Elections

In 2018 an international team of scientists — from labs in Houston, Copenhagen, Barcelona and beyond — got their hands on a remarkable biological specimen: a skin sample from a 52,000-year-old woolly mammoth that had been recovered from the permafrost in Siberia. They probed the sample with an innovative experimental technique that revealed the three-dimensional architecture of the mammoth’s genome. The resulting paper was published on Thursday in the journal Cell.Hendrik Poinar, an evolutionary geneticist at McMaster University in Canada, was “floored” — the technique had successfully captured the original geometry of long stretches of DNA, a feat never before accomplished with an ancient DNA sample. “It’s absolutely beautiful,” said Dr. Poinar, who reviewed the paper for the journal.The typical method for extracting ancient DNA from fossils, Dr. Poinar said, is still “kind of cave man.” It produces short fragments of code composed of a four-letter molecular alphabet: A (adenine), G (guanine), C (cytosine), T (thymine). An organism’s full genome resides in cell nuclei, in long, unfragmented DNA strands called chromosomes. And, vitally, the genome is three-dimensional; as it dynamically folds with fractal complexity, its looping points of contact help dictate gene activity.“To have the actual architectural structure of the genome, which suggests gene expression patterns, that’s a whole other level,” Dr. Poinar said.“It’s a new kind of fossil, a fossil chromosome,” said Erez Lieberman Aiden, a team member who is an applied mathematician, a biophysicist and a geneticist and directs the Center for Genome Architecture at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Technically, he noted, it is a non-mineralized fossil, or subfossil, since it has not turned to stone.Erez Lieberman Aiden, director of the Center for Genome Architecture at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York TimesThe trunk of a 39,000-year-old woolly mammoth nicknamed Yuka that also yielded fossil chromosomes in the study.Love Dalén/Stockholm UniversityWe 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

There’s always more to a photo than what we see, as shown by standout exhibitions at this year’s Rencontres d’Arles in southern France.Deep beneath the town hall in Arles, France, past some unassuming service counters and down several flights of narrow steps, the artist Sophie Calle has buried some things that she can’t bear to part with.Her show, called “Neither Give Nor Throw Away,” is a standout exhibition at this year’s Rencontres d’Arles, an annual summer photography festival founded in 1970 that presents group and solo shows of new and old photographic works in museums, churches, repurposed storefronts and parks across this Provençal city of 52,000 residents.This year’s edition of the Rencontres, which runs through Sept. 29, is titled “Beneath the Surface,” and Calle’s contribution takes place in a labyrinthine series of underground caverns bisected by long arched balustrades. The shadowy walkways and damp, moldy atmosphere are ideal for her project, in which she displays works from her storeroom that were damaged in a storm. Advised by restorers to destroy them, she decided instead to give them a subterranean afterlife. And so, the works are now “buried” in Arles, where they continue to decompose, but have not, at least, been forsaken.Sophie Calle’s exhibition “Neither Give Nor Throw Away” is in a series of underground caverns beneath Arles’s town hall.Teresa Suarez/EPA, via ShutterstockCalle — a photographer, writer and conceptual artist — is one of France’s most lauded and prolific contemporary art makers. Family, absence, death, romance and archives are themes that recur in her work, which often pairs images and text. In Arles, water-damaged photographs show a charred and discarded bed, formerly Calle’s own, in which a man who was renting a room from Calle’s mother burned to death, and a series of modest grave plots with stark markers: Mother, Sister, Child.Others come from a series titled “The Blind,” which matches modest black-and-white portraits that Calle took of blind people with her photographic interpretations of their responses, also present as framed texts, when she asked them what they imagine to be beautiful. (Answers include the sea, the color blue and Alan Delon.)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

Readers discuss his idea for picking an alternative to President Biden and offer suggestions of their own.To the Editor:Re “Biden Won’t Win. Democrats Must Have a Plan. Here’s One,” by James Carville (Opinion guest essay, July 11):Mr. Carville has given us a good option for the Democratic Party presidential selection process, with former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama selecting eight potential candidates and then hosting four regional “auditions.” A refinement: At the convention in Chicago, winnow the field like the N.C.A.A.’s March Madness championship process.Using the Elite Eight, the Final Four and then the championship game format, in three nights of the convention have votes to lop off first the bottom four, then the bottom two, and then the last two would be voted on. The winner would emerge as a consensus choice; the runner-up could be offered the veep position. Talk about riveting TV!Lamont WiltseeCarmel Valley, Calif.To the Editor:James Carville makes one structural mistake in his piece calling for four town halls around the country. President Biden should be invited to be one of the participants and compete on an even footing with the other candidates. Let Mr. Biden keep running, but make him prove he’s the one.Keith LiggettSilverton, British ColumbiaTo the Editor:James Carville has been a stalwart for Democrats, so it is sad to see him jumping ship just when the best president since Franklin D. Roosevelt needs his support most. His proposed nominee plan is a waste of campaign time better used to hammer away at the defects and danger of a Donald Trump presidency.History shows that voters returned Roosevelt to a fourth term to continue the war effort despite known health issues. The battle to save democracy is on the ballot, and President Biden is the proven commander. So, James, get back in the boat and row in unison.Richard SigalNew YorkTo the Editor:James Carville’s plan for a post-Biden Democratic campaign gave me hope for the first time since the disastrous debate. Those who suggest that Kamala Harris must be President Biden’s replacement ignore her low poll numbers, voters’ unfamiliarity with her and a sense that she hasn’t done anything as vice president. Mr. Carville’s plan would give all of us a chance to get to know her better as well as to explore the broader Democratic bench.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

