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    After Splash Park Shooting, Michigan Community Feels a Familiar Pain

    The violence in the city of Rochester Hills, which injured nine people including children, comes three years after the shooting at Oxford High School in the same county. One day after a shooting in a splash park in suburban Detroit injured nine people, including children, residents on Sunday were struggling to process what happened, with bafflement, fear and shock. “It was hard to go to sleep last night. It’s hard to function this morning,” said Alex Roser, a 33-year-old pharmacy technician who said he grew up in the area.On Saturday afternoon, a gunman opened fire at a splash pad — a play area for children with blue cylinders that spray water — in Rochester Hills. The police identified the shooter as Michael William Nash, 42, and said that the handgun recovered at the scene was legally purchased in 2015 and registered to him. Authorities said that a motive was not yet known but that the attack appeared to be random. Mr. Nash was found dead with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound later on Saturday in his home nearby, they said. The wounded included an 8-year-old boy, a 4-year-old boy and their 39-year-old mother, authorities said. Others at the park that day were a city employee and 14 of his friends and family members. The city employee’s wife was shot, Mayor Bryan Barnett of Rochester Hills said Sunday. He added that two of the victims were in critical condition, while the others were stable.As the community reeled, it was not lost on residents that this was the second shooting in the area in recent years: In 2021 at Oxford High School in the same county, a student fatally shot four of his classmates and injured seven others. And many were horrified that this time it happened so close to their home, in a city that promotes itself on its website as one of the safest in America. 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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    NYT Crossword Answers for June 17, 2024

    Kiran Pandey runs a tight ship.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesMONDAY PUZZLE — Can you remember the first time you answered a riddle? I have a memory from summer camp. A counselor asked the group, “What’s brown and sticky?” — and I answered, “a tree.” An early adopter of wordplay among my age group (who needs popularity when you have puns, right?), I had heard “stick-y” and come up with the right answer.Riddles don’t tend to thrill adults the way they do children, but a cleverly crafted crossword theme comes close to capturing that feeling. The theme of today’s puzzle, by Kiran Pandey, offers such a sensation. If you haven’t already solved it yourself, read on for an explanation. There’s more to it than meets the, ahem, eyes.Today’s ThemeThanks to the use of circled letters, a pattern quickly emerges among the themed entries at 20-, 31- and 41-Across. THIS IS AMERICA is the “2018 Childish Gambino hit that won the Grammy for Song of the Year” (20A); the “Pixar film that takes place mostly underwater” (31A) is FINDING NEMO; and a certain “Holder of bait” (41A) is a FISHING HOOK. These entries feature two circled I’s — and, thus, are a partial phonetic rendering of an “Affirmative at sea”: AYE-AYE, CAPTAIN (55A).This seemed like a decent enough reveal, albeit a simple one. But on a second pass I noticed the qualifier in the revealer clue — “sequentially” — and realized that I’d appreciated only half of Mr. Pandey’s theme set.THIS IS AMERICA contains an AYE and an AYE, and then a CAPTAIN; in this case, AMERICA. The same pattern applies to reveal 31A’s captain, NEMO, and at 41A, with HOOK. To (nearly) quote Walt Whitman: “O Captains! My Captains!”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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    Deadly Toll in Greece as Heat Waves Sweep the Country

    Several foreigners have gone missing or been found dead after going out for walks in recent days as temperatures in Greece soar.Heat waves that have swept across Greece this month continued to exact a deadly toll over the weekend, with the authorities on Sunday reporting another death on a Greek island. At least six tourists remain missing on Greek islands.The authorities said that a body of a man had been found Saturday on the island of Samos, where a Dutch hiker has been missing for a week. The body has not yet been identified. Searches were also underway for the six other tourists who have gone missing on Greek islands amid searing temperatures this month.“The problem of missing hikers is not new — we have it every year,” said Constantina Dimoglidou, a police spokeswoman. “But this year, it seems more people became disoriented during the heat wave.”One of the missing was Albert Calibet, 59, a retired police officer who is a dual citizen of France and the United States, on the Aegean island of Amorgos. Mr. Calibet had set out on a trek alone on Tuesday morning, Ms. Dimoglidou said.Also missing were two Frenchwomen, aged 73 and 64, on another Aegean island, Sikinos; an Israeli couple in the area of Vytina in the Peloponnese peninsula; and a 55-year-old United States citizen on the islet of Mathraki near Corfu, the authorities said.The announcements came only days after the remains of Michael Mosley, a British medical journalist and documentary maker, were found on the island of Symi after his disappearance during a walk. At least three other tourists have died while out walking during the extreme heat this month.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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    Italians Respond to Pope’s Slur by Taking Francis to Pride

