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The Justice Department told victims’ families that it would propose a nearly $244 million fine and three years of company oversight to settle a fraud charge.The Justice Department plans to allow Boeing to avoid a criminal trial if it agrees to plead guilty to a fraud charge stemming from two fatal crashes of its 737 Max more than five years ago, according to two lawyers for families of the crash victims.Federal officials shared details of the offer on a call with the families on Sunday afternoon before bringing the deal to Boeing, according to the lawyers, Paul G. Cassell and Mark Lindquist.The terms include a nearly $244 million fine, a new investment in safety improvements, three years of scrutiny from an external monitor, and a meeting between Boeing’s board and the victims’ families, said Mr. Cassell, a University of Utah law professor.The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while Boeing declined to comment.Mr. Cassell, who represents more than a dozen of the families, said that he and the families found the deal to be “outrageous” and that it fell far short of what they had sought. He described the offer as a “sweetheart plea deal” because it would not force Boeing to admit fault in the deaths of the 346 people who died in the crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia in late 2018 and early 2019.“The families will strenuously object to this plea deal,” Mr. Cassell said in a statement. “The memory of 346 innocents killed by Boeing demands more justice than this.”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 plane crashed around 2 p.m. on Sunday in Delaware County, N.Y., the Federal Aviation Administration said. Multiple crews were searching for the aircraft.Emergency responders were searching for a small plane carrying five people that crashed in a rural part of New York State outside the Catskill Park on Sunday afternoon, the authorities said.The plane, a single-engine Piper PA-46, crashed around 2 p.m., the Federal Aviation Administration said. The National Transportation Safety Board is leading an investigation.It was not immediately clear what caused the crash or whether there were any injuries or fatalities. The search was initially focused on an area near Trout Creek, N.Y., which is about 45 minutes east of Binghamton, N.Y.Sarah Taylor Sulick, a public affairs specialist at the N.T.S.B, said that “it’s our understanding that the plane has not yet been located and the local authorities are conducting a search.”Preliminary information indicated that the plane left from Albert S. Nader Regional Airport in Oneonta, N.Y., with five people aboard, the authorities said.It was headed to Charleston, W.Va., when it crashed under unknown circumstances, Ms. Sulick said, adding that an N.T.S.B. investigator was expected to arrive at the scene on Monday.Dallis Wright, deputy coordinator for Delaware County Emergency Services, said emergency dispatchers received multiple calls Sunday that there was a plane in distress that appeared to be going down.The National Weather Service in Binghamton issued a request for a spot forecast at around 2:30 p.m. for an aircraft search in Delaware County.Multiple responders from local and state law enforcement agencies and fire and emergency services departments were on the ground on Sunday, using all-terrain vehicles, searching for the plane, Ms. Wright said.A helicopter that provides critical care to patients throughout New York and Pennsylvania was also on the scene.Delaware County, in south central New York, is a rural, mountainous region that is home to 19 towns and 10 villages. More

Margi Stevenson makes her New York Times debut.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesMONDAY PUZZLE — Solving a crossword on your phone may lack the nostalgic appeal of the pen-and-paper method, but I consider it the more whimsical option. Digital solving allows you to guess with abandon and then delete and correct your mistakes without consequence. And, so long as you aren’t trying to break any speed records, it’s a fun way to improve your skills as a solver: You’ll find that fewer and fewer guesses need correction over time.Today’s crossword, constructed by Margi Stevenson in her New York Times debut, showed me that I still had plenty of room for improvement. I had to fix nearly half of my Across entries (half!) once the crossings revealed them to be wrong. I chalk this up in part to the talents of the constructor: It takes a tightly crafted puzzle to leave so much room for error. But I’m also eager to compare notes with my fellow puzzle fiends, so let me know in the comments how you fared.Today’s ThemeI love the way that a clever crossword theme can breathe new life into an otherwise commonplace coincidence of the English language, letting us enjoy its wordplay anew. Ms. Stevenson has done just that with an ordinary series of homophones.To [Author on behalf of someone else] (15A) is to GHOSTWRITE. A [Bat mitzvah] (21A) is an example of a RELIGIOUS RITE. [One half of a noted aviation team] (45A) is ORVILLE WRIGHT. The rhyme of these entries is clear — but what’s the reason?We discover it at 55-Across: [Straight to the point … or, homophonically, what this answer is relative to this puzzle?] is FORTHRIGHT. Why? Because this entry is the fourth instance of the sound “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

