percent in early trading Friday, while the Hang Seng Index dipped 0.7 percent in Hong Kong. Wall Street was closed at the time of the attack, but overnight futures market trading indicated that they could also fall as much as the Tokyo market.Iran is among the world’s largest producers of oil, and it sells almost all of what it produces to China, which consumes 15 percent of the global supply. Sales by Iran’s state oil company to China represent about 6 percent of Iran’s entire economy, and are equal to about half of its entire government’s spending.Iran’s exports have lagged in recent years as international sanctions have limited its ability to modernize its oil extraction and transportation technology.But Iran’s shipments have begun to recover in the past year on strong demand from China, which would be forced buy oil elsewhere if a broader conflict were to interrupt Iranian supplies. Beijing does have a large strategic oil reserve, accumulated through more than a decade of purchases and dispersed among numerous sites across the country. That could allow it to withstand weeks of an interruption in imports without difficulty.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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    In L.A., the Divide Between Peace and Violence Is in the Eye of the Beholder

    Los Angeles, a city marked by fiery and full-throated protests, adds a new chapter to that history. Alfonso Santoyo was marching through the streets of Los Angeles with a boisterous crowd on Wednesday protesting the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Mr. Santoyo’s presence, and his voice, were his only weapons.“It’s upsetting how they’ve portrayed the community as criminals,” said Mr. Santoyo, a 43-year-old postal worker whose parents came to the U.S. from Mexico as undocumented immigrants but eventually gained legal status. “It’s just upsetting to see that. Because we know it’s not the case.”After an 8 p.m. curfew brought a ghostly quiet to much of downtown, a man in body armor stood in front of a building full of jewelry stores, smoking a cigarette down to the filter.The man, who declined to give his name, wore a handgun on his thigh and carried a rifle that fires plastic projectiles. He pointed to nearby stores and buildings in L.A.’s jewelry district that had been broken into days earlier. Much like the 2020 demonstrations against police violence, he said, there always seemed to be bad actors among the peaceful ones.Separating them out, he said, was pointless. He cited an Armenian proverb: “Wet wood and dry wood burn together.”In Los Angeles this week, many protesters have marched peacefully. Others have thrown objects at the police, set cars ablaze and looted stores and restaurants. Police have responded aggressively, intimidating protesters with earsplitting explosives and mounted patrols, hitting them with batons, deploying tear gas and firing foam projectiles and rubber bullets into crowds.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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    Review: ‘The Counterfeit Opera’ on Little Island Falls Short

    At Little Island, “The Counterfeit Opera” falls short of its wildly successful historical models.After weeks of rain that interrupted rehearsals, conditions seemed perfect at the start of “The Counterfeit Opera” Wednesday on Little Island, with balmy temperatures and zero chance of precipitation. As members of the cast swarmed the stage shouting questions into the steeply raked rows of the amphitheater, conditions also seemed ripe for some political rabble-rousing.After all, this show with a libretto by Kate Tarker and music by Dan Schlosberg was billed as a new take on John Gay’s “Beggar’s Opera,” which punctured the cultural pretensions of 18th-century London and inspired Brecht’s darker indictment of social inequality in “The Threepenny Opera” (1928).“Can you afford your rent?”“No!” the audience shouted back.“Can you afford health insurance?”“No!”“Can you afford to support a lawless, self-serving government of con men?”This time, the “no” came out as a roar.At that point, it almost seemed possible that a revolution might start up right here on this artificial island developed by the billionaire Barry Diller. But as the sun set, the heat drained out of the day and with it the performance. With toothless satire, goofy humor and an absence of memorable tunes, “The Counterfeit Opera” falls short of its wildly successful historical models.The closing chorus — “Class wars repeat. Con men don’t sleep. Fight to break the dark spell of a world made of deceit!” — was met with mild-mannered applause and a version of a standing ovation that masks competition for the exits. The meteorological chance of political action breaking out was back to zero.More unforgivably, perhaps, the piece fails to infuse the material with a distinct New York flavor. Aside from a few quips at the expense of Boston and New Jersey, this self-declared “Beggar’s Opera for a Grifter’s City” feels like it could unfold anywhere.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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    Review: Jean Smart, Gritty and Poetic in ‘Call Me Izzy’

