Aurelia Butler

Scroll down for hints and conversation about the puzzle for Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024.Good morning, dear connectors. Welcome to today’s Connections forum, where you can give and receive puzzle — and emotional — support.Be warned: This article includes hints and comments that may contain spoilers for today’s puzzle. Solve Connections first, or scroll at your own risk.Connections is released at midnight in your time zone. In order to accommodate all time zones, there will be two Connections Companions live every day, dated based on Eastern Standard Time.If you find yourself on the wrong companion, check the number of your puzzle, and go to this page to find the corresponding companion.Post your solve grid in the comments and see how your score compares with the editor’s rating, and one another’s.Today’s difficultyThe difficulty of each puzzle is determined by averaging the ratings provided by a panel of testers who are paid to solve each puzzle in advance to help us catch bugs, inconsistencies and other issues. A higher rating means the puzzle is more difficult.Today’s difficulty is 2.9 out of 5.Need a hint?In Connections, each category has a different difficulty level. Yellow is the simplest, and purple is the most difficult. Click or tap each level to reveal one of the words in that category. 🟨 StraightforwardDWELL🟩 ⬇️DWINDLE🟦 ⬇️DWEEB🟪 TrickyDWARFFurther ReadingWant to give us feedback? Email us: [email protected] to go back to Connections?Want to learn more about how the game is made?Leave any thoughts you have in the comments! Please follow community guidelines:Be kind. Comments are moderated for civility.Having a technical issue? Use the Help button in the Settings menu of the Games app.Want to talk about Wordle or Spelling Bee? Check out Wordle Review and the Spelling Bee Forum.See our Tips and Tricks for more useful information on Connections.Join us here to solve Crosswords, The Mini, and other games by The New York Times. More

Casey Mahoney, 48, of Los Angeles, illegally paid “body brokers” to lure clients, a federal jury found.A California man who operated addiction treatment facilities in Orange County was convicted this week of paying nearly $3 million in illegal kickbacks for referrals of patients to his facilities, according to federal prosecutors.From at least October 2018 until December 2020, the man, Casey Mahoney, 48, of Los Angeles, paid about $2.87 million to “so-called ‘body brokers’” who gave thousands of dollars to patients to coax them into Healing Path Detox L.L.C. in Huntington Beach and Get Real Recovery Inc. in San Juan Capistrano, two treatment centers Mr. Mahoney operated, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said in a statement on Friday.Some of the money that the body brokers gave to patients was used by the patients to buy drugs, the department’s statement said.After a nine-day trial, a federal jury in Los Angeles found Mr. Mahoney guilty on Wednesday of one count of conspiracy related to offering illegal remunerations for patient referrals, seven counts of illegal remunerations for patient referrals and three counts of money laundering, prosecutors said. He was acquitted on one count of aiding and assisting the preparation of a false tax document.The money-laundering charges, the most serious on which Mr. Mahoney was convicted, each carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Sentencing is set for Jan. 17, 2025.Treatment facility operators may pay a group like a marketer or an advertiser to promote their services to patients. But the Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act of 2018 prevents the operators from paying body brokers kickbacks based on how much revenue the patients they referred brought in, as Mr. Mahoney did, according to the indictment.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

Peter Cichuniec was sentenced in March to five years in prison. On Friday, a judge reduced the sentence because of “unusual and extenuating circumstances.”The punishment for a Colorado paramedic who was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain was reduced to probation on Friday.The paramedic, Peter Cichuniec, a former paramedic with Aurora Fire Rescue, was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and the more serious second-degree assault for the unlawful administration of drugs in the case, which drew national attention after the death of George Floyd and became part of the movement against police brutality.Mr. McClain, a 23-year-old Black man, died after a confrontation with the Aurora police, in which officers put him in a chokehold and a paramedic injected him with ketamine. He died in a hospital several days later.Mr. Cichuniec, 51, was the senior-ranked paramedic who gave what prosecutors described as an excessive amount of the powerful sedative. In March, Judge Mark Warner of Adams County District Court sentenced Mr. Cichuniec to five years in prison, the statutory minimum.On Friday, the judge reduced the sentence to four years of probation. “The court finds, really, there are unusual and extenuating circumstances, and they are truly exceptional in this case,” the judge said in a hearing, according to The Denver Post, referring to a provision of Colorado’s mandatory sentencing law that allows modifications.The judge noted Mr. Cichuniec’s lack of criminal history and his good character, according to The Post, and said that Mr. Cichuniec had to make quick decisions that night. He has been in custody since his conviction in December.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

