Elections

Ruth Westheimer loved to give advice — and often strayed from her area of expertise as she tried, in her words, “to make the world a better place.”Ruth Westheimer spent a lot of time talking about sex. She did so with her own brand of frankness and good cheer on her pioneering radio show, “Sexually Speaking,” and on her daytime TV program, “The Dr. Ruth Show,” as well as in her column for Playgirl magazine, in her many books and in countless interviews and public appearances across more than four decades. It’s possible that Dr. Ruth, who died last week at 96, talked publicly about sex more than anyone else. Ever.But since her specialty touched on so many other aspects of the human experience, she also gave plenty of general life advice. Some of those lessons were pulled from her own difficult experience as a German Jewish refugee who lost her parents during the Holocaust. Or from her unhappy early relationships, though she found lasting love with her third husband, Manfred Westheimer, an engineer, after two brief marriages.In a 2012 interview with The Guardian, she spoke of the importance of turning a terrible experience into something positive. “I was left with a feeling that because I was not killed by the Nazis — because I survived — I had an obligation to make a dent in the world. What I didn’t know was that that dent would end up being me talking about sex from morning to night.”To describe her sense of purpose, she often used the phrase tikkun olam — Hebrew for “repairing the world” or, as she put it in a speech, “making the world a better place.” “I knew I had to do something for tikkun olam,” she said in a 2014 interview with Hadassah Magazine. “You can take horrible experiences you will never forget, but you can use the experiences to live a productive life.”In a 1984 interview with The New York Times, she noted the importance of humor in teaching. “If a professor leaves his students laughing,” she said, “they will walk away remembering what they have learned.”Dr. Ruth made her first appearance on The Tonight Show in 1982, when “Sexually Speaking” was catching on. When the host, Johnny Carson, said that many people are bashful talking about sex, Dr. Ruth offered a lesson in how to approach delicate subjects: “If you do it in good taste — and if you do it properly, then it can be — everything can be talked about. Everything.”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 father and daughter were found dead in the park after they texted 911 that they ran out of water and were lost while hiking in triple-digit temperatures.A man and his daughter died in Canyonlands National Park in Utah on Friday after they ran out of water and texted 911 for help while hiking along a challenging trail in temperatures of well over 100 degrees, according to the park officials and the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office.The causes of death had not been determined, but emergency dispatchers received text messages on Friday afternoon from the man, Albino Herrera Espinoza, 52, and his daughter Beatriz Herrera, 23, that said they had run out of water and were lost. National Park Service rangers and Bureau of Land Management personnel found both of them later that afternoon, already dead.There was an excessive-heat warning in the park at the time and the high temperature for the day was 106 degrees, according to AccuWeather.The two, who were from Green Bay, Wis., were hiking the Syncline Trail, which is considered strenuous and is where most of the rescues in the park occur, according to Canyonlands National Park. The trail is a little over eight miles and has a steep elevation change of about 1,500 feet.Karen Garthwait, public affairs specialist for Southeast Utah Group parks, said the trail has sections where hikers are between rock walls that radiate heat — and that hiking in these spots is sometimes referred to as “being in the oven.”The two deaths were the latest in Southwestern parks at a time when heat waves have consumed much of the United States. Millions of people in the western United States have experienced back-to-back days with triple-digit temperatures. June broke global heat records for the 13th consecutive month.On July 7, a 50-year-old man was found dead while hiking in Grand Canyon National Park during a heat wave. His cause of death is still not known. He was the third hiker to have died there in less than a month amid the heat.In late June, two people died from heat-related causes at Lake Mead National Recreation Area, and another died in Death Valley National Park on July 6.Park officials in both Canyonlands and Grand Canyon National Park warn against hiking during the hottest hours of the day, especially during heat advisories. In both parks, there is little shade on trails to protect people from the sun, and heat can increase as hikers descend into canyons.There have been 26 deaths in Canyonlands National Park from 2007 to April 2023, according to National Park Service data. Two of those deaths have been from hyperthermia, which is when the body overheats. More

