Elections

After months of roaring around the city in a souped-up Dodge Charger, drawing furious complaints and unpaid fines, Miles Hudson was led out of court on Monday in handcuffs.A man who for months has infuriated Seattle residents with his raucous driving and late-night social media escapades was ordered into custody on Monday and prohibited from posting to his vast following on Instagram.Miles Hudson, 21, known in Seattle as the “Belltown Hellcat,” has faced a series of escalating legal troubles after spending many nights roaring through downtown streets, the explosive backfires from his Dodge Charger Hellcat SRT shaking windows and rattling nerves. Separately, a woman accused him of stalking her and sending explicit images of her to other people.At a hearing on Monday where Mr. Hudson appeared wearing a facial covering, Magistrate Judge Seth Niesen ordered him taken into custody, setting bail at $5,000 for the domestic stalking case and $2,500 for the reckless driving case.He also barred Mr. Hudson from posting on his Twitch and Instagram accounts.“If there are any posts from those accounts, it’s a violation of this court’s order,” the judge said, before a court marshal placed handcuffs on Mr. Hudson and led him out of the courtroom.Mr. Hudson has built a following of more than 750,000 on Instagram. Many of his videos show him driving Seattle’s streets at nights, the car revving and backfiring. At least one video shows Mr. Hudson exceeding 100 miles per hour on downtown streets. Residents have repeatedly complained, saying the noise, which often sounds like gun shots, is keeping them awake at night.City officials at first responded with citations, fines and a lawsuit.But Mr. Hudson seemed to relish his growing notoriety. In a video interview posted in recent days, he says that those bothered by the noise should consider relocating to higher units. And he has an answer for people who complain that his vehicle is waking their pets or children.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

Erica Ash started out on sketch comedy shows in the 2000s before appearing in movies like “Scary Movie V” and the satirical reality show “Real Husbands of Hollywood.”Erica Ash, an actress and comedian known for her roles in the satirical reality show “Real Husbands of Hollywood” and on the sketch comedy show “Mad TV,” died on Sunday in Los Angeles. She was 46.The cause was cancer, her mother, Diann Ash, said in a statement on Monday.Ms. Ash began her career in the 2000s as a cast member on the sketch comedy shows “The Big Gay Sketch Show” and “Mad TV,” where she impersonated celebrities like Michelle Obama and Condoleezza Rice.She went on to appear in several dozen TV shows and films, including “Scary Movie V.” She landed a recurring role on BET’s “The Real Husbands of Hollywood,” a parody of reality TV shows that starred Kevin Hart.On Starz’s “Survivor’s Remorse,” a drama-comedy about a young basketball star’s rise to fame, she played the main character’s sister. Among her last projects, Ms. Ash appeared in the Netflix horror-comedy film, “We Have a Ghost.”Erica Chantal Ash was born on Sept. 19, 1977, in Florida, according to IMDb. She attended Emory University as a pre-medicine student, but pivoted to comedy and entertainment. In an interview in 2018 with Steve Harvey, she talked about taking a year off from studying medicine and becoming a backup singer for a Japanese band.She was popular on social media, where she spoke out on politics and posted videos of herself portraying funny characters.A list of survivors was not immediately available. More