    The “Hacks” star returns to Broadway after 25 years in a triumph for her, if not for the old-fashioned, flowery play about spouse abuse.Two things can happen when a big star appears in a small play. She can crush it, or she can crush it.The first is almost literal: She leaves the story in smithereens beneath her glamorous feet. The second is colloquial: She’s a triumph, lifting the story to her level.Returning to Broadway after 25 years in “Call Me Izzy,” which opened Thursday at Studio 54, Jean Smart crushes it in the good way.Naturally, Smart plays the title character, a poor Louisiana housewife who writes poems on the sly. In the manner of such vehicles, she also plays everyone else, including Ferd (her abusive husband), Rosalie (a nosy neighbor), Professor Heckerling (a community college instructor) and the Levitsbergs (a couple who have endowed a poetry fellowship).You could probably write the play from that information alone, but I’m not sure you’d achieve the level of old-fashioned floweriness and deep-dish pathos that the actual author, Jamie Wax, has achieved.For this is quite self-consciously a weepie, one that with its allusions to Melville’s lyrical prose (“Moby-Dick” begins with the phrase “Call me Ishmael”) aspires to poetry itself. The play’s first words are an incantation: six synonyms for “blue” as Izzy drops toilet cleaner tablets in the tank. (“Swirlin’ cerulean” is one.) Shakespeare comes next, after a visit to a local library she didn’t know existed. Ears opened, she is soon devising sonnets of her own.This she does in secret, lest Ferd, who sees her hobby as a betrayal, should discover the evidence and beat her up. (He has been doing that with some regularity since their infant son died years earlier.) In a detail that’s a few orders of magnitude too cute, Izzy’s sanctum is the bathroom, where she scratches out her lines in eyebrow pencil, on reams of toilet paper.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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    Netanyahu says fighting with Iran will continue as long as Israel deems necessary.

    Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, told an anxious country in an early morning video statement that Israel had attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities to ward off an existential threat, vowing that the battle would continue for “as many days as it takes.”Israeli forces attacked Iran’s “main enrichment facility in Natanz,” as well its ballistic missile capabilities and top Iranian nuclear scientists, Mr. Netanyahu said. “We struck at the heart of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. We struck at the heart of Iran’s nuclear weaponization program,” he added. “We targeted Iran’s leading nuclear scientists working on the Iranian bomb. We also struck at the heart of Iran’s ballistic missile program.”Israel’s targets included nuclear facilities, air defense batteries, homes and headquarters of senior officials, weapons depots and laboratories. The first wave of the assault also focused on senior Iranian figures.Across Israel, people huddled in public shelters and fortified safe rooms in anticipation of an Iranian response. Israel’s defense ministry declared a national state of emergency and told the public to expect Iran to fire missiles and drones in response. Justifying the government’s decision to launch the attack, which caps more than 20 months of war between Israel and Iranian-backed groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, Mr. Netanyahu said Israel had to act promptly to eliminate what he called the existential threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.“I told our security leadership: We have no alternative but to act swiftly,” he said. “We can’t leave these threats for the next generation. If we don’t act now, there won’t be a next generation.”Mr. Netanyahu said Israel was facing “difficult days, but great days” ahead. He also repeatedly invoked the Holocaust — the annihilation of European Jewry — as a reason not to treat a nuclear Iran lightly. “Together, with God’s help, we will ensure Israel’s eternity,” he said. Adam Rasgon More

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    Supreme Court Sides With Teenager in School Disability Discrimination Case

    Disability rights groups had followed the case closely, warning that arguments by the school district could threaten broader protections for people with disabilities.The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with a teenage girl with epilepsy and her parents who had sued a Minnesota school district, claiming that her school had failed to provide reasonable accommodations, which made it difficult for her to receive instruction.The case hinged on what standard of proof was required to show discrimination by public schools in education-related disability lawsuits.In a unanimous decision written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the court held that the student and her family needed to show only that the school system had acted with “deliberate indifference” to her educational needs when they sued.That is the same standard that applies when people sue other institutions for discrimination based on disability.The school district argued that a higher standard — a stringent requirement that the institution had acted with “bad faith or gross misjudgment” — should apply. Had the district prevailed, the new standard might have applied broadly to all kinds disability rights claims filed under the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.That argument had unnerved some disability rights groups, which had cautioned that a ruling for the school could make it much harder for Americans with disabilities to successfully bring court challenges.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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    Chaos At Site of Air India Plane Crash