After a strong start to the year, spending has slumped as a real estate downturn weighs on consumers. Communist Party leaders are meeting this week to discuss what to do about it.Economic growth slumped in China through the spring after a strong start this year, according to data released on Monday, as a real estate crash caused consumers to spend more cautiously.The latest growth statistics for the world’s second-largest economy, covering April through June, put further pressure on the Communist Party as its leaders gathered on Monday in Beijing for a four-day conclave to set a course for the country’s economic future.In a country known for strict controls on the flow of information, the Chinese government is maintaining a particularly tight grip ahead of the party gathering, known as the Third Plenum, which typically takes place every five years. China’s statistical bureau canceled its usual news conference that accompanies the release of economic data and Chinese companies are mostly avoiding the release of earnings reports this week.China’s National Bureau of Statistics said that the economy grew 0.7 percent in the second quarter over the previous three months, a little below the expectations of most economists in the West. When projected out for the entire year, the data indicates that China’s economy grew during the spring at an annual rate of about 2.8 percent — a little less than half its growth rate in the first three months of this year.The statistical bureau also revised down its estimate of growth in the first quarter. That growth rate, projected out for the full year, was about 6.1 percent, not the 6.6 percent rate that was disclosed in April.Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, is trying to win confidence in his policies at home and abroad as growth falters and the property market suffers.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

For Donald J. Trump’s most ardent supporters, the assassination attempt on Saturday was the climax and confirmation of a story that Mr. Trump has been telling for years.It is the story of a fearless leader surrounded by shadowy forces and intrigue, of grand conspiracies to thwart the will of the people who elected him. A narrative in which Mr. Trump, even before a gunman tried to take his life, was already a martyr.“They’re not coming after me,” he declared at the first rally of his 2024 campaign, last year in Waco, Texas. “They’re coming after you — and I’m just standing in their way.”In the hours after the shooting — before the gunman’s name, much less a motive, was known — many Republican politicians and Trump supporters blamed Democrats and the news media. They pointed to portrayals of Mr. Trump as an authoritarian and anti-democratic force in politics, which they argued created a climate that made an attempt on his life inevitable.“Dems and their friends in the media knew exactly what they were doing” in comparing Mr. Trump to Hitler, Donald Trump Jr. wrote on Sunday in one of several accusatory posts on X about his father’s shooting.Others pointed to President Biden’s remarks on a call with donors last week in which he said, “It’s time to put Trump in a bull’s-eye.” Citing the speech, Mike Collins, a Republican congressman from Georgia, wrote on X: “Joe Biden sent the orders.”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

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Prince Aemond makes a move — another move, that is, after the one where he blasted his own brother with dragonfire.In his series of epic fantasy novels A Song of Ice and Fire, the author George R.R. Martin has based a trio of men-at-arms on Curly, Moe and Larry, the Three Stooges. He has used the superheroes Blue Beetle and Green Arrow as the basis for noble houses’ emblematic sigils. During the events depicted in “House of the Dragon,” the important House Tully is variously ruled over by Lords Grover, Elmo, and Kermit, with a Ser Oscar thrown in for good measure, as if “Sesame Street” had come to the Seven Kingdoms.So do I think it’s possible that in his book “Fire and Blood,” the basis of “House of the Dragon,” Martin put Prince Aemond Targaryen in control of Westeros just as a cheeky way to illustrate the maxim “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”? I wouldn’t put it past him.Compared to the all-out dragon warfare of last week’s outing, this week’s episode was a low-key affair, though not an inconsequential one. Aemond One-Eye’s ascension to the regency as his comatose brother, Aegon, clings to life in a burned and battered body is an alarming development in several respects. Already in possession of the Targaryen civil war’s deadliest weapon, the ancient dragon Vhagar, Aemond now has the political power to match his firepower. That sort of consolidation of control can’t bode well for any of the other prominent voices on the small council, particularly that of Aemond and Aegon’s increasingly marginalized mother, the dowager Queen Alicent.Even his nominal supporters visibly chafe at their choice of regent, though they feel that choice is limited at best. Ser Criston Cole saw firsthand how Aemond tried to kill his brother, first with Vhagar and then up close and personal, but he tells none of this to Alicent. He goes along with Aemond’s rise not despite the horror he witnessed but because of it. This is now a war of dragons, he tells Alicent, and as such they must be led by a dragon rider.The logic of Ser Larys Strong is more political than martial. How would it look, he asks, if they rejected the claim of Rhaenyra on the grounds of her sex, only to raise up another woman, Alicent, as Queen Regent? The legal and sociopolitical waters would be muddied considerably, and support put at risk. With the exception of Grandmaester Orwyle (Kurt Egyiawan), a habitual voice of reason, the men of the council all back the male candidate over the female.The episode’s director, Clare Kilner, lets the camera linger on the face of the actor who plays Alicent, Olivia Cooke, at this point. As the music of the composer Ramin Djawadi strikes an ominously modern tone, the camera draws ever closer, as Queen Alicent struggles to contain her … anger? Embarrassment? Fear? Pain, especially over her abandonment by both her lover and her son? All of the above are visible in Cooke’s extraordinarily communicative eyes.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