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      The Indian Aircraft Pakistan Says It Shot Down

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      Tensions between India and Pakistan have risen sharply in the weeks since a terrorist attack in Kashmir. On Wednesday, India hit Pakistan and appears to have lost aircraft in the strike.Indian aircraft went down after the country launched attacks against Pakistan this week, in what it said was retaliation for a terrorist attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir that killed 26 people and caused tensions between the two nations to boil over.The exact number and variety of lost aircraft is not yet clear.Two or three Indian aircraft went down inside India’s border, according to Indian officials, Western diplomats and local media reports. Pakistan, for its part, claims it shot down five planes and at least one drone: three Rafale fighter jets, one MIG-29 fighter aircraft, one Su-30 fighter jet and one Heron drone.The New York Times was unable to independently verify these claims.John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a nonprofit research group based in Alexandria, Va., said those five aircraft and the drone could have been downed by surface-to-air or air-to-air missiles. “Pakistan has both,” he said.Here is what to know about the aircraft Pakistan’s military says it shot down.RafaleThe Rafale is a twin-engine fighter jet that can take off from an aircraft carrier or a base onshore, according to its French manufacturer, Dassault Aviation.In April, the Indian government signed a deal with France to purchase an additional 26 of the aircraft for the Indian Navy, to be delivered by 2030. According to Dassault Aviation, India had previously ordered 36 Rafales.Photos from the village of Wuyan in India-administered Kashmir, showed debris identified as an external fuel tank for a plane. Trevor Ball, an associate researcher at Armament Research Services, said that the tank was likely from a French-made Mirage or Rafale fighter jet, but he could not confirm whether the fuel tank came from an aircraft that had been hit by enemy fire.MIG-29The Soviet-designed MIG-29 is a twin-engine fighter aircraft developed to counter U.S. fighters like the F-16. The Soviet Air Force began using MIG-29s in the 1980s, and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, many former Soviet republics continued to use the plane. It has also been a popular export; over 30 nations have used or operated it, according to the U.S. Army Training Command.The plane was originally intended for dogfighting enemy aircraft, though some MIG-29s have been outfitted for attacking ground targets.The MIG-29 is often a competitor with the F-16 in international arms sales Mr. Pike said, adding that it was a “competition which it frequently loses.”Su-30The Su-30 is a twin-engine fighter jet developed in the Soviet Union in the 1990s by Russia’s Sukhoi Aviation. It can be used for air-to-air combat, or missions striking targets on the ground, according to a U.S. Army analysis.It’s significantly bigger than the MIG-29, at nearly 72-feet long and with a wingspan of over 48 feet. (The MIG-29 is nearly 57-feet long and has a wingspan of around 37 feet.)Heron DroneHeron drones encompass a family of Israeli-made unmanned aerial vehicles. U.S. government assessments list India as having at least one variant.Shawn Paik More

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      NYT Crossword Answers for May 8, 2025

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      Dan Caprera wants us to mind our own business. Are we going to take that from him?Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTHURSDAY PUZZLE — The following is a public service announcement for those of you who are just starting to solve Thursday puzzles: Today’s crossword is not broken. It’s supposed to be like that.I know that some of the words don’t match their clues, and that some solvers will not expect to see this sort of theme in a crossword. I’m being deliberately vague so as not to spoil things for readers who are still solving, but all will be revealed in the theme discussion section.Before we do that, however, let’s all extend our hands in friendship and camaraderie to Dan Caprera, today’s constructor. He seems to be a bit cranky, which is an unsolicited opinion I’ve formed based solely on the revealer in his puzzle.Seriously, Mr. Caprera, we like your crossword. No need to push us away. Sure, we need to think outside the box for it, but, in the end, we are not a bunch of bums. We have the chops to solve whatever you throw at us. And if some solvers need help, someone will be there to help them. Hence the Wordplay motto: “No solver left behind.”Today’s ThemeCrosswords where letters escape the boundaries of the grid are rare, but they appear approximately once a year, according to Ian Livengood, a puzzle editor. That’s what we are dealing with today and why some of the answers in Mr. Caprera’s puzzle don’t seem to make sense.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

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      National Archives Releases More Robert F. Kennedy Files

