Aurelia Butler

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    Trump Urged to Halt Firings at the FAA

    The Trump administration is facing pressure to protect the Federal Aviation Administration from further layoffs after hundreds of workers were fired over the weekend.The job cuts were part of a government restructuring under Elon Musk, an adviser to President Trump who is heading a cost-cutting initiative.Mr. Musk’s team has helped push through layoffs of thousands of workers across the government, including at the Transportation Department. But at the same time, the department’s secretary, Sean Duffy, has asked Mr. Musk, whose companies span the sectors of technology and transportation, to aid in addressing the agency’s aging air traffic control technology.The firings come at a time when the F.A.A., the nation’s premier aviation safety agency, is dealing with several deadly plane crashes across the country, including a midair collision between an Army helicopter and American Airlines plane that killed 67 people on Jan. 27. About 400 probationary workers — who were “hired less than a year ago” — were cut from the agency, according to Mr. Duffy, in a social media post on Monday responding to criticism from his Democratic predecessor, Pete Buttigieg.“Zero air traffic controllers and critical safety personnel were let go,” Mr. Duffy wrote.The Transportation Department added in a statement that the agency was continuing to hire and train air traffic controllers and aviation safety workers. However, union representatives say that some of the fired employees served in important support roles.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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    Winnie Harlow and Kyle Kuzma’s Engagement Met With Star-Studded Congratulations

    The couple’s happy news captured the hearts of celebrity friends and fans alike.The model Winnie Harlow and the N.B.A. player Kyle Kuzma announced their engagement on Tuesday, posting photos on Instagram and sharing details of the proposal in an interview with Vogue. Mr. Kuzma, 29, a forward for the Milwaukee Bucks, proposed to Ms. Harlow, 30, on Feb. 13.According to Vogue, he chartered a private plane to Turks and Caicos Islands for the long weekend, returning to a special spot where they had vacationed together in 2022. The plane was decorated with roses, balloons, chocolate and Champagne, but Ms. Harlow didn’t see a proposal coming, instead thinking it was a grand romantic gesture for Valentine’s Day.He read her a poem he’d written, which ended with the line: “Will you be my wife?” She said yes.The ring — an “8.5-carat oval-cut engagement ring with two baguette stones on the side,” per Vogue — was designed by Mr. Kuzma. He told the magazine: “I just wanted to draw a picture of what I felt resembled her — something that was elegant, but very timeless and simplistic at the same time.”After their plane touched down, Mr. Kuzma surprised Ms. Harlow yet again. Her family, Mr. Kuzma’s family, as well as some friends, were waiting at a private villa for them to celebrate their engagement all together.“I’ve dreamed of this moment ever since I was a little girl, and it was even more beautiful than I could have imagined,” Ms. Harlow told The New York Times in an emailed quote sent by a representative. “I’m overflowing with love for him and so excited to start this incredible new chapter of our lives.”By Wednesday evening, the couple’s joint announcement post on Instagram had more than 900,000 likes and thousands of comments. Stars of the entertainment, fashion and sports worlds and beyond commented, sending their congratulations to the couple.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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    So, You Want to Get Rid of the Penny. Do You Have a Plan for the Nickel?

    President Trump’s plan to eliminate the penny could save the government money, but there’s no guarantee.President Trump recently ordered the U.S. Mint to stop producing pennies, for a simple-sounding reason. Each penny, he said, has “literally cost us more than 2 cents.”He’s right. Since 2006, the government has spent more money minting pennies than those pennies have been worth. More

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    What Is Elon Musk’s Job?

