Elections

Prosecutors have said Brian Benjamin, the former lieutenant governor of New York, planned to funnel $50,000 in state money to a developer in exchange for campaign donations.A federal appeals court on Friday revived corruption charges against former Lt. Gov. Brian A. Benjamin of New York, saying prosecutors had sufficiently demonstrated a plan to funnel $50,000 in state money to a now-deceased developer in exchange for campaign contributions.The appeals court’s decision reversed a ruling in December 2022 by Judge J. Paul Oetken of Federal District Court in Manhattan that threw out the bribery charges. The decision sent the case back to Judge Oetken for further proceedings, although Mr. Benjamin may appeal.The prosecution, which began nearly two years ago, is now proceeding under further shadow of uncertainty. The developer, Gerald Migdol, who was likely to be prosecutors’ primary witness, died in February. The appellate ruling also comes in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2023 that narrowed the kinds of corruption cases that federal prosecutors may bring.But on Friday, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said that in Mr. Benjamin’s case, the indictment “sufficiently alleged an explicit quid pro quo.”A lawyer for Mr. Benjamin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The charges against Mr. Benjamin grew out of his actions in 2019, while he was a Democratic state senator representing Harlem.Federal prosecutors charged that Mr. Benjamin used his office to obtain a $50,000 state grant for a nonprofit run by Mr. Migdol, a real estate developer and homeless shelter operator, in exchange for Mr. Migdol arranging thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions for Mr. Benjamin.Mr. Migdol, who eventually pleaded guilty to related charges, cooperated with the government in its case against Mr. Benjamin before his death. Mr. Benjamin was also charged with falsifying campaign donation forms in connection with the scheme and providing false information during a background check in August 2021, after he was chosen by Gov. Kathy Hochul to be the state’s lieutenant governor. Mr. Benjamin still faces trial on those two counts, which Judge Oetken allowed to stand.This is a developing story and will be updated. More

For about a decade, people in the New York art and fashion scene have relied on Eric Wrenn, an unassuming designer known for his minimalist touch, to help shape the images of their brands.Mr. Wrenn, 38, has worked on ad campaigns, logos, books, websites, stationery, business cards and invitations to runway shows. Through it all he has kept a low profile, but his client list reads like a who’s who of downtown bluechips.“Eric feels like an industry secret,” said Emily Bode Aujla, the designer and founder of the brand Bode.“He has an art-world sensibility, and talking with him about a project can feel more like a therapy session,” she continued. “I lean on Eric to help me conceptualize Bode’s entire brand identity. When I hear a brand is working with him, it’s like: ‘Oh, they know.’”Images from Mr. Wrenn’s recent campaign for the fashion brand Eckhaus Latta.Michael HauptmanMr. Wrenn’s chicly simple logo for Bode.BodeWe 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

Israeli soldiers “fired precisely” at Gazans who approached them during a chaotic scene near an aid convoy in northern Gaza last week that led to the deaths of dozens of Palestinians, but they did not fire on the convoy itself, the Israeli military said on Friday after an initial internal review.The account differs sharply from those of witnesses and Palestinian officials who described extensive shooting after thousands of desperate Gazans massed around an Israeli-organized aid convoy. The deaths prompted global outrage and underscored the widespread hunger and hopelessness in northern Gaza, where five months of war and little aid have driven many to the brink.The initial review largely matched Israel’s early account of the disaster, reiterating its claim that many civilians were harmed or killed in a stampede as they crowded around the aid trucks. It said that Israeli forces had opened fire toward dozens of Gazans who had approached them.Gazan officials did not immediately respond to the Israeli review.The Israeli military said that its review found that the soldiers had “fired precisely” at people who were approaching them in what it said was an attempt to keep “suspects” at a distance. “As they continued to approach, the troops fired to remove the threat,” it said in a statement summarizing the review’s findings.Hours after the disaster, doctors in Gaza described receiving scores of casualties at hospitals in the area, many of them killed or wounded by gunfire.A fact-finding committee appointed by the Israeli military chief of staff will continue to investigate the episode, the military said. Some human rights groups say that the Israeli military lacks independent accountability mechanisms and rarely penalizes soldiers for harming Palestinians in contested circumstances. More

