Aurelia Butler

Kerry Gahalal, who was struck when officers shot a knife-wielding man at a Brooklyn station, was not simply “grazed” as officials said, according to a lawyer for the woman’s family.A 26-year-old woman who was wounded when New York City police officers shot a knife-wielding man at a Brooklyn subway station was not “grazed” by gunfire as officials have said, according to a lawyer for her family. Instead, the lawyer said on Saturday, she has a bullet lodged in her leg and is unable to walk.The woman, Kerry Gahalal, was one of two bystanders to be struck when the officers shot the man, Derrell Mickles, during a confrontation last Sunday at the Sutter Avenue L train station in the Brownsville neighborhood. The other bystander, Gregory Delpeche, was in critical condition on Friday.The contention that police officials had minimized the severity of Ms. Gahalal’s injury came a day after the Police Department released video footage of the episode that appeared unlikely to end questions about whether the officers had acted appropriately under the circumstances.The shooting is being examined by the department’s Force Investigation Division and the Brooklyn district attorney’s office. Police leaders and Mayor Eric Adams have said that the use of force was justified because Mr. Mickles had threatened officers with a weapon. Critics say it was a dangerous escalation of what had begun as an effort to enforce the minor offense of fare evasion.Ms. Gahalal turned 26 the day before the shooting and was taking the subway to Manhattan with her husband for a celebratory dinner when the L train they were on stopped at the Sutter Avenue station, the lawyer for her family, Joel Levine, said.Discussing the shooting, in which Mr. Mickles and an officer were also wounded, Jeffrey Maddrey, the chief of department, said at a police news conference last Sunday that a male bystander (Mr. Delpeche) had been struck in the head and that a female bystander (Ms. Gahalal) had been “grazed.”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

Faithful supporters of former President Donald J. Trump lined up on Saturday afternoon to cheer him on at a rally at the Aero Center in Wilmington, N.C., their red shirts billowing from a beach-side breeze.When asked about the former president’s chances of winning North Carolina, many in the crowd were confident and brimming with energy. They would be the force to keep the battleground state red for Mr. Trump.But many of their smiles shrank when they were asked about the embattled Republican nominee for governor, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who has been under fire since CNN reported this week on the lewd comments he made on a pornography website several years ago. According to CNN, Mr. Robinson wrote on the site that he was a “black NAZI,” that he enjoyed watching transgender pornography and that he defended slavery. He also recounted on the site how he went “peeping” on women in public gym showers as a teenager.Few rally attendees believed the article about Mr. Robinson, who had already faced criticism for old Facebook posts that were widely condemned as racist, antisemitic and transphobic. And while many voters said they would still stand behind him, some acknowledged that the allegations were damning.“Look, he’s toast,” said David Huffman, 60, of Wilmington, who wore a collared shirt printed with the American flag. “I’m still going to vote for Mark, but at this point it’s worse than a Hail Mary.”Not only was Mr. Robinson not at the rally, but Mr. Trump also did not mention his name once to the thousands of supporters who were in attendance, the very people who helped fuel the rise of the lieutenant governor in 2020.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

Dr. Dania El-Hallak was already exhausted. After wireless devices exploded across Lebanon, there had been little time to process what she had seen — the hundreds of wounded, many of their faces disfigured beyond recognition.“I am hoping that it was all just a bad dream,” Dr. El-Hallak said, still struggling to take stock of the carnage on Friday.Then, without warning, Israeli fighter jets ripped through the skies above Lebanon’s capital.“There are strikes in Dahiya?” she said in disbelief, using the Arabic name for Beirut’s southern suburbs.Her nightmare had only just begun.The attacks on Hezbollah’s communication devices this week — widely attributed to Israel — wounded thousands of people, leaving many of them permanently disabled and in need of long-term rehabilitative care. The Israeli airstrike just miles from downtown Beirut on Friday, which killed at least 37 people and injured dozens more, has only added to the toll. Others are still presumed trapped in the debris.Lebanon’s ailing health system — already embattled by a crippling economic collapse — has been sent into overdrive.Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta at his home in London in December. He volunteered last year at a burn unit in Gaza and now believes war will come to Lebanon. Mary Turner for The New York TimesWe 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

