Elections

Organizers of a plan to adorn some trains with googly eyes said that if the trains could not be reliable, they could at least make commuters smile.Demonstrators marched to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s Boston headquarters in April with a single, deeply researched demand.Put googly eyes on some trains, they said. Two months later, their demands have been met — at least until the decals wear off.The campaign was organized by two recent college graduates who cast the effort as an attempt to improve commuters’ spirits and promote empathy for the metal contraptions that transport them.“When T trains are delayed, people can at least look into the eyes of the train when it finally arrives, and feel some love and understanding in their hearts,” the organizers wrote before the march to the Transportation Authority’s headquarters.“The T doesn’t want to be late,” they wrote. “It feels bad being late.”The organizers said the Transportation Authority also had “a responsibility to improve the lives of Bostonians.”If the city’s trains can’t be reliable, they wrote, at least they could bring a smile to riders. The system averages about 766,000 riders on weekdays.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 offer a range of views after an editorial that called on the president to leave the race after his poor debate performance.To the Editor:Re “To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race” (editorial, June 30):Joe Biden is an extraordinary person, with a track record of service to this country he loves so much to prove it. Being its president has clearly been the pinnacle of that service.But it is time for Mr. Biden to have a heart-to-heart with his ego and recognize that the same altruism and passion that brought him to the White House must now guide him to the sidelines of this election. The stakes are too high, and his candidacy is too risky.To stay is to repeat the tragic miscalculation of another soldier for the good, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.Don’t lose your faith now, Joe. Do the right thing for democracy.Alison Daley StevensonWaldoboro, MaineTo the Editor:To paraphrase the great Mark Twain, your report of President Biden’s cognitive demise is greatly exaggerated. Not to mention premature.The president is probably one of the worst extemporaneous public speakers to hold his office. Age has made his lack of skill in this area worse, but that does not mean it has impaired his intellectual capacity.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

Researchers at the University of Tokyo published findings on a method of attaching artificial skin to robot faces to protect machinery and mimic human expressiveness.Japanese researchers used living skin cells to make a flexible 3-D facial mold for a robot.via Shoji TakeuchiEngineers in Japan are trying to get robots to imitate that particularly human expression — the smile.They have created a face mask from human skin cells and attached it to robots with a novel technique that conceals the binding and is flexible enough to turn down into a grimace or up into a squishy smile.The effect is something between Hannibal Lecter’s terrifying mask and the Claymation figure Gumby.But scientists say the prototypes pave the way for more sophisticated robots, with an outward layer both elastic and durable enough to protect the machine while making it appear more human.Beyond expressiveness, the “skin equivalent,” as the researchers call it, which is made from living skin cells in a lab, can scar and burn and also self-heal, according to a study published June 25 in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science.“Human-like faces and expressions improve communication and empathy in human-robot interactions, making robots more effective in health care, service and companionship roles,” Shoji Takeuchi, a professor at the University of Tokyo and the study’s lead researcher, said in an email.The research comes as robots are becoming more ubiquitous on factory floors.There were 3.9 million industrial robots working on auto and electronics assembly lines and other work settings in 2022, according to the International Federation of Robotics.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

What Is the Democratic Party For?Top Democrats have closed ranks around Joe Biden since the debate. Should they?On Thursday night, after the first presidential debate, MSNBC’s Alex Wagner interviewed Gov. Gavin Newsom of California. “You were out there getting a chorus of questions about whether Biden should step down,” she said. “There is a panic that has set in.”Newsom’s reply was dismissive. “We gotta have the back of this president,” he said. “You don’t turn your back because of one performance. What kind of party does that?”Perhaps a party that wants to win? Or a party that wants to nominate a candidate that the American people believe is up to the job? Maybe the better question is: What kind of party would do nothing right now?In February, I argued that President Biden should step aside in the 2024 election and Democrats should do what political parties did in presidential elections until the 1970s: choose a ticket at their convention. In public, the backlash I got from top Democrats was fierce. I was a bed-wetter living in an Aaron Sorkin fantasyland.In private, the feedback was more thoughtful and frightened. No one tried to convince me that Biden was a strong candidate. They argued instead that he couldn’t be persuaded to step aside, that even if he could, Vice President Kamala Harris would lose the election and that if a convention didn’t choose Harris, passing her over would fracture the party. They argued not that Biden was strong but that the Democratic Party was weak.I think Democrats should give themselves a little bit more credit. Biden’s presidency is proof of the Democratic Party’s ability to act strategically. He didn’t win the Democratic nomination in 2020 because he set the hearts of party activists aflame. Support for him always lacked the passion of support for Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or even Andrew Yang. Biden won because the party made a cold decision to unite around the candidate it thought was best suited to beating Donald Trump. Biden won because Democrats did what they had to do, not what they wanted to do.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

