Elections

Incumbents who had feared President Biden would drag them down to defeat say the electoral environment has improved rapidly since he left the race.Senator Martin Heinrich, a two-term Democrat from New Mexico, was not on anyone’s watch list of incumbents facing serious re-election trouble given the reliable partisan tilt of his state, which has not voted for a Republican for Senate since 2002 or a Republican presidential candidate since 2004.But in the weeks after President Biden turned in a disastrous debate performance against Donald J. Trump last month, Mr. Heinrich was among the Democrats privately panicking. Polls showed New Mexico slipping into an expanding universe of potentially winnable states for the former president — foretelling an electoral disaster for Mr. Biden and trouble in the senator’s own re-election race.So Mr. Biden’s decision last weekend to exit the race took a weight off the shoulders of Mr. Heinrich and other Democratic incumbents, who now describe a sense of hope and momentum overtaking the doom and gloom that had permeated their party since late June.“It just feels like a completely different world than a week ago,” said Mr. Heinrich, who is facing a challenge from Nella Domenici, the daughter of the state’s last Republican senator, Pete Domenici, a popular figure and household name in New Mexico. “Across the board — engagement, social media, anecdotal — everything feels different. I feel better about the broad momentum.”Mr. Biden’s withdrawal is still fresh, polling is only beginning to come in and Democrats still face significant challenges in holding their thin Senate majority and gaining control of the House.But lawmakers who just days ago were bracing for what they feared would be a November wipeout say the ascension of Vice President Kamala Harris to the top of the ticket has stabilized races and given Democrats a fighting chance. Instead of running from awkward questions about Mr. Biden’s age, mental acuity and fitness, Democrats are hoping to benefit from a surge of grass-roots support for Ms. Harris.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

Want to follow the women’s gymnastics competition in Paris, but don’t understand the skills or how they’re scored? Here’s a guide.For two weeks every four years, women’s gymnastics is one of the biggest sports in the world. The rest of the time, those of us watching are kind of a niche group.That can make it hard to fully appreciate what you’re seeing when the athletes take the Olympic stage. If you want to know what’s required on each apparatus, or what that skill you saw was, or how to distinguish good routines from great ones, we’re here to help.Here, we’ll look at the vault, starting with a broad overview and then moving into the technical details. We also have guides to the uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise.The basicsGymnasts sprint down an 82-foot runway, use a springboard to propel themselves onto the vault (sometimes called the vaulting table or just the table), push themselves into the air and perform flips and twists before landing on the mat.Many gymnasts, mainly those who don’t specialize in the event, complete only one vault. But those who want to qualify for the vault final must attempt two, and their methods must be from different “families.” (More on that later.)Gymnasts receive one score for difficulty and one for execution, and the two are combined. A gymnast who performs a difficult vault with some flaws can outscore one who does an easier vault cleanly. And while landing errors may be the easiest to spot, what happens in midair is just as important: A gymnast who takes a step but has impeccable form can score more highly than one who sticks the landing but has sloppy form.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

Want to follow the women’s gymnastics competition in Paris, but don’t understand the skills or how they’re scored? Here’s a guide.For two weeks every four years, women’s gymnastics is one of the biggest sports in the world. The rest of the time, those of us watching are kind of a niche group.That can make it hard to fully appreciate what you’re seeing when the athletes take the Olympic stage. If you want to know what’s required on each apparatus or how to distinguish good routines from great ones, we’re here to help.Here, we’ll look at the floor exercise, starting with a broad overview and then moving into technical details. We also have guides to the vault, uneven bars and balance beam.The basicsThe square floor mat is about 40 feet on each side, which makes the diagonal paths along which gymnasts tumble about 56 feet. A carpeted surface covers a layer of foam, over wood, over springs. The slight bounce of those springs allows gymnasts to do more difficult skills.Every floor routine must include:A flip with a twist of at least 360 degreesA double back flip, with or without twistsBackward and forward tumblingTwo leaps or hops in succession, either directly connected or with running steps in between. One must involve a 180-degree split.Floor routines, set to music of the gymnast’s choice — no lyrics allowed — last about 90 seconds and include three or four tumbling passes. Gymnasts generally do their most difficult passes first. They receive one score for difficulty and one for execution, and the two are added.Unlike the vault, which showcases pure power, the floor exercise combines power with artistry. In practice, though, some gymnasts don’t put as much effort into their choreography. But when a gymnast really puts on a performance, you can tell.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

