On This Week’s Episode:“This American Life” listens in on a parole board hearing, where people have to make a difficult decision with imperfect information.Andre RuddockNew York Times Audio is home to the “This American Life” archive. Download the app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. More
Aleksei A. Navalny knew he would likely die in prison.In messages to his supporters posted on social media, Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, often struck a hopeful note about the future of his country, or a comic one, joking about the absurdities and indignities of prison life.But in the journal entries he managed to write and smuggle out of prison, he was more introspective, and blunt: “I knew from the outset that I would be imprisoned for life — either the rest of my life or until the end of the life of this regime,” Navalny wrote in his diary in March 2022. “I will spend the rest of my life in prison and die here.”He reflected on what that would mean: missing birthdays, anniversaries, his children’s graduations. Never meeting his grandchildren. The thought made him want to scream and smash things, he wrote. But then he thought of other Russian dissidents who had suffered similar fates. “I resigned myself and accept it,” he wrote.Those passages appear near the end of “Patriot,” a posthumous memoir by Navalny that will be published on Tuesday, eight months after his death at age 47 in an Arctic penal colony.“Patriot” is by turns funny, fiery, reflective and tragic, laced with Navalny’s trademark wry humor and idealism. Even from his prison cell, he takes obvious delight in attacking the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. It’s also a gutting personal account from a husband and father facing the reality that he will never be with his family again, that Putin might succeed in silencing him and that the sacrifices he made to oppose authoritarianism and corruption will have grave consequences for the people he loves most.The memoir, which is being released in the United States by Knopf, was pieced together after his death with the help of Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny’s widow. It will be published in 22 languages, including Russian. For Navalnaya, releasing the memoir is a way to instill hope in the struggling Russian opposition movement, and to keep her husband present in the world.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
The Israeli military conducted a wave of airstrikes across Lebanon on Sunday, targeting branches of Al-Qard al-Hasan, a financial association associated with the militant group Hezbollah.The organization was placed under U.S. sanctions in 2007 and has been accused by American, Israeli, Saudi Arabian and other officials of operating as Hezbollah’s de facto banking arm. Inside Lebanon, where Hezbollah also functions as a political organization and provides a range of social services, Al-Qard al-Hasan is designated a non-governmental organization and is viewed as a Hezbollah-affiliated charity.It operates as a lender and financial services provider for civilians in many areas of Lebanon, where the traditional banking sector is in shambles. Many of its branches are situated on the ground floors of residential buildings, and it is deeply embedded in the Shiite Muslim communities it serves.On social media on Sunday night, Avichay Adraee, the Arabic spokesman for the Israeli military, warned residents of Lebanon to evacuate buildings near the infrastructure of Al-Qard al-Hasan around Beirut and across southern and eastern Lebanon, saying that the organization “is involved in financing the terrorist activities of the Hezbollah organization against Israel.”Soon after, the sounds of explosions could be heard ringing across Beirut, the Lebanese capital. A New York Times reporter saw dense plumes of black smoke rising in the near distance after the strikes.The strikes marked an apparent escalation of Israel’s war against Hezbollah, with a senior Israel intelligence official saying the targeting of the banking system — rather than weapons depots or command and intelligence centers — was intended to disrupt Hezbollah’s day-to-day operations, undermine its support in Lebanese communities and hamper its ability to rebuild.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
Stick to your instincts as you solve Neil Padrick Wilson’s crossword puzzle.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesMONDAY PUZZLE — If you’ve come to the Wordplay column directly after glancing at today’s crossword, don’t panic. This puzzle, constructed by Neil Padrick Wilson, is as Monday-friendly as they come, even though it doesn’t look that way. The grid is a little more open than one might expect for the top of the week — and I share your initial alarm at the number of longer entries Mr. Wilson managed to fit into his grid. But I can assure you that it’s an easy solve. I might even call it child’s play.Today’s ThemeELMER’S GLUE (58A) can be interpreted as the puzzle’s revealer in two senses. The first is literal, since the adhesive is [What a kid might use to hold] a PAPER PLATE (17A), COTTON BALLS (24A), MACARONI NOODLES (35A) and a PIPE CLEANER (47A) together. And 58-Across also represents the more figurative “glue,” as the revealer of any crossword serves to bring the elements of a theme together.I’m far more interested in what the imagined “kid” of this puzzle plans to make with those crafting items. Are we thinking a classic necklace of MACARONI NOODLES? A fluffy animal mask for Halloween that uses the PAPER PLATE and the COTTON BALLS? A PIPE CLEANER stick figure? Whatever the finished product, I promise to react to it with feigned enthusiasm, as any responsible adult would.Tricky Clues29A. One generally kneels while being knighted — that’s what the movies tell me, anyway — so the [Direction to a newly knighted knight] is ARISE.32A. I spent several minutes cycling through possible mononyms for all my immediate family members and extended relatives before realizing that the [Family member who usually goes by one name] referred to a PET.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