Investigations into Adams and associates Adams, his campaign and Turkey Senior City Hall aides and associates Former police commissioner’s brother Other legal matters More

Christina Iverson presents a clean and cozy themeless puzzle.SATURDAY PUZZLE — Christina Iverson is a puzzle editor at The New York Times and a prolific contributor of daily crosswords: This is her 31st construction. So much of her work is collaborative, however; although this is her fourth Saturday puzzle, it is her first without a co-author, and her gentle style really shines through. There’s great humor in the wordplay, and a lot of interesting trivia that will resonate instantly (and gratifyingly) with some solvers. There should be something for everyone. All the factoids that I drew a blank on weren’t too difficult, just not in my wheelhouse, and each of them had enough accessible entries intersecting them that I didn’t get stuck for long.Tricky Clues13A. This is a perfect example of if-you-know-you-know trivia: Some people are going to picture it the second they read the clue, and the rest of us have to hope that we know all of its crossing entries because the entry is a homonym. The [Baseball mascot with a fluffy green snout] is the Phillie PHANATIC, a creation of Bonnie Erickson, a puppet designer who worked with Jim Henson.18A. This is a hidden-word clue, the kind you’d find in a cryptic or puns-and-anagrams puzzle. The [Woman in dire need?] in this case is RENEE, composed of consecutive letters in “dire need.”27A. [Job that anyone could see themselves doing?] would also be at home in a cryptic puzzle, and makes a terrific seed clue and entry. I took the clue literally and came up with a “mirror washer,” a job that might exist at some carnivals (or Versailles, perhaps). The entry here is just as apt and a real vocation: It’s a WINDOW WASHER, who’s watching their own reflection while they dangle outside your building with a squeegee.42A. I can’t resist including the self-referential back story on this one: [It once ran the headline “Santa Dies on Xmas Trip”: Abbr.] solves to NYT. On Christmas Day 1913, the story ran on the front page of the newspaper, but it wasn’t even the worst holiday-related news of the day. It was relegated to the second column (above the fold).59A. [Apollo was conceived in them] reads like trivia from Greek mythology to me — the hills of the island of Delos, or something like that. The Apollo in this clue is a reference to the U.S. space project, which came to exist in the SIXTIES.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 U.S. military said those killed in a joint assault by U.S. and Iraqi forces last month included the group’s top commander in Iraq and its leading bomb maker.One of the largest counterterrorism operations against the Islamic State in Iraq in recent years killed four top insurgent leaders last month, the U.S. military said on Friday, dealing the group a major blow at a time when its attacks in Iraq and Syria are on the rise.The raid by American and Iraqi commandos against several Islamic State hide-outs in western Iraq on Aug. 29 killed at least 14 insurgents and devastated the group’s top leadership in the country, according to a statement from the Pentagon’s Central Command and U.S. counterterrorism officials.Among the dead the military identified was Ahmad Hamid al-Ithawi, the top ISIS commander in Iraq and one of the group’s most well-established veterans. Two senior commanders for ISIS operations in western Iraq were also killed, the military’s statement said.Another main target killed was Abu Ali al-Tunisi, a Tunisian national who was the subject of a $5 million reward from the U.S. government, the military revealed on Friday. Mr. al-Tunisi has been ISIS’s most significant designer, manufacturer and teacher in explosives — including improvised devices, suicide vests and car bombs, counterterrorism officials said.“The raid appears to have effectively killed off ISIS’s entire command in Anbar,” Charles Lister, the director of the Middle East Institute’s Syria and counterterrorism programs, wrote in a Substack newsletter, “Syria Weekly,” on Friday. Anbar is a vast province in western Iraq that has been a locus for violent Sunni extremists for years.Central Command and the Iraqi military offered scant details when they announced the raid on Aug. 30, even though it was one of the most sweeping counterterrorism missions in the country in years.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