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      The new batch of documents included transcripts of police interviews with Sirhan Sirhan, who was convicted of killing Mr. Kennedy.The National Archives released on Wednesday a second tranche of documents related to the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York, though the documents are unlikely to change scholars’ views of his murder.The release of 60,000 additional documents was announced by Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence.“After the initial release of 10,000 documents three weeks ago, we searched F.B.I. and C.I.A. warehouses for any records not previously turned over to The National Archives,” Ms. Gabbard wrote on social media. “More than 60,000 documents were discovered, declassified, and digitized for public viewing. Today’s release is an important step toward maximum transparency, finding the truth, and sharing the truth.”Ms. Gabbard’s office said the new batch of documents included transcripts of police interviews with Sirhan Sirhan, who was convicted of killing Mr. Kennedy. Many of the documents had previously been released.Sirhan Sirhan, right, accused of assassinating Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, with his attorney Russell E. Parsons in Los Angeles, in June 1968.Associated PressThe first tranche of documents included letters from many members of the public advancing various conspiracy theories. Some were heartfelt condolences from world leaders. Others raised questions about the circumstances of the assassination.Some were concerned about the rights of Mr. Sirhan, others the circumstances of his background as a Palestinian. And one person had, with no evidence, a theory that Robert Kennedy actually died at Chappaquiddick.Ms. Gabbard’s office said the new documents included documents with “rumors circulating on foreign soil that Senator Kennedy had been shot one month prior to his true assassination date.”It will take scholars weeks, if not months, to go through the pages, but expectations are low that anything useful will be found.“We have always known who assassinated R.F.K., because he was shot in front of a lot of people,” Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive, an independent research center at George Washington University, said in an interview after the first tranche was released. “So this collection can’t be expected to change that history.”Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services and Senator Kennedy’s son, has pushed for the releases. Mr. Kennedy has pushed alternative theories and has said that he does not believe Mr. Sirhan killed his father.Mr. Sirhan pleaded guilty to killing the senator while he was campaigning for president, though he said he had no memory of shooting him. He said he wanted to kill Mr. Kennedy because of his support for Israel. More

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      Who Is Casey Means, Trump’s Pick for Surgeon General?

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      Dr. Means, President Trump’s new pick for surgeon general, has focused on the prevalence of chronic diseases and called on the government to scale back on childhood vaccines.President Trump said on Wednesday that he would nominate Casey Means, a Stanford-educated doctor turned critic of corporate influence on medicine and health, as surgeon general.Dr. Means, an ally of the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has described becoming disillusioned by establishment medicine. She rose to prominence last year after she and her brother, Calley Means, a White House health adviser and former food industry lobbyist, appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show.What is her field of medicine?Dr. Means, who trained as an otolaryngologist and head and neck surgeon, left surgery behind without finishing her training to practice so-called functional medicine, which focuses on addressing the root causes of disease. She published a diet and self-help book last year titled “Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health.” Before that, she had been best known for founding Levels, a company that offers subscribers wearable glucose monitors to track their health.She has focused on the prevalence of chronic diseases in the United States and has taken aim at obesity, diabetes and infertility, problems she has attributed to the use of chemicals and medications and Americans’ sedentary lifestyles.What has she said about vaccines?Dr. Means has echoed some of Mr. Kennedy’s skepticism of vaccines, calling on the new administration to study their “cumulative effects” and to weaken liability protections offered to vaccine makers as a way of encouraging them to develop new shots.“There is growing evidence that the total burden of the current extreme and growing vaccine schedule is causing health declines in vulnerable children,” she wrote in an October newsletter.Child health experts are adamantly opposed to trimming the list of recommended immunizations, warning that such changes would trigger outbreaks of deadly infectious diseases. And they have noted that the government makes available the safety data used to license vaccines and the safety data generated after they are put into use.What has she said about the food supply?Dr. Means has also pushed for a concerted campaign to pare back corporate-friendly policies related to the production and sale of food and medicine. For example, she has supported serving more nutritious meals in public schools, investigating the use of chemicals in American food, putting warning labels on ultra-processed foods, forbidding pharmaceutical companies from advertising directly to patients on television and reducing the influence of industry among drug and food regulators.“American health is getting destroyed,” she said at a Senate round table event on food and nutrition in September. “If the current trends continue, if the graphs continue in the way that they’re going, at best we’re going to face profound societal instability and decreased American competitiveness, and at worst, we’re going to be looking at a genocidal-level health collapse.” More

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      Courts Must ‘Check the Excesses’ of Congress and the President, Roberts Says

