Elections

Three years after the military staged a coup, intensifying a civil war, civilians continue to pay the price, according to a coming United Nations report.Thousands of civilians in Myanmar have been “killed at the hands of the military,” the United Nations said on Tuesday, including hundreds who have died from torture and neglect in the junta’s prisons.“Myanmar is plumbing the depths of a human rights abyss,” James Rodehaver, the head of the U.N. human rights team monitoring the crisis, told journalists. He described a vacuum in the rule of law that was being filled by summary killings, torture and sexual violence.The casualties attest to a chaotic civil war that escalated sharply after the military staged a coup in February 2021. Now, three years later, pro-democracy forces and ethnic militias are battling the junta’s soldiers in a conflict that has displaced more than three million people and left close to 19 million in need of humanitarian aid, according to the U.N.But the military’s ferocious tactics, including an ongoing campaign of airstrikes and mass arrests, also reflect its shrinking hold. The military now controls less than 40 percent of the country and is constantly losing ground to armed opposition groups, Mr. Rodehaver said.The military killed at least 2,414 civilians just between April 2023 and the end of this June, including 334 children, according to a report by the U.N. team monitoring Myanmar that it will present to the Human Rights Council next week. About half of those deaths occurred in military airstrikes or in artillery bombardments.Another 759 people died in the junta’s custody in that same time period, the U.N. report will say. And they are only a portion of those who have died in detention since the coup, according to the report. Military authorities have arrested around 27,400 people since February 2021, including some 9,000 people in the 15 months that the U.N. report covered.What’s Happening in Myanmar’s Civil War?Questions you may have about the ongoing war in Myanmar, explained with graphics.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

Casey Callaghan and Will Nediger reach new heights in their collaboration debut.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesWEDNESDAY PUZZLE — Tourist season may be winding down in the Northern Hemisphere, but Casey Callaghan and Will Nediger are whisking us away for a last-minute vacation: Their crossword theme takes us on a sightseeing tour of Rome. As I prepare to spend all of my remaining vacation days for the year on a trip to the Maritime Provinces of Canada — which also means that this column will feature several guest stars over the next week or two — I’m thrilled about this bonus bit of travel.I’ll admit, however, that this grid is one of the more challenging Wednesday puzzles I’ve solved in recent memory, and that certain trivia-based entries made the puzzle feel more like a Friday crossword. That shouldn’t deter you from solving! I simply recommend tackling the grid from the safety of your comfiest chair, with a glass of whatever you please beside you.Today’s ThemeTo crack this multifaceted theme, start with 67A, an [Architectural attraction in Rome depicted by this puzzle’s grid?]. One must assume it has something to do with the circled letters that create a diagonal strip down the grid from left to right.This revealer clue, just like 29D, uses a question mark to indicate wordplay. THE SPANISH STEPS aren’t just an architectural attraction; they’re also hinted at by the Spanish numbers UNO, DOS, TRES and CUATRO in the circled squares, whose positions evoke the shape of a staircase.Then, we’ve got the [House of worship at the top of 67-Across] (17A). That’s the TRINITÀ DEI MONTI, a 16th-century Gothic church at the top of the Spanish Steps. Don’t feel bad if you got stuck here — unless you’re already familiar, this answer and THE SPANISH STEPS are nearly impossible to figure out without crossings. (Let that also be a reminder to us all to Use the Crossings, Luke.)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

Two days after an apparent assassination attempt against him, former President Donald J. Trump showed few signs on Tuesday that he would shake up his approach to campaigning.At a town hall in Flint, Mich., for his first campaign event since the Sunday incident, he made grand promises to restore auto-making jobs to the state, the heart of the American auto industry, as he gave long-winded, often meandering responses to only a few questions.To the extent that Mr. Trump was focused, it was on repeatedly vowing that his tariffs would revitalize the auto industry in Michigan, a crucial battleground state, and that a Trump loss in November would be catastrophic — referring to such an outcome as a “tragedy.”Using the dire language he often uses to frame this election, he said if “we don’t win, there will be zero car jobs, manufacturing jobs.”“It will all be out of here,” he said.Speaking to thousands of supporters in the Dort Financial Arena in Flint, he also insisted vaguely that his tariff proposals would be enough to reverse a decades-long decline in the American auto industry and bring “so many auto plants” into the state if elected.Trump supporters outside the arena in Flint where Mr. Trump spoke.Doug Mills/The New York TimesWe 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

