Elections

Lizelle Gonzalez was arrested after using an abortion pill in 2022, and her charge was since dropped. Now she is seeking $1 million in damages. A woman in Texas who was falsely charged with murder over a self-induced abortion in 2022 has filed a lawsuit against the local prosecutor’s office and its leaders, seeking more than $1 million in damages. Lizelle Gonzalez was arrested in April 2022 in Starr County, near the southeastern border with Mexico, and charged with murder after using the drug misoprostol to self-induce an abortion, 19 weeks into her pregnancy. She spent two nights in jail before the charge was dropped. Self-induced abortions can refer to those performed outside of professional medical care, including the use of abortion pills. Under Texas law at the time, abortions after six weeks were illegal, but pregnant women are exempt from criminal prosecution. (Health care professionals who provide abortion procedures and medication, and others who help someone get an abortion, can still be liable.) Ms. Gonzalez, who was known as Lizelle Herrera and 26 at the time of her arrest, filed a complaint on Thursday against Starr County, along with its district attorney, Gocha Ramirez, and assistant district attorney, Alexandria Lynn Barrera. She argues that the arrest and charge resulted in her suffering reputational harm and distress, and seeks to “vindicate her rights but also to hold accountable the government officials who violated them,” according to her lawsuit.Ms. Gonzalez and her lawyers were not immediately available for comment on Saturday.Mr. Ramirez and Ms. Barrera also did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit. A month ago, the state bar of Texas found that Mr. Ramirez had unlawfully prosecuted Ms. Gonzalez without probable cause and fined him $1,250. His law license will also be held in probated suspension for a year, which means he must comply with specific requirements but can practice law during that time. That period starts April 1. According to the complaint, Ms. Gonzalez took the abortion medication in January 2022 and went to the hospital for an examination. Doctors found a positive heartbeat for the baby and no contractions, so she was discharged the next day. But later that day, she returned to the hospital with complaints of vaginal bleeding, and doctors performed a C-section to deliver a stillborn child.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

Dina Boluarte, who has been seen wearing luxury watches and a $50,000 bracelet, is under investigation for breaking the country’s unlawful enrichment and asset disclosure laws.The police and prosecutors in Peru carried out a surprise raid at the home of President Dina Boluarte and the presidential palace early Saturday as part of an “unlawful enrichment” investigation into news reports that she had been seen wearing Rolex watches since taking office.The raid, which came as Peruvians were celebrating the Holy Week holiday, shocked many people, even in a country that has grown accustomed over the past two decades to politicians investigated for alleged corruption.Before midnight on Good Friday, the police used a battering ram to force their way into Ms. Boluarte’s home in Lima, according to live coverage on Latina Noticias. Prosecutors and the police then searched Ms. Boluarte’s office and residence in the presidential palace.The president had failed to appear this week for a scheduled appointment with prosecutors to show them three Rolex watches she has worn and to explain how she obtained them. She also refused to allow them into her house to execute a search warrant, according to Attorney General Juan Villena, who told lawmakers that her refusal was “a clear indicator of rebellion.”Police officers and prosecutors outside Ms. Boluarte’s house in Lima, Peru, on Saturday.Martin Mejia/Associated PressThe investigation into Ms. Boluarte began on March 18, after the online news program La Encerrona revealed that she had started wearing increasingly expensive watches, including at least one Rolex, since taking office in December 2022. Prosecutors suspect her of violating the country’s laws against unlawful enrichment and failing to declare assets. In Peru, the elected authorities must report to the government any assets worth more than 10,300 soles, or about $2,774, and disclose any gifts received from third parties.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

Nearly eight million customers and 65.4 million former account holders were affected by the data breach, the company said.The telecommunications giant AT&T announced on Saturday that it had reset the passcodes of 7.6 million customers after it determined that compromised customer data was “released on the dark web.”“Our internal teams are working with external cybersecurity experts to analyze the situation,” AT&T said. “To the best of our knowledge, the compromised data appears to be from 2019 or earlier and does not contain personal financial information or call history.”The company said that “information varied by customer and account,” but that it may have included a person’s full name, email address, mailing address, phone number, Social Security number, date of birth, AT&T account number and passcode.In addition to those 7.6 million customers, 65.4 million former account holders were also affected.The company said it would be “reaching out to individuals with compromised sensitive personal information separately and offering complimentary identity theft and credit monitoring services.”AT&T said it reset the passcodes for those affected and directed customers to a site with details about how to reset them. It also said that it was starting a “robust investigation supported by internal and external cybersecurity experts.”A company representative did not address specific questions about how the breach happened or why it went unnoticed for so long.TechCrunch, which first reported on the passcode reset, said it informed AT&T on Monday that “the leaked data contained encrypted passcodes that could be used to access AT&T customer accounts.”TechCrunch said it delayed publishing its article until the company “could begin resetting customer account passcodes.”In its report, TechCrunch said that “this is the first time that AT&T has acknowledged that the leaked data belongs to its customers, some three years after a hacker claimed the theft of 73 million AT&T customer records.”AT&T had previously denied a breach of its systems but how the leak happened was unclear, TechCrunch reported.AT&T said that it did not know whether the leaked data “originated from AT&T or one of its vendors” and that it “does not have evidence of unauthorized access to its systems resulting in theft of the data set.”The episode comes after AT&T customers experienced a widespread outage last month that temporarily cut off connections for users across the United States for several hours. The Feb. 22 outage affected customer in cities including Atlanta, Los Angeles and New York.At its peak, there were around 70,000 reports of disrupted service for the wireless carrier, according to Downdetector.com, which tracks user reports of telecommunication and internet disruptions.A few days later, AT&T offered customers affected by the outage a $5 credit in an effort to “make it right.” More

