Elections

The eight workers say they were wrongfully fired after circulating a memo raising concerns about sexual harassment at the rocket company led by Elon Musk.Eight former employees of Elon Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, sued the company and Mr. Musk on Wednesday, contending they were wrongfully fired for raising concerns about sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace.The employees were fired in 2022 after they circulated an open letter urging SpaceX executives to condemn Mr. Musk’s comments on Twitter, later renamed X, which amounted to “a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us.” After being made aware of the letter, Mr. Musk ordered the terminations, according to the complaint.“Our eight brave clients stood up to him and were fired for doing so,” Laurie Burgess, a lawyer representing the former SpaceX employees, said in a statement. “We look forward to holding Musk accountable for his actions at trial.”The plaintiffs are seeking an unspecified amount of compensatory damages. SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The lawsuit, filed in California state court in Los Angeles, called SpaceX’s workplace an “Animal House” filled with inappropriate and sexually suggestive behavior. Several plaintiffs said they had experienced harassment from other SpaceX employees that “mimicked Musk’s posts,” which created “a wildly uncomfortable hostile work environment.”The lawsuit contends that executives at SpaceX were regularly made aware of grievances about Mr. Musk’s explicit social media messages, but that the complaints were routinely dismissed, even after a “sexual harassment internal audit” conducted by Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer.After the employees were fired, Ms. Shotwell wrote in an email to SpaceX employees that there was “too much critical work to accomplish and no need for this kind of overreaching activism,” according to a copy of the email obtained by The New York Times.The same eight employees are already pursuing charges against SpaceX with the National Labor Relations Board. In January, SpaceX sued the labor board to dispute the charges, arguing that the complaint should be dismissed because the structure of the agency is unconstitutional.The lawsuit was filed a day before Tesla shareholders are expected to conclude a vote on a pay package for Mr. Musk that’s worth about $45 billion. It also followed a Tuesday report in The Wall Street Journal detailing Mr. Musk’s history of sexual relationships with co-workers.The lawsuit is the latest in a list of grievances between employees and Mr. Musk. In 2022, Business Insider reported that SpaceX had paid $250,000 to settle a claim that he exposed himself to an employee on a private plane. (Mr. Musk later denied the “wild accusations.”) In 2022, he laid off roughly half of Twitter’s work force after acquiring the company, later firing another two dozen of the company’s internal critics. And last August, the Justice Department sued SpaceX for discriminating against refugees and asylum seekers in its hiring.“We hope that this lawsuit encourages our colleagues to stay strong and to keep fighting for a better workplace,” Paige Holland-Thielen, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement. More

The spending blitz showcases the importance of state legislatures in 2024.Hi there. Today, my colleague Nick Corasaniti, who covers voting and elections, joins us with an exclusive look at the big money pouring into small races. Then, I ask whether a surprising election result last night in Ohio tells us anything about November. — Jess BidgoodThey’re the races often listed near the bottom of the ballot, with what may be unfamiliar names running for state legislative seats. But these little-known contests are drawing big money.Democrats are poised to flood the country’s most consequential state house and senate elections with a spending blitz that will add up to nine figures, showcasing the critical role state legislatures play in some of the nation’s most pressing issues — and building on a cash advantage over Republicans.The States Project, a Democratic-aligned group, is set to announce a plan to spend $70 million in legislative battles in nine states, according to a memo I obtained, one of the largest investments in such races by a single outside Democratic-leaning group in recent history. They plan to send the funds directly to candidates and groups on the ground, who can decide how best to use it.Combined with a previously announced $60 million target from the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee and $35 million from the aligned group Forward Majority, the total cash coming to help Democratic state legislative candidates will most likely exceed $160 million.These investments in down-ballot races underscore the growing realization by national Democratic organizations that state legislative fights will probably have a greater influence on many of the issues affecting voters’ day-to-day lives than other contests this cycle — even the presidential race. And the torrent of cash from the left shows how Democrats have surpassed what had long been a Republican advantage in funding campaigns for state legislatures.“In the last decade, whether it comes to the right to reproductive health care or policies to raise wages for full-time workers, state legislatures have done more good — and more harm — than any other level of government,” said Daniel Squadron, a former Democratic state senator from New York and co-founder of the States Project. “So that’s what’s on the ballot across these states this election.”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

