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      German Court Convicts Five Over Plot to Kidnap Health Official and Spread Chaos

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      The defendants, part of a group known as “United Patriots,” aimed to reinstate a 19th-century Constitution by giving power to an all-powerful Kaiser.Five people have been sentenced to prison over what the authorities in Germany described as a plot to kidnap the country’s health minister on live television in 2022 in an attempt to destabilize the German state.After a nearly two-year trial, a court found on Thursday that the five, under a group billed as the “United Patriots,” had planned to create a widespread weekslong power outage and then use the chaos to reinstate a 19th-century Constitution ceding power to an all-powerful Kaiser.They were convicted of founding or joining a terrorist group, of treason and in some cases of owning illegal guns, rifles and explosives.Jörn Müller, a spokesman for the court, in Koblenz in western Germany, said the trial had “shown that a democratic constitutional state is capable of dealing with its alleged opponents on the basis of law and order in a fair and independent trial.”The court sentenced a 46-year-old man whom it had determined to be the group’s central figure to eight years in prison. A 77-year-old woman who holds a Ph.D. in theology and frequently interrupted the court hearings with antisemitic and conspiracy-theory-laced diatribes was handed a sentence of seven years and nine months. Three other men, all in their 50s, received sentences ranging from six and a half years to two years and 10 months.In accordance with German privacy laws, the court identified the defendants only by their initials.The five were part of the Reichsbürger scene, a loosely affiliated antisemitic far-right grouping that does not accept the legitimacy of the modern German state. Their planned overthrow was not directly related to a far more complex, and far more dangerous, plot surrounding a disgruntled prince that is currently being tried in three separate courts in Germany.After meeting and radicalizing on a Telegram chat group during the pandemic, members of the plot tried to buy and hoard weapons and other tools for their plans, according to the case brought by the prosecutors. Police searches after their arrest in 2022 yielded 52 packets of low-grade explosives, with which the authorities said the group hoped to use to disable large parts of the power grid.Members of the group were arrested while trying to buy AK-47 assault rifles, mines and bulletproof vests. The seller was an undercover police officer and the exchange was a setup.The five convicted on Thursday had focused their ire on Germany’s health minister, Karl Lauterbach, a medical doctor and former professor who has taught at the Harvard School of Public Health. During the pandemic, he was an outspoken proponent of vaccination rules, often appearing on television panel shows to explain the medical science behind the spread of the coronavirus.On Thursday, he thanked the German police for keeping him safe. “The state has shown that it can defend itself against violent conspiracy theorists,” he said on social media. More

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      Climate Change Made South Sudan Heat Wave More Likely, Study Finds

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      Years of war and food insecurity in the region made the extreme heat especially dangerous.After a blistering February heat wave in South Sudan’s capital city caused dozens of students to collapse from heat stroke, officials closed schools for two weeks. It was the second time in less than a year that the country’s schools closed to protect young people from the deadly effects of extreme heat.Climate change, largely caused by the burning of fossil fuels in rich nations, made at least one week of that heat wave 10 times as likely, and 2 degrees Celsius hotter, according to a new study by World Weather Attribution. Temperatures in some parts of the region soared above 42 degrees Celsius, or 107 degrees Fahrenheit, in the last week of February.The analysis used weather data, observations and climate models to get the results, which have not been peer reviewed but are based on standardized methods.South Sudan, in the tropical band of East Africa, was torn apart by a civil war that led to independence from Sudan in 2011. It’s also one of the countries least responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions that are heating up the globe. “The continent has contributed a tiny fraction of global emissions, but is bearing the brunt of climate change,” said Joyce Kimutai, a researcher at the Center for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London.Heat waves are one of the deadliest extreme weather events and have become more frequent and more severe on a warming planet. But analysis methods connecting heat to mortality vary between and within countries, and death tolls can be underreported and are often unknown for months after an event.Prolonged heat is particularly dangerous for children, older adults and pregnant women. For the last three weeks, extreme heat has settled over a large region of continental Eastern Africa, including parts of Kenya and Uganda. Residents have been told to stay indoors and drink water, a difficult directive for countries where many people work outdoors, electricity is sporadic, access to clean water is difficult and modest housing means there are few cooling systems.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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      Buying a Home? Without the CFPB, You Need to Be Your Own Watchdog.

