Aurelia Butler

More stories

  • 175 Shares169 Views

    in Elections

    California Man to Reunite With Family 25 Years After He ‘Vanished With No Trace’

    Marcella Nasseri saw a man who resembled her long-lost brother in the news. Fingerprint scans solved the decades-old case.For years, Marcella Nasseri searched for the remains of her brother, who she believed had died after he mysteriously disappeared in Doyle, Calif., 25 years ago.Now, Ms. Nasseri’s brother, who vanished in August 1999, has been found and identified in the Los Angeles area and is being reunited with his family, the authorities announced on Tuesday.It all started when Ms. Nasseri saw an article in USA Today from May that asked the public for help identifying a patient who had been found sitting on a curb in south Los Angeles nearly a month before. He had been staying at emergency facilities including St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood near Long Beach, Calif., for weeks.The article, which explained that the patient could not communicate, included a photo of the man — with gray hair and blue eyes, believed to be in his mid-60s — lying in a hospital bed.Ms. Nasseri believed the patient was her missing brother, Tommy. She added an undated photograph of her brother as a younger man in a GoFundMe post earlier this week. Tommy had more dark hair than the man in the hospital bed but his arched eyebrows, rounded nose and deep-set eyes showed a resemblance between the two.In an attempt to have her inclination confirmed or denied, Ms. Nasseri contacted the local authorities. Derek Kennemore, the deputy sheriff of Lassen County in Northern California, then pushed for a detective with the Missing Persons Unit of the Los Angeles Police Department to obtain the fingerprints of the unidentified patient, according to a statement from the Lassen County Sheriff’s Office.“The Detective was able to positively identify the man as the one reported missing in 1999 from Doyle,” the statement said.St. Francis Medical Center, the county sheriff and Ms. Nasseri did not respond to requests for comment. Tommy’s condition and how he disappeared were not immediately clear.“He just VANISHED with no trace,” Ms. Nasseri said in her post. “Not even his vehicle was ever located.”Now, the two are working to be reunited. Ms. Nasseri lives in Lassen County, about 600 miles north of Lynwood, Calif., where her brother is staying. For the cost of a possible medical transfer as well as items like men’s clothing, pencils and paper so he can draw, Ms. Nasseri sought $500 in donations on the crowdsourcing site.After two days, the page had raised nearly $7,000.Some of the money, Ms. Nasseri said, would also go to buy her brother a device so he could listen to some of the songs that she remembers him loving — including one especially prescient tune by Cyndi Lauper.“If you’re lost you can look and you will find me,” Ms. Lauper sings in one of the tunes that appeared on Tommy’s list. “Time after time.” More

  • 150 Shares169 Views

    in Elections

    Notre-Dame Shines, and World Gets a Sneak Peek, on Macron’s Televised Tour

    “You’ve achieved what was said to be impossible,” the French president told workers at the Paris monument, which will reopen after the 2019 fire.President Emmanuel Macron of France toured the Paris cathedral five years after it was damaged in a devastating fire. The landmark is expected to reopen to the public next month.Pool photo by Christophe Petit TessonThe world got its first glimpse on Friday of the newly renovated Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.President Emmanuel Macron of France took viewers on a live televised tour of the cathedral’s dazzlingly clean interior and rebuilt roofing, five years after a devastating fire that was followed by a colossal reconstruction effort.“I believe you are seeing the cathedral like it has never been seen before,” Philippe Jost, the head of the reconstruction task force, told Mr. Macron.The French president and his wife, Brigitte, gushed with admiration and craned their necks as they entered the 12th and 13th-century Gothic monument alongside the mayor and archbishop of Paris.More than 450,000 square feet of cream-colored limestone inside the cathedral have been meticulously stripped of ash, lead dust and centuries of accumulated grime, leaving its soaring vaults, thick columns and tall walls almost startlingly bright.Mr. Macron’s visit before the monument is scheduled to reopen next week was an opportunity for him to shift focus away from the country’s political turmoil and budgetary woes. It will put the spotlight on a bet that he made, and that appears to have paid off, to rebuild the cathedral on a tight five-year deadline.“You’ve achieved what was said to be impossible,” Mr. Macron told an assembly of over half of the 2,000 workers and craftsmen from around France — and beyond — who contributed to the cathedral’s reconstruction. 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 Shares119 Views

