More stories

  • in

    Trump Targets Workplaces as Immigration Crackdown Widens

    Many industries have become dependent on immigrant labor. Some workplace raids have been met with protest.The chaos that engulfed Los Angeles on Saturday began a day earlier when camouflage-clad federal agents rolled through the garment district in search of workers who they suspected of being undocumented immigrants. They were met with protesters, who chanted and threw eggs before being dispersed with pepper spray and nonlethal bullets.The enforcement operation turned into one of the most volatile scenes of President Trump’s immigration crackdown so far, but it was not an isolated incident.Law enforcement during a protest in California on Saturday.Eric Thayer/Associated PressLast week, at a student housing complex under construction in Tallahassee, Fla., masked immigration agents loaded dozens of migrants into buses headed to detention centers. In New Orleans, 15 people working on a flood control project were detained. And raids in San Diego and Massachusetts — in Martha’s Vineyard and the Berkshires — led to standoffs in recent days as bystanders angrily confronted federal agents who were taking workers into custody.The high-profile raids appeared to mark a new phase of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, in which officials say they will increasingly focus on workplaces — taking aim at the reason millions of people have illegally crossed the border for decades. That is an expansion from plans early in the administration to prioritize detaining hardened criminals and later to focus on hundreds of international students.“You’re going to see more work site enforcement than you’ve ever seen in the history of this nation,” Thomas D. Homan, the White House border czar told reporters recently. “We’re going to flood the zone.”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

  • in

    Hunt for Father Accused of Killing 3 Daughters Expands in Washington Forest

    Travis Decker is a former member of the military who has enough wilderness survival skills to live in the woods on his own for weeks or months, the authorities said.The National Guard is joining the search in Washington State for a man the police say killed his three young daughters.More than a hundred law enforcement officers are combing parts of central and northern Washington State for the man, Travis Decker, who the police say has wilderness skills that could help him survive for weeks on his own.The police say Mr. Decker kidnapped the three girls — Olivia Decker, 5; Evelyn, 8; and Paityn, 9 — on May 30. They were found dead on Monday near a campsite roughly 70 miles east of Seattle. Each child had a plastic bag over her head, according to an affidavit from the police in Wenatchee, Wash., where the girls lived with their mother.Travis Caleb DeckerWenatchee Police DepartmentLarge swaths of wilderness around where the girls’ bodies were found have been closed to the public as the manhunt has intensified. The U.S. Forest Service closed some trails, roads and campsites in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest. On Thursday, the National Park Service closed parts of the Lake Chelan National Recreation Area, a part of the North Cascades National Park Service Complex to the north of the national forest.On Friday, Gov. Bob Ferguson pledged to support the investigation by sending National Guard resources and emergency funding.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

  • in

    Bill Atkinson, Who Made Computers Easier to Use, Is Dead at 74

    A designer for Apple, he created software that made it possible to display shapes, images and text on the screen and present a simulated “desktop.”Bill Atkinson, the Apple Computer designer who created the software that enabled the transformative visual approach pioneered by the company’s Lisa and Macintosh computers, making the machines accessible to millions of users without specialized skills, died on Thursday night at his home in Portola Valley, Calif., in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was 74.In a Facebook post, his family said the cause was pancreatic cancer.It was Mr. Atkinson who programmed QuickDraw, a foundational software layer used for both the Lisa and Macintosh computers; composed of a library of small programs, it made it possible to display shapes, text and images on the screen efficiently.The QuickDraw programs were embedded in the computers’ hardware, providing a distinctive graphical user interface that presented a simulated “desktop,” displaying icons of folders, files and application programs.Mr. Atkinson is credited with inventing many of the key aspects of graphical computing, such as “pull down” menus and the “double-click” gesture, which allows users to open files, folders and applications by clicking a mouse button twice in succession.Before the Macintosh was introduced in January 1984, most personal computers were text-oriented; graphics were not yet an integrated function of the machines. And computer mice pointing devices were not widely available; software programs were instead controlled by typing arcane commands.The QuickDraw library had originally been designed for Apple’s Lisa computer, which was introduced in January 1983. Intended for business users, the Lisa predated many of the Macintosh’s easy-to-use features, but priced at $10,000 (almost $33,000 in today’s money), it was a commercial failure.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