In the last month, the planet has figured in new releases by SZA, Kacey Musgraves and Ariana Grande. But for the astrologically inclined, what does a “Saturn return” signify?In two months, Alejandra Herrera will hit a milestone dreaded by many in their late 20s: her 30th birthday. While she has mixed feelings about “adulting,” she at least feels grounded about the whole ordeal — she is, after all, an earth sign.“I’ve been feeling like this whole new rebirth lately,” Ms. Herrera, a Taurus from East Los Angeles, said. “As an ex-people pleaser, I just feel like my 30s are going be, like, a new beginning, where I’ll finally focus on myself.”The last few years were turbulent for Ms. Herrera, marked by a mix of depression and exhaustion that she says arose from her job as an assistant manager at a vegan Mexican restaurant, which she recently quit.“I feel like I have grown so much,” she said, “and I do feel like I’m in that Saturn return because I turned it all around.”Ms. Herrera isn’t alone in looking to the heavens for answers: For a celestial body 887 million miles from the sun, Saturn sure is hot right now. Just last month, the planet supplied the title of SZA’s latest single and was name-checked in the opening lyric (“My Saturn has returned”) of a newly released Kacey Musgraves song. And on Friday, Ariana Grande released an album featuring a track called “Saturn Returns Interlude.”So what is one’s Saturn return? Depending on your openness to celestial fiddle-faddle, it’s a highly personal astrological phenomenon that matters either a whole lot or very, very little. According to the popular astrology app Co-Star, a person’s Saturn return “occurs when the planet Saturn comes back to the same position in the sky that it was at the time of your birth.”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

Terese Svoboda considers what’s worth protecting in a new novel and a story collection.THE LONG SWIM, by Terese SvobodaROXY AND COCO, by Terese SvobodaEach story in “The Long Swim,” the latest collection from the interdisciplinary writer Terese Svoboda, begins with a tangled paragraph of striking sentences. Characters cross paths in unpredictably baroque relationships. Narrators find themselves on the edges of the action — the wife of “a beloved-enough cousin,” “the only woman” on the expedition — paddling their way to the center of the plot. Call it amped-up in medias res, and take a moment to find your bearings. You have been gleefully tossed into the deep end.The book’s 44 stories cover a lot of ground: New Zealand, Ottawa, Oxford, the Haight. A sinking cemetery built on a pond, the flight of a hot-air balloon, a town where a loose circus lion is reportedly on the prowl. There are hints of another world just below this one, giving the collection a destabilizing effect.A father’s affair with his daughter’s roommate roils beneath a friendship. On the other side of a closed door, a stepchild is either awake or lost to a drug overdose. A story of a honeymoon seems to be narrated by the couple’s fetus — “just a cell or two or three inside her womb” — until the narrator comes into focus as their grown child, imagining the parents’ relationship from memories heard secondhand. In another piece, an actor goes “hard,” completely catatonic and unmoving, despite his wife’s best efforts to revive him. When he returns from his trance, he claims he was held captive, trapped in a place where “the reception was fuzzy.”There is the sense that one could reach through each of these vignettes and overturn reality; characters struggle with the “too-close rhyme” of worlds hopelessly beyond reach. In the title story, on the beach at night with her family, the narrator sticks a flashlight in her mouth: “It lights me, my mouth so wide and red I’m scary, I could be a beating heart. Love, love, love.” As brightly as it shines, the light in this story and others turns off quickly. Most of the plots resolve in just a few pages, leaving the suggestion of other, longer swims rippling at their margins.In “Rain People,” we meet high school students who serve as extras in Francis Ford Coppola’s film “The Rain People.” After Coppola gets a shot of a teenager in a phone booth, 13 other teens climb in. “It was the era of piling: Volkswagen bugs with dozens of kids stuffed inside,” one of the pilers tells us. The booth topples, the glass breaks, and this image illustrates what’s wonderful about the collection. Svoboda’s prose is similarly stuffed to the brim — with invention, surprise and the sweaty mystery of whom we get tangled up with, and why.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 trial of the “Rust” armorer offered a preview of the case against Mr. Baldwin, who is set to stand trial on an involuntary manslaughter charge in July.The trial of the armorer on the film “Rust,” who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter this week for putting live ammunition into a gun that went off on the set and killed the cinematographer, offered a preview of the criminal case prosecutors are building against Alec Baldwin, who was handling the gun when it fired.A grand jury indicted Mr. Baldwin in January on a charge of involuntary manslaughter, which carries up to 18 months in prison. He pleaded not guilty; his trial is set for July.Mr. Baldwin was practicing drawing an old-fashioned revolver when the gun fired on Oct. 21, 2021, killing the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and wounding its director. He has denied responsibility from the beginning, telling investigators that he had been told the gun did not contain live ammunition, and noting that live ammunition was supposed to be banned on the set. He also denied pulling the trigger, saying that the gun went off after he pulled its hammer back and released it; a forensic analysis commissioned by prosecutors found that he must have pulled the trigger for it to go off.Prosecutors have argued that Mr. Baldwin failed to observe firearms safety measures.“Alec Baldwin’s conduct and his lack of gun safety inside that church on that day is something that he’s going to have to answer for,” Kari T. Morrissey, the lead prosecutor in the case, said during the closing arguments in the trial of the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. “That’ll be with another jury on another day.”Some of the evidence and testimony presented at the trial of Ms. Gutierrez-Reed could help Mr. Baldwin’s case; other things that emerged in court could undermine it. Here’s a look at evidence that could play a role at his trial.Jurors at Hannah Gutierrez-Reed’s trial watched video of Mr. Baldwin shooting blanks from a revolver on the set of “Rust.”Gabriela Campos/Agence France-Presse, 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