Fiscal hawks are lamenting the transformation of the party that claimed to prize fiscal restraint and are warning of dire economic consequences.When Donald J. Trump ran for president in 2016, the official Republican platform called for imposing “firm caps on future debt” to “accelerate the repayment of the trillions we now owe.”When Mr. Trump sought a second term in 2020, the party’s platform pummeled Democrats for refusing to help Republicans rein in spending and proposed a constitutional requirement that the federal budget be balanced.Those ambitions were cast aside in the platform that the Republican Party unveiled this week ahead of its convention. Nowhere in the 16-page document do the words “debt” or “deficit” as they relate to the nation’s grim fiscal situation appear. The platform included only a glancing reference to slashing “wasteful” spending, a perennial Republican talking point.To budget hawks who have spent years warning that the United States is spending more than it can afford, the omissions signaled the completion of a Republican transformation from a party that once espoused fiscal restraint to one that is beholden to the ideology of Mr. Trump, who once billed himself the “king of debt.”“I am really shocked that the party that I grew up with is now a party that doesn’t think that debt and deficits matter,” said G. William Hoagland, the former top budget expert for Senate Republicans. “We’ve got a deficit deficiency syndrome going on in our party.”The U.S. national debt is approaching $35 trillion and is on pace to top $56 trillion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. At that point, the United States would be spending about as much on interest payments to its lenders — $1.7 trillion — as it does on Medicare.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 downpour took place exactly a year after a storm caused devastating flooding in some of the same towns.Heavy rain late Wednesday and early Thursday caused flash flooding and forced dozens of overnight rescues and evacuations in central Vermont, affecting some of the same towns that were devastated by record rain and flooding a year ago.One death in the state is believed to have been caused by the extreme weather, Jennifer Morrison, the state’s commissioner of public safety, said at a news conference Thursday morning, though she added that the cause had not been confirmed. The death occurred when a vehicle was swept into floodwater in Peacham, east of Montpelier, she said.The rainfall, attributed to the passing remnants of Tropical Storm Beryl, totaled as much as 5 or 6 inches in some locations, and was expected to continue on Thursday. The National Weather Service in Burlington predicted “excessive rainfall risk” through 8 a.m. Friday in and around Burlington, Middlebury, Stowe and Montpelier, the state capital, where floodwaters inundated the downtown area on July 10, 2023.A flood watch was in effect Thursday morning for much of Vermont and northern New York. Two rivers — including the Winooski, downstream from Waterbury — had yet to crest, officials said.State officials at the news conference said that three bridges had been destroyed by floodwaters and three others damaged, in locations including Norton, Charleston, Morristown and Barnet. The officials stressed that the situation remained dangerous, and urged residents to stay away from rivers, where flood-borne debris continued to pose hazards.Among the places hardest hit on Thursday was Barre, a city of 8,500 next to Montpelier that was devastated by the two-day storm last summer. Local media outlets reported on Thursday morning that Barre’s Main Street was again underwater.More than a dozen swift-water rescue teams, including one from New Hampshire and another from Connecticut, made 118 rescues from Wednesday into Thursday, officials said. Rescues were continuing in Lyndonville, northeast of Montpelier.Mental health counselors were deployed in some communities on Thursday morning to assist residents experiencing trauma, officials said.“I know last night’s flooding — in many of the very same communities impacted on the same day last year — is devastating for these families, business owners and community members,” Gov. Phil Scott wrote on his Facebook page Thursday morning. “My team, emergency responders and local leaders are working around the clock to help ensure public safety, and we will act as quickly as possible in recovery.” More