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      The C.F.P.B. had kept a close eye on mortgage lenders. But with the bureau hobbled, consumers should take several steps, starting with shopping for the best mortgage rates.House prices are stubbornly high, and mortgage rates remain substantially above their prepandemic level. Now, with the spring home buying season looming, shoppers have a new worry: A major federal consumer watchdog has been hobbled.Without the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency responsible for overseeing most aspects of the home buying process, consumer advocates say home buyers need to be their own watchdogs.“Now, when you buy a house, you are much more vulnerable to being misled,” said Sharon Cornelissen, housing director with the Consumer Federation of America. “It’s important to be on guard, because guardrails are being taken away.”Buying a home is the biggest financial decision most Americans will make in their lives. The typical home price is about $397,000, according to the National Association of Realtors, but prices are far higher in some parts of the country. In several California counties, for instance, the median price at the end of last year was over $1.5 million, with monthly mortgage payments over $8,000.What role has the consumer bureau played in home buying?The consumer bureau was created after the financial and housing crisis in 2007-8 to streamline oversight of lenders and financial companies serving consumers. Over the years, the bureau has moved to ease the mortgage shopping process by offering simplified forms and educational tools, and has taken action against an array of banks and lenders. In 2022, for instance, the bureau ordered Wells Fargo to pay $3.7 billion for mishandling a variety of customer accounts, including improperly denying thousands of requests for mortgage loan modifications that in some cases led borrowers to lose their homes to “wrongful” foreclosures.On Jan. 17, in the final days of the Biden administration, the bureau reached a settlement with Draper and Kramer Mortgage Corporation for discouraging borrowers from applying for loans to buy homes in majority Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in Chicago and Boston. In an email, the lender’s lawyers said Draper and Kramer “considers the matter closed and denies” the bureau’s claims, but chose to settle in part to avoid “protracted legal costs.”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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      Fort Liberty Set to Be Renamed Fort Bragg, Fulfilling a Trump Promise

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      In 2020, Congress pushed past the president’s veto of a military policy bill to rename the base, which was originally named for a Confederate general.The Trump administration will officially reinstate the name of an Army base in North Carolina on Friday to Fort Bragg, which was originally named for an incompetent Confederate general who owned enslaved people.The base’s name was changed to Fort Liberty in June 2023 as part of the U.S. military’s examination of its history with race. But President Trump campaigned on a promise to restore the old name.The official ceremony at the military base on Friday will cement a political victory for Mr. Trump, who suffered a legislative defeat in 2020 when Congress pushed past his veto of a bill with a provision to rename nine Army bases that had honored treasonous Confederate generals who fought against the United States to preserve slavery and white supremacy.The original naming of those bases was part of a movement to glorify the Confederacy and advance the Lost Cause myth that the Civil War was fought over “states’ rights” and not slavery.The reversion of Fort Liberty to Fort Bragg is part of a larger effort by Mr. Trump to purge the military of top officers, diversity initiatives, transgender service members and other things that he said had made the armed forces “woke.”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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      Migrant Boats Capsize Off Yemen and Djibouti, U.N. Says

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      The missing people were on two boats that capsized off Yemen, which is on a major route for migrants trying to reach Gulf countries for work.CAIRO — At least two people have died and 186 others were missing after four boats carrying migrants from Africa capsized overnight in waters off Yemen and Djibouti, the United Nations migration agency said on Friday.Two vessels capsized off Yemen late Thursday, said Tamim Eleian, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration. Two crew members were rescued, but 181 migrants and five Yemeni crew members remain missing, he said.Two other boats capsized off the tiny African nation of Djibouti around the same time, he said. Two bodies of migrants were recovered, and all others onboard were rescued.Strong winds caused the two boats to capsize near the beach in Djibouti after they started sailing off, said Abdusattor Esoev, the head of the mission for the I.O.M. in Yemen.The third boat, which capsized off Dhubab district in Taiz governorate, in southwestern Yemen, was carrying 31 Ethiopian migrants and three Yemeni crew.The fourth boat, which capsized near the same area, was heading to Ahwar district in Abyan governorate, and was carrying 150 Ethiopian migrants and four Yemeni crew.Yemen is a major route for migrants from East Africa and the Horn of Africa seeking to reach Gulf countries for work, with hundreds of thousands trying the route each year.To reach Yemen, migrants are taken by smugglers on often dangerous, overcrowded boats across the Red Sea or Gulf of Aden.The numbers making it to Yemen reached 97,200 in 2023 — triple the number in 2021. Last year, the number dropped to just under 61,000, probably because of greater patrolling of the waters, according to an I.O.M. report released this month.Over the past decade, at least 2,082 migrants have disappeared along the route, including 693 known to have drowned, according to the migration agency. Some 380,000 migrants are in Yemen. More

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      Abrdn’s Rebrand Reversal and a History of Corporate Missteps

