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Since 1890, there have been fewer than 50 verified mountain lion attacks on humans in California, and of those, only six have been fatal, officials said.In a rare attack against humans, a mountain lion killed a man and injured his brother while the men were in a remote area of Northern California on Saturday, the authorities said.The brothers, 18 and 21, were in Georgetown, Calif., when the mountain lion attacked, the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.At about 1:13 p.m. on Saturday, the younger brother called 911 to report that the two had been attacked in Georgetown, about 50 miles northeast of Sacramento, and that he had been separated from his brother.The caller told the authorities that he had “suffered traumatic injuries to his face” during the attack, according to the statement.Deputies and paramedics arrived and helped the younger brother. Deputies then began searching and found the mountain lion crouched next to the older brother, officials said.“The mountain lion was between the deputies and the subject on the ground,” the sheriff’s office said.Deputies fired shots to scare off the animal so they could help the older brother. “Unfortunately, the male subject was deceased,” the statement said.The victims’ names were not released. The surviving brother has undergone multiple surgeries for his injuries and was expected to make a full recovery, according to Sgt. Kyle Parker of the Sheriff’s Office, who cited a family spokesman.Sgt. Parker said that, at the time of the attack, the brothers were searching for antlers that had been shed.Wardens and trappers from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and a trapper for El Dorado County responded and found the mountain lion, the sheriff’s office said.The mountain lion was euthanized near the scene of the attack, according to the department, which noted that its remains were sent to a forensics laboratory to obtain DNA and assess its general health.Mountain lion attacks on humans are rare, according to the department.Since 1890, there have been fewer than 50 verified mountain lion attacks on humans in California, and of those, only six have been fatal, the department said.The last fatal encounter that a human had with a mountain lion in California was in 2004 in Orange County. In most cases, the victim was alone when the attack occurred, according to the department.The mountain lion is known by more than 40 different common names, including puma, cougar, panther, red tiger, catamount and screamer, according to the state agency.They live in diverse habitats across California, including the temperate redwood forest, foothills and mountains. More

Justice Stephen G. Breyer, the liberal judge who retired from the Supreme Court in 2022, said in an interview aired on Sunday that he would be open to supporting an age limit for the justices.“Human life is tough, and moreover, you get older,” Justice Breyer, 85, said during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “When you’ve been there quite a while, other people also should have a chance to do these jobs. And at some point, you’re just not going to be able to do it.”Justice Breyer suggested that an 18- or 20-year term could dissuade members of the court from “thinking about the next job” just as effectively as a lifetime appointment does now. He retired reluctantly in 2022 after mounting calls from liberals who wanted to ensure that the 6-to-3 conservative majority on the court did not get larger after an untimely death or resignation. President Biden then appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson, once a law clerk for Justice Breyer, to the Supreme Court that same year.An age limit “would have avoided, for me, going through difficult decisions on when you retire and what’s the right time,” Justice Breyer said.He also reiterated his criticism of the conservative Supreme Court majority and its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, referring to his dissent in the 2022 case. Justice Breyer — along with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — said in the dissent that the majority’s opinion that a right to terminate pregnancy was not “deeply rooted” in the history and tradition of the United States would mean “all rights that have no history stretching back to the mid-19th century are insecure.”Justice Breyer said on Sunday that such a reading of the Constitution, which focuses on the text and the original intent of its writers — a legal doctrine often referred to as originalism — “doesn’t work very well” because it prevents judges from doing what they think is right and forces them to “be bound by the text.”In a forthcoming book, Justice Breyer calls originalists on the Supreme Court stunningly naïve in their claim that overturning Roe v. Wade would simply return the question of abortion to the political process. He said on Sunday that he had tried to warn the conservative majority that Roe’s demise would lead to more lawsuits challenging state-level abortion bans.“What’s going to happen when a woman’s life is at stake, and she needs the abortion?” Justice Breyer asked during the interview. “Do you think if a state forbids that, then that won’t come to the court? We thought it probably would. And we thought there will be a lot of issues coming to the court coming out of the decision to overrule Roe v. Wade.”The retired justice’s new book is set to be published on Tuesday, the day the Supreme Court hears a major case on access to pills used to terminate pregnancies. More