Not long ago, candidates running for national office spent much of the general election distancing themselves from the fringes of their parties.But on Saturday, Senator JD Vance of Ohio will share a stage with someone on the fringes of his.Mr. Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, is scheduled to appear in Hershey, Pa., as the special guest of the “Tucker Carlson Live” show, just weeks after Mr. Carlson, the former Fox News anchor, praised and aired the views of Darryl Cooper, who falsely claimed that the Holocaust was not an intentional act of genocide.Mr. Carlson described Mr. Cooper as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.” In Mr. Carlson’s interview with him, which was posted on social media this month, Mr. Cooper falsely claimed that the Nazis’ systematic killing of European Jews was an accident of history carried out by a German military overwhelmed with prisoners of war — not an act of premeditated genocide. In fact, the Nazis’ killing of almost six million Jews was meticulously planned and documented.Mr. Cooper also called Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, “the chief villain of the Second World War” for declaring war on Germany after the Nazis invaded Poland.Mr. Carlson’s promotion of Mr. Cooper drew criticism from the Biden White House and from some conservatives.A Vance campaign spokesman said this month that Mr. Vance did not share the views of Mr. Cooper but “doesn’t believe in guilt-by-association cancel culture.”Mr. Vance has defended his decision to keep his interview with Mr. Carlson, saying that Republicans believe in free speech and debate. “Tucker Carlson is not affiliated with the campaign, so I don’t think what Tucker Carlson does is a distraction or is not,” Mr. Vance said this month. “He’s going to do what he wants to do, and we can disagree or agree with the viewpoints.”Tickets for the events ranged from $35 for upper-level seats to $1,600 for a “V.I.P. Meet and Greet Experience” that included access to a reception with Mr. Vance, a photo with Mr. Carlson and a seat in the first five rows.Mr. Carlson is in the midst of his first live tour, a national, monthlong run of shows with some of the most well-known and controversial figures in conservative politics. His guests have included Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point Action, and media personalities such as Glenn Beck and Dan Bongino.Later this month, Mr. Carlson will be joined by Alex Jones, a conspiracy theorist who has been ordered to pay over $1.4 billion in defamation damages to the families of the victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012; Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia; and Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest child and the host of the podcast “Triggered.” More

In an abrupt reversal, the social network’s lawyers said it was complying with court orders that it had previously defied. Brazil’s Supreme Court could allow the site to return next week.Elon Musk suddenly gave up.After defying court orders in Brazil for three weeks, Mr. Musk’s social network, X, has capitulated. In a court filing on Friday night, the company’s lawyers said that X had complied with orders from Brazil’s Supreme Court in the hopes that the court would lift a block on its site.The decision was a surprise move by Mr. Musk, who owns and controls X, after he said he had refused to obey what he called illegal orders to censor voices on his social network. Mr. Musk had dismissed local employees and refused to pay fines. The court responded by blocking X across Brazil last month.Now, X’s lawyers said the company had done exactly what Mr. Musk vowed not to: take down accounts that a Brazilian justice ordered removed because the judge said they threatened Brazil’s democracy. X also complied with the justice’s other demands, including paying fines and naming a new formal representative in the country, the lawyers said.Brazil’s Supreme Court confirmed X’s moves in a filing on Saturday, but said the company had not filed the proper paperwork. It gave X five days to send further documentation.The abrupt about-face from Mr. Musk in Brazil appeared to be a defeat for the outspoken businessman and his self-designed image as a warrior for free speech. Mr. Musk and his company had loudly and harshly criticized Brazil’s Supreme Court for months, even publicly releasing some of its sealed orders, but neither had publicly mentioned their reversal by Saturday morning.The moment showed how, in the yearslong power struggle between tech giants and nation-states, governments have been able to keep the upper hand.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