Nicolás Maduro, el líder autoritario de Venezuela, parece haber sobrevivido una vez más en unas elecciones que lucen profundamente injustas y plagadas de irregularidades. El resultado, que ya enfrenta resistencia y ha ocasionado disturbios que podrían aumentar en los próximos días, no es solo una decepción para la oposición y los millones de venezolanos que anhelan un cambio democrático. Las elecciones también han sido una prueba crucial de la permanencia del nuevo tipo de autoritarismo que se apodera del continente americano, y han demostrado que esa tendencia no desaparecerá pronto.La democracia está siendo sofocada o seriamente desafiada en todo el hemisferio occidental. En los últimos 20 años, Venezuela, Nicaragua y El Salvador han derivado en dictaduras. Aunque acabó detenido, el entonces presidente de Perú intentó disolver el Congreso a finales de 2022. El año pasado, Guatemala estuvo a punto de seguir esta tendencia cuando el Ministerio Público buscó impedir una transición pacífica del poder. Y queda por ver si la recién elegida próxima presidenta de México, Claudia Sheinbaum, continuará la erosión de los controles y equilibrios democráticos que inició su predecesor.El panorama no es tan desalentador. En otros lugares —Brasil, Chile, Colombia y Estados Unidos— la democracia está triunfando. Pero se está poniendo a prueba a medida que crece la oposición al pluralismo y la inclusión y se extiende el malestar social y la insatisfacción con el gobierno en un contexto de clara desigualdad e inestabilidad institucional.Las elecciones de Venezuela son un momento decisivo para América. A pesar de la alta participación, se registraron numerosos reportes de irregularidades en los comicios, intimidación de votantes y problemas en los centros de votación. Sin embargo, con el 80 por ciento de los votos escrutados, el Consejo Nacional Electoral declaró ganador a Maduro con el 51,2 por ciento de los votos, frente al 44,2 por ciento de su principal contrincante. Debido a que los funcionarios de muchos centros de votación se negaron a entregar copias físicas de los recuentos de votos, la oposición no tenía modo concreto de señalar un resultado distinto.Si Maduro logra sortear la agitación poselectoral y mantenerse en el poder otro mandato, dará pie a que otros autócratas en ciernes de la región sepan que también pueden actuar con casi total impunidad. Los procesos electorales cuestionables, los abusos contra los derechos humanos y la corrupción podrían extenderse si no se coordina una respuesta internacional contra ellos, mientras que las voces de los electores de esos países son apagadas por la represión. El retroceso de la democracia es algo que ya ha ocurrido: muchas democracias incipientes de Latinoamérica se perdieron durante la Guerra Fría y regresaron después de que terminara.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 F.B.I. also provided the most comprehensive portrait to date of the shooter, revealing that he carefully concealed more than two dozen online purchases of weapons and explosives using aliases.Former President Donald J. Trump has agreed to be interviewed by the F.B.I. as part of its investigation into the motives of the 20-year-old man who tried to assassinate him during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, bureau officials said on Monday.“We want to get his perspective on what he observed, like any other witness,” Kevin Rojek, the head of the bureau’s Pittsburgh field office, said on a call with reporters. “It is a standard victim interview, like we would do.”Mr. Trump’s supporters had sharply criticized Christopher A. Wray, the bureau’s director, for telling a House committee last week that investigators had not definitively determined the cause of the minor injury to the former president’s ear. By week’s end, the F.B.I. offered its most definitive explanation yet, saying it was a bullet or a fragment of one, a statement it reiterated on Monday.The F.B.I. also provided the most comprehensive portrait to date of the gunman, Thomas Crooks, revealing that he carefully concealed more than two dozen online purchases of weapons and explosives using aliases, and that he gathered information on other assassination attempts, including the shooting of Robert Fico, the prime minister of Slovakia, in May.Mr. Rojek also provided information about a critical — and lost — opportunity to stop Mr. Crooks. He said that a local law enforcement officer who was boosted onto the warehouse roof where Mr. Crooks had positioned himself just before the shooting “dropped down” to the ground after the shooter aimed at the officer.About 25 to 30 seconds later, Mr. Crooks fired eight rounds — hitting Mr. Trump’s ear, killing a bystander and injuring two other people.F.B.I. officials said they were taking the unusual step of providing investigative details, even though their efforts were continuing, to combat conspiracy theories and misinformation.They also said that their investigation was not geared toward identifying or analyzing security failures by the Secret Service and local enforcement that allowed Mr. Crooks to get within a few hundred yards of Mr. Trump to discharge a deadly volley with a clear line of sight.The investigation, they said, has been entirely focused on determining whether he was motivated by political animus — they have found no evidence to suggest that so far — and to find out if he was part of a larger conspiracy. They have not ruled that possibility out, but thus far, the bureau has found that Mr. Crooks had few contacts outside of his immediate family, and did not even seem to interact much with co-workers or fellow participants on gaming platforms.“We do still believe that he was a loner,” Mr. Rojek said. More

Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman and other tech billionaires, many of whom are part of the “PayPal Mafia,” are openly brawling with one another over politics as tensions rise.Less than an hour after a gunman in Butler, Pa., tried to assassinate Donald J. Trump this month, David Sacks, a venture capitalist based in San Francisco, directed his anger about the incident toward a former colleague.“The Left normalized this,” Mr. Sacks wrote on X, linking to a post about Reid Hoffman, a technology investor and major Democratic donor. Mr. Sacks implied that Mr. Hoffman, a critic of Mr. Trump who had funded a lawsuit accusing the former president of rape and defamation, had helped cause the shooting.Elon Musk, who leads SpaceX and Tesla and previously worked with Mr. Sacks and Mr. Hoffman, then weighed in on X, name-checking Mr. Hoffman and saying people like him “got their dearest wish.”In Silicon Valley, the spectacle of tech billionaire attacking tech billionaire has suddenly exploded, as pro-Trump executives and their Democratic counterparts have openly turned on each other. The brawling has spilled into public view online, at conferences and on podcasts, as debates about the country’s future have turned into personal broadsides.The animus has pit those who once worked side by side and attended each other’s weddings against one another, fraying friendships and alliances that could shift Silicon Valley’s power centers. The fighting has been particularly acute among the “PayPal Mafia,” a wealthy group of tech executives — including Mr. Hoffman, Mr. Musk, Mr. Sacks and the investor Peter Thiel — who worked together at the online payments company in the 1990s and later founded their own companies or turned into high-profile investors.Other tech leaders have also been pulled into the political spats, including Vinod Khosla, a prominent investor, and Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz of the Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz.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