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      The chief justice, in rare public remarks, defended judicial independence before a crowd of lawyers and judges.Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. defended the independence of the judiciary and denounced any attempt to impeach judges over disagreements with their rulings during rare public remarks on Wednesday evening.“Impeachment is not how you register disagreement with a decision,” the chief justice told a crowd of about 600 people, mainly lawyers and judges, gathered in Buffalo, his hometown.The remarks were his first since issuing a similar, though also unusual, written statement in March in response to threats by President Trump and his allies to impeach federal judges who have issued decisions against administration policies.The chief justice did not mention the president directly in his comments on Wednesday, and he did not elaborate further in his answer about threats of impeachment, which he gave in response to a direct question during an event to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York.But the commentary was nevertheless notable given that justices typically avoid weighing in on political matters. His comments came less than a week after another justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, denounced attacks on the judiciary during remarks at a conference for judges held in Puerto Rico.Justice Jackson criticized what she called “relentless attacks” on judges, as well as an environment of harassment that “ultimately risks undermining our Constitution and the rule of law.”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

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      Federal Judge Casts Doubt on Trump Arguments in Venezuelan Migrants Case

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      The judge pressed a lawyer for the Justice Department on the government’s role and responsibilities in the men’s deportation and incarceration in El Salvador.A federal judge on Wednesday night expressed skepticism about the Trump administration’s reasons to avoid seeking the return of scores of Venezuelan immigrants who had been expelled to El Salvador in March, saying he was inclined to order officials to provide more information on the arrangement between the American and Salvadoran governments.The questions raised by the judge, James E. Boasberg, came at a hearing in Federal District Court in Washington, where lawyers for the deported men claimed that because the administration had sent them to a prison in El Salvador under an apparent agreement with the Salvadoran government, it should be responsible for facilitating their return to U.S. soil.Over the past several weeks, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union have secured orders from judges in several courts across the country stopping the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century wartime law, to summarily deport Venezuelans accused of being gang members to a terrorism prison in El Salvador.But at least so far, the lawyers have not been able to protect about 140 Venezuelan migrants who are already in Salvadoran custody after the United States sent them on charter flights under the act on March 15.The hearing in Washington on Wednesday night was held in part to debate two crucial issues: what role the Trump administration played in having the men detained in the Salvadoran prison in the first place, and whether officials could be held accountable for bringing them back to the United States.In seeking to answer the first of those questions, Judge Boasberg pressed a Justice Department lawyer about a recent statement by President Trump concerning Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who was wrongfully expelled to El Salvador in the same set of flights as the Venezuelan migrants.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

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      How Lost Radar and Silent Radios Have Upended Newark Air Travel

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      On a recent afternoon in Philadelphia, an air traffic controller began shouting that he had lost his radar feed for planes flying in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport.Some of his colleagues still had radar but their radios went dead, prompting frantic calls to their counterparts in New York urging them to keep their planes away from Newark’s airspace.Then, for 30 harrowing seconds until the radios came back, there was nothing more to do but hope — as they had no means of telling pilots how to avoid crashing their planes into one another.Shortly after that, one controller discovered a trainee, who had been directing Newark traffic under supervision just moments earlier, shaking in the hallway.That was the chaotic scene on Monday, April 28, according to several people who were present when controllers working the airspace for Newark lost the means to do their jobs.The failure of the system the controllers rely on left several of those on duty that day with extreme anxiety, requiring a mental health respite that has caused low staffing levels for days since. It has also prompted more than 1,000 flights at one of the nation’s busiest airports to be canceled or delayed, leaving some passengers feeling frustrated and abandoned.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

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      Flu Killed 25 Children in New York This Season, the Most in Many Years

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      Amid declining vaccination rates, the 2024-25 influenza season exacted a heavy toll, with 216 pediatric deaths nationwide.Amid dropping vaccination rates, 25 children in New York State died from influenza during the 2024-25 flu season — more than in any recent flu season, state health authorities said on Wednesday.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that more than 47 million people nationwide caught the flu between fall and spring and that more than 600,000 have been hospitalized. The hospitalization rate for flu is the highest it has been in 15 years.A number of factors have probably contributed to influenza’s heavy toll. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, more people have chosen not to be vaccinated against the seasonal flu. And some researchers believe that the mix of strains circulating this year tend to be associated with more intense flu seasons.The C.D.C. has attributed 216 pediatric deaths nationwide to the flu this season, a number that is expected to climb before the end of the season, which is receding. More than 10 percent of those deaths occurred in New York State, which is home to less than 6 percent of the nation’s children.Of the 25 children who died from flu, only one was vaccinated, the state health commissioner, Dr. James V. McDonald, noted. Five were too young to be vaccinated, he said in a statement. The flu vaccine is not approved for children younger than 6 months.The decline in flu vaccinations reflects a rising tide of distrust of the scientific establishment, which has left many people questioning the safety or effectiveness of vaccines. Before the pandemic, the share of Americans who received an annual flu shot had been slowly climbing.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