    At Saturday’s celebration in Rome, Pope Francis’ image was on cardboard cutouts adorned with flower necklaces. People came dressed as the pope, wore papal hats and said that there was never too much “gayness.”At Rome’s Pride celebration, bare-chested men in pink angel wings danced to Abba songs, women wrapped in rainbow flags kissed, and shimmering drag queens waved from parade floats. And then there was Pope Francis.The pontiff’s image was everywhere. On cardboard cutouts adorned with flower necklaces, on glittery banners, on stickers. Romans came to the Pride parade on Saturday dressed like Francis, wearing papal hats and T-shirts that read, “There is never too much frociaggine,” a reference to an offensive slur against gay men that the pope has been accused of using twice in recent weeks.The slur “is the slogan of the 2024 Pride,” said Martina Lorina, 28, an actress who was holding up a banner bearing the word.After Italian media reported that Pope Francis used the slur at a meeting with priests to complain that there was too much “gayness” in the church, the Vatican apologized.But Rome’s Pride attendees took a different tack to respond to the insult: They made it their own. Pride participants symbolically invited the pope and his slur to the party, using a longtime tactic of the L.G.B.T.Q. community to turn insults into words of pride.“Let’s make him feel how beautiful this frociaggine is,” a participant shouted in the crowd as men dressed as unicorns sang a Britney Spears song and children held hands with their two mothers, their faces covered in glittery rainbows.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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    John Everett Benson, Who Chiseled John F. Kennedy’s Grave, Dies at 85

    A master of the ancient and exacting art of carving into rock, he was 25 when he began his first major commission, at Arlington National Cemetery. John Everett Benson, a master stone carver, designer and calligrapher whose chisel marked the deaths of presidents, playwrights, authors and artists, as well as generations of American families — and whose elegant inscriptions graced museums and universities, government buildings and houses of worship — died on Thursday in Newport, R.I. He was 85.His son Christopher said he died in a hospital but did not specify the cause.Mr. Benson practiced the ancient and exacting art of carving into rock; slate was his preferred medium. He did so, precisely and gorgeously, on cornerstones, gravestones and monuments, as his father had before him, working out of an atelier in Newport called the John Stevens Shop. Founded in 1705, it is one of the oldest continuously run businesses in the country.The art Mr. Benson practiced is mostly devoted to mortality, the brief span of a life, though it is designed for eternity, or something close to it. It is often described as the slowest writing in the world. Mr. Benson could spend a day carving a cross; a gravestone might take three months.For the inscriptions for the East Building of the National Gallery in Washington, designed by I.M. Pei in the 1970s, he averaged an hour and a half carving each letter, some of which are nearly a foot tall. He and his team at the time, two young carvers named John Hegnauer and Brooke Roberts, spent months completing the painstaking work.Mr. Benson in 2020 at the John Stevens Shop, in Newport, R.I., with his son Nick, who took over his business in 1993, and his granddaughter Hope, who is training to be a stone carver like her father and grandfather.via Benson FamilyHe carved the words on the pedestal that supports Secretariat’s statue at Belmont Park; he also carved John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s credo into a slab of polished granite in Rockefeller Center. His elegant slate alphabet stone — alphabet stones are where lapidary artists show off their chops, their calligraphic feats and flourishes — lives in Harvard’s Houghton Library. He also worked on the National Cathedral in Washington, Yale University and the Boston Public Library, among other institutions.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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    Arizona Man Plotted Mass Shooting to Trigger ‘Race War,’ Officials Say

    Prosecutors said Mark Adams Prieto of Arizona planned to target Black concertgoers at an Atlanta venue. He was indicted on hate crime and firearm charges.An Arizona man who planned to commit a mass shooting at an Atlanta rap concert as a way of inciting a “race war” has been indicted by a federal grand jury on hate crime and firearm charges.The man, Mark Adams Prieto, hatched a plan in several discussions with two people working with the F.B.I. who posed as racist extremists to carry out a mass shooting targeting Black people and other people of color at a concert in Atlanta on May 14 and May 15, the Justice Department said on Tuesday.Mr. Prieto intended for the shooting to incite a “race war” before the presidential election, prosecutors said in a news release.Mr. Prieto, 58, was reported to the authorities last year by an acquaintance who said he had made concerning comments calling for mass shootings targeting Black people and others, according to officials.Mr. Prieto faces two counts of trafficking in firearms, one count of transfer of a firearm for use in a hate crime and one count of possessing an unregistered firearm.He faces a maximum 15-year prison sentence for each firearm trafficking and transfer charge and a maximum 10-year sentence for the unregistered firearm charge, prosecutors said. Mr. Prieto also could be fined $250,000 for each count.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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    Russian Forces Quash Prison Mutiny Led by Terrorism Suspects, State Media Reports

