Elections

A problem with Microsoft’s Azure system also hit check-in and booking systems at Allegiant and Sun Country Airlines.Frontier Airlines briefly grounded all flights on Thursday amid a major outage in Microsoft networks, which also knocked out some computer systems at low-cost carriers Allegiant Air and Sun Country Airlines.Microsoft said on the status page for Azure, its flagship cloud computing platform, that the problem began at 5:56 p.m. and affected multiple systems for customers in the central United States.“Our systems are currently impacted by a Microsoft outage, which is also affecting other companies. During this time booking, check-in, access to your boarding pass, and some flights may be impacted,” Frontier said in a post on X.The airline issued a ground stop for all its flights, according to a notice posted on the Federal Aviation Administration’s website. The ground stop was lifted about 35 minutes later.Airlines sometimes issue these orders to temporarily halt flights because of technical issues.Frontier did not specify how many flights and passengers have been affected so far. The Denver-based airline operates a fleet of more than 100 planes, according to its website.The Microsoft outage hit at least two other airlines.“One of our information vendors is experiencing a global outage affecting multiple airlines. As a result, some of our services are temporarily unavailable,” Sun Country said.Allegiant said on X that customers may face problems with check-ins, bookings and issuing boarding passes. More

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Five days after a gunman tried to assassinate him at a political rally, former President Donald J. Trump on Thursday night described his personal experience of the shooting as he formally accepted the Republican Party’s presidential nomination and called on Americans to see in him a unifier.“As you already know, the assassin’s bullet came within a quarter of an inch of taking my life,” Mr. Trump said at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. “So many people have asked me what happened — ‘Tell us what happened, please.’ And therefore, I’ll tell you exactly what happened, and you’ll never hear it from me a second time, because it’s actually too painful to tell.”The crowd inside Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee was rapt and silent as Mr. Trump described turning his head to look at a chart on a screen behind him and then feeling a bullet hit his ear. He was lucky, he said, he had not turned further.“I’m not supposed to be here tonight,” Mr. Trump said. The crowd, devoted fans of a man they had nominated to be their presidential candidate, responded in unison by chanting, “Yes, you are.”Mr. Trump shook his head. “I’m not,” he said, adding that it was only “by the grace of almighty God” that he had survived.On the stage with him was the jacket and helmet of Corey Comperatore, a volunteer firefighter and supporter who was killed in the shooting. Leaving the podium briefly, Mr. Trump kissed the helmet.The former president’s recounting of the shooting, in his first public speech since the assassination attempt, came as he encouraged Americans to unify behind him.Mr. Trump — who frequently mocks his political enemies, has promised retribution against them and often insists this election is the country’s “final battle” — insisted that Americans must put aside the divisions that he has often stoked.“The discord and division in our society must be healed. We must do it quickly,” Mr. Trump said. “As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny. We rise together. Or we fall apart.” More

The tableau of Trump family unity is all but complete: Melania Trump has joined Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, in seats with other V.I.P.s at the back of the arena.At times in the past four years — in January 2021, in November 2022 — it seemed that the Trumps might be banished to the political hinterlands. But this week’s events made it clear that the family is at the center of the modern Republican Party more than ever before.Politics has become the family business. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have been fixtures of the convention. Lara Trump, Eric’s wife, spoke Tuesday as the co-chair of the Republican Party. Donald Trump Jr.’s teenage daughter, Kai, spoke Wednesday night, after the younger Mr. Trump’s longtime fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle. Tiffany Trump, Mr. Trump’s younger daughter, was in the audience on Monday.But Mr. Trump’s wife, his youngest son and his older daughter have been notably absent — not just this week, but throughout the campaign. (Barron Trump, 18, has not appeared in the family seats Thursday night.)Melania Trump, whose politics and relationship with her husband have long drawn considerable interest, has largely opted out of this campaign. Her last known political appearance with Mr. Trump was when they went together to cast their primary ballots on Super Tuesday in March. The next week, he clinched the nomination.As Mr. Trump took the stage, Mrs. Trump was seated next to J.D. Vance, his vice-presidential pick.Ivanka Trump, 42, introduced Mr. Trump at the conventions in 2016 and 2020. She was a senior adviser to her father in the White House.This time, she said at the outset of his run that she would not be involved. Ms. Trump, a mother of three, has focused on family life and has not appeared on the campaign trail. More

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage after the 7.4 magnitude earthquake.A 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck northern Chile on Thursday. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.The quake struck 28 miles south of San Pedro Atacama at a depth of 72 miles, or 117 kilometers, according to the United States Geological Survey. San Pedro is a town in the Atacama desert that is a major tourist hub for northern Chile.This is a developing story. More