Thousand-year-old DNA from Chichén Itzá offers eye-opening details of the religious rituals of ancient Maya.In the spring of 1967, workers building a small airport behind Chichén Itzá, the ancient Maya city in Mexico, ran into a problem: Their excavations had uncovered human remains in the pathway of the proposed runway. The airport was set to serve V.I.P.s who wanted to visit Chichén Itzá. But with the remains so close to a major archaeological site, the work had to be halted until the bones could be examined.Any hope for a quick resolution dissolved when archaeologists who were called to the scene uncovered a chultún — an underground rainwater-storage container that, in Maya mythology, was viewed as an entrance to the subterranean land of the dead. Connected to the cistern was a cave containing more than 100 sets of human remains, almost all belonging to children. In a push to finish the airport, researchers were given just two months to excavate and exhume the cache of bones.Nearly 60 years later, ancient DNA extracted from 64 of the children is offering new insights into the religious rituals of the ancient Maya and their ties to modern descendants. In a paper published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, an international cohort of researchers revealed that the children — sacrificial victims killed between 500 and 900 A.D. — were all local Maya boys that may have been specifically selected to be killed in sibling pairs.“These are the first ancient Maya genomes to be published,” said Johannes Krause, an archaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. The DNA work provided a previously unseen glimpse into the identities of the sacrificed children. “One feels quite moved by such a finding,” Dr. Krause said, noting that he himself has a young son.The search into the genome of the Maya boys did not start as an exercise in ancient Maya rituals. In the mid-2000s, Rodrigo Barquera — now an immunogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute — was hoping to discover the genetic legacy of Mesoamerica’s deadliest pandemic.In 1545, an outbreak of Salmonella enterica spread like wildfire across what is now Mexico. Over the next century, the disease killed up to 90 percent of the Indigenous population. Pandemics like these often leave their mark on the immune genes of survivors. To uncover this genetic legacy, Dr. Barquera and his colleagues needed to compare the DNA from the precolonial remains with that of people who were born after the calamity.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

Concerns are also growing for two foreign hikers who have gone missing on Greek islands amid the soaring temperatures.Intense heat in Greece prompted a mini lockdown for two days starting on Wednesday, with some schools closing and the Acropolis restricting visiting hours, as the authorities searched for two foreign hikers just a few days after a British medical journalist was found dead on the island of Symi after going for a walk in searing heat.The onset of sweltering temperatures, which meteorologists said might set a record on Thursday, prompted the Health Ministry to issue a warning to older people and people with chronic ailments to stay indoors. The authorities also advised anyone who works outdoors to avoid strenuous activity from noon to 5 p.m.Temperatures were forecast to reach 41 Celsius, or 105.8 Fahrenheit, in Athens on Wednesday and rise to 42 Celsius (107.6 Fahrenheit) on Thursday before dipping on Friday, according to Greece’s National Meteorological Service. The heat elsewhere in the Greek mainland was expected to reach 43 Celsius.Walking up Lycabettus Hill in Athens on Wednesday. Temperatures were forecast to reach 105.8 degrees Fahrenheit in the city on Wednesday and 107.6 degrees on Thursday.Alkis Konstantinidis/ReutersThe tinderbox conditions also raised concerns about wildfires after a disastrous summer last year, when wildfires killed more than 20 people in Greece and razed vast areas of forestland. Greece’s civil protection authority and the army were conducting 24-hour patrols of major forests this week in an effort to prevent fires from breaking out.Meteorologists have warned that Europe is on course to have another scorching summer. Last summer’s heat and wildfires hurt some Greek businesses that rely on tourism, although the country still reported record tourism revenue for the year overall. This year, while many visitors still plan to visit the Mediterranean nation, others are opting for cooler Northern European countries.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 Biden administration is taking new measures aimed at stopping China from helping the Kremlin sustain its war effort against Ukraine. U.S. officials hope European nations will take similar steps.The Biden administration announced a series of new financial sanctions Wednesday aimed at interrupting the fast-growing technological links between China and Russia that American officials believe are behind a broad effort to rebuild and modernize Russia’s military during its war with Ukraine.The actions were announced just as President Biden was leaving the country for a meeting in Italy of the Group of 7 industrialized economies, where a renewed effort to degrade the Russian economy will be at the top of his agenda.The effort has grown far more complicated in the past six or eight months after China, which previously had sat largely on the sidelines, has stepped up its shipments of microchips, optical systems for drones and components for advanced weaponry, U.S. officials said. But so far Beijing appears to have heeded Mr. Biden’s warning against shipping weapons to Russia, even as the United States and NATO continue to arm Ukraine.Announcing the new sanctions, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said in a statement that “Russia’s war economy is deeply isolated from the international financial system, leaving the Kremlin’s military desperate for access to the outside world.”At the heart of the new measures is an expansion of “secondary” sanctions that give the United States the power to blacklist any bank around the world that does business with Russian financial institutions already facing sanctions. This is intended to deter smaller banks, especially in places like China, from helping Russia finance its war effort.The Treasury Department also imposed restrictions on the stock exchange in Moscow in hopes of preventing foreign investors from propping up Russian defense companies. The sanctions hit several Chinese companies that are accused of helping Russia gain access to critical military equipment such as electronics, lasers and drone components.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