An agreement by more than 90 said, however, that artificial intelligence’s benefit to the field of biology would exceed any potential harm.Dario Amodei, chief executive of the high-profile A.I. start-up Anthropic, told Congress last year that new A.I. technology could soon help unskilled but malevolent people create large-scale biological attacks, such as the release of viruses or toxic substances that cause widespread disease and death.Senators from both parties were alarmed, while A.I. researchers in industry and academia debated how serious the threat might be.Now, over 90 biologists and other scientists who specialize in A.I. technologies used to design new proteins — the microscopic mechanisms that drive all creations in biology — have signed an agreement that seeks to ensure that their A.I.-aided research will move forward without exposing the world to serious harm.The biologists, who include the Nobel laureate Frances Arnold and represent labs in the United States and other countries, also argued that the latest technologies would have far more benefits than negatives, including new vaccines and medicines.“As scientists engaged in this work, we believe the benefits of current A.I. technologies for protein design far outweigh the potential for harm, and we would like to ensure our research remains beneficial for all going forward,” the agreement reads.The agreement does not seek to suppress the development or distribution of A.I. technologies. Instead, the biologists aim to regulate the use of equipment needed to manufacture new genetic material.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

It has become harder for some borrowers to get affordable car loans as banks and dealerships face a rising number of delinquencies.New cars are more available this spring, and manufacturers have even begun offering deals to entice buyers.But at the same time, lenders have been tightening the terms of car loans as they deal with a rising number of delinquencies. That has made it harder for some people to get affordable loans.Access to auto loans for both new and used cars was generally worse in January than in December and down year over year, according to Dealertrack, a Cox Automotive service that tracks credit availability based on factors like loan approvals, terms and down payments. The impact was seen at banks, credit unions and dealerships.“We are seeing credit access tighten in all channels,” said Sean Tucker, a senior editor at Kelley Blue Book, Cox’s car research and sales website.Subprime borrowers in particular — consumers with the lowest credit scores — may face challenges finding financing, Mr. Tucker said. The share of subprime new-car loans has fallen to about 6 percent, roughly half what it was before the pandemic.Borrowers with strong credit are especially attractive to lenders. The average credit score for new-car shoppers taking out a loan or lease rose to 743 at the end of 2023, up from 739 a year earlier, according to fourth-quarter data from Experian Automotive, which tracks car financing. For used cars, the average score was 684, up from 681. (Experian’s report uses VantageScore 3.0 scores, ranging from 300 to 850; scores of 661 and above generally are eligible for favorable terms.)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