Senator Jon Tester of Montana called on President Biden to drop his campaign for re-election on Thursday night, becoming the second sitting Democratic senator to publicly join the effort to push Mr. Biden out of the race. “I have worked with President Biden when it has made Montana stronger, and I’ve never been afraid to stand up to him when he is wrong,” Mr. Tester, a vulnerable incumbent whose opponent has sought to tie him tightly to Mr. Biden, said in a statement. “And while I appreciate his commitment to public service and our country, I believe President Biden should not seek re-election to another term.”Mr. Tester’s Washington office said he was also endorsing an open process to select the nominee at the Democratic National Convention, rather than throwing his support behind Vice President Kamala Harris.Mr. Tester is locked in a tight re-election race of his own, and he needs all the distance from Mr. Biden he can get in his deep-red state. Even before Mr. Biden’s poor debate performance last month put the spotlight back on his age and mental acuity, Mr. Tester had kept him at arm’s length while working to appear bipartisan and appeal to moderate and Republican voters. Mr. Tester is just the second Democratic senator to call on Mr. Biden to quit, though a group of House Democrats have done so and other senators have been said to be pushing Mr. Biden to the exits behind the scenes.Last month, when Mr. Tester debated Tim Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL and businessman who is his Republican rival for the Senate seat, he criticized the Biden administration’s energy policies and its approach toward immigration. “The bottom line is: He doesn’t listen to me enough,” Mr. Tester said of Mr. Biden. “He needs to.”But Mr. Sheehy has hammered at Mr. Tester, tying him to Mr. Biden and accusing him of being “the deciding vote for Biden’s America-Last agenda.” One of his recent advertisements played a clip of Mr. Tester vouching for Mr. Biden’s mental competency: “He’s absolutely 100 percent with it,” Mr. Tester says. Polls of the Montana Senate contest have shown a close race, with Mr. Sheehy often narrowly ahead.Mr. Sheehy immediately slammed Mr. Tester’s statement on Thursday night, which was reported by a local Montana news outlet moments before the senator released it publicly.“Is Jon Tester finally admitting he lied when he told us Biden is 100% with it?! And does this mean he’s endorsing his former colleague Kamala Harris??” Mr. Sheehy wrote on X. “Two-Faced Tester is desperately trying to distance himself from the train wreck he’s enabled and forced on Montanans.” More

The former Fox News host, who is now firmly a part of Donald Trump’s inner circle, appeared to relish his return to the limelight.Tucker Carlson’s return to prime time kicked off with a roar.Mr. Carlson, a Fox News star until his firing 15 months ago, brought the Fiserv Forum to its feet when he emerged onstage at the Republican convention on Thursday evening, his support from the Make America Great Again crowd clearly intact. The grin on his face suggested just how much he relished his return to the limelight.Mr. Carlson is freshly embedded in former President Donald J. Trump’s inner circle, and he delivered an unscripted monologue straight out of his old Fox News show, complete with off-color jokes and dark visions of a nation at risk of falling into tyranny should Mr. Trump not prevail in November.And on a night when convention organizers were keen to present a softer, more humanized version of Mr. Trump — emphasizing his love of family and music — Mr. Carlson broached harder-edged topics, making thinly veiled cracks about President Biden’s age and nodding to Republican conspiracy theories that the 2020 election had been stolen.“You could take, I don’t know, a mannequin, a dead person, and make them president,” Mr. Carlson said to laughter. “You could. You could! I’m just saying, it’s theoretically possible. With enough cheating, that could happen.”The audience loved it, bathing Mr. Carlson in cheers. There were whoops when he dropped the fact that he was speaking extemporaneously, a rhetorical flourish meant to underscore an image of authenticity. (His teleprompter stayed blank throughout his nearly 12-minute appearance.)Mr. Carlson went on to praise Mr. Trump as “the funniest person I ever met in my life,” adding a line that chimed with the softer themes of the evening: “You can’t be funny without perspective or without empathy.”Mr. Trump, though, did not hear the plaudits in person: He was not in the hall for Mr. Carlson’s appearance.One of Mr. Carlson’s attempted jokes did seem to fall flat. With a smirk, he called Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, whom he lobbied for as a Trump running mate, “one of the only politicians in Washington who is actually very close to his own wife.”The line landed awkwardly, given the conspicuous absence of Melania Trump from this week’s convention, although the former first lady arrived at the convention hall later in the evening. More

Finding your way into Jacob McDermott’s puzzle may be a challenge.Jump to: Tricky CluesFRIDAY PUZZLE — Here at the Wordplay headquarters, we usually give beginning solvers two pieces of advice: Start with Mondays and solve your “gimmes” first. Gimmes are those entries you definitely know.By the time solvers work their way to the Friday puzzles, finding those gimmes becomes harder because the clues are considerably more opaque.You don’t believe me? Let’s look at an example, RAYON, a fairly common entry in puzzles. (RAYON is a random choice to avoid spoilers; the word is not in Jacob McDermott’s puzzle.)Some early-week clues for RAYON include [Synthetic fabric] and [Synthetic fabric that feels like silk]. With those clues and one or two crossing entries, most people would probably be able to figure it out. When the word has appeared on Fridays, however, some of the clues have included [So-called “laboratory’s first gift to the loom”] and [Chardonnet’s invention]. You can see how finding a way into some late-week puzzles might be difficult.That’s how I felt when I read the clue list for Mr. McDermott’s puzzle. On my first pass, I was able to fill in a bit of the eastern section of the grid, starting with 33A. (Don’t judge, I never said I was classy.) And that was it. I was stuck.My heart sank a little, which I actually consider to be a good sign for a Friday puzzle. It means that there is going to be a hopefully fun tug of war between me and the constructor. But the sinking feeling is also a signal to put the puzzle down and come back to it later. No sense in getting frustrated, right?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