The former president met with the Mercers and others as he sought to keep pace financially with President Biden.Donald J. Trump, facing a cash crunch that puts him at a severe disadvantage to President Biden, dined on Thursday night with a small group of donors including the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, according to two people with knowledge of the event.Mr. Trump’s dinner companions also included the entrepreneur Omeed Malik, the cosmetics firm founder Trish McEvoy and the real estate management billionaire Richard Kurtz, one of the people said.The Mercers, Ms. McEvoy and Mr. Kurtz did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Mr. Malik declined to comment, and a Trump spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.The Mercers were a critical source of support behind Mr. Trump’s win in the 2016 presidential election. In addition to giving donations, they pushed him to make changes to his political team, including making Kellyanne Conway his campaign manager and Stephen K. Bannon his chief executive. The family was conspicuously quiet during Mr. Trump’s 2020 re-election effort.But both Robert and Rebekah Mercer have lent their names for an invitation to a high-dollar fund-raiser on April 6, along with Mr. Malik. And their appearance with Mr. Trump at the dinner is additional evidence of a rekindled relationship.The dinner came at the end of a day when Mr. Trump flew to New York City from Florida to attend the wake of the New York Police Department officer Jonathan Diller, who was shot and killed during a traffic stop in Queens this week.Mr. Trump’s visit took place at the same time that Mr. Biden was preparing for a fund-raiser with two of his Democratic predecessors, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, that raised a record $25 million at Radio City Music Hall. Mr. Trump’s team mocked the event as one for elites as he was received by Officer Diller’s family. More