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      A British investment firm restored most of the vowels to its name after a widely ridiculed revamp that showed the pitfalls of trying to look cool in the digital age.Hw cn brnds sty cl? Nt by drpping vwls, one of Britain’s biggest investment firms concluded this week, when it announced it was adding back the “e’s” to its name four years after dropping them.The 200-year-old company is now called aberdeen group, effectively reversing a decision to rebrand as abrdn in 2021 in a bid to pitch itself as a “modern, agile, digitally-enabled brand.”The decision four years ago was widely ridiculed. James Windsor, who took over as chief executive last year, said on Tuesday that it was time to “remove distractions” — less than two months after saying he had no plans to change the name.Corporate rebrands can be critical to signifying a strategy shift but they also come with risks when companies veer too far from their purpose. Aberdeen’s vowel-dropping rebrand was just the latest example of a company reversing course after a new name failed to lift its performance or its reputation with customers.The Perils of Chasing TrendsRemoving vowels from brand names or using a name with a deliberately misspelled word was not uncommon in the 2000s, especially among trendy technology companies. Businesses including Grindr, Flickr, Tumblr and even twttr, as Twitter (now X) was initially called, embraced the aesthetic. But today, that style can look out of date and embarrassing, said Laura Bailey, a senior lecturer in linguistics at the University of Kent.Often, when companies try to appear trendy, “by the time they get to it, it’s been around for too long,” Dr. Bailey said. “It’s like your parents doing it — it doesn’t seem right.”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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      N.Y. Corrections Department Issues Ultimatum to Striking Officers

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      The department agreed to some of the officers’ demands but said that those who did not return to work on Friday would face disciplinary action and possible criminal charges.Corrections officers who staged unauthorized strikes that have sowed chaos across New York State’s prisons for the last two and a half weeks received an ultimatum on Thursday night: Return to work on Friday or face termination, disciplinary action and the possibility of criminal charges.In exchange for the officers’ returning to work, the state would place a 90-day pause on some provisions of the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act, known as HALT, which limits the use of solitary confinement for inmates, Daniel F. Martuscello III, commissioner of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, said in a news conference Thursday night.The department will also create a committee to study the law, which many corrections officers say has made their jobs more dangerous and difficult.Striking officers have also complained about staffing shortages and forced overtime, with some being required to work 24-hour shifts. The shifts of workers who return to duty on Friday will be limited to 12 hours, Mr. Martuscello said. When all workers are back in place and the prisons return to normal operations, he said, workers will not be forced to work shifts longer than eight hours.Dozens of corrections officers and sergeants have been fired for participating in the illegal strikes, Jackie Bray, commissioner of the New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, said Thursday evening. Others who refuse to return to work on Friday will also be fired, and will face possible disciplinary action, civil contempt charges or criminal prosecution, Ms. Bray said.Those who return to work on Friday can avoid all of that, Ms. Bray said. Striking corrections officers and sergeants who already quit, who were fired, or who face contempt charges or other disciplinary actions will have their records swept clean and their jobs reinstated, but only if they accept the terms offered Thursday night.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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      Judge Reinstates NLRB Member Fired by Trump

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      A federal judge on Thursday reinstated Gwynne Wilcox, a Democratic member of the National Labor Relations Board, declaring that President Trump’s attempt to fire her was unlawful.The ruling, which the Trump administration immediately moved to appeal, was a rebuke of Mr. Trump’s expansive view of executive power and his efforts to establish presidential control over agencies designed by Congress to be independent from the White House.Judge Beryl A. Howell, appointed to the Federal District Court in Washington by President Barack Obama, excoriated Mr. Trump’s vision of unchecked authority in her 36-page ruling, referring to a declaration he had made during the 2024 campaign that he would be a dictator on “Day 1” and to an image that the White House shared of Mr. Trump wearing the crown of a king.“A president who touts an image of himself as a ‘king’ or a ‘dictator,’ perhaps as his vision of effective leadership, fundamentally misapprehends the role under Article II of the U.S. Constitution” Judge Howell wrote.She later continued that “an American president is not a king — not even an ‘elected’ one — and his power to remove federal officers and honest civil servants like plaintiff is not absolute, but may be constrained in appropriate circumstances, as are present here.”Ms. Wilcox did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Her ouster, in January, had the effect of paralyzing the N.L.R.B., which hears labor disputes, because it left the board with just two members — a Republican and a Democrat — and, by federal law, the board cannot act without a minimum of three members.She swiftly filed a lawsuit, one of several cases that could wind up before the Supreme Court as a test of the reaches of executive authority.In a lengthy hearing in the case on Wednesday, before the ruling, Judge Howell made a joke about the case’s possible trajectory, saying that she understood that “this court is merely a speed bump for you all to get to the Supreme Court.” More