Elections

Visitors were mostly unaffected by the third and fourth drownings at New York City beaches this season, matching the total number of swimming deaths last summer.The scene at Coney Island on Saturday was typical for a humid and hot weekend in July: colorful towels, tents and umbrellas packed into the strip of sand.Along the famed boardwalk in Brooklyn, signs warned visitors of the potential dangers posed by lightning or strong currents, and delineated where and when it was safe to swim.Yet in one area, closed off by small red flags staked into the sand, a handful of people ventured into the water with no lifeguards present. To the east, where two teenage sisters drowned in the water the night before, swimmers splashed around, unaware or undeterred, enjoying an escape from the city’s heat as temperatures peaked just below 90 degrees.The two teenage sisters who drowned on Friday entered the ocean after the beach was closed.Dakota Santiago for The New York TimesThe sisters who drowned Friday night, Zainab Mohammed, 17, and Aisha Mohammed, 18, were the second pair of teenagers to drown off New York City’s beaches already this summer. At nearby Jacob Riis Park beach in Queens, two boys, ages 16 and 17, drowned just two weeks earlier. Both incidents happened on especially hot days, after the beaches closed but before the sun had set.On Saturday, another man died after being pulled from the water off Inwood Hill Park in Upper Manhattan, according to the police. He was transported to NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. 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 ridiculous number of candidates are contending to be governor of Tokyo and its surrounding prefecture. Many are not even trying to win.When voters in Tokyo cast their ballot for governor of the world’s largest city on Sunday, they will be spoiled for choice.Fifty-six candidates are contending for the office, a record. One who styles himself “the Joker” has proposed legalizing marijuana and says polygamy can address the nation’s declining birthrate. Another is a pro wrestler who hides his face on camera and vows to use artificial intelligence to complete governmental tasks. There’s a 96-year-old inventor who says he will deploy gas-fueled cars that do not emit carbon, and a 31-year-old entrepreneur who took off her shirt during a campaign video and promised “fun things.”It might look like democracy run amok. But in fact, the race is profoundly status quo and the incumbent is projected to win a third term.The proliferation of candidates reflects fatigue with politics as usual, and many of them are unserious attention seekers, creating a farcical, circuslike atmosphere and putting real change further out of reach.“I wonder if this is democracy in action, or whether it’s like an ‘up yours’ to democracy,” said Emma Dalton, a senior lecturer in Japanese Studies at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. Multiple candidates have criticized the incumbent, Yuriko Koike, “in the most vulgar way,” said Ms. Dalton. “Because they know she’s going to win.”Yuriko Koike, the current Tokyo governor, giving a speech on Saturday. She is strongly favored to win re-election.Yuichi Yamazaki/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWe 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 vote will determine the composition of France’s National Assembly, and the future of President Emmanuel Macron’s second term.Voters in France will cast ballots on Sunday in the final round of snap legislative elections. The results could force President Emmanuel Macron to govern alongside far-right opponents or usher in chronic political instability weeks before the Paris Summer Olympics.Mr. Macron called the elections for the 577-seat National Assembly, France’s lower and more prominent house of Parliament, last month in a risky gamble that appeared to have largely backfired after the first round of voting last week.Most polls close at 6 p.m. local time on Sunday, or as late as 8 p.m. in larger cities. Nationwide seat projections by polling institutes, based on preliminary results, are expected just after 8 p.m. Official results will come in throughout the night.Here is what to watch for.Will the far right win enough seats for an absolute majority?That will be the key question.The first round of voting was dominated by the nationalist, anti-immigration National Rally party. An alliance of left-wing parties called the New Popular Front came in a strong second, while Mr. Macron’s party and its allies came in third.Seventy-six seats were won outright — roughly half by the National Rally. But the rest went to runoffs.Over 300 districts were three-way races until over 200 candidates from left-wing parties and Mr. Macron’s centrist coalition pulled out to avoid splitting the vote and try to prevent the far right from winning.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 president defended his debate performance with exaggerations about polling, his recent appearances and his opponent.President Biden rejected concerns about his fumbling performance in the first presidential debate last month in a prime-time interview on Friday.In the interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, Mr. Biden downplayed and misstated polls showing him falling farther behind former President Donald J. Trump since the debate, exaggerated Mr. Trump’s proposals and made hyperbolic statements about his own record and recent events.Here’s a fact check.what Was SAID“After that debate, I did 10 major events in a row, including until 2 o’clock in the morning after the debate. I did events in North Carolina. I did events in — in — in Georgia, did events like this today, large crowds, overwhelming response, no — no — no slipping.”This is exaggerated. Since the debate on June 27, Mr. Biden has traveled up and down the East Coast and participated in more than a dozen events, according to his public calendar. Whether or not the events can be considered “major” and crowds “large” are matters of opinion, but Mr. Biden did misspeak at several.Before the interview on Friday, Mr. Biden said of Mr. Trump at a rally in Wisconsin that he would “beat him again in 2020.”At a Fourth of July barbecue with military members and their families, Mr. Biden referred to Mr. Trump as “one of our former colleagues” before correcting himself.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