Signed into law by Gov. Jay Inslee, the legislation provides wide-ranging protections for adult dancers.Washington State recently enacted a law that includes wide-ranging workplace protections for adult dancers, who have long fought for such measures across the country.The law, known as the Strippers’ Bill of Rights, was signed by Gov. Jay Inslee on March 25. It includes anti-discrimination provisions and mandatory club employee training.Supporters of the law say that it includes incentives for establishments to comply, as it carves a path for them to obtain liquor licenses. The state traditionally has prohibited venues that allow sexual performances to sell alcohol.“It is crucial that we confront the stigma surrounding adult entertainment and recognize the humanity of those involved in the industry,” State Senator Rebecca Saldaña of Seattle, a Democrat who sponsored the legislation, said in a statement.“Strippers are workers,” she said, “and they should be given the same rights and protections as any other labor force.”Madison Zack-Wu, the campaign manager for Strippers Are Workers, a dancer-led organization that supported the bill, said in an interview that “the most important part of this policy is that it was created by dancers, for ourselves in our own working conditions.”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 evidence is strong that Al Gore would have won had it not been for an infamous ballot design in Palm Beach County.Theresa LePore, who designed Palm Beach County’s butterfly ballot, with old ballots three years after the 2000 election. David FriedmanWe’re still in a post-primary lull before the campaign starts to heat up — and before Donald J. Trump goes on trial. Here are a few quick notes to end the week.Joe Lieberman and the butterfly ballotJoe Lieberman, the former Democratic senator, died this week at 82. He was Al Gore’s vice-presidential nominee in 2000, when the Gore-Lieberman ticket came less than 600 Florida votes away from winning the White House.We’ll never know what would have happened if the Supreme Court had allowed the recount to continue. But I don’t think it’s always appreciated that we probably do know that Mr. Gore would have won Florida, and therefore the presidency, if it weren’t for the infamous “butterfly ballot” in Palm Beach County.If you don’t remember — it has been a while — the butterfly ballot was very unusual. Candidates were listed on both sides of the ballot, and voters cast a ballot by punching a corresponding hole in the middle. What made it so unusual was that the ordering of the candidates on the ballot didn’t have the same logic as the corresponding punch hole: George W. Bush and Mr. Gore were the first two candidates listed on the left-hand side, but they corresponded to the first and third hole on the punch. The second punch corresponded with the first candidate on the right-hand side of the ballot: the paleoconservative Pat Buchanan, running as a Reform Party candidate.After the election, many voters from Palm Beach claimed they had inadvertently voted for Mr. Buchanan when they meant to vote for Mr. Gore. This is clear in the data. Mr. Buchanan fared far better in Palm Beach County than he did on the other side of the county line. Indeed, Mr. Buchanan fared far better in Palm Beach County than any politically or demographically comparable area in the country.You can see this pattern quite clearly in this map, courtesy of Matthew C. Isbell, a Democratic data strategist and consultant: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 huge rear gate of the Jordanian air force cargo plane slowly lowers like a stiff iron jaw, revealing a hazy blue sky and, far below, the battered landscape of northern Gaza.Inside the plane’s cavernous hold, the aid being delivered by the crew is lined up in neat rows: chest-high bundles of boxes stacked atop wooden pallets, each one bound by shrink-wrap and heavy straps and marked with images of Jordan’s flag.Now, as the light and the sound rush in, the bundles slide down rollers in the floor and disappear out the door, floating down under billowing parachutes as a silent, and most likely inadequate, offering to the desperate population below.With humanitarian groups and others sounding the alarm over a looming famine in northern Gaza and hunger widespread throughout the territory, airdrops are playing a prominent role in efforts to deliver food, water and urgent supplies to Palestinians.On Thursday, the Jordanian air force allowed a photographer for The New York Times on one of its planes to observe the airdrop of bundles of aid across northern Gaza. The trip, taking off and returning from Jordan’s King Abdullah II air base, east of Amman, took several hours.A member of Jordan’s air force checking aid packages.Pallets of relief supplies, marked with Jordan’s flag, ready to be loaded.A Jordanian soldier heading toward the plane before the air drop.An aid package starting to fall from the plane, with its attached parachute beginning to open.Countries including Jordan, the United States, Britain and France say the drops are helping compensate for a steep fall in the amount of aid entering Gaza by truck since Oct. 7, when Hamas led a deadly attack on Israel, and Israel responded with a monthslong military assault.The United Nations and aid groups have complained that deliveries by truck are being slowed by Israel’s insistence on inspecting all supplies going into Gaza. Most aid trucks have been allowed in through just two border crossings — one from Egypt and one from Israel — in southern Gaza.Israel has maintained that disorganization among aid groups is responsible for slow deliveries of aid to Palestinians and that much of the aid is diverted to Hamas or the black market, though it is not possible to verify those claims.One of the few alternatives is dropping supplies from the sky, a process that takes only minutes in the air but extensive bureaucracy and hours of preparation on the ground.The dozens of pallets pushed out of the planes on Thursday included thousands of meals, the Jordanians said. But airdrops are inefficient and expensive, humanitarian officials say, with even big military cargo planes delivering less than a single convoy of trucks could.And the airdrops can be dangerous: This week, Gazan authorities said 12 people drowned while trying to retrieve assistance that had fallen into the ocean. Part of northern Gaza, as seen from the Jordanian military plane. More

A string of gambling situations involving athletes leaves leagues in a tough spot.Major League Baseball held its season openers this week under the shadow of a gambling scandal. Reports surfaced that the National Basketball Association is investigating a player over irregular bets. And college basketball fans await results from a review into unusual betting on a men’s basketball game.The incidents have highlighted a trade-off that professional sports leagues made when they embraced gambling.Leagues have signed lucrative marketing deals with betting apps like FanDuel and DraftKings and use gambling to amp up fan engagement. But this new source of revenue has also opened the doors to a fundamental danger: that an explosion of sports betting could threaten the assumption of fairness at the core of athletic competitions.“The risk is that the game becomes like professional wrestling — which is rigged. And nobody bets on professional wrestling,” said Fay Vincent, the M.L.B. commissioner from 1989 to 1992. “And if baseball becomes professional entertainment the way wrestling is, it’s dead.”Leagues are unlikely to abandon gambling completely. But is there a way for them to protect their image as they profit from betting?Clubs can no longer blame gambling itself for scandals. When Pete Rose was barred from baseball in 1989 for betting on games, in one of the most famous gambling scandals in sports history, Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti, Vincent’s predecessor, denounced gambling as corrosive. But after a 2018 Supreme Court decision paved the way for states to legalize betting, leagues are now working directly with sports books. The N.B.A. signed an estimated $25 million contract with MGM Resorts in 2018, and M.L.B. has an exclusive multiyear deal with FanDuel.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