The parent company of Redbox, which rents movies through kiosks, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Friday.Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, the parent company of the movie rental company Redbox, which is known for its distinctive red kiosks, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Friday.In the filing, Chicken Soup listed debts of about $970 million, and total assets of about $414 million. It owes millions to entertainment and media companies, including Universal Studios, Sony Pictures and BBC Studios Americas, as well as some retailers, such as Walgreens and Walmart, according to court filings.Chicken Soup for the Soul was founded in 1993 by two motivational speakers, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen. The company’s inspirational book series, with titles like “From Lemons to Lemonade” and “Angels Among Us,” contains collections of stories for specific audiences, for example new mothers or cat lovers.Its original book, published more than 30 years ago, dispensed life advice and stories of overcoming obstacles with the hope that it would heal readers’ souls just as “chicken soup has a healing effect on the body of the ill.”The company, which has published more than 300 titles, has sold more than 500 million copies worldwide.Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment is separate from its book-publishing arm, which is unaffected by the bankruptcy filing. It was not immediately clear whether the Chapter 11 filing would affect the Redbox operation. The company declined to comment on Sunday.In 2022, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment acquired Redbox, a business founded in 2002 and recognized for its bright red DVD rental kiosks outside supermarkets and pharmacies. Redbox has about 27,000 kiosks across the United States.William J. Rouhana Jr. became the company’s chief executive in 2008 and ran the company with his wife, Amy Newmark, the publisher and editor in chief of the book division.Mr. Rouhana tried to expand the company into different products, including a line of soups, which ultimately failed. He founded the entertainment division of Chicken Soup for the Soul in 2016.The company requested relief to pay its employees, which it has been unable to do “for the two-week period ending on June 14, 2024.” Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment has about 1,000 full- and part-time workers.The company reported $636 million in net income loss in 2023, compared with $111 million in 2022, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. At the time that Chicken Soup for the Soul acquired Redbox, the movie rental company had more than $300 million in debt. More

Producers of “The Boyfriend” on Netflix hope it will encourage broader acceptance of the L.G.B.T.Q. community in Japan, which still has not legalized same-sex unions.Japan is the only country among the world’s wealthiest democracies that has not legalized same-sex unions. Few celebrities are openly gay. Conservative groups oppose legislative efforts to protect the L.G.B.T.Q. community.But now, Netflix is introducing the country’s first same-sex dating reality series.Over 10 episodes of “The Boyfriend,” which will be available in 190 countries beginning on July 9, a group of nine men gather in a luxury beach house outside Tokyo. The format evokes Japan’s most popular romantic reality show, “Terrace House,” with its assembly of clean cut and exceedingly polite cast members, overseen by a panel of jovial commentators.The vibe is wholesome and mostly chaste. The men, who range in age from 22 to 36, operate a coffee truck during the day and cook dinner at night, with occasional forays outside for dates. One of the biggest (among very few) conflicts of the series revolves around the cost of buying raw chicken to make protein shakes for a club dancer who is trying to maintain his physique. Sex rarely comes up, and friendship and self-improvement feature as prominently as romance.In Japan, the handful of openly gay and transgender performers who regularly appear on television are typically flamboyant, effeminate comic foils who are shoehorned into exaggerated stereotypes. With “The Boyfriend,” Dai Ota, the executive producer, said he wanted to “portray same-sex relationships as they really are.”Mr. Ota, who was also a producer of “Terrace House,” which was made by Fuji TV and licensed and distributed globally by Netflix, said he had avoided “the approach of ‘let’s include people who cause problems.’”“The Boyfriend,” he said, represents diversity in another way — with cast members of South Korean, Taiwanese and multiethnic heritages.