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    Afghan Man Charged With Plotting Election Day Attack on Behalf of ISIS

    It is not clear where the man intended to stage the attack, though the criminal complaint said he sought to inflict mass casualties on behalf of the Islamic State.The F.B.I. has arrested an Afghan citizen in Oklahoma City on charges of plotting a suicide attack on Election Day, with the intent of inflicting mass casualties on behalf of the Islamic State, according to a criminal complaint filed on Tuesday.In preparation for the attack, the complaint said, the man, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, liquidated his family’s financial assets to raise cash for the resettlement of his relatives in Kabul and recruited a co-conspirator, his nephew, who was not named because he is under the age of 18.It is not clear where Mr. Tawhedi intended to stage the attack, though investigators said he planned to use two AK-47s. His online history showed that he searched for how to access cameras in Washington on the same day he visited the White House and Washington Monument webcams, according to investigators.Mr. Tawhedi communicated his plans in chilling detail to a man he later identified as a member of the Islamic State, telling him he would obey any order he was given.“God willing, with the help of God, we will get ready for the election day,” he wrote, according to the filing.Charges against other individuals are possible, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing investigation.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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    Bitcoin Documentary ‘Money Electric’ Reopens Search for Satoshi Nakamoto

    The identity of the pseudonymous Bitcoin creator has eluded sleuths for years. But does finding the real Mr. Nakamoto really matter?There are two ambitious missions behind “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery,” a new documentary by the filmmaker Cullen Hoback that was released Tuesday by HBO.The first is to solve one of the internet’s great mysteries by revealing, at long last, the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous programmer who created Bitcoin in 2008.The film’s second mission is to make the case that the identity of Bitcoin’s creator actually matters — that Bitcoin, for all its flaws, represents an important technological breakthrough with far-reaching implications, and that there are good reasons, aside from prurience, to care who created it.Let’s start with the first part. Among Bitcoin buffs and cryptocurrency journalists, the mystery of Mr. Nakamoto’s identity has been the subject of fierce debate and painstaking investigation for more than a decade. But nothing has been proved conclusively, and a handful of bungled attempts to crack the case — most notoriously a 2014 Newsweek cover story that put the blame on a physicist, Dorian Nakamoto, who turned out to have nothing to do with Bitcoin at all — have only muddied the waters.(My former colleague Nathaniel Popper suggested that Nick Szabo, who created a digital currency with similarities to Bitcoin, was most likely Satoshi Nakamoto back in 2015, but Mr. Szabo has denied it, and no conclusive evidence has emerged.)Mr. Hoback, who spent years diving down the rabbit hole of the QAnon conspiracy theory for his last film, “Q: Into the Storm,” took a similarly exhaustive approach this time. He and a camera crew spent three years flying around the world interviewing early Bitcoin contributors, following digital breadcrumbs buried in ancient message board posts and piecing together the evidence.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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    Ruth Glacier in Alaska Hides America’s Deepest Gorge

    As his bush plane circled the craggy peaks of the Alaska Range, the explorer Bradford Washburn peered down and had a burning thought.Coursing down the southern slopes of Denali and Mount Silverthrone were the accumulated snows of thousands of winters, compacted under their own weight into colossal rivers of ice that filled the valleys for miles in every direction. At one particular spot in the white wilderness, Washburn noticed from above, all this glacial mass was somehow squeezing through a granite-walled corridor just a mile wide.Washburn became convinced, he wrote, that beneath the ice lay a secret: The corridor was deep. Deeper, perhaps, than any other gorge on the continent, and maybe even the planet.That was 1937. Nearly 90 years later, a team of scientists set off into the windswept mountains to measure the glacier with snowmobiles and ice-penetrating radar. It wasn’t easy: The Great North does not surrender its mysteries readily. The researchers almost didn’t think they’d found anything of interest.The Ruth Glacier originates beneath the summit of Denali and flows through deep granite valleys.Now, thanks to some clever analysis, and a bit of luck, they have put forth the most conclusive evidence yet that Washburn was right — that the area could be the deepest gorge in North America.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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    Welcome to Mike Kelley’s World: Beautiful, Ugly, Funny and Dumb

    The American artist died in 2012, but a new exhibition in London shows how his deadpan-weirdo works continue to resonate today.Fantasy birdhouses, monkey islands, U.F.O. abductions, poltergeist possessions, hillbillies, rockers, goths, stuffed animals, graffitied history books and colorful banners with humorous phrases (most of which can’t be printed in this newspaper): The work of the Detroit-born multimedia artist Mike Kelley has something for everyone.At Tate Modern, in London, “Ghost and Spirit,” the first British retrospective of Kelley’s work (on through March 9, 2025,) shows how he mirrored America back to itself, like a twisted fun house maze filled with deranged, anarchic duplications.“My interest in popular forms wasn’t to glorify them, because I really dislike them in most cases,” he said of his work, which draws on references as varied as Pop Art, Roman Catholic ritual, folk traditions, mainstream television and tabloid newspapers. “All you can really do now,” he said, “is work with the dominant culture, flay it, rip it apart, reconfigure it.”Hung chronologically, Tate Modern’s extensive exhibition begins with Kelley’s time at the California Institute of the Arts, a school known for its experimental and political approaches, during the late 1970s. Early photographs, sculptures and works on paper show the artist, recently transplanted from Michigan, where he had been involved in the underground music scene, experimenting with concepts of identity and authorship in what would become a characteristic deadpan-weirdo style.The Tate Modern is the first British retrospective of Mike Kelley’s work.Lucy Green/TateA 1982 series called “Personality Crisis” has three large paintings of Kelley’s name in different fonts, stacked above each other like an adolescent doodling — sort of. The first variation is in looping cursive; variation two, in angular death metal font; and the third, subtitled “Death Trail of a Flea,” shows the artist’s signature, the ultimate stamp of authenticity, dissolved in an erratic curlicue trail — at once an insect’s dying gasp and a nod to the automatic writing of the Surrealists.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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    Trump Secretly Stayed in Touch With Putin After Leaving Office, Book Says