    Even as the billionaire tech executive Elon Musk is seemingly everywhere in Washington, his role remains murky.Early on in his interview with President Trump and Elon Musk yesterday, Fox News’s Sean Hannity tried ever so gently to get to the bottom of an important question: What does Musk actually do?“He’s your tech support?” Hannity asked, referring to the words on the T-shirt Musk had opened his blazer to reveal a few moments earlier.Musk said he was.“He’s much more than that,” Trump insisted.The exchange did little to answer the question. Musk’s precise role and responsibilities remain so vague, and so shrouded in secrecy, that even he and the president haven’t quite agreed on what to call it, or exactly how to talk about it.Trump once said that it would be Musk’s job to “lead” the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, but a court filing this week said he was not actually the administrator of that effort — although it did not say who was. The White House has called Musk a “special government employee,” and Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, insisted that the department merely advised agencies, without the authority to fire people.“He’s more powerful than a cabinet secretary, but he is not Senate-confirmed,” said Jessica Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a former Republican Senate aide, who added that, at the same time, Musk offers little public information about his day-to-day activities.The White House has not laid out exactly how many people are part of Musk’s team, or exactly what they are doing. For all of Musk’s promises of transparency, the public is learning about his team’s work largely through reporting and through, as my colleague Zach Montague pointed out today, legal filings. Even judges are having difficulties ascertaining basic facts about the group’s incursion into agencies and the data its staff is collecting.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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    Scientists Describe Rare Syndrome Following Covid Vaccinations

    In a small study, patients with the syndrome were more likely to experience reactivation of Epstein-Barr virus and high levels of a coronavirus protein.The Covid-19 vaccines were powerfully protective, preventing millions of deaths. But in a small number of people, the shots may have led to a constellation of side effects that includes fatigue, exercise intolerance, brain fog, tinnitus and dizziness, together referred to as “post-vaccination syndrome,” according to a small new study.Some people with this syndrome appear to show distinct biological changes, the research found — among them differences in immune cells, reawakening of a dormant virus called Epstein-Barr, and the persistence of a coronavirus protein in their blood.The study was posted online Wednesday and has not yet been published in a scientific journal. “I want to emphasize that this is still a work in progress,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University who led the work.“It’s not like this study determined what’s making people sick,” she said, “but it’s the first kind of glimpse at what may be going on within these people.”Independent experts noted that the findings were not conclusive on their own. Yet the results, from a scientific team known for rigorous work, suggest that post-vaccination syndrome deserves further scrutiny, they said.“One of the most important things is that we get some attention to really shine a light on this and try to understand exactly what it is,” said John Wherry, director of the Institute for Immunology at the University of Pennsylvania. (Dr. Wherry has previously collaborated with Dr. Iwasaki’s team, but did not participate in this work.)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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    European Leaders Try to Recalibrate After Trump Sides With Russia on Ukraine

    The American president’s latest remarks embracing Vladimir Putin’s narrative that Ukraine is to blame for the war have compounded the sense of alarm among traditional allies.President Emmanuel Macron of France called a second emergency meeting of European allies on Wednesday seeking to recalibrate relations with the United States as President Trump upends international politics by rapidly changing American alliances.Mr. Macron had already assembled a dozen European leaders in Paris on Monday after Mr. Trump and his new team angered and confused America’s traditional allies by suggesting that the United States would rapidly retreat from its security role in Europe and planned to proceed with peace talks with Russia — without Europe or Ukraine at the table.Mr. Trump’s remarks late on Tuesday, when he sided fully with Russia’s narrative blaming Ukraine for the war, have now fortified the impression that the United States is prepared to abandon its role as a European ally and switch sides to embrace President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.It was a complete reversal of historic alliances that left many in Europe stunned and fearful.“What’s happening is very bad. It’s a reversal of the state of the world since 1945,” Jean- Yves Le Drian, a former French foreign minister, said on French radio Wednesday morning.“It’s our security he’s putting at risk,” he said, referring to President Trump. “We must wake up.”Fear that Mr. Trump is ready to abandon Ukraine and has accepted Russian talking points has been particularly acute in Eastern and Central Europe, where memories are long and bitter of the West’s efforts to appease Hitler in Munich in 1938 and its assent to Stalin’s demands at the Yalta Conference in 1945 for a Europe cleaved in two.“Even Poland’s betrayal in Yalta lasted longer than Ukraine’s betrayal in Riyadh,” Jaroslaw Walesa, a Polish lawmaker and the son of Poland’s anti-Communist Solidarity trade union leader, Lech Walesa, said Wednesday on social media, referring to the American-Russian talks in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.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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    Zelensky Urges ‘More Truth’ After Trump Suggests Ukraine Started the War