    in Elections

    UK Lawmakers Vote to Legalize Assisted Dying After Emotional Debate

    In a landmark decision on Friday, Parliament voted in favor of allowing assisted suicide for the terminally ill in England and Wales.British lawmakers on Friday voted to allow assisted dying for terminally ill patients in England and Wales under strict conditions, opening the way to one of the most significant changes in the country in decades.After five hours of debate in the House of Commons, they voted by 330 to 275 to support a plan that would allow people with a terminal illness, who are expected to live no more than six months, to be helped to die.The vote was not the final word on the legislation, because it will now be scrutinized in parliamentary committees and amendments to the bill may be put forward.But it is a landmark political moment, setting the stage for a significant social change that some have likened to Britain’s legalization of abortion in 1967 and the abolition of the death penalty in 1969.Assisted dying is legal in a handful of European countries, Canada, New Zealand, and in 10 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The decision follows weeks of fraught, often emotional public debate in Britain over an issue of ethics that has transcended party political affiliations.This is a developing story. More

  • 138 Shares99 Views

    in Elections

    The ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’ Author Wants Us to Give Thanks Every Day

    The world is a gift, not a giant Amazon warehouse, Robin Wall Kimmerer said. In her new book, “The Serviceberry,” she proposes gratitude as an antidote to prevailing views of nature as a commodity.Every summer, the botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer takes a group of students on a two-week field trip deep into the woods and bogs of the Adirondacks.For their final exam, students prepare a feast from foraged plants, dining on a wild menu of boiled cattail kebabs, roasted rhizomes, stir-fried day lily buds, lichen noodles in a gelatinous broth of boiled rock tripe. For dessert there are serviceberry and cattail pollen pancakes, smothered in pine-scented spruce needle syrup.Before digging in, the group recites the Thanksgiving address — an invocation within Indigenous Haudenosaunee communities that gives thanks to the earth and its abundance.“We start the class with a Thanksgiving address to share our sense of gratitude for the plants, and we end the same way,” said Kimmerer, a professor of environmental biology at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, who is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. “So we learn about the gifts of plants and how to receive them.”Kimmerer often says that plants have been her teachers throughout her life. As a little girl, she stashed shoe boxes of pressed leaves and seeds under her bed. Later, as a young botanist, she studied the mysteries of moss reproduction. Throughout her decades of research and environmental advocacy, as she’s pushed to bring Indigenous knowledge into ecological conservation work, she’s learned about the delicate web of relationships between plants and their surroundings.Now, as a renowned plant ecologist and best-selling author, Kimmerer is teaching millions of people how to learn from plants.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

  • 63 Shares109 Views

    in Elections

    Can Exercise Help a Hangover?

    If you overdid it last night, here’s how to know whether it’s wise to sweat through it.Electrolyte drinks, ibuprofen, a bagel overflowing with bacon, egg and cheese — everyone has their own way of nursing a hangover. There are also plenty of products that claim to make the experience less miserable, with little evidence to support them.But what about exercise? Some people swear that a workout can help cure, or blunt, a hangover. If it can, what type of movement could be most helpful?“There’s very few settings where exercise is not beneficial,” said Dr. Andy Peterson, a team physician at the University of Iowa. It’s “the closest thing we have to a miracle drug in medicine.”That includes hangovers — with some caveats — he said. Here’s what experts advise if you are thinking about sweating through a rough morning.How does a hangover affect your body?After a night of drinking, several things happen to your body at once, said Dr. Shaan Khurshid, a cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. You might be dehydrated and you might experience sleep disturbances, digestive issues or a spike in anxiety.While hangover symptoms and their severity can vary a lot between people — and even for the same person at different times — no one is going to be at their physical peak after drinking a substantial amount of alcohol, Dr. Khurshid 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