They were injured in a knife attack in Southport, near the northern English city of Liverpool.At least eight people were injured in a knife attack on Monday in a seaside town near the northern English city of Liverpool, according to statements from the local police and ambulance service.The victims most likely included children, as some were taken to Liverpool’s Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, according to a statement from the North West Ambulance Service, which responded to the attack.The stabbings took place just before noon, according to the Merseyside Police, who oversee law enforcement in the region. The police said they had been called to a property on Hart Street after receiving reports of a stabbing.“There are a number of reported casualties and more details will be confirmed when possible,” the police said in a statement. The police said they had detained a man and seized a knife, and they assured the public that there was “no wider threat.”Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, in a statement, said there was a “major incident” at the hospital as it dealt with the emergency response.Yvette Cooper, Britain’s home secretary, spoke in front of Parliament on Monday afternoon, saying she was “deeply concerned” about the incident in Southport and that she had spoken with the local authorities to convey the government’s “full support.”A number of eyewitnesses told local news outlets that they had seen injured people on the street.Colin Parry, the owner of a vehicle repair shop on Hart Street, where the police said the incident took place, told Sky News, “It is like a scene from a horror movie.”Bare Varathan, 35, who owns a corner store on Hart Street, told The Telegraph that he had seen a number of bleeding children on the street. He also said he saw armed police officers remove a man from a building.By Monday afternoon, large stretches of the typically quiet, largely residential street were blocked off by blue-and-white police tape. Police vehicles and fire trucks remained at the scene, visible in broadcasts carried by British news networks.Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he had seen the “horrendous and deeply shocking news emerging from Southport” in a post on X. “My thoughts are with all those affected. I would like to thank the police and emergency services for their swift response,” he added. “I am being kept updated as the situation develops.”At least one event for children was being held near Hart Street at the time of the attack.A class for children 6 to 11 was taking place at Hart Space, a yoga and community studio in a building just off Hart Street.Schools in the area had recently begun their summer break, and the studio was hosting a sold-out, Taylor Swift-themed yoga and dance workshop for children on Monday morning, according to a since-deleted post on its Facebook page. More

The prestigious downtown nonprofit Soho Rep will share space with Playwrights Horizons in Midtown Manhattan while figuring out a longer-term plan.In another indication of how postpandemic economics are rattling the nonprofit theater world, the prestigious Soho Rep is giving up its longtime home in TriBeCa and will instead share space with Playwrights Horizons, a Midtown theater company, while trying to figure out a longer-term plan.The move, prompted by real estate constraints as well as fiscal concerns, comes at the same time that another important New York nonprofit, Second Stage Theater, is leaving its Off Broadway home. That company is now planning to reside, at least temporarily, with Signature Theater, which in recent years has had more space than it can afford to program.The two decampments follow a 2022 decision by the Long Wharf Theater, in New Haven, Conn., to let go of its waterfront home and become itinerant.Taken together, the transitions are a reminder of the enormous stresses facing nonprofits, and suggest that revisiting real estate choices will become part of the solution for some.“If you look at the field-wide vulnerability, partnerships are a result of that,” said Eric Ting, one of Soho Rep’s three directors. “We look to each other for support and for strength.”Soho Rep, established in 1975, is small: Its current annual budget is about $2.8 million, it has just five full-time employees and since 1991 it has been presenting most of its work in a 65-seat TriBeCa space, making it an Off Off Broadway theater. But the company, committed to what it calls “radical theater makers,” punches way above its weight. It was the first to stage Jackie Sibblies Drury’s “Fairview,” which won the Pulitzer Prize in drama in 2019, as well as Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s “Public Obscenities,” which was a Pulitzer finalist this year. The theater has regularly introduced New York audiences to work by important, and often provocative, playwrights, including Sarah Kane, Aleshea Harris, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Lucas Hnath.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 birds were accidentally poisoned in India. New research on what happened next shows how wildlife collapse can be deadly for people.To say that vultures are underappreciated would be putting it mildly. With their diet of carrion and their featherless heads, the birds are often viewed with disgust. But they have long provided a critical cleaning service by devouring the dead.Now, economists have put an excruciating figure on just how vital they can be: The sudden near-disappearance of vultures in India about two decades ago led to more than half a million excess human deaths over five years, according to a forthcoming study in the American Economic Review.Rotting livestock carcasses, no longer picked to the bones by vultures, polluted waterways and fed an increase in feral dogs, which can carry rabies. It was “a really huge negative sanitation shock,” said Anant Sudarshan, one of the study’s authors and an economics professor at the University of Warwick in England.The findings reveal the unintended consequences that can occur from the collapse of wildlife, especially animals known as keystone species for the outsize roles they play in their ecosystems. Increasingly, economists are seeking to measure such impacts.A study looking at the United States, for example, has suggested that the loss of ash trees to the invasive emerald ash borer increased deaths related to cardiovascular and respiratory illness. And in Wisconsin, researchers found that the presence of wolves reduced vehicle collisions with deer by about a quarter, creating an economic benefit that was 63 times greater than the cost of wolves killing livestock.“Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning do matter to human beings,” said Eyal Frank, an economist at the University of Chicago and one of the authors of the new vulture study. “And it’s not always the charismatic and fuzzy species.”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