    The assailants had taken two guards hostage and were killed, the prison service said.Russian special forces have quashed a short-lived mutiny at a provincial detention center on Sunday, killing detainees, some charged with terrorism, who had broken out of their cells earlier in the day, according to Russian state media.Six detainees who awaited court appearances at a pretrial detention center in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don had managed to take control of the facility, state media reported. Armed with knives, the suspects took two guards hostage, the reports said.A video posted on Rostov’s local news channels and reposted by some Russian officials appeared to show a man identified as one of the detainees brandishing a knife and demanding a car to leave the detention center for an unspecified destination. A detainee is seen in the video holding a black flag associated with the Islamic State. The video could not immediately be verified.Security agents had surrounded the detention center by Sunday morning. Soon after, Russian state media published a short statement from the country’s prison service saying that security agents had stormed the facility, “liquidated” the mutinied detainees and freed the hostages unharmed.The Rostov governor and senior federal officials have yet to comment on the episode.The Rostov mutiny comes less than three months after assailants staged the deadliest terrorist attack in Russia in more than a decade at a concert hall near Moscow. The attack, which killed nearly 150 people, took place despite U.S. intelligence services providing a detailed warning to their Russian counterparts of the impending plot.The Islamic State took responsibility for the concert hall attack. President Vladimir V. Putin, however, has blamed it on Ukraine and Western intelligence services, without providing evidence.Mr. Putin’s critics said those accusations were an attempt to deflect his government’s failure to deal with the threat of Islamist terrorism as their attention shifted to the war in Ukraine.Sunday’s attack could renew the public discussion of that threat, which is fueled by the Kremlin’s suppression of separatist Muslims inside Russia and Mr. Putin’s support for the Islamic State’s enemies in Syria.At least one Russian official publicly questioned how the Rostov detainees managed to break out of their cells and overpower the guards.“They clearly were planning this for a while,” Andrei Medvedev, a Russian propagandist and regional lawmaker in Moscow, wrote on the Telegram messaging app on Sunday. “Where is the protocol for dealing with especially dangerous detainees?”Hwaida Saad More

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    Euro 2024 Shooting: Police in Hamburg Shoot Man With Ax

    The shooting took place in Hamburg, in an area packed with soccer fans, and hours before the Netherlands and Poland were set to play in the city.A man wielding an ax on a street crowded with soccer fans was shot by the police on Sunday in Hamburg, Germany, only hours before the city was to host a game at the European Championship.The man threatened police officers with “a pickax and an incendiary device,” a police spokesman said on Sunday. When he did not respond to warnings, the police said, he was shot.The man was injured and was being treated, they confirmed. No fans nor police officers were injured.The incident took place in Hamburg’s entertainment district, a section of the city known as the Reeperbahn that is filled with restaurants and bars. At the time, the area was packed with thousands of fans who had arrived to see the Netherlands play Poland on Sunday afternoon.According to a spokeswoman for the Hamburg police and videos of the incident posted online, the man came out of a small restaurant with a small, double-bladed ax and a firebomb and threatened officers nearby.Standing behind a police barrier as fans watched only steps away, the man — dressed all in black — shouted and moved toward a group of about a dozen police officers, several of whom were pointing their weapons at him from either side of the barrier. He held the small ax in one hand and what appeared to be a bottle with a rag in its neck in the other.At the time of the incident, Hamburg’s Reeperbahn area was packed with thousands of fans who had arrived to see the Netherlands play Poland on Sunday afternoon.Lena Mucha for The New York TimesWhen a police officer sprayed pepper spray in the man’s direction, he turned and began running up the street as fans scattered out of his path. Officers moved to surround him a short distance up the narrow street, and soon after, at least four gunshots rang out and the man fell to the ground.The police said that the man had been injured, but they could not give further updates on his condition. He was placed in an ambulance and driven away.The gunshots, captured in several videos that were posted online, were a sudden and jarring intrusion into what had been a festive lunchtime atmosphere. Within minutes, scores of police officers had gathered and set up a cordon around the scene of the shooting, and loudspeaker announcements — and the looming kickoff — cleared the area.The site of the shooting was a 10-minute walk from the city’s official fan zone, which was thronged with many more thousands of fans at the time, and a short train ride from the 57,000-seat Volksparkstadion, where the Netherlands and Poland were to meet in the first of three tournament games set for Sunday.The shooting came on the third day of the monthlong tournament, which brings together the continent’s best 24 teams every four years, and amid a heightened police presence.The German authorities said last week that about 22,000 police officers would be working each day of the tournament, and that they would be supplemented by hundreds more from the participating countries. More