Aurelia Butler

Michael Lacey, 76, co-founded the website that became known for its ads for prostitution. He was convicted on a money laundering charge in a case that included accusations of sex trafficking.A founder of the shuttered classified advertising website Backpage was sentenced on Wednesday to five years in federal prison in connection with a sweeping case that led to the closing of the website and accusations against its executives that they promoted sex trafficking, prosecutors said.Michael Lacey, 76, of Arizona, was convicted on a single count of international concealment money laundering in November after being charged in a 100-count indictment in 2018 with several other defendants who, prosecutors said, conspired to promote prostitution ads and launder earnings of more than $500 million made from the scheme between 2010 and 2018. The case was tried in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona.In addition to the five-year prison sentence, Mr. Lacey was ordered Wednesday to pay a $3 million fine, prosecutors said.The jury that convicted Mr. Lacey last year was deadlocked on 84 other charges against him, including several charges that he helped advertise prostitution on Backpage. The deadlock led U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa to declare a mistrial on those counts. It was the second mistrial in the case. Mr. Lacey would later be acquitted of several of the counts, but could still face 30 of them, according to The Associated Press.Two other executives, Scott Spear and John “Jed” Brunst, were convicted alongside Mr. Lacey on both money laundering and prostitution facilitation counts.They were acquitted on some of those charges in April, but each received 10-year sentences Wednesday, according to a spokesman for the Justice Department, Joshua Stueve.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 risk of life-threatening landslides and floods was rapidly increasing in parts of Kyushu Island as the storm lashed it with relentless rain, the authorities warned.The storm unleashed torrential rain, hurricane-force winds and the threat of landslides.Kyodo, via Reuters More

The country’s Supreme Court gave the service 24 hours to name a legal representative in Brazil or face suspension.Brazil’s Supreme Court on Wednesday gave Elon Musk 24 hours to name a legal representative for X in Brazil or face a ban of his social network across the nation of 200 million.Mr. Musk closed X’s office in Brazil last week in protest of orders from a Brazilian Supreme Court justice to suspend certain accounts. If X refuses to comply, it could lose access to one of its largest markets outside the United States — a blow as the company struggles to regain revenue after Mr. Musk battled with advertisers and told them not to spend on the platform.The court posted its order on X on Wednesday night, suggesting that Mr. Musk had until about 8 p.m. local time Thursday to respond.The moment is one of the biggest tests yet for Mr. Musk’s efforts to mold X to his personal ideology, and how he responds will shed light on how far he is willing to take his stated commitment to protecting his social network from what he calls censorship.X and Mr. Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the possible ban.Mr. Musk has been enmeshed in a monthslong feud with Alexandre de Moraes, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice whom he has accused of censoring conservative voices online. Justice Moraes has ordered the suspension of more than 100 X accounts in what he says is a battle against misinformation, hate speech and attacks on democracy.Most of the accounts that Justice Moraes has targeted belong to right-wing supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former president. Some of them questioned Mr. Bolsonaro’s 2022 election loss and sympathized with protesters who raided Brazil’s halls of power, hoping to invoke a military takeover.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 popular destination has put strict water restrictions into effect before one of summer’s busiest weekends.Citing recent breaks in its waterline, Grand Canyon National Park in northern Arizona announced Wednesday that it would temporarily halt overnight hotel stays on the South Rim of the park starting Thursday afternoon, just before the busy Labor Day weekend.The park also announced strict water restrictions on the South Rim after four recent significant breaks in the 12-and-a-half-mile-long Transcanyon Waterline, which supplies water from the canyon for use in the park.The park has been dealing with water supply problems since July 8, according to the Park Service, saying that “currently, no water is being pumped to either the South or North Rim.”It was not immediately clear how long the closure would last. Joelle Baird, the park’s spokeswoman, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.“The goal is to restore full operational status for overnight guests on the South Rim as quickly as possible,” the Parks Service said in the statement.But Xanterra, which operates hotels inside the park, said on its website that no overnight guests would be allowed to stay inside the park from Aug. 29 through Sept. 4.The closure, which comes at the height of the park’s busy summer season, affects overnight accommodations, such as hotel and camp sites inside the park. Hotels outside of the park, in the town of Tusayan, will not be affected.The closure affects the four hotels in the park that are owned by Xanterra Travel Collection: El Tovar, Bright Angel Lodge, Maswik Lodge, and Phantom Ranch. It also affects Yavapai Lodge, a hotel about half a mile from the South Rim, and Trailer Village, an RV park.The El Tovar Hotel, on the South Rim of Grand Canyon National Park, is one of the hotels that will be closed to overnight guests because of water restrictions in the park.George Rose/Getty ImagesThere are just over 900 lodging units on the South Rim, according to the Park Service.Visitors will be allowed only to go “dry camping,” the Park Service said, adding that there would be no spigot access at campgrounds. Faucets in bathrooms will stay in use, the Park Service said.Campfires, including warming fires and charcoal barbecues, will not be allowed.On the North Rim — the lesser visited part of the Canyon — a lodge and camp grounds will remain open. Also known as the “other side” of the Grand Canyon, the North Rim attracts about one tenth of all park visitors, according to the National Park Service. About six million people a year visit the park.It is not the first time the Transcanyon Waterline has experienced problems. The waterline, built in the 1960s, has outlived its expected life span, according to the Park Service, and requires a lot of expensive repairs. Since 2010, there have been more than 85 breaks that have disrupted water delivery to the park.The park will continue to be open during the day, and food and beverage services will be up and running. The post office will remain open during the day. More

