Elections

The vote at the Southern Baptist Convention raising alarms about in vitro fertilization began with two conservatives at a seminary in Kentucky.About a month after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in February that frozen embryos were to be considered children under the law, Andrew T. Walker, an ethicist at a Southern Baptist seminary in Kentucky, called a friend with an idea: to spread Alabama’s argument beyond Alabama.The Alabama ruling, which had threatened access to in vitro fertilization and other reproductive services in the state, caught many Americans, including conservatives, off guard. The idea that fertility treatments could be morally and legally questionable rattled many anti-abortion voters who had used such procedures to expand their families. And it further frayed the increasingly tense alliance between the anti-abortion movement and the Republican Party, which saw political peril in going after I.V.F. Four months later, Dr. Walker succeeded. On Wednesday, the Southern Baptist Convention, the country’s largest Protestant denomination, voted to condemn the use of reproductive technologies like I.V.F. that end in the destruction of “frozen embryonic human beings.” The resolution passed by what appeared to be the overwhelming majority of Baptists that gathered in Indianapolis for their annual meeting. The moment was especially striking given that after the Alabama ruling earlier this year, Republican leaders quickly tried to signal to their base that they supported I.V.F., an extraordinarily popular procedure widely used by Christians and non-Christians alike.But the vote showed the power of wide-reaching theological and moral arguments about human life and reproduction, and that anti-abortion Christians in the denomination’s more than 45,000 churches, many of whose congregants have relied on I.V.F., may be open to more sweeping moves against the procedure.Dr. Walker, 39, first publicly opposed in vitro fertilization five years ago, co-writing an article titled “Breaking Evangelicalism’s Silence on IVF” for the website of the evangelical organization the Gospel Coalition, which ran a companion essay by a high-profile theologian defending the procedure.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 facial recognition start-up doesn’t have the funds to settle a class-action lawsuit, so lawyers are proposing equity for those whose faces were scraped from the internet.A facial recognition start-up, accused of invasion of privacy in a class-action lawsuit, has agreed to a settlement, with a twist: Rather than cash payments, it would give a 23 percent stake in the company to Americans whose faces are in its database.Clearview AI, which is based in New York, scraped billions of photos from the web and social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram to build a facial recognition app used by thousands of police departments, the Department of Homeland Security and the F.B.I. After The New York Times revealed the company’s existence in 2020, lawsuits were filed across the country. They were consolidated in federal court in Chicago as a class action.The litigation has proved costly for Clearview AI, which would most likely go bankrupt before the case made it to trial, according to court documents. The company and those who sued it were “trapped together on a sinking ship,” lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote in a court filing proposing the settlement.“These realities led the sides to seek a creative solution by obtaining for the class a percentage of the value Clearview could achieve in the future,” added the lawyers, from Loevy + Loevy in Chicago.Anyone in the United States who has a photo of himself or herself posted publicly online — so almost everybody — could be considered a member of the class. The settlement would collectively give the members a 23 percent stake in Clearview AI, which is valued at $225 million, according to court filings. (Twenty-three percent of the company’s current value would be about $52 million.)If the company goes public or is acquired, those who had submitted a claim form would get a cut of the proceeds. Alternatively, the class could sell its stake. Or the class could opt, after two years, to collect 17 percent of Clearview’s revenue, which it would be required to set aside.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