Two crew members were onboard a Navy aircraft when it crashed during a routine training flight on Oct. 15 in Washington State, officials said.Two U.S. Navy crew members who were missing after their aircraft crashed near Mount Rainier in Washington State during a training flight last week were declared dead on Sunday, according to Navy officials.The jet that crashed was known as a “Zapper,” or VAQ-130, the oldest electronic warfare squadron in the U.S. Navy.“It is with a heavy heart that we share the loss of two beloved Zappers,” Cmdr. Timothy Warburton, commanding officer of Electronic Attack Squadron, which is stationed on Whidbey Island near Seattle, said in a statement posted to social media by the Navy, referring to the crew.The names of the aviators were not released on Sunday pending notification of next of kin.The crash took place after 3 p.m. on Oct. 15 during a routine training flight. The crew members were onboard a Boeing EA-18G Growler, a specialized electronic attack aircraft that is part of the Navy’s “first line of defense in hostile environments,” according to its website.“Our priority right now is taking care of the families of our fallen aviators, and ensuring the well-being of our Sailors and the Growler community,” Commander Warburton added.The Navy said that the wreckage was found at about 6,000 feet altitude in “a remote, steep and heavily-wooded area east of Mount Rainier.”Search and rescue teams from the Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, supported by Army soldiers stationed at nearby Joint Base Lewis–McChord, responded to the crash site and looked for the crew members for several days.The Navy said on Sunday that efforts had shifted “from search and rescue efforts to recovery operations.” The cause of the crash remained under investigation, the Navy said.Before the training mission that led to the crash, the squadron had returned to Whidbey Island from a recent deployment in the Middle East, the Navy said in a statement last week.The squadron had conducted operations in the Southern Red Sea, Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden to “maintain the freedom of navigation in international waterways,” the Navy said in another statement about the deployment.Shipping in the region has been disrupted by attacks by the Houthis, a Shiite militant group based in Yemen.The squadron had performed nearly 700 combat missions to “degrade the Houthi capability to threaten innocent shipping” during its nine-month deployment, the release said. More
More from our inbox:Veterans as Poll WorkersAn Immigrant’s StoryPolitical Messages: Time to Turn Up the Sound Allison Dinner/EPA, via ShutterstockTo the Editor:Re “November’s Second-Most-Important Election,” by David French (column, Oct. 14):I find it difficult to understand why the heart has become a determiner of fetal life in abortion discussions and law when it’s the brain that makes us truly human.According to much neurological research, the brain doesn’t reach its major development until the end of the second trimester, about 24 weeks into a pregnancy, also known as viability. The brain then continues to develop through the ninth month of pregnancy, and certain parts, such as the frontal cortex, are not fully developed until adults reach their mid-20s.All of us, even lawmakers, should pay attention to the neurological science instead of emotional reactions to sounds.Ellen CreaneGuilford, Conn.To the Editor:I personally am deeply conflicted on the issue of abortion, but the problem I have with many pro-life supporters is that they never talk about support after the baby is born.Live babies and children need diapers and food and child care and good schools and support for college or learning a trade and safe schools and streets. If you have no concrete plans to eliminate child poverty, improve public education and put gun controls in place, can you really say that you support children?Ending the conversation (and legislation) at birth is not pro-life, but pro-childbirth.Margaret DowlingPhiladelphiaWe 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
Birtherism, meet burgerism.Vice President Kamala Harris has recalled her stint at a Bay Area McDonald’s 41 years ago in introducing herself to voters — a biographical detail relatable to millions of Americans who have toiled in fast-food restaurants.But former President Donald J. Trump has repeatedly accused her of inventing it. Lacking a shred of proof, he has charged that she never actually worked under the golden arches — recalling his earlier false claim that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States.Mr. Trump’s latest allegation also appears to be false.Whether a presidential candidate actually flipped burgers as a college student is a far less serious allegation, of course. But Mr. Trump’s seeding of doubts about Ms. Harris’s story, while insidious and outside the lines of traditional fair play in politics, advances his goal of portraying Ms. Harris as a fraud.It exploits the fact that her life story is not as well known or as well documented at this late stage of the campaign as those of most presidential nominees have been. And it gives voters who may already harbor doubts about her another invitation to dismiss her and doubt what she says.Former President Donald J. Trump is an avid eater of fast food. In 2019, as he hosted college football players at the White House, he fed them McDonald’s. Sarah Silbiger/The New York TimesMr. Trump, an avid eater of fast food who even catered a White House celebration from McDonald’s in 2019, is scheduled to visit a McDonald’s location in the Philadelphia area on Sunday. “I’m going to McDonald’s to work the French fries,” he said on Saturday in Latrobe, Pa. Asked why, an aide, Jason Miller, told reporters, “So that one candidate in this race could have actually worked at McDonald’s.”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
It’s not every day that lifelong Wisconsin farmers take time out during the frenetic harvest season to do pirouettes and turns in their tractors like so many John Deere Baryshnikovs.“The Hay Rake Ballet” in an alfalfa field — set to opera music in front of a rapt crowd who oohed and aahed at every lift of the rakes used to move hay into rows — was a hit of the Farm/Art DTour, a 10-day, 50-mile self-guided driving tour of large-scale art installations and “pasture performances” along the pristine, hilly back roads of rural Sauk County, Wis.“The Hay Rake Ballet,” choreographed by Sarah Butler.Held every other October, the DTour draws more than 20,000 “D-Tourists” from Madison, Milwaukee and beyond. They come to soak up art in surprising contexts — a screaming pink abstract deer blind hoisted above a corn field, for instance, or a plucky dragon concealing a 250-foot-long irrigation system.“I think it’s neat that urban people get a kick out of what we see every day,” said Andy Enge, a dairy farmer and a star of the ballet, in which three tractors twirled around each other in a pas de trois.His 93-year-old father, Maurice, saw it differently. “If a man drove like that out in the hayfields, I’d fire them!” he said.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
