Elections

Alexander Liebeskind opens our solving week.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesMONDAY PUZZLE — One thing I was surprised to learn from the puzzle editors when I took this job is just how hard it is to create a top-quality Monday puzzle. Constructors who have a puzzle published in The New York Times are, in nearly all cases, top-quality wordsmiths who have a command of the English language that most of us mortals can barely dream of. So it can be tough for those people to turn it down a bit so that the rest of us can have some fun.Once I learned that, I gained a new appreciation for Mondays. The approachable fill and the clever cluing keep me coming back for these puzzles week after week. Take a moment to appreciate the relaxed solving experience of a good Monday puzzle like this one. The week only gets harder from here.Today’s ThemeI thought this puzzle’s theme was pretty straightforward; the theme answers are all phrases that include names of notes of payment (STATEMENT and CHECK, for example). I found the fill to be supremely smooth, but there were a couple of spots that I thought might trip people up. I’ll cover them in the next section.Tricky Clues27A. The AMHERST area is home to the Five College Consortium, whose members are the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst College, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College and my alma mater, Hampshire College.11D. Not a drop as in one of water, but to drop as in fall. The answer is SINK.60D. PDA is an abbreviation for public display of affection.Join Our Other Game DiscussionsWant to be part of the conversation about New York Times Games, or maybe get some help with a particularly thorny puzzle? Here are the:Spelling Bee ForumWordle ReviewConnections CompanionImprove Your Crossword SolvingWork your way through our guide, “How to Solve the New York Times Crossword.” It contains an explanation of most of the types of clues you will see in the puzzles and a practice Mini at the end of each section.Want to Submit Crosswords to The New York Times?The New York Times Crossword has an open submission system, and you can submit your puzzles online.For tips on how to get started, read our series “How to Make a Crossword Puzzle.”The Tipping PointAlmost finished solving but need a bit more help? We’ve got you covered.Spoiler alert: Subscribers can take a peek at the answer key.Trying to get back to the main Gameplay page? You can find it here. More

Stocks dropped after Japan’s governing party chose Shigeru Ishiba, a critic of the country’s longstanding ultralow interest rates, as its leader.Stocks in Japan fell sharply after the country’s governing party chose a leader some view as hawkish on interest rates, underlining how central bank decisions continue to set the course of the world’s fourth-largest economy after decades of easy money policy.On Friday, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party elected Shigeru Ishiba, a proponent of raising interest rates to help curb inflation, as Japan’s next prime minister.Mr. Ishiba narrowly defeated Sanae Takaichi, a disciple of Shinzo Abe, who remains committed to the former prime minister’s longstanding policies aimed at strengthening Japan’s economy by maintaining ultralow interest rates.Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index fell more than 4 percent in early trading on Monday.Some economists said the decline, which they described as the “Ishiba Shock,” was caused by the unwinding of stock trading that reflected expectations that Ms. Takaichi would be elected.The market jitters show how the recent L.D.P. election came at a pivotal moment for the Japanese economy.Following a recent surge of inflation, the Bank of Japan has raised interest rates twice this year. The bank’s governor, Kazuo Ueda, has indicated he plans to continue increasing rates, though it is unclear how quickly that might happen.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

Mr. Ashton was most widely recognized for his role as Sgt. John Taggart in the “Beverly Hills Cop” franchise.John Ashton, the actor best known for his role as the gruff Sgt. John Taggart in the “Beverly Hills Cop” franchise, died on Thursday in Fort Collins, Colo. He was 76.His death was confirmed by his representative, Alan Somers. No cause was given.Mr. Ashton appeared in more than 200 stage, film and television productions in his more than 50-year career. He is most widely recognized for his role as Sergeant Taggart in the “Beverly Hills Cop” movies.Sergeant Taggart is a stuffy rule stickler whose partner is a younger, laid-back detective, Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold). In “Beverly Hills Cop” (1984), they help a fast, young officer from Detroit named Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) track down the person who murdered his best friend, and along the way learn how to bend the rules and why a banana does not belong in the tailpipe of a cruiser.Taggart and Rosewood were originally cast for minor roles in the film, but they became co-stars once Mr. Murphy came on board as Foley, Mr. Ashton said in a 2020 interview with MovieJunk, a podcast and a YouTube channel. The film’s director, Martin Brest, saw the spark the three men shared, he said. “We just started developing a chemistry, and Marty saw it and loved it, and just kept letting us ad-lib and run with scenes,” Mr. Ashton said.Mr. Ashton reprised his role in the 1987 sequel, “Beverly Hills Cop II,” and again in “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F,” which was released this past July, again reuniting him with Mr. Reinhold and Mr. Murphy.“Going back to this one was like a family reunion — we just fell right back into it,” Mr. Ashton said in a July interview with “Nerds of Color,” a website and YouTube channel that examines superheroes, sci-fi, fantasy and video games through a culturally critical eye.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

Days after the Category 4 hurricane made landfall in Florida’s gulf coast, some victims’ portraits were coming into focus. A woman in her 70s who repaired nuclear cooling towers and rode motorcycles. A Florida resident who helped her community recover from Hurricane Ian two years ago. A man who had just moved to South Carolina to work as an electrical lineman.All three were among the more than 90 people killed by Helene, a roaring Category 4 hurricane that has devastated much of the Southeast since coming ashore last week. The victims came from at least six states — Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. Many people drowned, and others were killed by falling trees, car crashes under heavy rains and a tornado produced by the storm. A lot of the victims were still unidentified.The toll is almost certain to rise as rescuers reach communities in the Appalachian Mountains, where devastating flooding and mudslides have decimated whole towns.But on Sunday, three days after the giant storm made landfall in the Big Bend region, some victims’ stories were coming into focus.In Florida, most of the 11 victims there drowned in Pinellas County, which is in the Tampa Bay region and the most densely populated county in the state. 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