She was on the front lines of dogged fights against injustices, including a recent series of murders of Indigenous women by a white man.Cathy Merrick, a towering figure in the fight for Indigenous rights in Canada and the first woman to be elected grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, representing 63 First Nations, died on Sept. 6 in Winnipeg, the provincial capital. She was 63.The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs announced her death in a statement.Ms. Merrick died while doing what she had dedicated her life to: advocating for Indigenous people. She had just attended the trial of a corrections officer who had been charged in the death of an Indigenous inmate. The man had been acquitted, and Ms. Merrick was standing on the courthouse steps expressing her disappointment to the news media when she suddenly collapsed.She was taken to nearby St. Boniface hospital, where she was declared dead. The cause was not immediately known, and an autopsy was to be performed.Ms. Merrick’s death was met with deep grief across Canada. Hundreds attended her wake as she lay in state last week at the Manitoba Legislative Building, only the sixth person and the first woman ever to receive that honor.“Grand Chief Cathy Merrick was a relentless and incredibly effective advocate for First Nations peoples, especially for those most vulnerable,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada said in a statement.Catherine Ann McKay, whose traditional Cree name was Kameekosit Ispokanee Iskwew, was born on May 31, 1961, at Cross Lake, the English name for the Pimicikamak Cree Nation, in northern Manitoba. She was the adopted daughter of Hazel and Thomas Spence. Her mother was a nurse, her father a carpenter.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 state joins dozens of others in regulating the A.I. fakery in ways that could impact this year’s presidential race.California will now require social media companies to moderate the spread of election-related impersonations powered by artificial intelligence, known as “deepfakes,” after Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed three new laws on the subject Tuesday.The three laws, including a first-of-its kind law that imposes a new requirement on social media platforms, largely deal with banning or labeling the deepfakes. Only one of the laws will take effect in time to affect the 2024 presidential election, but the trio could offer a road map for regulators across the country who are attempting to slow the spread of the manipulative content powered by artificial intelligence.The laws are expected to face legal challenges from social media companies or groups focusing on free speech rights.Deepfakes use A.I. tools to create lifelike images, videos or audio clips resembling actual people. Though the technology has been used to create jokes and artwork, it has also been widely adopted to supercharge scams, create non-consensual pornography and disseminate political misinformation.Elon Musk, the owner of X, has posted a deepfake to his account this year that would have run afoul of the new laws, experts said. In one video viewed millions of times, Mr. Musk posted fake audio of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, calling herself the “ultimate diversity hire.”Election-Related ‘Deepfake’ LawsSeveral states have adopted or seem poised to adopt laws regulating “deepfakes” around elections. More

New York City school employees took their children or grandchildren to Disney World and other places through a program intended for homeless students, investigators found.A half-dozen New York City school system employees took their children or grandchildren to Disney World, New Orleans and other destinations by exploiting a program intended for homeless students, investigators said in a report released this month.The trips were meant as “enrichment opportunities,” attendance incentives and rewards for academic achievement for students living in shelters and other temporary housing, according to the report by the special commissioner of investigation for the city’s public schools.The abuse of the grant-funded program was led by Linda Wilson, who at the time was the Queens manager for the Department of Education office that supports homeless students, the report says. As many as one in nine of the city’s roughly one million public school students are homeless.Ms. Wilson, who supervised about 20 employees, took her daughters on some of the trips and encouraged several workers she supervised to do so as well but to keep the activities secret, the report says.“What happens here stays with us,” she told one employee, according to the report.Ms. Wilson and others forged the signatures of homeless students’ parents as part of the scheme, and she used a nonprofit organization to arrange the trips to evade Department of Education oversight, the report says.“Few of the homeless students listed on the trip paperwork actually attended the trips,” the report says, although at least in the case of the Disney World trip, some homeless students did attend. One person interviewed by investigators told them “he had to beg” Ms. Wilson to allow him to add two of his students to the trip, the report says.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