It’s highly unusual for the nation’s authorities to publicly acknowledge a leak from the command​, which is one of South Korea’s top two spy agencies.South Korea was investigating a leak from its top military intelligence command​ that ​local news media said had caused a large amount of sensitive information, including personal data on the command’s agents abroad, to end up in North Korea, its military said Saturday.The military said in a brief statement that it planned to “deal sternly with” those responsible for the leak. But it declined to confirm the local media reports, pending its investigation of the Korea ​Defense Intelligence Command,​ where the leak took place.The command, a secretive arm of the South Korean military, specializes in gathering intelligence on North Korea, a heavily militarized country that often threatens ​its southern neighbor with nuclear weapons.It’s highly unusual for the South Korean authorities to publicly acknowledge a leak from the command​, which is one of South Korea’s top two spy agencies, along with the National Intelligence Service.The intelligence command runs a network of agents, including those disguised ​as South Korean diplomats or using other undercover identities, in China and other parts of Asia.The agents often spend years recruiting North Koreans overseas as their contacts. The information they collect augments the intelligence that the United States and its allies collect on North Korea through spy satellites or by intercepting electronic communications.If personal data about the agents ended up in North Korea, that could seriously damage South Korea’s ability to gather intelligence on the North.The last time a major breach of security was reported at the command was in 2018, when an active-duty military officer affiliated with the command was found to have sold classified information to foreign agents in China and Japan through a retired ​South Korean intelligence officer. The information he sold reportedly included data on the command’s agents in China or data on North Korean weaponry.North and South Korea run vigorous intelligence and counterintelligence operations against each other. South Korea still occasionally ​arrests people accused of spying for North Korea. In recent years, North Korea has also used an army of hackers to attack computer networks in the United States, South Korea and elsewhere to steal information or cryptocurrency.On Thursday, the United States, Britain and South Korea issued a joint advisory warning that North Korea​’s hackers have conducted a global cyber espionage campaign to steal classified military secrets to support​ its nuclear weapons program​.The U.S. Justice Department said ​on Thursday that a North Korean military intelligence operative had been indicted in​ a conspiracy to hack into American health care providers, NASA, U.S. military bases and international entities, stealing sensitive information and installing ransomware to fund more attacks​. A reward of up to $10 million has been offered for information that could lead to ​the arrest of the alleged North Korean operative, Rim Jong Hyok​. More

Want to follow the women’s gymnastics competition in Paris, but don’t understand the skills or how they’re scored? Here’s a guide.For two weeks every four years, women’s gymnastics is one of the biggest sports in the world. The rest of the time, those of us watching are kind of a niche group.That can make it hard to fully appreciate what you’re seeing when the athletes take the Olympic stage. If you want to know what’s required on each apparatus or how to distinguish good routines from great ones, we’re here to help.Here, we’ll look at the uneven bars, starting with a broad overview and then moving into technical details. We also have guides to the vault, balance beam and floor exercise.The basicsThe apparatus consists of two bars, one about five and a half feet high and one about eight feet high. Gymnasts swing in circles around the bars, fly between them, do pirouettes on their hands and perform release moves in which they let go of the bar and re-catch it. The best routines flow from one skill to the next.Routines must include at least one transition from the high bar to the low bar; one move releasing and catching the same bar; one 360-degree turn, or pirouette on the hands; and at least two different grips, or hand positions. Gymnasts receive one score for difficulty and one for execution, and the two are combined. The judges deduct for leg separation, flexed feet and other form issues; breaks in momentum; “empty swings,” in which the gymnast loses her balance or rhythm and has to swing back and forth to regain momentum before the next skill; and, of course, falls. It’s also a deduction if she isn’t fully vertical when moving into a handstand or finishing a turn.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