The Supreme Court refused to allow a key part of President Biden’s student debt plan to move forward. Here’s what’s left of it, and who could still benefit.President Biden’s latest effort to wipe out student loan debt for millions of Americans is in jeopardy.The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to allow a key component of the policy, known as the SAVE plan, to move forward after an emergency application by the Biden administration.Until Republican-led states sued to block the plan over the summer, SAVE had been the main way for borrowers to apply for loan forgiveness. The program allowed people to make payments based on income and family size; some borrowers ended up having their remaining debt canceled altogether.Other elements of Mr. Biden’s loan forgiveness plan remain in effect for now. And over the course of Mr. Biden’s presidency, his administration has canceled about $167 billion in loans for 4.75 million people, or roughly one in 10 federal loan holders.But Wednesday’s decision leaves millions of Americans in limbo.Here is a look at what the ruling means for borrowers and what happens next:Who was eligible for SAVE?Most people with federal undergraduate or graduate loans could apply for forgiveness under SAVE, which stands for Saving on a Valuable Education.But the amount of relief it provided varied depending on factors such as income and family size. More than eight million people enrolled in the program during the roughly 10 months that it was available, and about 400,000 of them got some amount of debt canceled.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 family of a Green Beret who died by suicide after serving eight combat tours and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery expressed concern on Wednesday that Donald J. Trump’s campaign had filmed his gravesite without permission as Mr. Trump stood in an area where campaign photography isn’t allowed.Relatives of Master Sgt. Andrew Marckesano issued their statement two days after Mr. Trump’s visit, which also included a confrontation between members of the Trump campaign and an Arlington employee. The former president’s campaign took video in a heavily restricted section of the cemetery known as Section 60, which is largely reserved for the fallen veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.A woman who works at the cemetery filed an incident report with the military authorities over the altercation. But the official, who has not been identified, later declined to press charges. Military officials said she feared Mr. Trump’s supporters pursuing retaliation.Sergeant Marckesano died on July 7, 2020, after moving to Washington to begin a job at the Pentagon. He had three children, and friends said he had chronic post-traumatic stress disorder from his time in combat. He earned Silver and Bronze Stars during his service. His gravesite is adjacent to that of Staff Sergeant Darin Taylor Hoover, a Marine who was killed in the 2021 bombing at Abbey Gate outside the Kabul airport in Afghanistan.The Hoover family granted permission to the Trump team to film and take photographs at the gravesite; the Marckesano family did not, and filming and photographing at the gravesite for political purposes is a violation of federal law, according to cemetery officials. Yet Sergeant Marckesano’s grave was shown in photos from the visit that were published online. A video was posted to Mr. Trump’s TikTok account featuring footage from the Section 60 visit and the gravestones from behind, with narration criticizing the handling of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.In a statement from Sergeant Marckesano’s relatives after being contacted by The New York Times, his sister, Michele, said, “We fully support Staff Sergeant Darin Hoover’s family and the other families in their quest for answers and accountability regarding the Afghanistan withdrawal and the tragedy at Abbey Gate.”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

More than 260 similar footprints found in Brazil and Cameroon help us understand a region that broke apart millions of years ago.They may be an ocean apart, but dinosaur footprints found in South America and Africa are so similar that their discovery suggests dinosaurs may have roamed a narrow corridor that connected the two continents before they split.Researchers found more than 260 footprints more than 3,700 miles apart in Brazil and Cameroon that were preserved in mud and silt where ancient rivers and lakes once stood, according to a study published Monday by the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. The tracks were made 120 million years ago when Africa and South America were still connected as part of a supercontinent called Gondwana, the researchers found.According to the study, the Borborema Plateau in northeastern Brazil and the Koum Basin in northern Cameroon both contain similar geological structures that preserved dinosaur prints.The footprints discovered in those areas were similar in age, shape and geological context, said Dr. Louis L. Jacobs, a paleontologist at Southern Methodist University in Texas and the study’s lead author.Researchers discovered theropod footprints in the Sousa Basin of northeastern Brazil.Ismar de Souza CarvalhoIt is not surprising to make similar discoveries in regions that were once connected, Dr. Jacobs said, but the dinosaur tracks help us understand the geologic history of a region that broke apart millions of years ago. 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

‘She didn’t break eye contact. It was intense. You feel on trial.’Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, will sit down with Dana Bash of CNN tomorrow at 9 p.m. Eastern for the first major television interview of their presidential campaign.It’s a high-stakes moment for their nascent candidacy, a chance to define their campaign, defend their ideas and test their political dexterity in the run-up to Harris’s debate against former President Donald Trump on Sept. 10.It’s also an opportunity, following a month of rallies and campaign speeches, for the pair to tell a deeper story about themselves and their vision.But getting them to do that might not be easy.My colleague Astead Herndon, friend of the newsletter and host of the podcast “The Run-Up,” interviewed Harris as part of his reporting for a profile he wrote of Harris last year.The interview was contentious, but revealing, too, and I think it’s worth revisiting now. I called Astead to ask him what it taught him, and what he’s looking for from Harris’s interview tomorrow. Our conversation was edited and condensed.JB: Astead, thank you for joining me! You’ve held sit-down interviews with Harris twice, once in 2019 and once in 2023. How were those two interviews different?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