After fellow Republicans criticized her appearance on the trail, noting her history of offensive remarks, former President Donald J. Trump praised her but later said he disagreed with some of her statements.Five years ago Laura Loomer, a far-right activist with a history of expressing bigoted views and a knack for generating publicity, filed an application for a trademark to protect her work in “the field of political activism.”Ms. Loomer, 31, part of a generation of web-savvy right-wing influencers, decided to trademark the term she had coined for her signature move of ambushing people with unexpected, often embarrassing questions. She called it getting “Loomered.”Already a well-known figure among internet obsessives thanks to her anti-Muslim activism, undercover sting operations and web-savvy political stunts, Ms. Loomer found herself at the center of the presidential campaign this week when she traveled with former President Donald J. Trump. She went with him to Philadelphia for the presidential debate, and then accompanied him to Sept. 11 memorial events in New York City and Shanksville, Pa., which drew pointed criticism from Democrats and Republicans because she had previously called Sept. 11 “an inside job.”Here’s more about Laura Loomer.Why are politicians from both parties criticizing her?Ms. Loomer has made a number of racist, sexist, homophobic and Islamophobic comments in the past. She has described Islam as a “cancer,” used the hashtag “#proudislamophobe” and once seemed to celebrate the deaths of migrants crossing the Mediterranean. In 2018, after Twitter banned her for frequent anti-Muslim content, she handcuffed herself to the company’s headquarters in New York and wore a yellow Star of David similar to those Nazis forced Jews to wear during the Holocaust (Ms. Loomer is Jewish).After the billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter, her account was reinstated, and she has since built up a following of more than 1.2 million people on the site (which Mr. Musk later renamed X) and has a web show. She often blasts out content praising Mr. Trump and viciously attacking anyone she might perceive as a rival.Two days before she traveled with Mr. Trump to the debate, she wrote in a post on X that if Vice President Kamala Harris, whose mother was Indian American, won the election, the White House would “smell like curry.”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

As the president deliberated with Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the question of whether to let Ukraine use long-range weapons in Russia was a rare point of contention between allied nations.President Biden’s deliberations with Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain about whether to allow Ukraine to attack Russia with long-range Western weapons were fresh evidence that the president remains deeply fearful of setting off a dangerous, wider conflict.But the decision now facing Mr. Biden after Friday’s closed-door meeting at the White House — whether to sign off on the use of long-range missiles made by Britain and France — could be far more consequential than previous concessions by the president that delivered largely defensive weapons to Ukraine during the past two and a half years.In remarks at the start of his meeting with Mr. Starmer, the president underscored his support for helping Ukraine defend itself but did not say whether he was willing to do more to allow for long-range strikes deep into Russia.“We’re going to discuss that now,” the president told reporters.For his part, the prime minister noted that “the next few weeks and months could be crucial — very, very important that we support Ukraine in this vital war of freedom.”European officials said earlier in the week that Mr. Biden appeared ready to approve the use of British and French long-range missiles, a move that Mr. Starmer and officials in France have said they want to provide a united front in the conflict with Russia. But Mr. Biden has hesitated to allow Ukraine to use arms provided by the United States in the same way over fears that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia would see it as a major escalation.On Thursday, Mr. Putin responded to reports that America and its allies were considering such a move by declaring that it would “mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia,” according to a report by the Kremlin.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