On the social media platform X, which Mr. Musk owns, reactions to a vote that reaffirmed Mr. Musk’s $45 billion package were buoyant.Tesla shareholders reaffirmed a pay award worth more than $45 billion for Elon Musk on Thursday, but before the announcement was made official at the company’s annual meeting in Austin, Texas, Mr. Musk posted the news on X, his social media platform.“Both Tesla shareholder resolutions are currently passing by wide margins!” he wrote in a post late Wednesday night. “Thanks for your support!!”For months, Mr. Musk’s supporters have used the social media site, which he purchased for $44 billion in 2022, to drum up support for his massive payday, and Tesla board members warned he could leave the company if shareholders voted against him.But for some Tesla investors, Mr. Musk’s involvement with X has been the primary cause of concern, stirring complaints that the pay package has drawn his attention away from Tesla and into other ventures. Mr. Musk has also used the platform to promote right-wing conspiracy theories and vulgar content, offending some of his employees and investors.On X, shareholder approval of the pay package was met with praise from Mr. Musk’s legion of supporters — some cheering before the official vote was announced. They included retail investors, friends in the technology industry and media personalities.“Congrats on getting paid what you’re owed E!” wrote Jason Calacanis, a prominent tech investor and podcast host who is close to Mr. Musk.“The most important message of the vote,” wrote Alex Voigt, a blogger and YouTube personality, “is that Elon knows now he has the support of 90% of retail investors and more than 73% of all shares, and that matters for him personally and for the future of Tesla.”“Means a lot,” Mr. Musk replied.“Looks like Tesla shareholders are approving Elon’s CEO package by a wide margin — good for them,” wrote Lulu Cheng Meservey, a tech executive with 80,000 followers on the platform. “People with actual skin in the game can see the business logic that a Delaware judge blinded by her personal agenda could not.”“The vast majority of Tesla shareholders approved Elon’s comp package in 2018 and have re-approved it now. An activist judge voided it for nothing. The trial lawyers who are asking for billions in fees should get nothing,” wrote David Sacks, a Silicon Valley tech investor, who is also close to Mr. Musk.Critics of Mr. Musk also chimed in, albeit in smaller numbers.“It’s official — Tesla shareholders are the stupidest humans to walk the face of the planet,” one poster wrote.But many Tesla shareholders who were critical of the pay package in the weeks leading up to the vote were mostly silent in the hours after the decision. More

John Randal Tyson, a fourth-generation member of the Tyson family business, was charged with driving while intoxicated, the company said, two years after he was found asleep in a stranger’s house.A top executive at Tyson Foods who is a fourth-generation member of the Tyson family business was suspended on Thursday after he was charged with driving while intoxicated, the company said in a statement.John Randal Tyson, 34, the company’s chief financial officer and a great-grandson of Tyson’s founder, was arrested in Fayetteville, Ark., by the University of Arkansas Police Department and booked at the Washington County jail at about 1:30 a.m. Thursday, jail records show.It was the second time in less than two years that Mr. Tyson had been charged with an alcohol-related offense.Mr. Tyson, whose father is Tyson’s chairman, was named the company’s chief financial officer in September 2022. He had been in his position just over a month when he was arrested in November 2022, after a woman called the police to report that she had returned to her home in Fayetteville to find him asleep in her bed, The Arkansas Democrat Gazette reported.Tyson Foods said in a statement on Thursday that it was aware that Mr. Tyson had been “arrested for an alleged DWI.”“Tyson Foods has suspended Mr. Tyson from his duties effective immediately,” the company said. The company named Curt Calaway as his interim replacement.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

Los analistas atribuyen la fuerza del candidato independiente al notable reconocimiento de su apellido y a la frustración con los dos principales contendientes.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]Cuando Joe Biden y Donald Trump se enfrentaron en las elecciones presidenciales de 2020, Alexis Figueroa, trabajador de un hospital de Phoenix, afirmó que habría votado por Biden, porque parecía el menos controversial de los dos candidatos.Pero ahora que esos dos hombres están de nuevo en la papeleta en noviembre, Figueroa está considerando una tercera opción: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Figueroa, que ahora tiene 20 años, dijo sobre Kennedy: “Va a por los que acaban de empezar a votar, la generación más joven a la que no se le escucha”, y añadió que no quería votar por Biden porque no creía que el presidente hubiera cumplido muchas de sus promesas.En una contienda en la que el entusiasmo por los dos principales contendientes es bajo, más votantes latinos como Figueroa se están inclinando hacia candidatos de terceros partidos, según muestran encuestas recientes. Para los encuestadores y los observadores políticos, Kennedy, que está presentando una candidatura presidencial independiente con pocas posibilidades, está obteniendo resultados sorpresivamente positivos entre los votantes hispanos en los estados indecisos, aunque hasta ahora solo está oficialmente en las papeletas de California, Utah, Míchigan, Oklahoma, Hawái y Delaware.Las encuestas muestran que Kennedy está llevándose apoyo que solía ser para Trump y Biden, pero cuando se trata de los latinos, quienes tienden a votar a los demócratas, podría suponer una mayor amenaza para Biden.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