The woman whose very existence once seemed to threaten the royal family’s stability has emerged as a stabilizing force during a major health crisis.In the last few weeks, as illness has sidelined two of Britain’s most visible royal figures, Catherine, Princess of Wales, and King Charles III, one member of the family’s frontbench has stepped into the vacuum: Queen Camilla.Last week, she traveled to the Isle of Man to deliver a speech on Charles’s behalf and met with public officials and community groups. She then flew to Northern Ireland, where she visited a bakery and butcher shop, attended a literary event and accepted salutes at a military parade.Camilla, 76, smiled for the photographers, joking on Thursday that a camera-friendly toddler who upstaged her visit to the butcher shop was a “natural.” She betrayed neither the strain of taking care of a cancer-stricken husband, nor that a day later Catherine would announce that she, too, had been diagnosed with cancer.It is the kind of twist of fate that royal watchers savor: Camilla, the woman whose very existence once seemed to threaten the stability of the royal family, has emerged as a stabilizing force during a major royal health crisis. At times recently, it has felt as though she was carrying the entire House of Windsor on her shoulders.“This is a vulnerable time for the royal family, where their human frailties are fully on display,” said Arianne J. Chernock, an associate professor of history at Boston University and an expert on the modern British monarchy. “Camilla’s own background and training can help her in these circumstances.”Crowds awaited Queen Camilla’s arrival in Douglas, Isle of Man, last week, where she filled in for Charles.Chris Jackson/Chris Jackson Collection, via Getty ImagesWe 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

Former President Donald J. Trump, with a deadline fast approaching to secure a roughly half-billion-dollar bond in his civil fraud case in New York or risk seizure of his assets and flagship properties, sent an email on Saturday morning to his campaign’s supporters.The subject line — “Keep your filthy hands off Trump Tower” — was repeated at the start of the email in bold, italics and all caps, even as the message was clearly intended not for his backers but for New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, who brought the case.Mr. Trump told his supporters that Ms. James “wants to SEIZE my properties in New York,” adding, “THIS INCLUDES THE ICONIC TRUMP TOWER!” He then exhorted them to donate money to his presidential campaign as a show of strength against the web of legal troubles he faces, which he has broadly cast as a political witch hunt.With the deadline for Mr. Trump to post an appeals bond on Monday, the Trump campaign has sent at least 10 similar fund-raising solicitations since Wednesday accusing Ms. James and Democrats of trying to seize Mr. Trump’s marquee property, Trump Tower.Last month, a New York judge imposed a $454 million penalty on Mr. Trump in the civil fraud case after concluding that the former president had fraudulently inflated the value of his company’s properties and his net worth to obtain favorable loans and other benefits from banks.Mr. Trump has appealed the judgment, and was given until Monday to either write a check to the state court system for the full amount or obtain an appeal bond. But his lawyers said last week that he had been unable to secure the bond, raising the prospect that Ms. James could move to collect the money and try to seize some of the properties involved in the case.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 Islamic State has long threatened to strike Russia for helping the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, stay in control.In the past few months, deep in the forbidding deserts of central Syria, Russian forces have quietly joined the Syrian military in intensifying attacks against Islamic State strongholds, including bombing what local news reports called the dens and caves where the extremist fighters hide.While the world was focused on the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, this type of skirmishing has been simmering for years in Syria, and the Islamic State has long threatened to strike Russia directly for shoring up the regime of its sworn enemy, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.That moment appeared to have come on Friday night with the bloody assault on a Moscow concert hall that left more than 130 people dead. “The fiercest in years,” said a statement of responsibility issued on Saturday by a branch of the Islamic State via its news agency, referring to the long history of brutal terrorist attacks pitting jihadist forces against Moscow.“They have framed this attack as coming in the context of the normal, ongoing war between ISIS and the anti-Islamic countries,” said Hanna Notte, a Berlin-based expert on Russian foreign and security policy at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. “This seems to be within the overarching theme of Russia in Afghanistan, Russia in Chechnya, Russia in Syria.”President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, right, meeting with the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, in Moscow last year.Vladimir Gerdo/Sputnik, via EPA-EFE, via ShutterstockIn his brief remarks on Saturday, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia did not mention the claim from the Islamic State, but he did threaten to punish those responsible. “All perpetrators, organizers and commissioners of this crime will receive a just and inevitable punishment,” Mr. Putin said.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