We explore a boom in research into our furry friends. My career as a science journalist began with a story on canine genetics. It was the summer of 2004, and a female boxer named Tasha had just become the first dog in the world to have her complete genome sequenced. It was a major advance for an animal that, though beloved by humans, had been overlooked by many scientists.Over the two decades since, I have seen dogs transform from an academic afterthought to the new “it” animal for scientific research. In the United States alone, tens of thousands of dogs are now enrolled in large, ongoing studies. Canine scientists are investigating topics as varied as cancer, communication, longevity, emotion, retrieving behavior, the gut microbiome, the health effects of pollution and “doggy dementia.”The research has the potential to give dogs happier, healthier and longer lives — and improve human well-being, too, as I report in a story published this morning. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain why dogs have become such popular scientific subjects.Big dog dataFirst, an important clarification: Dogs have long been the subject of invasive medical experiments, similar to lab rats and monkeys. That’s not the research I’m discussing here. The studies that have exploded in popularity involve pets. They require the enthusiastic participation of owners, who are collecting canine saliva samples, submitting veterinary records and answering survey questions about their furry friends.One reason these studies have become more common: Scientists realized that dogs were interesting and unique subjects. Our canine companions have social skills that even great apes lack, for instance, and they happen to be the most physically diverse mammal species on the planet. (Consider the difference between a Chihuahua and a Great Dane.) Dogs also share our homes and get many of the same diseases that people do, making them good models for human health.“Most of the questions that we have in science are not questions about what happens to animals living in sterile environments,” said Evan MacLean, the director of the Arizona Canine Cognition Center at the University of Arizona. “They’re questions about real organisms in the real world shared with humans. And dogs are a really, really good proxy for that in ways that other animals aren’t.”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

Scroll down to reveal a hint for each category of today’s Connections, or head to the comments for community hints and conversation.Good morning, dear connectors. Welcome to today’s Connections forum, where you can give and receive puzzle — and emotional — support.Be warned: This article includes hints and comments that may contain spoilers for today’s puzzle. Solve Connections first, or scroll at your own risk.Connections is released at midnight in your time zone. In order to accommodate all time zones, there will be two Connections Companions live every day, dated based on Eastern Standard Time.If you find yourself on the wrong companion, check the number of your puzzle, and go to this page to find the corresponding companion.Post your solve grid in the comments and see how your score compares with the editor’s rating, and one another’s.Today’s difficultyThe difficulty of each puzzle is determined by averaging the ratings provided by a panel of testers who are paid to solve each puzzle in advance to help us catch bugs, inconsistencies and other issues. A higher rating means the puzzle is more difficult.Today’s difficulty is 3.2 out of 5.Need a hint?In Connections, each category has a different difficulty level. Yellow is the simplest, and purple is the most difficult. Click or tap each level to reveal one of the words in that category. 🟨 StraightforwardUSHER🟩 ⬇️CON🟦 ⬇️SEAL🟪 TrickyNORTHWESTFurther ReadingWant to give us feedback? Email us: [email protected] to go back to Connections?Want to learn more about how the game is made?Leave any thoughts you have in the comments! Please follow community guidelines:Be kind. Comments are moderated for civility.Having a technical issue? Use the Help button in the Settings menu of the Games app.Want to talk about Wordle or Spelling Bee? Check out Wordle Review and the Spelling Bee Forum.See our Tips and Tricks for more useful information on Connections.Join us here to solve Crosswords, The Mini, and other games by The New York Times. More

Officers in Utica, N.Y., believed the boy had brandished a handgun. The police chief said on Saturday that it was a pellet gun.A 13-year-old boy was shot and killed by a police officer in Utica, N.Y., after a foot chase on Friday night, according to the police.The boy was one of two juveniles stopped by the Utica Police Department’s Crime Prevention Unit at about 10:18 p.m., the police said. After they were stopped, the 13-year-old ran and displayed “what appeared to be a handgun,” the police said in a statement.After a struggle on the ground, a police officer “ultimately discharged his firearm once, striking the male,” Mark Williams, the chief of police, said at a news conference on Saturday.Lay Htoo, a close relative of the boy, identified him as Nyah Mway.Nyah was taken to a hospital, where he died, the police said. Later, officers recovered a replica of a Glock 17 Gen5 handgun with a detachable magazine, according to the news release.The replica was determined to be a pellet gun, according to Chief Williams.On Saturday evening, the police confirmed the boy’s identity and identified three officers involved. Patrick Husnay, a six-year veteran of the Utica Police Department, was the officer who shot Nyah, the police said. The others were identified as Bryce Patterson, a four-year veteran, and Andrew Citriniti, who has been on the force for two-and-a-half years.The officers stopped the boys while investigating recent robberies in the area, in which the suspects were described as Asian males who brandished a black firearm and forcibly demanded and stole property from victims, the police said in a statement.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

Direct cash payments are not imminent, but under the state’s new budget, the money could go toward other reparations-related proposals pending in the Legislature.Last year, a California task force issued a seminal report urging reparations for Black residents that could add up to hundreds of billions of dollars. But the state’s new $298 billion budget, signed Saturday after a woeful run for California finances, is offering a much more modest beginning: $12 million.The budget does not call for immediate cash payments for Californians whose lives were shaped by injustices. Instead, it promises some state money if lawmakers agree on proposals that supporters see as early steps to repair the consequences of California’s past.The state’s approach has drawn criticism as offering far too little in the face of a sprawling, methodical report that laid bare a troubling history and offered recommendations on how to make up for it. Some lawmakers, though, have nevertheless welcomed the money as a start after the state scrambled to close a $47 billion shortfall.“I thought it was a win,” Assemblywoman Lori D. Wilson, a Democrat who chairs the Legislative Black Caucus and represents a Northern California district, said in an interview on Saturday. “To see it in the budget means that we were listened to.”Though many state lawmakers have, for now, eschewed seeking direct cash payments, they have pressed for ideas like creating a California American Freedmen Affairs Agency and prioritizing Black people for professional licenses, “especially applicants who are descended from a person enslaved in the United States.”On Thursday, the Legislature placed on the November ballot a proposal to amend the State Constitution to ban involuntary servitude, even for state prisoners. The measure is part of a reparations package that the Black Caucus announced in January. 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