Aurelia Butler

The baseball team tied the modern day record for losses on Sunday, dropping a 120th game. In the team’s most loyal neighborhood, some people couldn’t bear to watch. It was the bottom of the second inning on Sunday afternoon before Lauren Eaves, the bartender at BallPark Pub in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago, remembered to turn one of the bar’s six flat-screen TVs to the White Sox game.“Nobody’s asking for it,” she said. In the dwindling days of a spectacularly dreadful season, many White Sox fans are averting their eyes. On Sunday, the team lost for the 120th time this year, tying the major league record for most losses by a modern-day team in a single season. The loss happened nearly 2,000 miles away in San Diego, where the Padres beat the Sox, 4-2. But it landed like one more gut punch on the South Side of Chicago in Bridgeport, the neighborhood where the White Sox have played for more than a century, and home to many families who have loyally cheered for the team for generations.All Sunday afternoon, customers drifted in and out of BallPark, about as Sox-centric as a bar can be. The walls are covered with Sox memorabilia: a mural depicting the notorious Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in 1979 that ended in a riot, a black-and-white portrait of the former maverick team owner Bill Veeck, a yellow vintage sign advertising $3 grandstand seats. Patrons at BallPark Pub, near where the Chicago White Sox play their home games, watched the Chicago Bears and other N.F.L. teams play on Sunday.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times“Welcome Sox Fans!” a large sign by the door beckons. These days, few fans who walk through the door of BallPark are here to watch the Sox. 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

Leslie Boileau, a sheriff’s deputy in Marion County, Fla., said that he had “accidentally discharged” a loaded gun at his girlfriend, as they were cleaning and dry-firing guns during a lesson.A sheriff’s deputy in Florida has been charged with manslaughter in the shooting death of his girlfriend, the police said.Leslie Boileau, 32, a sheriff’s deputy in Marion County, Fla., said he “accidentally discharged” a loaded gun at his girlfriend, Polina Wright, 25, as they were cleaning and testing guns at his home on Thursday evening, the Ocala Police Department said on Friday.Mr. Boileau was arrested on Friday and released on $30,000 bond on Saturday, his attorney, Jimmie Sparrow, said.Chief Mike Balken of the Ocala Police Department said his agency was working with the State Attorney’s Office to “ensure justice is served.”“We are deeply saddened by this tragic incident,” Chief Balken said in a statement posted on Facebook. “Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victim’s family and loved ones during this incredibly difficult time.”According to the arrest affidavit, the Ocala Police Department responded to a call of a shooting at 10:52 p.m. on Thursday at Mr. Boileau’s home in southeast Ocala, in Central Florida. In his emergency call, Mr. Boileau described the shooting as an “accidental discharge,” the document 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

On This Week’s Episode:Kids feeling the pressure and hype to make their final year of high school as good as the movies.Jennifer HeuerNew 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

Most of the senior staff members on Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s campaign for North Carolina governor resigned on Sunday, dealing a seismic blow to the embattled Republican who has faced widespread criticism after an explosive CNN report that he had made a series of disturbing comments on a pornographic website.Among the resignations was his top campaign consultant, Conrad Pogorzelski III, who for years had been one of Mr. Robinson’s most loyal confidants and who had been the only consultant to take a chance on him during his run for lieutenant governor four years ago.Mr. Pogorzelski confirmed his resignation in a text message on Sunday evening, saying he and seven other campaign staffers had resigned on “our own accord.”The other resignations included Chris Rodriguez, the campaign manager; Heather Whillier, the finance director; and Jason Rizk, the deputy campaign manager. Two political directors, John Kontoulas and Jackson Lohrer, and the director of operations, Patrick Riley, also resigned.The 11th-hour shake-up in the campaign less than 50 days before the election will only exacerbate the troubles already plaguing Mr. Robinson, the fiery Trump acolyte who has been widely criticized for comments perceived as racist, antisemitic, transphobic and hateful.CNN reported on Thursday that Mr. Robinson had written on a porn site years ago that he was a “black NAZI,” that he enjoyed watching transgender pornography and that slavery was not bad. He also recounted on the site how he went “peeping” on women in public gym showers as a teenager. Mr. Robinson has denied that he wrote the posts and ignored calls from some fellow Republicans to withdraw from the race.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 owners of Rayne Beau, the 2-year old Siamese cat, have no idea how their cat made it back, but call his return a “miracle.”When a cat dashed into the woods of Yellowstone National Park during a camping trip in June, his California owners, Benny and Susanne Anguiano, thought they’d never see him again.The couple searched for five days through the woods near their campground at Fishing Bridge R.V. Park but never found their 2-year-old male Siamese cat, Rayne Beau, pronounced “rainbow.” Mrs. Anguiano said that Rayne Beau’s sister, Starr, started to meow through the screen door of the trailer. Eventually, when the couple made the tough decision to drive home to Salinas, Calif., Starr, who had never been away from her brother, meowed all the way back.“Leaving him was unthinkable,” Mrs. Anguiano said. “I felt like I was abandoning him.”But almost two months later, Rayne Beau was found wandering the streets of Roseville, Calif., three hours north of where the Anguianos live and more than 800 miles away from Yellowstone National Park, as first reported by the news station KSBW.When a worker from a local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals notified the couple that rescuers had identified Rayne Beau from his microchip, Mr. Anguiano said they were shocked that the cat had made it back to California.The couple met Rayne Beau and his sister when they were 11 weeks old and decided to foster and then adopt them. Rayne Beau, who at first seemed timid compared with his playful sister, quickly adjusted to his new home and developed an adventurous streak. Mrs. Anguiano described him as being like a “dog cat” who played fetch and came to her when she called his name.She said he was also clever. One night he climbed over the fence in their backyard, but he returned home the following morning.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