When Vice President Kamala Harris visited the southern border on Friday, she called fentanyl a “scourge on our country” and said that as president she would “make it a top priority to disrupt the flow of fentanyl coming into the United States.”Ms. Harris pledged to give more resources to law enforcement officials on the front lines, including additional personnel and machines that can detect fentanyl in vehicles. And she said she would take aim at the “global fentanyl supply chain,” vowing to “double the resources for the Department of Justice to extradite and prosecute transnational criminal organizations and the cartels.”But that was not how her opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, characterized her position on Sunday at a rally in Erie, Pa., where he made a false accusation against Ms. Harris that seemed intended to play on the fears and traumas of voters in communities that have been ravaged by fentanyl.“She even wants to legalize fentanyl,” Mr. Trump said during a speech that stretched for 109 minutes. It was the second straight day that Mr. Trump had amplified the same false claim about Ms. Harris; he did so on Saturday in Wisconsin.The former president did not offer context for his remarks, but his campaign pointed to an American Civil Liberties Union questionnaire that Ms. Harris had filled out in 2019 during her unsuccessful candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.A question asking if Ms. Harris supported the decriminalization at the federal level of all drug possession for personal use appeared to be checked “yes.” Ms. Harris wrote that it was “long past time that we changed our outdated and discriminatory criminalization of marijuana” and said that she favored treating drug addiction as a public health issue, focusing on rehabilitation instead of incarceration.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

After two assassination attempts, the former president seems to be relishing the dangers of his job. Some at the Georgia-Alabama football game wondered if his appearance was wise.Chicken tenders and cynicism were flying through the air.It was Saturday night in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and former President Donald J. Trump was in the bowels of Bryant-Denny Stadium at the University of Alabama, surrounded by screaming football fans. He began hurling boxes of chicken at them. His aides filmed his every movement, uploading the footage to social media.One popular pro-Trump influencer reposted a video of Mr. Trump traipsing through the concourse, writing: “There have been two assassination attempts on this man in the past three months and he walks into a stadium full of 100,000 people like a boss. Next week he’s returning to the site where he was shot. Total badass.”It was a perfect encapsulation of the ways in which Mr. Trump and those around him have plied the plots against his life for political benefit.The shooting in Butler, Pa., which left two men dead, including the gunman, was a terrifying event that was rewatched endlessly in the era of social media streaming. And it was shocking how close a second would-be assassin got to the former president weeks later at his golf club in Florida. These near misses have rattled the country and stirred memories of dark chapters in American political history.Mr. Trump plans to return to Butler for a rally on Oct. 5, and he relives these attempts on his life at nearly every campaign stop. Lately he has taken to saying that he has one of the most dangerous professions in the world, more dangerous than racecar driving or bull riding. He has bragged about the mortal danger in which he finds himself (“they only go after consequential presidents”); used it as evidence of divine intervention (“God has now spared my life — it must have been God, thank you — not once, but twice”) and as inspiration for set design (he decorated the stage at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee with images of his bloodied face).There has been a new assassination threat against him from Iran, as retaliation for ordering the killing of the Iranian general Qassim Suleimani in early 2020, and some recent campaign events have been scaled back, modified or canceled altogether. “I am surrounded by more men, guns, and weapons than I have ever seen before,” he wrote on Truth Social last week.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

On This Week’s Episode:People caught in limbo, using ingenuity and guile to try to get themselves out.Marie Hickman, via Getty ImagesNew York Times Audio is home to the “This American Life” archive. Download the app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. More

La contienda se ha estrechado en dos de los estados disputados del norte, según las encuestas de The New York Times/Siena College.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]La vicepresidenta Kamala Harris y el expresidente Donald Trump están en una contienda aún más apretada en los estados en disputa de Míchigan y Wisconsin que hace solo siete semanas, según las nuevas encuestas de The New York Times y Siena College.La ventaja de Harris de principios de agosto se ha visto ligeramente reducida por la fortaleza de Trump en cuestiones económicas, según las encuestas, un hecho potencialmente preocupante para la vicepresidenta, dado que la economía sigue siendo el tema más importante para los votantes.A menos de 40 días de las elecciones, la contienda está esencialmente empatada en Míchigan, con Harris recibiendo el 48 por ciento de apoyo entre los votantes probables y Trump obteniendo el 47 por ciento, bien dentro del margen de error de la encuesta. En Wisconsin, un estado donde las encuestas suelen exagerar el apoyo a los demócratas, Harris tiene un 49 por ciento, frente al 47 por ciento de Trump.Los sondeos también revelan que Harris aventaja en nueve puntos porcentuales a Trump en el segundo distrito electoral de Nebraska, cuyo único voto electoral podría ser decisivo en el Colegio Electoral. En un escenario posible, el distrito podría dar a Harris exactamente los 270 votos electorales que necesitaría para ganar las elecciones si ganara Míchigan, Wisconsin y Pensilvania, y Trump capturara los estados en disputa del Cinturón del Sol, donde las encuestas de Times/Siena muestran que está por delante.El Times y el Siena College también analizaron la contienda presidencial en Ohio, que no se considera un estado en disputa para obtener la Casa Blanca, pero tiene una de las contiendas senatoriales más competitivas del país. Trump lidera por seis puntos en Ohio, mientras que el senador demócrata Sherrod Brown aventaja a su oponente republicano, Bernie Moreno, por cuatro puntos.How the polls compare More