Employees of the National Education Association picketed the site of the group’s annual convention after a walkout over issues including overtime pay.A strike by the staff of the nation’s largest teachers’ union has prompted President Biden to cancel a speech on Sunday in Philadelphia, where he was scheduled to address thousands of delegates to the union’s annual convention.The staff union of the National Education Association began its strike on Friday, citing management’s revocation of holiday overtime pay for the Fourth of July holiday and its refusal to provide information on $50 million in outsourced work that may have previously been done by N.E.A. staff. The strike has shut down the last three days of the four-day convention, as delegates declined to cross a picket line.Mr. Biden’s campaign said he would not do so, either. “President Biden is a fierce supporter of unions and he won’t cross a picket line,” a statement from his campaign said, adding that the president was still planning to travel to Pennsylvania over the weekend.The National Education Association has about 2.5 million members nationwide, not including retirees, according to a recent government filing. The staff union says it represents more than 350 employees assigned to the union’s headquarters in Washington.The staff union, the National Education Association Staff Organization, voted to authorize a strike in April, and its three-year contract expired in late May. It waged a one-day walkout in June. “N.E.A. has abandoned its union values with its actions at the bargaining table,” said the president of the staff union, Robin McLean, in a statement. “N.E.A. would rather cancel a multimillion-dollar convention than comply with labor law.”The N.E.A. said in a statement that it remained “fully committed to a fair bargaining process” and accused the staff union of circulating “misinformation” that “not only misrepresents the facts but also undermines the integrity of our ongoing efforts to honor a fair bargaining process.”The union added that the association offered generous benefits and competitive salaries, saying its current proposal would raise the average salary of staff union members to about $133,000 from about $124,000. The staff union said that salary increases had lagged for years and that most members would see an increase of less than 2 percent per year under the proposal.Strikes by unions’ staff members are not unheard of. Employees of the United Food and Commercial Workers union held a one-day walkout in May. The staff of a large local of the Service Employees International Union in California waged a two-week strike in 2022. More

A coach at San Jose State for seven decades, he helped establish the sport in America and trained generations of athletes, many of whom went to the Olympics.Yoshihiro Uchida, the longtime San Jose State University coach who helped establish judo as one of the most popular martial arts in America — and who was widely regarded as the best college judo coach in history — died on June 27 at his home in Saratoga, Calif. He was 104.His daughter Lydia Uchida-Sakai confirmed the death.The son of Japanese immigrants, Uchida, who went by the nickname Yosh, began coaching judo at San Jose State in the 1940s, while he was still a student there.It was a pivotal moment for the sport, which had been created in 1882 in Japan as a means of self-defense, built around a series of throws and holds that use opponents’ weight and movement against them. Americans had long incorporated elements of judo into other combat sports, and returning soldiers from the Pacific Theater brought a new level of interest in martial arts to the country.Uchida, who had been practicing judo since he was 10, despaired over the quality of the training available, especially at the higher levels. Working with a judo coach at the University of California, Berkeley, he established standards for competition, including weight classes, and in 1953 won approval from the Amateur Athletic Union.The first national amateur championships took place at San Jose State that same year. The first collegiate championships took place in 1962, and Mr. Uchida’s team won.Uchida in 2012 inside the San Jose State campus building that was renamed after him in 1997. It had been used as a processing center for Japanese Americans being sent to internment camps during World War II.Alexis Cuarezma for The New York TimesWe 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 host of “The Source” on WURD in Philadelphia said the president’s aides provided her with a list of eight questions to choose from.The questions asked of President Biden by two radio interviewers this week were provided in advance to the hosts by Mr. Biden’s aides at the White House, one of the hosts said Saturday morning on CNN.Andrea Lawful-Sanders, the host of “The Source” on WURD in Philadelphia, said White House officials provided her with a list of eight questions ahead of the interview on Wednesday.“The questions were sent to me for approval; I approved of them,” she told Victor Blackwell, the host of “First of All” on CNN. Asked if it was the White House that sent the questions to her in advance, she said it was.“I got several questions — eight of them,” she said. “And the four that were chosen were the ones that I approved.”Lauren Hitt, a spokeswoman for the Biden campaign, said it is “not uncommon” for the campaign to share preferred topics, but added that officials “do not condition interviews on acceptance of these questions” by the interviewer.“Hosts are always free to ask the questions they think will best inform their listeners,” she said. “In addition to these interviews, the president also participated in a press gaggle yesterday as well as an interview with ABC. Americans have had several opportunities to see him unscripted since the debate.”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

Representative Emilia Sykes is one of only a few Black Democrats in Congress who don’t resemble most of their constituents, and whose political survival this year will help determine which party controls the House.When Representative Emilia Sykes arrived at the regional airport in Akron on a recent Thursday morning to meet with dozens of local elected officials, she was the only Black person in the room.It wouldn’t be long before two others took seats in the audience, but it soon became clear that they were both related to her. Ms. Sykes briefly interrupted her remarks to welcome her parents: Vernon Sykes, a state senator, and Barbara Sykes, who sits on the Akron School Board.It is the kind of room that Ms. Sykes, 38, a first-term Democrat, is familiar with as one of only about a dozen Black members of Congress representing a majority-white district. And as she fights to defend her seat in a year when control of the House of Representatives is up for grabs, it represents a critical piece of the coalition that Ms. Sykes is toiling to keep together — one that includes a strong Democratic base but also a sizable portion of independents and moderate Republicans who crossed over to help her win the seat in 2022.Republicans, who hold a razor-thin majority and are toiling to keep their grasp on the House, have identified her as a top target for defeat in a district rated as a “tossup” by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. Her G.O.P. challenger, Kevin Coughlin, who is white, is a former state lawmaker who is well known in Akron politics.For Ms. Sykes, beating back the challenge means reminding voters as clearly and as often as possible what she has done to benefit them directly during her time in Congress. It also means steering clear of the bitter partisanship that is defining the presidential race and toiling to keep the focus off President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump, both of whom were viewed unfavorably by a majority of respondents in the latest New York Times/Siena poll.“What my focus is, is making sure that my constituents understand what I’ve been doing,” Ms. Sykes said in an interview. “And we can translate that work into votes.”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