    Firefighters raced to douse smoking buildings as emergency workers recovered bodies after a deadly passenger plane crash in India.Dozens of medical school students in the western Indian state of Gujarat were eating lunch on Thursday when an Air India passenger plane carrying 242 people to London crashed into their dining hall. In the aftermath of the disaster, the ripped tail of the wrecked plane could be seen jutting out of the building.At least five students died in the crash in the city of Ahmedabad, said Minakshi Parikh, the dean of B.J. Medical College, whose campus is near the end of the runway of the airport. Officials feared that the death toll at the medical campus and its neighboring buildings could be higher.“Most of the students escaped, but 10 or 12 were trapped in the fire,” Ms. Parikh said.At least 204 people were killed in the crash of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, G.S. Malik, the police commissioner of Ahmedabad, said in an interview. That makes the crash India’s deadliest aviation disaster since 1996.Verified video shows the plane descending, almost as if on a glide, and then a fireball rises in its place. Photos and verified videos from the crash site show widespread carnage as well as medical workers carrying the bodies of victims into ambulances on stretchers.Dr. Bharat Ahir, who reached the scene soon after the crash, said he had seen rescuers bringing people out of thick smoke. Inside the damaged dinning hall, he said, the meals of many of the students sat unfinished.Dt. Ahir said he feared that casualties in a nearby residential complex, a multistory block where doctors and their families live, could outnumber those at the dinning facility.“The plane’s back part is stuck in the dinning hall, and the front hit the residential building,” he said.Wreckage from the plane at the site of the crash. Amit Dave/ReutersImages emerging from the scene show the blackened tangle of the wreckage of the plane. The aircraft appeared to have broken into large pieces, with one wing lying on a roadway. Firefighters could be seen spraying burned-out buildings and sooty, cracked trees as they stepped carefully around the hunks of debris.At a nearby hospital, medical workers raced through busy rooms with empty stretchers and wheelchairs, verified video showed. Crowds of people milled about.Outside, a group of men walked through the streets with a stretcher carrying an injured person. Ambulance after ambulance drove by.Mujib Mashal More

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    Five Key Discoveries in the Family Tree of Pope Leo XIV

    We went back 500 years and found his connection to some fascinating people.On May 8, an American cardinal named Robert Francis Prevost became Pope Leo XIV. Later that day, The Times, drawing on research by Jari C. Honora, a genealogist, reported that Prevost had recent African American ancestors. This revelation came from going back just three generations — what else might be found by looking even further into the past?Certainly, the fans of “Finding Your Roots,” the PBS show I have hosted for 13 years, wanted to know. My inbox was flooded with emails asking us to trace the new pope’s ancestry. In collaboration with the genealogists at American Ancestors and the Cuban Genealogy Club of Miami, we were able to go back as far his 12th-great-grandparents, who were born in the early 1500s. Here are some of our discoveries, ​which you can read in detail in The New York Times Magazine feature.Pope Leo’s lineage is surprisingly international.His diverse ancestry reflects the history of American immigration. The forebears identified so far were born in France (40), Italy (24), Spain (21), the United States (22), Cuba (10), Canada (6), Haiti (1) and Guadeloupe (1). The birthplaces are unknown for another nine ancestors who have been identified.Many of Pope Leo’s American-born ancestors were Black.Seventeen of the pope’s American ancestors were Black, described in historical records in terms ranging from “negresse” and “free person of color” to “mulâtresse créole” and “quadroon.” Another Black ancestor, the pope’s grandfather Joseph Nerval Martínez, was born in Haiti, to which his African Americans parents migrated from New Orleans before returning to the city in 1866.A dozen of the pope’s ancestors were slaveholders — including several who were Black.We Traced Pope Leo XIV’s Ancestry Back 500 Years. Here’s What We Found.Noblemen, enslaved people, freedom fighters, slaveowners: what the complex family tree of the first American pontiff reveals.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