Elections

The police have launched a manhunt for the perpetrator, who stabbed people at a city festival before slipping away.German police are hunting for a man who on Friday night attacked nearly a dozen people with a knife, killing three, during a street festival in the western city of Solingen.At a news conference on Saturday afternoon, the authorities said they had not ruled out that it was a terrorist attack because no other explanation for the seemingly random violence made sense.The police said they had detained a 15-year-old boy for questioning whom they believed might have had prior knowledge of the attack. The state attorney is not treating the youth as a suspect.What happened?Shortly after 9:30 p.m., the attacker started stabbing people who had gathered at the festival to celebrate Solingen’s 650th anniversary. The attack occurred during a live music performance, not far from a temporary stage set up for the event, which was billed as a “Festival of Diversity.”The police said it appeared that the attacker chose victims from the crowd at random and that he appeared to target at least one of the victims’ necks.The festival, which was planned to run through Sunday, was immediately canceled as emergency workers tended to the injured and the police tried to get a handle on the situation.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

At a meeting next week, team owners are expected to approve rules that would allow private equity firms to invest in their franchises.For more than a century, National Football League owners have been an exclusive club. With rules that place tough restrictions on who is allowed to buy teams — and how those purchases can be financed — only the extremely wealthy can afford to join. Now they’re on the cusp of admitting a new kind of member.At a meeting next week in Eagan, Minn., N.F.L. owners are expected to approve rules that would allow certain private equity firms to buy as much as 10 percent of a team.The move would help owners solve a liquidity problem. As team valuations have soared — the Washington Commanders sold for $6.05 billion last year — the number of potential buyers has fallen. Finding limited partners has also become more difficult because they have no voting rights yet must tie up tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars. Allowing investments from private equity could make it easier to put together a deal.The N.F.L. would be the last major sports league to allow private equity firms to become minority owners, and its approach is more conservative than leagues like the National Basketball Association, which allows private equity firms to own up to 30 percent of a team. If the new rules pass, only a handful of anointed private equity firms will be able to invest in teams.Who’s in? The N.F.L. has whittled the potential list of permitted private equity investors to just a handful of firms. They include firms that focus on sports, like Arctos Partners and Dynasty Equity, as well as larger firms like Blackstone, CVC Capital Partners and Carlyle Group, which expanded its sports with its recent purchase of the women’s soccer team Seattle Reign F.C. The firms were reported earlier by Sportico.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

A prosecutor involved in the inquiry into the sinking said it was “plausible” that crimes were committed during the accident.Italian authorities said on Saturday that they had opened a manslaughter investigation into the sinking of the Bayesian luxury yacht, but that they had not yet zeroed in on any potential suspects.The sleek, $40 million sailing boat went down fast in a storm off Sicily’s coast on Monday morning, killing Michael Lynch, a British tech billionaire; his teenage daughter, Hannah; four of his friends; and one member of the crew. The captain escaped on a lifeboat with 14 others.On Saturday, Ambrogio Cartosio, the prosecutor in charge of the case, said at a news conference that it was “plausible” crimes were committed during the accident.“There could be responsibilities of the captain only,” he said. “There could be responsibilities of the whole crew. There could be responsibilities of the boat makers. Or there could be responsibilities of those who were in charge of surveilling the boat.”Here is what the authorities said on Saturday:It will be difficult to determine the cause of the sinking until the yacht is brought to the surface and inspected, which could take weeks.Five bodies were found in the same cabin.The yacht sank at an angle, with the stern — where the heavy engine is situated — having gone down first.The captain and the crew, who have been holed up in a Sicilian hotel with other survivors, are allowed to leave Italy. But prosecutors said that they still want to ask them more questions.The authorities did not perform alcohol or drug tests on the captain or the crew.The authorities would not comment on whether hatches on the deck had been left open, which would have allowed water to pour in during the yacht’s sinking.In addition to possible manslaughter charges, the authorities are also investigating the possibility of a negligently caused shipwreck, a crime that carries up to several years in prison upon conviction.Investigators said they were focusing on why the 184-foot-long Bayesian, which was built in 2008, went down so quickly, especially when other yachts nearby weathered the storm.Executives at the company that built the boat have said there is nothing faulty with the design of the yacht and have tried to shift the blame to the crew.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

Philip Colt Moss, 41, paid another man for videos of monkeys being sexually abused, tortured and killed, prosecutors said. A child in Indonesia made the videos, according to a previous indictment.An Iowa man was arrested this month for his role in a group that created and shared so-called animal crush videos in which monkeys were brutally tortured, sexually abused and killed in sadistic ways, federal prosecutors said on Friday.The man, Philip Colt Moss, 41, who was arrested on Aug. 8, was charged in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati with conspiracy to create and distribute the videos and with distributing the videos themselves, according to the indictment, which was unsealed on Friday.Also named in the indictment against Mr. Moss are Nicholas T. Dryden, of Ohio, and Giancarlo Morelli, of New Jersey, who were charged in June with the same counts as Mr. Moss.Mr. Dryden, who prosecutors said had paid a minor in Indonesia to film the videos, is also charged with “creation of animal crush videos, as well as with production, distribution and receipt of a visual depiction of the sexual abuse of children because a minor was paid to abuse the monkeys,” the Department of Justice said.Mr. Moss and Mr. Morelli were two of Mr. Dryden’s customers, prosecutors said.From February to April of last year, Mr. Moss sent Mr. Dryden $1,447 for the videos, discussed them and mentioned plans to take a trip to Indonesia with Mr. Dryden to make crush videos themselves, according to the indictment.Lawyers for the three men did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday night. Prosecutors also did not immediately respond.Mr. Moss and Mr. Dryden appeared to have become friends, according to charging documents, with Mr. Dryden even offering to give Mr. Moss free videos.“If ur low on bread brother I’ll throw u a couple for free,” Mr. Dryden said in a text message to Mr. Moss that was included in the indictment.Mr. Moss called Mr. Dryden a “good friend” and responded that he appreciated the offer but insisted on paying because “u work hard to make that all happen.”If convicted on the counts he faces, Mr. Moss could face a maximum sentence of 12 years in prison, according to the Justice Department.Kirsten Noyes More