With just seven weeks until Election Day, America PAC, one of the most ambitious, well-funded groups supporting former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign, has switched up its ground game in Arizona and Nevada, two states pivotal to his re-election bid.The super PAC, which was founded by the billionaire Elon Musk, has cut ties with the canvassing firm it hired to knock on hundreds of thousands of doors and turn out Republican voters. The super PAC’s leadership decided in recent days to replace that firm, the September Group, according to three people with knowledge of the move.The firm had about 300 paid canvassers combined working on behalf of America PAC in those states, according to two of the people. But the PAC felt the group was not reaching enough voters quickly enough, the people said. The PAC has increased the number of doors it hopes to hit, according to the third person, reflecting the group’s belief that the switch will allow it to scale up and help Mr. Trump in the long run.Arizona and Nevada are especially difficult for political canvassers working in the summer, given the daytime heat. The firm had knocked on about 250,000 doors in Arizona and about 150,000 doors in Nevada during its three-week engagement.America PAC plans to try to rehire as many of the canvassers as possible, one of the people said, although it is unclear how many of them will stay under the new management. Some of the canvassers in Nevada, for instance, are already planning to work this week for a different candidate in the state, Sam Brown, the Republican candidate for Senate, said two of the people.Still, there is precious little time before the election for these changes: Arizona begins early voting on Oct. 9, and Nevada voters can cast ballots as soon as Oct. 19. The super PAC has not been knocking on doors over the past few days in the two states, as the group tries to rebuild its field infrastructure there, two of the people 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

What does Kamala Harris think the United States should do about the Houthis, whose assaults on commercial shipping threaten global trade, and whose attacks on Israel risk a much wider Mideast war? If an interviewer were to ask the vice president about them, would she be able to give a coherent and compelling answer?It’s not an unfair or unprecedented question. As a presidential candidate, George W. Bush was quizzed on the names of the leaders of Taiwan, India, Pakistan and Chechnya. He got one right (Taiwan’s Lee Teng-hui) but drew blanks on the rest. It fueled criticism, as The Times’s Frank Bruni reported in 1999, that “he is not knowledgeable enough about foreign policy to lead the nation.”A few more questions for Harris: If, as president, she had intelligence that Iran was on the cusp of assembling a nuclear weapon, would she use force to stop it? Are there limits to American support for Ukraine, and what are they? Would she push for the creation of a Palestinian state if Hamas remained a potent political force within it? Are there any regulations she’d like to get rid of in her initiative to build three million new homes in the next four years? What role, if any, does she see for nuclear power in her energy and climate plans? If there were another pandemic similar to Covid-19, what might her administration do differently?It may be that Harris has thoughtful answers to these sorts of questions. If so, she isn’t letting on. She did well in the debate with Donald Trump, showing poise and intelligence against a buffoonish opponent. But her answers in two sit-down interviews, first with CNN’s Dana Bash and then with Brian Taff of 6ABC in Philadelphia, were lighter than air. Asked what she’d do to bring down prices, she talked at length about growing up middle-class among people who were proud of their lawns before pivoting to vague plans to support small business and create more housing.Lovely. Now how about interest-rate policy, federal spending and the resilience of our supply chains?All this helps explain my unease with the thought of voting for Harris — an unease I never felt, despite policy differences, when Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden were on the ballot against Trump. If Harris can answer the sorts of questions I posed above, she should be quick to do so, if only to dispel a widespread perception of unseriousness. If she can’t, then what was she doing over nearly eight years as a senator and vice president?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