Aurelia Butler

Recent studies show that certain feather pigments can help neutralize toxic pollution. It means darker, duller birds could have a survival advantage.Some popular city dwellers appear to be losing their colorful allure, and not just the dirty birds.According to a study published this summer in the journal Landscape and Planning that looked at 547 bird species in China, birds that live in cities are duller and darker on average than their rural counterparts. A similar conclusion emerged from an analysis of 59 studies published in March in Biological Reviews: Urban feathers are not as bright, with yellow, orange and red feathers affected most.Often, city birds are covered in grime. But even if you could give them all a good bird bath, chances are their brightness still wouldn’t match that of their country cousins. That’s because of the way pollution, and heavy metals in particular, can interact with melanin, a pigment that makes feathers black, brown and gray.Studies show that melanin can bind to heavy metals like lead. That means toxic chemicals may be more likely to be stored in plumage in darker and duller birds. And that, in turn, can confer a survival advantage.“The more melanin you accumulate, the better able you are to sequester these harmful compounds in feathers,” said Kevin McGraw, a biologist at Michigan State University who studies the colors of animals to understand the costs, benefits and evolution of visual signals.Urban pollution affects avian colors in other ways, too. Research shows that compared with rural plants, city trees store fewer natural pigments called carotenoids, and pollution is the likely reason. Carotenoids are produced by plants, algae and fungi. They’re what makes red peppers red and carrots orange.When leaves are low on these pigments, the effects go up the food chain: Leaf-munching caterpillars become deficient in carotenoids, and so do caterpillar-munching birds.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

States voting on abortion One measure Two measures Voters in a record 10 states will decide whether to enshrine abortion rights in their state constitutions this fall. In Nebraska, voters face two measures: one favoring abortion rights and another that would ban abortion after the first trimester. Supporters of abortion rights hope to continue their […] More

More Americans are using mail-in ballots, which take longer to count than those cast in person. In several battleground states, a winner may not be apparent on Nov. 5.The hosts of election night parties may want to book a room for more than just one night.For the second straight presidential election, it is becoming increasingly likely that there will be no clear and immediate winner on election night and that early returns could give a false impression of who will ultimately prevail.Large swaths of Americans have changed their voting habits in recent years, relying increasingly on mail-in ballots, which take more time to count than those cast in person on Election Day. States with prolonged vote-counting processes, such as Arizona, have become suddenly competitive. And the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump appears extremely close.If a winner is not declared on election night, it will not necessarily point to failures in the process. More likely, it will be a result of the intense security measures required for counting mail-in ballots.Election officials across the country are trying to telegraph to voters that waiting long hours or even days for a result is not unexpected in a close election. They are eager to counter conspiracy theorists who may seize on the uncertainty as evidence of fraud or malfeasance.“I keep objecting to the term ‘delays,’” said Al Schmidt, the Republican secretary of state in Pennsylvania. The ballots, he said, would be counted “as expeditiously as possible, and counting votes takes time.”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

Thousands of Boeing workers in Washington State and Oregon walked off the job on Friday in the first strike at the plane maker in 16 years.Boeing is facing a strike that threatens to disrupt plane production, after workers overwhelmingly voted to reject a tentative contract their unions had reached with the company.Thousands of workers walked off the job in the Seattle and Portland, Ore., regions on Friday, a move that is likely to stall operations at factories where Boeing manufactures most of its commercial planes. While the deal their unions struck with the company on Sunday included double digit pay raises and improvements to benefits, 95 percent of workers rejected the proposed contract, opting instead to leverage a strike to push for more.Here’s what else to know about the company’s first strike since 2008:How many workers are on strike?Boeing, one of the largest exporters in the United States, employs a total of nearly 150,000 people across the country — almost half of them in Washington State — and more than 170,000 people worldwide. The contract that spurred Friday’s strike covers about a fifth of the company’s employees.A vast majority of the 33,000 workers under the contract are represented by District 751 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, Boeing’s largest union. Most of that union’s members work on commercial airplanes in the Seattle area. Workers in the Portland, Ore., area, who are represented by the union’s smaller District W24, are also on strike.What prompted them to walk off the job?The leaders of the unions representing the workers on strike reached a tentative deal with Boeing on Sunday that would have secured raises of 25 percent over four years, along with improvements to health care and retirement benefits. The company also committed to building its next commercial plane in the Pacific Northwest.But workers’ overwhelming rejection of that tentative contract reflects their willingness to fight for more, in large part to make up for concessions made in past talks, including the loss of pension benefits a decade ago. The unions started the talks by asking for raises of 40 percent.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