Want to follow the women’s gymnastics competition in Paris, but don’t understand the skills or how they’re scored? Here’s a guide.For two weeks every four years, women’s gymnastics is one of the biggest sports in the world. The rest of the time, those of us watching are kind of a niche group.That can make it hard to fully appreciate what you’re seeing when the athletes take the Olympic stage. If you want to know what’s required on each apparatus or how to distinguish good routines from great ones, we’re here to help.Here, we’ll look at the balance beam, starting with a broad overview and then moving into the technical details. We also have guides to the vault, uneven bars and floor exercise.The basicsThe beam is about 16 feet long, about four feet high and about four inches wide — not much wider than a credit card.Every routine must include:A successive series of two or more acrobatic skills (handsprings or flips). At least one must be a salto, meaning no hands.Two or more consecutive dance skills (turns, leaps or jumps). At least one must be a leap or jump featuring a 180-degree split.Acrobatic skills in multiple directions (backward versus forward or sideways).At least one turn or pirouette.Gymnasts receive one score for difficulty and one for execution, and the two are combined for their final score. In the best beam routines, the gymnast has no wobbles and, of course, no falls. (In reality, small balance checks are common.) Judges also deduct for poor form and excessive pauses between skills.The reigning Olympic champion is Guan Chenchen of China, and the reigning world champion is Simone Biles of the United States.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

An Oxford study estimates that despite cost-cutting efforts, Paris is spending more than $1 billion above the Games’ historical median cost.Like every city that hosts the Olympics, Paris designed its opening ceremony to make a splash, with ethereal dance performances, athletes floating down the Seine and a blowout performance by Celine Dion. A big display is table stakes, and hundreds of thousands of people jammed the city’s bridges and riverbanks for hours to cheer the flotilla.But to make these Olympics truly unique, Paris also had something quieter in mind: It vowed to buck the decades-long trend of spending a dizzying fortune on hosting them.That vision for a budget-conscious Olympics does not seem to have panned out. The tab for the Games in Paris, the first city to fully test cost-cutting reforms that the International Olympic Committee introduced in 2019, is at least $8.87 billion. That isn’t an eye-popping bill compared with the $17 billion that London spent in 2024, the estimated $28 billion that Tokyo spent in 2021 or the $24 billion that Rio de Janeiro spent in 2016 — the three most expensive Summer Games to date. But the figure is more than $1 billion above the historical median cost of hosting the Games, according to a study by researchers at Oxford’s Said Business School published in May. And it is about 115 percent above Paris’s initial estimate.“This is not the cheap Games that were promised,” the study concluded.Figuring out how to keep host city expenses on budget is vital for the Olympics, which have struggled to find host cities in places where citizens have a say in the decision. When the I.O.C. voted on Wednesday to give the 2030 Winter Games to the French Alps and the 2034 Winter Games to Salt Lake City, both cities were the only candidates.Repurposing buildings hasn’t necessarily solved the Games’ budgeting problem. Paris’s central argument in its bid for hosting rights was that reusing existing sporting facilities would help it avoid the steep capital investment that inflicted lasting economic pain on Olympic cities like Athens and Rio de Janeiro, as well as stave off anti-Olympic sentiment in the city. Los Angeles, host of the 2028 Summer Games, has promised no new Olympic buildings.But while refurbishing buildings may be more sustainable, adapting old monuments for the Olympics has taken years — at a cost that has not been revealed. Take the 125-year-old Grand Palais, a soaring iron, glass-roofed exhibition hall in central Paris, where fencing and taekwondo competitions will take place. It shut down for renovations in March 2021 and was scheduled to be closed for so long that the city constructed a new Grand Palais near the Eiffel Tower.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

She wrote two books about multiple generations of her forebears, including her mother, Lena Horne.Gail Lumet Buckley, who rather than follow her mother, Lena Horne, into show business, wrote two multigenerational books about their ambitious Black middle-class family, died on July 18 at her home in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 86.Her daughter Jenny Lumet, a screenwriter and film and television producer, said the cause was heart failure.Mrs. Buckley was inspired to chronicle her family history in the early 1980s, when her mother asked her to store an old trunk in her basement. It had belonged to Ms. Horne’s father, Edwin Jr., known as Teddy, and contained hundreds of artifacts that had belonged to relatives dating back six generations, to Sinai Reynolds, who had been born into slavery around 1777 and who in 1859 bought her freedom and that of members of her family.“There were photographs, letters, bills, notes,” Mrs. Buckley told The New York Times in a joint interview with her mother in 1986, as well as “speakeasy tickets, gambling receipts, college diplomas.”Those disparate paper fragments of history helped her structure “The Hornes: An American Family” (1986).Mrs. Buckley was inspired to chronicle her family history when she discovered, in an old trunk, hundreds of artifacts that had belonged to relatives dating back six generations.Alfred A. KnopfWe 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