Hezbollah said Saturday that Ahmed Wahbi, a Hezbollah commander it described as a leader and trainer in the group’s elite Radwan force, had been killed in an airstrike along with the force’s founding commander, Ibrahim Aqeel, and other Hezbollah members.As is common for Hezbollah military operatives, Mr. Wahbi had little public profile while he was alive, but an obituary distributed by Hezbollah-linked media said he played a leading role in Hezbollah’s support for Hamas after the latter’s assault on Israel on Oct. 7. Hezbollah has launched attacks on northern Israel through the war in Gaza to support Hamas.Both are backed by Iran and are members of a regional militia network known as the “axis of resistance,” which also includes the Houthis of Yemen, the government of Syria and other fighting groups there and in Iraq.Mr. Wahbi, 59, was a longtime member of Hezbollah, joining at its inception, during Lebanon’s civil war in the 1980s to fight the Israeli occupation of the country’s south. The origins and makeup of the Radwan unit are murky, but its fighters have played key roles in operations like the abduction of Israeli soldiers in 2006, which led to a destructive monthlong war with Israel in 2006. The unit also fought against the jihadists of the Islamic State in Syria.As a young fighter, Mr. Wahbi participated in Hezbollah’s early operations against Israel, Hezbollah said. He was captured by the Israeli army in 1984, though the group did not say why or how long he was held.In 1997, he was a leader of a Hezbollah ambush targeting Israeli naval commandos near the town of Ansariya, in southern Lebanon, according to Hezbollah’s obituary. Hezbollah fighters killed about a dozen Israeli officers in that operation.He was a longtime leader and trainer with the Radwan force, in what Hezbollah called “developing human capabilities.” He also trained other formations within the group.He headed the Radwan force until the beginning of this year, then returned to training, Hezbollah said.The Israeli military said in a statement that it had struck “the masterminds” of a plan to attack northern Israel as Hamas attacked near Gaza on Oct. 7. The military did not mention Mr. Wahbi specifically, and did not respond to a request for comment. More

For women starting new businesses, early funding from venture capital firms led by other women is vital. But few are large enough to lead subsequent rounds of financing.When Oriana Papin-Zoghbi was looking for venture capital funding to develop a new type of test for ovarian cancer, she found her pitch did best with women investors. “They were able to resonate with the problem we are trying to solve,” she said.Avestria Ventures, a fund focused on women-founded start-ups, led an early investment of $5 million in Ms. Papin-Zoghbi’s company, AOA Dx. And two years later, Good Growth Capital, a firm founded by women, led an additional $17 million investment.Ms. Papin-Zoghbi expects raising the next round of funding to be more difficult. Medical devices are expensive to develop, and AOA Dx is looking for an additional $30 million to bring its first product to market. “Most women-led funds cannot lead a round that size,” she said.More than 100 women-led venture capital funds, many specifically focused on investing in companies started by women, have been founded in the last decade, a trend that has contributed to a gain in fund-raising by women who are just starting their businesses. Female-founded start-ups received 7 percent of pre-seed and seed funding, the earliest funding a start-up raises, in 2023, up from 5 percent in 2015, according to the data platform Crunchbase.But women-led funds tend to be small, limiting their influence to early funding rounds. More mature companies led by women have not seen the same increase in funding. For women-founded businesses seeking investments past a Series B round, typically the third funding round, the share of venture capital dollars contracted to 1 percent from 2 percent over the same period, according to Crunchbase.Founders like Ms. Papin-Zoghbi are hitting — or fear hitting — a funding wall, an obstacle they say has been heightened by a rollback in diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and a general downturn in start-up investing.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

Strikes on weapons arsenals are crucial to weaken Moscow’s overwhelming superiority in battlefield firepower, analysts said.Ukraine said on Saturday that it had struck two large ammunition depots deep inside Russia overnight. It was the second such attack in less than a week as Kyiv seeks to escalate hits on Russian military bases and warehouses to try to disrupt Moscow’s military logistics and slow its troops’ advance on the battlefield.The strikes announced on Saturday targeted ammunition depots near the towns of Toropets, in northwestern Russia, and Tikhoretsk, in the country’s southwest. The facilities are both more than 200 miles from Ukrainian-controlled territory, and one has been identified as a major storage facility for munitions Russia has acquired from North Korea.The General Staff of the Ukrainian Army said in a statement that its forces had struck both depots, but it stopped short of specifying the types of weapons used in the attack, saying only that the arsenals had been “hit by fire,” raising the possibility that it had used a new kind of weapon.The attack came as Kyiv has been pressing its allies for weeks to let it use powerful, Western-delivered missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia. That authorization has yet to be granted, according to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and in the meantime his country has sought to modify missiles and drones already in its arsenal for long-range use.Moscow has not directly acknowledged the strikes on the depots, but regional authorities said that a drone attack on Tikhoretsk had “caused a fire that spread to explosive objects” and triggered detonations. Some 1,200 residents were evacuated from the area. The Russian state news agency Tass reported that a drone attack near Toropets had forced the evacuation of a train station and the suspension of traffic on a highway.NASA satellites detected multiple fires at the two depots on Saturday. The attack came four days after another ammunition depot near Toropets was hit by Ukrainian drones, causing a huge explosion, with videos showing large fireballs lighting up the night sky.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