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 meeting is the first between the Taliban and a United Nations-led conference of global envoys who are seeking to engage the Afghan government on critical issues.Taliban officials attended a rare, United Nations-led conference of global envoys to Afghanistan on Sunday, the first such meeting Taliban representatives have agreed to engage in, after organizers said Afghan women would be excluded from the talks.The two-day conference in Doha, Qatar, is the third of its kind. It is part of a United Nations-led effort, known as the “Doha process,” started in May 2023. It is meant to develop a unified approach for international engagement with Afghanistan. Envoys from around 25 countries and regional organizations, including the European Union, the United States, Russia and China, are attending. Taliban officials were not invited to the first meeting and refused to attend the second meeting, held in February, after objecting to the inclusion of Afghan civil society groups that attended.The conference has drawn a fierce backlash in recent days after U.N. officials announced that Afghan women would not participate in discussions with Taliban officials. Human rights groups and Afghan women’s groups have slammed the decision to exclude them as too severe a concession by the U.N. to persuade the Taliban to engage in the talks. The decision to exclude women sets “a deeply damaging precedent” and risks “legitimatizing their gender-based institutional system of oppression,” Agnès Callamard, the secretary general of Amnesty International, said in a statement referring to the Taliban’s policies toward women. “The international community must adopt a clear and united stance: The rights of women and girls in Afghanistan are nonnegotiable.”Since seizing power from the U.S.-backed government in 2021, Taliban authorities have systematically rolled back women’s rights, effectively erasing women from public life. Women and girls are barred from getting education beyond primary school and banned from most employment outside of education and health care, and they cannot travel significant distances without a male guardian.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 emergency services said that three female attackers had detonated devices at a wedding and at a funeral in a city once ruled by Boko Haram. So far, no group has claimed responsibility.At least 18 people were killed and dozens of others were wounded in a series of suicide bombings on Saturday afternoon in northeastern Nigeria, including at the wedding of a young couple and at a funeral, according to local officials.Barkindo Saidu, the director general of Borno State’s emergency management agency, said that three female attackers had struck distinct locations in Gwoza, a bustling city in Borno State that has been the center of Islamist insurgency by Boko Haram over the past 15 years.The victims included children and pregnant women, Mr. Saidu said. Some Nigerian news outlets reported that at least 30 people had been killed.As of Sunday afternoon, no group had claimed responsibility for the bombings. The blasts resembled attacks carried out by Boko Haram, whose fighters have killed tens of thousands in Nigeria and whose aggression in the region has led to the displacement of more than two million people.The first attacker on Saturday detonated a bomb that she was wearing at a wedding celebration, Mr. Saidu said in a preliminary report seen by The New York Times. Seven people died in that explosion, including the attacker and a baby she had with her, according to Kenneth Daso, a public relations officer with the police in Borno. Two attackers struck later near a hospital and at the funeral services of a victim of the earlier blast, Mr. Saidu said.Among the seven people killed in the explosion at the wedding were three men, a high school teacher, an entrepreneur and a bicycle seller, said Baba Shehu Saidu, a friend of theirs and of the groom who said that he had planned to attend the wedding but had had to cancel at the last minute.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 barrage on Vilniansk, a town in the south, killed seven, including three children, as attacks across Ukraine in the past few days have left dozens dead, according to local authorities.A Russian missile attack on a small town in southeastern Ukraine and the fiery inferno that followed killed at least seven civilians, including three children, the country’s authorities said as they surveyed on Sunday the deadly toll of two days of fierce Russian assaults.Yuriy Borzenko, chief doctor of Zaporizhzhia Regional Children’s Hospital, said in a phone interview that, aside from those killed, dozens of others, including a pregnant woman and five 14-year-old girls, were being treated for wounds after the attack on the southeastern town, Vilniansk, which took place on Saturday.The girls were out for a walk together in the afternoon sunshine, Dr. Borzenko said, when explosions from the projectiles tore through the center of the town, engulfing shops, cars and homes in flames. Shrapnel had embedded in the skull of one of the girls, who was left in a coma, he said, “still in between life and death.”“Her parents are in really bad shape, I just saw them,” he added.As the attacks have rained down, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has reiterated his plea to loosen restrictions on the use of long-range American missiles known as ATACMS so that Ukraine can target warplanes at Russian air bases before they take to the sky on bombing runs.“Long-range strikes and modern air defense are the foundation for stopping the daily Russian terror,” he said on Sunday in a statement accompanying videos said to show the aftermath of a number of the week’s worst attacks.The strike in Vilniansk was one of a series of attacks across Ukraine, which have killed at least 24 civilians since Friday evening, according to local officials and emergency workers, who said that scores more had been wounded.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