Speaker Mike Johnson dropped his demands for proof-of-citizenship voting requirements to strike a deal that includes more money for the Secret Service and funds the government through Dec. 20.Congressional leaders from both parties unveiled a short-term agreement to fund the government on Sunday, after Speaker Mike Johnson abandoned demands for a longer-term deal that also included new proof-of-citizenship requirements for voter registration.The deal, which extends federal appropriations through Dec. 20, includes an additional $231 million to help the beleaguered Secret Service protect candidates during the upcoming presidential election and into next year. According to the Treasury Department, the United States has spent about $6.3 trillion in fiscal 2024, which ends on Sept. 30.The timeline of the deal allows Congress to sidestep a government shutdown during the campaign season, but it all but ensures that spending disputes will dominate the lame-duck period between the election and the inauguration of a new Congress in January.“While I am pleased bipartisan negotiations quickly led to a government funding agreement free of cuts and poison pills, this same agreement could have been done two weeks ago,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said in a statement heralding the temporary spending patch — known as a continuing resolution — and blaming Republicans for dragging their heels. “Instead, Speaker Johnson chose to follow the MAGA way and wasted precious time.”In a letter on Sunday to his colleagues explaining why he was forced to take the deal, Mr. Johnson wrote, “A continuing resolution is the only option that remains.” He promised to put it to a floor vote this week.Mr. Johnson had made it a personal crusade to include in the spending package legislation requiring people to prove their U.S. citizenship when registering to vote, arguing it was necessary to prevent fraud, despite scant evidence of noncitizens voting. That requirement, known as the SAVE Act, was also supported by the hard right and by former President Donald J. Trump, who called on Congress not to pass a spending plan without “every ounce” of the proposal.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

Freddie Cheng experiments with the initial phase of constructing.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesMONDAY PUZZLE — I’ve written about two of Freddie Cheng’s puzzles since I started working at The New York Times, which is a small fraction of the number he has constructed. But it took only those two grids for me to appreciate Mr. Cheng’s talent for identifying subtle patterns in the English language. He can play with diverse definitions of a single word. He can use a shared ending of proper nouns as a springboard for puns. His sense of humor shines through each puzzle, and it’s wonderfully original.Today’s crossword continues this artistic streak as Mr. Cheng curates a few phrases that share a notable grammatical feature. I never would have thought about the feature if not for this puzzle, and I’m thrilled that he’s brought it to our attention.Today’s ThemeAbbreviations often appear as crossword entries, but rarely do they make up the theme of an entire puzzle! Each of today’s themed entries is a common expression that ends with a three-letter abbreviation: At 17A, the way [Some movies were released, pre-streaming] — what a concept! — is DIRECT-TO-DVD. At 29A, the [Bruce Springsteen album with a red, white and blue cover] is BORN IN THE USA, released in 1984. And at 44A, the [Question to someone who’s on the way] is WHAT’S YOUR ETA?The final clue — [A piece of cake, so to speak] (59A) — is the only toughie, funnily enough, because two nearly identical phrases ending in three-letter terms fit the spaces. Only one phrase satisfies the constraints of the theme, though: It’s AS EASY AS ABC, because “pie” is not an abbreviation.If you want to be fussy — and at The Times, we often do — then don’t refer to the three-letter abbreviations in this puzzle as acronyms. They’re technically initialisms, which are distinct from acronyms in that they are pronounced by their letters rather than as words (think N.F.L. versus NAFTA).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

A family says their son, a member of the swim team at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, was victimized when a teammate etched the slur across his chest with a box cutter. School administrators at a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania are investigating a report of a student scratching a racial slur onto another student’s chest at an on-campus residence this month.Both the student who wrote the slur and the student who was scratched were on the swim team at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pa. The school and the family of the targeted student said in a joint statement on Sunday that the investigation was almost finished and that the student who scratched the slur was no longer enrolled at the college. It was not immediately clear whether the student was expelled or had decided to leave.The names of the students have not been made public. The family of the targeted student had said in a statement published on Friday in The Gettysburgian, the college newspaper, that their son became “the victim of a hate crime” when a teammate used a box cutter to etch a slur against Black people across their son’s chest at an informal swim team gathering on Sept. 6. They said that their son had been the only person of color at the gathering and that the teammate had been a “trusted” friend. Their son was later interviewed by members of the swim team’s coaching staff and then dismissed from the team, according to their statement. It was unclear on Sunday whether his status had changed. The school and the family are now having conversations about “how most constructively to move forward,” they said on Sunday. “The college and the family both recognize the gravity and seriousness of this situation and hope it can serve as a transformative moment for our community and beyond,” the statement read.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