  • 138 Shares149 Views

    in Elections

    Protests Erupt in Georgia as It Pulls Back From Pro-Western Path

    Thousands of people took to the streets after the government in the Caucasus nation said it had suspended talks on joining the European Union.Thousands of people protested overnight in front of the Parliament building in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, after the government announced on Thursday that it had suspended its bid to join the European Union for four years.The announcement has further deepened the conflict between the country’s opposition, which wants closer ties with the West, and the governing Georgian Dream party, which has been pivoting Georgia away from Europe toward Russia and China.The protests were prompted by an announcement on Thursday by Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, who said the country was putting the process of accession into the European Union on hold until 2028. Mr. Kobakhidze also said that Georgia would decline all grants from the European Union, which has allocated more than $500 million to the country since 2019.Demonstrators blocked the main avenue in Tbilisi, chanting “slaves” and “Russians,” before they were dispersed by riot police, whose officers used water cannons and tear gas to push the crowd away from the Parliament building.The Ministry of Internal Affairs said in a statement that its law enforcement officers had detained 43 protesters. The police also said that 32 officers were injured. The protests were expected to resume on Friday.A mountainous country of 3.7 million, Georgia has been at the crossroads of great power interests for centuries. The current political crisis was prompted by the disputed victory of the Georgian Dream in parliamentary elections in October.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 Shares169 Views

    in Elections

    UK Transport Secretary Louise Haigh Resigns After Fraud Conviction Revealed

    In the latest setback for Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Louise Haigh resigned from the cabinet Friday after admitting she pleaded guilty to a type of fraud in 2014.Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain suffered the first resignation from his cabinet on Friday when the transport secretary, Louise Haigh, quit hours after it emerged that she had been convicted of a fraud offense involving a phone a decade ago.The departure is a blow to Mr. Starmer, who has been buffeted by a series of setbacks since Labour won the election in July, but the speed with which Ms. Haigh resigned suggests Downing Street is hoping to minimize the political fallout.As transport secretary, Ms. Haigh had overseen one of Labour’s flagship policies of bringing Britain’s troubled private rail network back into public ownership, through legislation which recently completed its passage through Parliament.Her resignation was triggered by reports from Sky News and The Times of London on Thursday night that revealed she had pleaded guilty to an offense in 2013. At the time she was 24 and working for Aviva, an insurance firm, when she was mugged in London.In her letter of resignation Ms. Haigh said “the experience was terrifying,” and said, “in the immediate aftermath, I reported the incident to the police. I gave the police a list of my possessions that I believed had been stolen, including my work phone.”She added: “Some time later, I discovered that the handset in question was still in my house. I should have immediately informed my employer and not doing so straight away was a mistake.”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

  • 75 Shares159 Views

    in Elections

    Hard Fork’s 100 Most Iconic Technologies

    Listen to and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTube | iHeartRadioKevin Roose and Rachel Cohn and Dan PowellMarion Lozano and This week, we’re bringing you a Thanksgiving special that’s great for a long car ride, a day of cooking or avoiding conversation with your family. We’re counting down the 100 most iconic technologies of all time, starting with No. 100: Boats. Our definitive list was carefully crafted using an advanced methodology of vibes-only decision-making. By “iconic,” we mean technologies that have either changed the world, ruined it or at the very least made life a little more interesting. And because we love chaos, we’ll explain why we chose each one in roughly 30 seconds or less.Additional Reading:This episode was inspired by the Iconic 400 list compiled by the podcast “Las Culturistas”; check it out.Photo Illustration by The New York Times; Photo: Getty ImagesCredits“Hard Fork” is hosted by More