A Louisiana priest was convicted in the sexual abuse of the ex-deacon’s son. What followed was a lawsuit and now the Catholic Church’s highest censure.A Catholic priest who sexually assaulted an altar boy in Louisiana is in prison, and a diocese has paid a settlement to the victim’s family. Now the diocese’s bishop has punished the victim’s father, a former deacon, with the Church’s highest censure: excommunication.It was the latest turn in a yearslong battle pitting the former deacon, Scott Peyton, and his family against the Diocese of Lafayette.The Peytons and the diocese have found themselves on opposing sides of a state law that gave childhood sexual abuse victims more time to file lawsuits.The law, which was passed in the State Legislature in 2021 but struck down on Friday by the state’s highest court, did not apply exclusively to victims of clergy abuse. However, the law prompted new civil suits against Louisiana churches and clergy members who worked for them.The battle has its roots in 2018, when Mr. Peyton’s son Oliver accused the parish priest at St. Peter Catholic Church in Morrow of sexually assaulting him three years earlier, when he was 16. Scott Peyton served the same priest, Father Michael Guidry, as a deacon.While the St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office investigated the allegations, Father Guidry was suspended from his church duties and later confessed to the assault, according to court records.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 from our inbox:Elect the U.S. Attorney GeneralFriendship MemoriesA Leadership GapInsurance companies have weaponized a seemingly benign process to protect their profits, and it’s putting patients at risk.To the Editor:Re “‘What’s My Life Worth?’ The Big Business of Denying Medical Care,” by Alexander Stockton (Opinion video, March 14), about prior authorization:Mr. Stockton’s video captures a current snapshot of an important truth about medical insurance in our country and in doing so does a service to all citizens by making them aware of this threat to themselves and their families.The immediate truth is that medical insurance companies are inadequately regulated, monitored and punished for their greed. In their current iteration they are bastions of greed, power and money. They need to be reined in.But there are other truths as well. Some physicians, just like some pharmaceutical companies, are unable to contain their greed and allow avarice to cloud their judgment, compromise their ethics and in some cases cross the line to Medicare fraud or other illegal activity.Medical care in our country is very big business involving billions of dollars. Without proper controls, regulation and monitoring, malfeasance follows. The challenge in such a complex and multifaceted context is how to implement such controls and monitoring without making things worse.Ross A. AbramsJerusalemThe writer, a retired radiation oncologist, is professor emeritus at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.To the Editor:The Times’s video exploits tragic outcomes and does not mention basic important facts about the limited yet key role of prior authorization in ensuring that patients receive evidence-based, affordable care.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 a dozen patients have died as a result of the prolonged Israeli military assault against the Al-Shifa hospital complex, the Gazan authorities say.Seven days after Israel’s military began a raid on the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, a picture of the sustained assault on the complex and its surrounding neighborhood emerges in fragments.Residents nearby described a relentless daily soundtrack of gunshots, airstrikes and explosions. A surgeon spoke of doctors and patients corralled in the emergency ward while Israeli forces took control of the complex outside. A Palestinian teenager who spent four days sheltering in the hospital described the bodies she saw piled up outside the entrance.“They had put the bodies on the side and thrown blankets over them,” said Alaa Abu Al-Kaaf, 18, who said she and her family were at Al-Shifa for days before leaving on Thursday. It was not immediately clear when or how the bodies were brought there.Interviews with other witnesses in the hospital, residents in or near the facility and the Gazan authorities in recent days, as well as with others who have left the complex over the past week, described a situation of fear and deprivation, interrogations and detentions of Palestinian men by Israeli forces, and a persistent lack of food and water.The assault on Al-Shifa, one of Israel’s longest hospital raids of the war in Gaza, began on Monday with tanks, bulldozers and airstrikes. The military said it was aimed at senior officials of Hamas, the armed group that led an attack into southern Israel on Oct. 7. Israel began a war on Gaza in response to that assault, with intense aerial bombardments and a ground offensive.A woman in the Gaza Strip on Thursday after fleeing the Al-Shifa medical complex.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWe 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