Mr. McQueen, the son of Steve McQueen, is most widely recognized for his recurring role as Dutch in the 1980s cult classic franchise “The Karate Kid.”Chad McQueen, the actor best known for the role of “Dutch” in the “Karate Kid” movie franchise and son of the actor Steve McQueen, died on Wednesday at his home in Palm Desert, Calif. He was 63.His family announced his death in a post on social media, paired with a photo of him as a boy with his famous father. The cause was organ failure, his longtime attorney and friend, Arthur Barens, said.Chad McQueen was involved in more than 25 movies and television shows, as an actor, producer and other roles, but he is most widely recognized for his role as Dutch in the 1984 teen classic “The Karate Kid.”As Dutch, Mr. McQueen played a mean, troublemaking bully of the Cobra Kai dojo who ran with Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) and his gang, showing no mercy and jumping up and down in excitement as they delivered a brutal beating to Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) on Halloween night.He reprised the role of Dutch in the sequel, “The Karate Kid Part II,” released in 1986.Mr. McQueen went on to appear in other films including “New York Cop,” a 1993 action film about a Japanese detective living illegally in the United States; and “Red Line,” a 1995 thriller about a car thief who is blackmailed.But Mr. McQueen did not stay in Hollywood for long after that, and he again followed in his father’s footsteps by switching to auto racing.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 violent episode resulted in an emergency landing. The man now faces federal flight interference charges.A California man accused of assaulting crew members and threatening to kill everyone aboard a Frontier Airlines flight was arrested Wednesday on federal charges, prosecutors announced.Charles Angel Salva, 30, of Fremont, Calif., faces federal charges of interference with flight crew members and attendants, prosecutors said on Thursday. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.The disruption happened on Monday evening shortly after Frontier Airlines Flight 3581 had taken off from John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, Calif., bound for San Francisco International Airport and resulted in an emergency landing at Ontario International Airport, about 30 miles northeast of Santa Ana.The plane had not yet reached 10,000 feet when flight attendants noticed the that oxygen masks above seats in Row 18 had deployed, according to a probable cause affidavit filed in the criminal complaint.Flight crew members who went to assess the situation found Mr. Salva with his hand in the overhead compartment.A passenger siting in Row 19 told investigators that Mr. Salva had appeared claustrophobic and had seemed to want to get off the flight before he pulled down the oxygen mask from the overhead compartment and got his hand stuck in the process, the affidavit said. The passenger helped Mr. Salva get his hand unstuck.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

No theatrical wizardry is needed for this compelling drama about a woman’s journey to Australia from war-torn Sri Lanka and the generations that follow.Some shows use an extended running time to challenge the audience and its perceptions. Pulling viewers into a trance state and testing their endurance is the ultimate artistic gambit.Then there are the shows that are long simply because they have a lot to tell.Such is the case with “Counting and Cracking,” which fills its three and a half hours with an absorbing tale of family ties and national strife, from Sri Lanka to Australia, across almost five decades. When the first of two intermissions arrived, I had barely recovered from a head-spinning plot twist. And the production, which is at N.Y.U. Skirball in partnership with the Public Theater, had more in store. It’s that kind of good yarn.Written by S. Shakthidharan, who drew from his own family history and is also credited with associate direction, “Counting and Cracking” starts in 2004 Sydney. The show opens with Radha (Nadie Kammallaweera) briskly instructing her son, the 21-year-old Siddhartha (Shiv Palekar), to disperse his grandmother’s ashes in the Georges River, and then immerse himself in the water, as required by tradition.“In Tamil we don’t say goodbye,” Radha tells Siddhartha. “Only, I will go and come back.”As the show progresses, we gradually realize what these words really mean to her, and to her family and community. In 1983, when she was pregnant and living in her home country of Sri Lanka, Radha was told that her husband, Thirru (Antonythasan Jesuthasan), had been killed in the budding civil war between the minority Tamil and the majority Sinhala. She fled the violence and settled in Australia, where she gave birth to a child who would grow up largely unaware of his heritage.At a steady clip, Shakthidharan and the director Eamon Flack (also credited with associate writing) hopscotch between Sydney and Sri Lanka, from the 1950s — when the South Asian nation was still known as Ceylon — to the 1980s and 2000s and back again. Even the language is in constant movement as the 16 actors juggle English, Sinhala and Tamil, providing instant translation when necessary.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

Boaz Moser makes his New York Times Crossword debut.Jump to: Tricky CluesFRIDAY PUZZLE — It didn’t happen often, but on occasion, I used to sit down to solve a Friday puzzle only to discover that the grid contained a theme. That must be a mistake, I thought, with my brow furrowed. Fridays are always themeless puzzles. If the subsequent reader commentary and emails were any way to gauge the reaction to this supposed impossibility, I wasn’t alone in that assumption.I haven’t seen a themed Friday grid in a while, and while Boaz Moser’s debut for the New York Times Crossword does not actually contain a theme, I thought it did when I started solving. I have to admit, I got a little excited at the prospect of solving something a bit different.I originally thought Mr. Moser’s grid contained a theme was because of 1D and 26D. The two entries have twin clues and synonymous answers. They are both on the perimeter of the puzzle, which has been used as a place to “hide” theme entries, as this 2003 crossword does.Alas, that’s as far as today’s theme-that-was-not-a-theme goes, but no matter. Mr. Moser’s puzzle is packed with fun and unique entries, and I am looking forward to seeing more from him, theme or no theme.Tricky Clues1A. The “jackknives” in [What jackknives can help to carve] are exercises, not actual carving tools. They look like this and target, among other muscle groups, the ABS.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