    Former President Donald J. Trump has secretly spoken with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as many as seven times since leaving office, even as he was pressuring Republicans to block military aid to Ukraine to fight Russian invaders, according to a new book by the journalist Bob Woodward.The book, titled “War” and scheduled to be published next week, describes a scene in early 2024 at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s estate in Florida, when the former president ordered an aide out of his office so he could conduct a phone call with Mr. Putin. The unidentified aide said the two may have spoken a half-dozen other times as well since Mr. Trump left the White House.The book also reports that Mr. Trump, while still in office early during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, secretly sent Mr. Putin what were then rare tests for the virus for the Russian’s personal use. Mr. Putin, who has been described as particularly anxious about being infected at the time, urged Mr. Trump to not publicly reveal the gesture because it could damage the American president politically. “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me,” Mr. Putin reportedly told him.The disclosures raise new questions about Mr. Trump’s relationship with Mr. Putin just weeks before an election that will determine whether the former president will reclaim the White House. A copy of the book was obtained by The New York Times. The Washington Post, where Mr. Woodward has worked for more than half a century, and CNN, where he often appears as a commentator, also reported on the book on Tuesday.Mr. Trump’s campaign dismissed Mr. Woodward’s book by assailing the author with typically personal insults — “a total sleazebag,” “slow, lethargic, incompetent and overall a boring person with no personality” — without addressing any of the specifics reported in it.“None of these made-up stories by Bob Woodward are true and are the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Steven Cheung, the campaign communications director, said in the statement. Mr. Cheung said Mr. Trump did not give Mr. Woodward access for the book and noted that the former president was suing the author over a previous book.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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    Una nueva encuesta muestra a Harris en ascenso frente a Trump

    Un sondeo nacional de Times/Siena revela que Kamala Harris aventaja ligeramente a Donald Trump. Los votantes son más propensos a verla a ella, no a Trump, como una ruptura con el statu quo.Los votantes son ahora más propensos a considerar a la vicepresidenta Kamala Harris que a Donald Trump como representante del cambio y candidata preocupada por la gente como ellos, cuando Harris lleva una ligera ventaja a nivel nacional en la contienda por la Casa Blanca, según la más reciente encuesta del New York Times/Siena College.Es la primera vez que Harris aventaja a Trump en la encuesta del Times/Siena desde julio, cuando el presidente Joe Biden abandonó la disputa y los demócratas se unieron en torno a Harris como su sustituta. Se produce cuando la contienda entra en su último mes, y las encuestas de los estados disputados consideran que las elecciones son unas de las más reñidas de la historia moderna.Aunque la encuesta del Times/Siena muestra algunas ventajas sólidas para Trump, los resultados sugieren que Harris está ganando terreno, aunque sea poco, en cuestiones como el temperamento, la confianza y el cambio, que pueden ser críticas en una carrera presidencial.El sondeo, realizado entre el 29 de septiembre y el 6 de octubre entre 3385 posibles votantes, reveló que Harris aventajaba al republicano Trump en un 49 por ciento frente a un 46 por ciento, una ligera ventaja que está dentro del margen de error del sondeo.[Times/Siena polls also found Trump leading in Texas and up by a wide margin in Florida. The Florida poll helps clarify what’s happening in the race, Nate Cohn writes.]How the Times/Siena poll compares More

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    City Hall Official Charged With Witness Tampering in Adams Inquiry

    Mohamed Bahi, who worked in the mayor’s office of community affairs, was accused of instructing witnesses to lie to federal authorities.F.B.I. agents on Tuesday morning arrested Mayor Eric Adams’s former senior chief liaison to the Muslim community on federal witness tampering and destruction of evidence charges that grew out of the investigation leading to the mayor’s indictment last month.The liaison, Mohamed Bahi, was charged in a criminal complaint in connection with unlawful contributions made to Mr. Adams’s 2021 mayoral campaign, officials said.Mr. Bahi instructed witnesses to lie to federal authorities conducting the investigation, Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.Mr. Bahi, who on Monday resigned from his position as senior chief liaison, was expected to appear in court later in the day.Tracking Charges and Investigations in Eric Adams’s OrbitFour federal corruption inquiries have reached into the world of Mayor Eric Adams of New York. Here is a closer look at the charges against Mr. Adams and how people with ties to him are related to the inquiries.This is a developing story and will be updated. More

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    Will Trump Get Jail Time? We Looked at Similar Cases to Find Out.

    Donald J. Trump faces sentencing on Nov. 26. The election three weeks earlier may determine not only if he returns to the presidency, but if he ends up behind bars.In November, after voters decide whether to return Donald J. Trump to the White House, the judge who oversaw his criminal trial could send him to jail.And despite Mr. Trump’s political status, the judge has ample grounds to do so, a New York Times examination of dozens of similar cases shows.The former president’s unruly behavior at the trial, held in New York in April and May, makes him a candidate for jail time, as does his felony crime of falsifying business records: Over the past decade in Manhattan, more than a third of these convictions resulted in defendants spending time behind bars, The Times’s examination found. Across New York State, the proportion is even higher — about 42 percent of those convictions led to jail or prison time. More