Days after light shows filled Earth’s skies with wonder, the red planet was hit by another powerful outburst of the sun.The sun fired off a volley of radiation-riddled outbursts in May. When they slammed into Earth’s magnetic bubble, the world was treated to iridescent displays of the northern and southern lights. But our planet wasn’t the only one in the solar firing line.A few days after Earth’s light show, another series of eruptions screamed out of the sun. This time, on May 20, Mars was blitzed by a beast of a storm.Observed from Mars, “this was the strongest solar energetic particle event we’ve seen to date,” said Shannon Curry, the principal investigator of NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution orbiter, or MAVEN, at the University of California, Berkeley.When the barrage arrived, it set off an aurora that enveloped Mars from pole to pole in a shimmering glow. If they were standing on the Martian surface, “astronauts could see these auroras,” Dr. Curry said. Based on scientific knowledge of atmospheric chemistry, she and other scientists say, observers on Mars would have seen a jade-green light show, although no color cameras picked it up on the surface.The specks in the sequence of images in this video were caused by charged particles from a solar storm that hit a navigation camera of the Curiosity Mars rover on May 20.NASA/JPL-CaltechBut it’s very fortunate that no astronauts were there. Mars’s thin atmosphere and the absence of a global magnetic shield meant that its surface, as registered by NASA’s Curiosity rover, was showered by a radiation dose equivalent to 30 chest X-rays — not a lethal dose, but certainly not pleasant to the human constitution.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 Supreme Court may soon decide the fate of dozens of cases brought by cities and states that seek to hold fossil fuel companies accountable.Over the past several years, dozens of cities and states have sued big oil companies, seeking to hold the producers of fossil fuels accountable for their role in causing climate change. All of the cases follow more or less the same script: they claim that oil companies like Exxon and Chevron deceived the public by concealing their understanding of the devastating effects of global warming, and seek to make those companies pay for the billions of dollars in damages now being caused by rising seas and extreme weather. So far, none of those cases has gone to trial. But this week, a closely watched case out of Hawaii took what could be a pivotal step toward the Supreme Court and have a cascading effect on the legal fight to hold fossil fuel companies accountable.The case was brought by the city of Honolulu against Sunoco and other big oil companies in 2020. Last year, the Hawaii state supreme court ruled the case could go to trial. But a coalition of energy firms, including ExxonMobil and Chevron, appealed that decision, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the case from moving forward. On Monday, the Supreme Court asked the Biden administration’s solicitor general for its opinion on the appeals. That may sound like a technicality. But to legal experts, it’s a sign that the case has the attention of the justices. The Supreme Court reviews many appeals each year, but only seeks input from the solicitor general in cases it is actively considering taking up. 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

One group in Hudson Bay might have roughly decade left because sea ice is becoming too thin to support them as they hunt, according to new research. Polar bears in the Southern Hudson Bay could go extinct as early as the 2030s because the sea ice that helps them hunt for food is thinning, a new study suggests.“We’ve known that the loss of Arctic sea ice would spell disaster for polar bears, so this might be the first subpopulation that disappears,” said Julienne Stroeve, the lead author of the study, which was published Thursday in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.Last month, the eastern half of Hudson Bay, home to the world’s most-studied polar bears, went ice free a month earlier than usual.Polar bears are used to an ice-free season of about four months when they rely on fat reserves until ice reforms and they can hunt blubber-rich seals from the floes. But the presence of sea ice doesn’t guarantee the bears will be able to hunt; it needs to be thick enough to support them.While earlier studies looked at the expanse of sea ice coverage to determine the survivability of the species, Dr. Stroeve and her colleagues used climate models from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent report to project when the remaining ice would be too thin for the bears to hunt successfully.While there is no consensus on how much ice is needed to support an adult male polar bear, the study relied on field research to determine a base line of about 10 centimeters, or just under four inches. 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