Time away can make work stress even more apparent. Here’s what to do about it.The email does not find you well.Yesterday, you were lounging on the beach, or sprawled on the couch with that book you finally had time to finish. Now, you’re staring down hundreds of missed messages.The return to work after vacation can be jarring for anyone. But for people who are burned out from their jobs — a state that psychologists describe as feeling persistently exhausted and cynical about work — the transition is even tougher.While vacation might seem like the obvious solution to being overwhelmed by work, time away can reveal just how depleted you’ve become, said Jeanette M. Bennett, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who studies the effects of stress on health.How to know if you’re burned out.Burnout stems from feeling like you don’t have control over your work. People can dread their jobs, experiencing “the quintessential ‘I’m overwhelmed, I’m exhausted, Sunday Scaries’” feeling, said Dr. Thea Gallagher, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at NYU Langone Health.Burnout bleeds into the rest of your life: people typically feel like they don’t have the energy to do anything except get through the day. Family responsibilities, friends and hobbies can fall by the wayside — even if people have the time for those activities outside of work, they may be too tired, or feel apathetic about them, said Angela Neal-Barnett, a psychology professor at Kent State University and author of “Soothe Your Nerves: The Black Woman’s Guide to Understanding and Overcoming Anxiety, Panic and Fear.”Taking time off can relieve burnout in some cases — people come back to work feeling recharged and better able to tackle their workload. But when people are intensely stressed, vacation is more like a Band-Aid. They might feel better when they’re away, but as soon as it’s time to return, they become anxious again.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

Customers generally support Bliss Caribbean Restaurant’s ban on male customers under 35 and women under 30. But some legal experts say there may be a problem.When Tina and Marvin Pate travel to Cancún or the Dominican Republic, they enjoy the bliss created by the good music, delicious food and the absence of children.So in May, when they opened Bliss Caribbean Restaurant in St. Louis County, Mo., the couple decided to give their customers the same joy — by requiring that all female customers be at least 30 years old, and all men 35.“We decided to come up with a whole restaurant where adults could pretty much go on vacation for a fraction of the cost,” Mr. Pate said.This rule has drawn widespread attention to Bliss through social media, resulting in packed dance parties and what the restaurant calls a “grown and sexy” vibe.But the requirement has also raised some legal questions, as experts point out that the restaurant is treating men and women differently.“My knee-jerk reaction is that it is technically illegal,” Sarah Jane Hunt, the owner and managing partner of the St. Louis-based law firm Kennedy Hunt, P.C., said in an interview. Ms. Hunt specializes in discrimination lawsuits.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

Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his governing coalition emerged battered from the vote for the European Parliament. But a snap election seems unlikely.Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany heads to the Group of 7 summit meeting in Italy on Thursday as a diminished leader after Sunday’s battering in elections for the European Parliament.All three of the parties in his coalition government earned fewer votes than the conservative opposition — combined. The far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, showed itself to be the country’s second-most popular party.While an even worse defeat in France for President Emmanuel Macron at the hands of the far right prompted him to call fresh elections for the National Assembly, no such outcome is expected in Germany, where the results reverberate differently.Here’s a look at why.Snap Elections Are RareSome opposition leaders said the results showed such a lack of confidence in the chancellor and his coalition that he, too, should call new federal elections.The government replied definitively: no.The reason could be as simple as the difference between the French and German systems. Whereas President Macron could call a new election for the French Parliament, a new vote in Germany can only happen at the end of a complicated procedure triggered by a parliamentary majority vote of no confidence in the chancellor. That makes snap elections extremely rare in Germany — happening only three times in the 75-year history of the Federal Republic.While the three parties in the coalition government took a beating on the E.U. level, at home they still have a majority of seats in the German Parliament. As unpopular as the coalition is, then, it is most likely to slog on, and hope that it can turn things around before the next regular federal election in 2025.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