His bid to buy Paramount pits one son of a billionaire against the son of another.When the media executive Edgar Bronfman Jr. submitted his last-ditch bid on Monday to take control of Paramount, his approach was greeted with surprise and skepticism. Who would take his unconventional coalition of investors seriously, especially when an $8 billion deal with Skydance was on the table?Later in the week, the answer came emphatically: Paramount.The bid has transformed Paramount’s sale into a battle of family dynasties. Skydance’s founder, David Ellison, who is the son of the Oracle founder Larry Ellison, has struck an agreement with Shari Redstone to take over Paramount, a media empire assembled by her father. But the deal is now threatened by the bid from Bronfman — a grandson of the Seagram mogul Samuel Bronfman — whose early foray steering the family business into media several decades ago has left a cloud over his career.Bronfman, no stranger to doubters, somehow corralled billions in commitments for the bid, refined his list of investors and persuaded a special committee of Paramount’s board of directors to extend the “go shop” window in the company’s agreement with Skydance in order to consider it.The son of one billionaire is now pitted against the son of another.“He’s been craving a media empire since the 1980s, and Paramount is a great studio with a lot of upside potential,” Terry Kawaja, the founder of Luma Partners, a boutique bank, said of Bronfman.“If you’re the billionaire son of a billionaire, it’s the ultimate asset.”Across Wall Street and Hollywood, Bronfman is a polarizing figure. Depending on whom you ask, he’s either the hapless heir who steered Seagrams into a catastrophic merger with Vivendi in 2000 or the misunderstood mogul who fought his way back from a bad deal to prove his mettle with success at Warner Music Group.Bronfman’s résumé is further complicated by a conviction for insider trading in 2011 under French law, which resulted in a $6.8 million fine and a 15-month suspended sentence. At the time of his conviction, he said his trades were aboveboard.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

Although the cross-border offensive carries risks, it has been a rare recent battlefield success for Ukrainian troops and caught Moscow flat-footed.President Volodymyr Zelensky, always adept at messaging, used his latest Independence Day speech on Saturday to drive home the idea that Ukraine is taking the fight to Russia, even as his troops struggle along the front line at home.He said the video of the speech was filmed near the site where his troops began a cross-border offensive into Russian territory nearly three weeks ago that caught Moscow by surprise. It was prerecorded from what he described as a location along the Psel River, an area frequently targeted by Russian artillery.“Whoever wished misery upon our land shall find it in their own home,” Mr. Zelensky said of the incursion, which has pushed into the Kursk region of southwestern Russia.He called his military’s operation — which has come after two and a half years of Russia’s all-out, and brutal, invasion of Ukraine — a “boomerang for evil.”The celebration on Saturday marks 33 years since Ukraine declared its independence from a crumbling Soviet Union.Earlier in the war, Ukraine marked Independence Day by parading burned Russian armored vehicles along Kyiv’s central thoroughfare, Khreshchatyk Avenue, using the holiday to boost morale.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

A starry group biography focused on a single Brooklyn Heights brownstone; a novel centered on one Upper West Side block.Librado Romero/The New York TimesDear readers,I have a sprightly white-haired neighbor who has lived in the garden apartment next door since Lyndon B. Johnson was president, more or less, and most days you will find her out there on her little patch of tulips and concrete, holding court in two languages. (The better gossip, I deeply suspect, is in Polish.)I love her consistency, and I also love how specific her territory is. Whatever’s going on beyond this block: not her business. Her purview is strictly whatever falls between the co-op, the cosmetic dentist and the mosque. That chic spot on the corner serving “contemporary Americana with a flair for sustainability”? She knew it when it was a French bistro and before that, a deli selling glorious pre-Ozempic piles of kielbasa and goulash.Which brings me to the picks in this week’s newsletter, both of which zoom in on chunks of urban real estate so finely parsed you could probably cover them with a large tarp. These books, like the lady next door, are living histories: loyal keepers of their own neighborhood flames, and other goulash ghosts of old New York.—Leah“February House,” by Sherill TippinsNonfiction, 2005We 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

In attacking Democrats and Kamala Harris, Republicans have been making a legitimate point: One of our major political parties has worked to undermine America’s families.The problem? While neither party has done enough to support families and children, the one that is failing most egregiously is — not surprisingly — the one led by the thrice-married tycoon who tangled with a porn star, boasted about grabbing women by the genitals and was found by a jury to have committed sexual assault.You’d think that would make it awkward for the Republican Party to preach family values. But with the same chutzpah with which Donald Trump reportedly marched into a dressing room where teenage girls were half-naked, the G.O.P. claims that it’s the Democrats who betray family values.“The rejection of the American family is perhaps the most pernicious and most evil thing that the left has done in this country,” JD Vance said in 2021. Pressed on those remarks last month, he went further in a conversation with Megyn Kelly, saying that Democrats “have become anti-family and anti-kid.”This is gibberish. Children are more likely to be poor, to die young and to drop out of high school in red states than in blue states. The states with the highest divorce rates are mostly Republican, and with some exceptions like Utah, it’s in red states that babies are more likely to be born to unmarried mothers (partly because of lack of access to reliable contraception).One of President Biden’s greatest achievements was to cut the child poverty rate by almost half, largely with the refundable child tax credit. Then Republicans killed the program, sending child poverty soaring again.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