    President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine appealed to the Trump administration on Wednesday to respect the truth and avoid disinformation in discussing the war that began with a Russian invasion of his country, in his first response to President Trump’s suggestion that Ukraine had started the war.“I would like to have more truth with the Trump team,” Mr. Zelensky told reporters in Kyiv during a broader discussion about the administration, which this week opened peace talks with Russia that excluded Ukraine. Mr. Zelensky said that the U.S. president was “living in a disinformation space” and in a “circle of disinformation.”The remarks, delivered from his presidential office in Kyiv, a building still fortified with sandbags to avoid blasts from Russian missiles, were some of the most pointed yet about Mr. Trump and his views on the war.The 38th Separate Marine Brigade firing a Grad self-propelled 122-milimeter multiple rocket launcher at a Russian target from the Pokrovsk front line of eastern Ukraine on Monday.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesMr. Zelensky had until this week walked a fine line of staking out Ukrainian positions while avoiding any suggestion of an open breach with the United States, Ukraine’s most important ally in the now nearly three-year-old war. After the initial cease-fire talks between Russia and the United States, Mr. Zelensky on Tuesday had starkly laid out his refusal to accept terms negotiated without Ukrainian participation.Later Tuesday, Mr. Trump said of Ukraine’s leadership and the war, “You should have never started it,” and appeared to embrace what has been a Russian demand that Ukraine hold elections before some stages of talks. Elections were suspended under martial law after Russia’s invasion in February 2022.Mr. Trump also said that Mr. Zelensky’s approval rating was 4 percent. Mr. Zelensky said that was not true, citing polls showing far higher support.At the news conference, Mr. Zelensky was focused and spoke with intensity. He said he was not personally ruffled by the negotiations with the Trump administration. “This is not my first dialogue or fight,” he said. “I take it calmly.”Russia, he said, is clearly pleased with the turn of diplomatic developments. “I think Putin and the Russians are very happy, because questions are discussed with them,” Mr. Zelensky said.“Yesterday, there were signals of speaking with them as victims,” he said of the Trump officials’ tone in discussing the Russian officials, whose government sparked the largest war in Europe since World War II, which has killed or wounded about a million people on both sides over three years. “That is something new.” More

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    Kremlin Message to Trump: There’s Money to Be Made in Russia

    Russian officials are arguing that American companies stand to make billions of dollars by re-entering Russia. The White House is listening.The Russian government’s top investment manager, who has Harvard and McKinsey credentials and fluent English, brought a simple printout to Tuesday’s talks with the Trump administration in Saudi Arabia.Its message: By pulling out of Russia in outrage over the invasion of Ukraine, American companies had walked away from piles of cold, hard cash.“Losses of U.S. companies by industry,” read the document, which Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, showed to a New York Times reporter. “Total losses,” one of the columns said. The sum at the bottom: $324 billion.In appealing to President Trump, the Kremlin has zeroed in on his desire to make a profit. President Vladimir V. Putin said last month that the two leaders “have a lot to talk about” when it comes to energy and the economy. Sergey V. Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said after Tuesday’s meeting that “there was great interest” in the room “in removing artificial barriers to the development of mutually beneficial economic cooperation” — an apparent reference to lifting American sanctions.Remarkably, the Trump administration appears to be engaging with Russia’s message without demanding payment up front. After Ukraine suggested the possibility of natural resource deals to Mr. Trump, his treasury secretary pushed to have the country sign away half its mineral wealth. And Mr. Trump continues to portray American allies as freeloaders, threatening more tariffs and demanding they pay more for their own defense.With Russia, by contrast, the administration seems to be signaling that the one thing Mr. Putin has to do to pave the way for a full reset in Moscow’s relationship with Washington is end the war in Ukraine. Many Europeans and Ukrainians fear Mr. Trump will seek a peace deal on Russia’s terms, especially after the American president suggested on Tuesday that Ukraine was to blame for the Russian invasion.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