We are honoring the Top 9 winners of our Student Open Letter Contest by publishing their entries. This one is by Emma Wang, age 15.This letter, by Emma Wang, 15, of Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Conn., is one of the Top 9 winners of The Learning Network’s Student Open Letter Contest, for which we received 8,065 entries. You can find the work of all the winners, as we publish them, here.Dear Singapore Government, My memories of Singapore make me who I am, a proud citizen of a beautiful country. However, there is one part of Singapore’s past that no citizen is proud of: colonialism. So, I am asking you to take down the statue of Sir Stamford Raffles. With the second highest G.D.P. per capita in the world, Singapore’s robust economy is often used to justify its colonial past. The misguided notion that British imperialists brought “Western know-how” to build our prosperous society is problematic, as it glorifies colonization and a false notion of Western superiority. In 1963, when Singapore gained its independence, “nearly 70 percent of the population lived in slums,” according to SG101, a government website that tells the story of Singapore’s journey as a nation. Britain left us with almost no local industry, while unemployment rates hovered in the double digits. The stark contrast of this despair with Singapore’s current success is not a result of British imperialism — it is an astonishing rebound from it. Located south of the Straits of Malacca, Singapore’s natural deep-sea ports place it at the crossroads between two important shipping channels. Now, with more than 5,000 maritime companies and over 130 international shipping groups, Singapore’s ports are among the busiest in the world. These ports were able to sustain Singapore’s economy in a fundamental way after independence, and before colonization; Britain simply saw this potential and exploited it to its advantage. Singapore also created a decolonization plan with impressive urgency and effectiveness. As SG101 describes, “While some newly independent nations with large domestic markets were adopting protectionist policies — ejecting foreign companies, slashing imports, and manufacturing their own products for the domestic market — Singapore had to go against the grain and open our borders to foreign investors.” This unique, and brave, policy allowed Singapore to become economically self-reliant. Clearly, Singapore’s economic success is not simply a continuation of British ideologies, but rather the country’s strategy for decolonization and economic independence. Colonial influence will always be our past, but do we need to celebrate it in the present? The statue of Sir Stamford Raffles encourages problematic justifications of colonialism, obscuring Singapore’s success. The original statue stands in front of Empress Place, with a plaque that reads “This tablet to the memory of Sir Stamford Raffles, to whose foresight and genius Singapore owes its existence and prosperity ….” Owes? The statue misleadingly attributes Singapore’s hard-won prosperity to him, “the founder,” and British imperialism. 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

Mr. Gregory was found dead on June 13 in his car, along with his service dog.Benji Gregory, who starred as a child in the hit television series “ALF” in the 1980s, has died. He was 46.His death was confirmed by his sister, Rebecca Pfaffinger, who said that an official cause of death was still pending.According to Mrs. Pfaffinger, Mr. Gregory and his service dog, Hans, were found dead in his car on June 13 at a bank’s parking lot in Peoria, Ariz. She said in a Facebook post that he had fallen asleep in the vehicle and had died of heatstroke.Mr. Gregory was best known for his role as Brian Tanner on “ALF,” an NBC sitcom that premiered in September 1986, when he was 8. The show featured a suburban family whose world is thrown upside down when a back-talking, pointy-eared alien from the planet Melmac crash-lands through their garage. The Tanner family calls the alien ALF, short for Alien Life Form, and he stays with them, causing mischief and voicing his observations about humankind. “ALF” was a hit and aired for four seasons.“It became quite natural to interact with ALF,” Mr. Gregory said of the experience in a 2022 interview with BTM Legends Corner, a show on YouTube.“ALF,” short for Alien Life Form, aired on NBC from 1986 to 1990. AlamyHe was born Benjamin Gregory Hertzberg on May 26, 1978, in the Los Angeles area, according to his IMDB profile.Alongside “ALF,” Mr. Gregory appeared in a string of other hit shows in the 1980s, including “The A-Team,” “Punky Brewster” and “Amazing Stories.”Mr. Gregory’s film credits include “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” a 1986 comedy about a lonely computer programmer in Manhattan played by Whoopi Goldberg, and the 1993 animated movie “Once Upon a Forest.”He eventually moved on from acting and in 2004 became an aerographer’s mate for the U.S. Navy stationed in Biloxi, Miss., according to IMDB.He had lived with bipolar disorder and depression and received care for both, his sister said. More

The state has had more than 3,500 wildfires this year, and the peak of the annual fire season has yet to arrive.Californians are once again thinking about the familiar perils of deadly wildfires as high temperatures and winds have made for an active early fire season.In recent weeks, more than 3,500 wildfires have erupted across California, the nation’s most populous state, from its northern boundary with Oregon to the Mexican border. Tens of thousands of people have had to flee their homes, including most residents in the city of Oroville last week.After two relatively calm fire years, Californians fear that the blazes will be more intense this summer and fall, threatening towns and polluting the air with smoke up and down the West Coast. Here’s what to know.What’s the latest on the most intense fires?On Friday, the Lake fire started in the grassy hills of the Los Padres National Forest, about 50 miles northwest of Santa Barbara. In mere days, it has burned almost 29,000 acres and has become the state’s largest wildfire so far this year, according to Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency.The fire initially drew attention because it threatened the property formerly known as Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch. Firefighters made early progress controlling the fire line and keeping it away from the ranch and other properties in the hills, but strong winds have continued to push the blaze southeast.Most of the fire has been in rural, rugged terrain, officials say, and it was 16 percent contained as of Wednesday. But it has still forced about 440 people to evacuate, according to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department, while more than 1,100 are under evacuation warnings.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