  • in

    2 Veterans Found With Stolen Military Weapons and Nazi Material, Officials Say

    The authorities said a soldier was assaulted with a hammer as the men tried to steal gear from a military base in Washington State. The theft led investigators to a house full of contraband.Two masked men dressed in fitness clothing worn by Army Rangers made their way onto a military base some 50 miles south of Seattle on Sunday night. The authorities said the men were intent on stealing thousands of dollars in combat equipment from an Army Ranger regiment there.However, the robbery quickly went awry.A soldier walked in and began asking questions as the two men were surrounded by piles of equipment. The soldier was bludgeoned with a hammer and one of the attackers brandished a knife.As the robbers fled, they dropped a bloody rucksack full of stolen combat gear. Handwritten on the rucksack was the name “Fields,” which investigators discovered matched the last name of a man whose identification had been scanned when he drove that day onto the military installation, Joint Base Lewis-McChord.His name led the authorities to a home elsewhere in Washington State, where they said they discovered a startling scene: rooms and rooms of Nazi and white supremacy paraphernalia and a stockpile of stolen weapons.That, according to a criminal complaint filed on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in the Western District of Washington, tells the story of the investigation that led to the two men, identified by the authorities as Charles Ethan Fields and Levi Austin Frakes, being charged with assault, robbery and theft of government property “by force and by violence and by intimidation.”The 11-page complaint and a Facebook post by the sheriff of Thurston County, Wash., so far amounts to the only public information about the activities of the two men, who were both identified in the complaint as veterans, leaving more questions than the authorities will currently answer.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

  • in

    The Latest Air Jordans? They’re Digital

    As the sneaker boom recedes, brands like Nike and Adidas are targeting younger audiences by meeting them where they are — in the virtual world of ‘Fortnite.’In March, when Jordan Brand released the Air Jordan 4 “Brick by Brick,” a collaboration with the BMX athlete Nigel Sylvester, they sold out almost instantly, quickly doubled in value on the resale market and were championed by collectors as an early contender for sneaker of the year.But for some sneaker fans, the real fun began two months later, when the “Brick by Brick” became available in Fortnite — as a fully digital replica that could be purchased for 1,000 “V-Bucks,” the game’s virtual currency, or about $8.99.Fortnite, the online multiplayer shooter by Epic Games, introduced Kicks, a vertical within its popular in-game marketplace dedicated to footwear, in November. Alongside a handful of quirky proprietary designs, the virtual shop sells shoes by Nike, Jordan Brand, Adidas, Vans and Crocs, which can be worn by player avatars and shown off during matches. For gamers — especially kids — these digital sneakers represent a form of creative self-expression. “The younger generation sees what happens on the internet as no less important than the offline world,” Funs Jacobs, a technology and culture strategist, said. “To older generations, it sounds insane, but it’s a bit of an identity thing.”Digital versions of Nike sneakers in “Fortnite.”NikeThey’re also a big business. Fortnite, a free-to-play game, has more than 500 million registered users and an average of over two million active players every day. Its $5 billion in annual revenue comes almost entirely from the sale of virtual goods. Though Epic would not provide exact sales figures, a representative from the company said players had selected and applied Kicks to their avatars nearly seven billion times since November.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

  • in

    Roger Nichols, Songwriter Behind Carpenters Hits, Dies at 84

    With Paul Williams, he wrote enduring 1970s soft-rock classics like “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “Rainy Days and Mondays.”Roger Nichols, a California songwriter and musician who, with his pop-alchemist partner Paul Williams, wrote an advertising jingle for a bank that turned into “We’ve Only Just Begun,” a milestone hit for the Carpenters and a timeless wedding weeper, died on May 17 at his home in Bend, Ore. He was 84.His death, from pneumonia, was confirmed by his daughter Caroline Nichols.Mr. Nichols was best known for his collaborations with Paul Williams, the songwriter, lyricist and all-around celebrity known for songs like “Rainbow Connection,” Kermit the Frog’s forlorn anthem from “The Muppet Movie” (1979).With Mr. Nichols focusing on the music and Mr. Williams conjuring up the words, the duo churned out silky pop nuggets like Three Dog Night’s “Out in the Country” (1970), which rose to No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100; “Traveling Boy,” which Art Garfunkel released in 1973; and “I Never Had It So Good,” recorded by Barbra Streisand in 1975.But it was with their work for the Carpenters, the hit-machine sibling duo Karen and Richard Carpenter, that Mr. Nichols and Mr. Williams scaled the heights of pop success.“We’ve Only Just Begun” peaked at No. 2 in 1970, sold more than a million copies of sheet music and served as a timeless showcase for Ms. Carpenter’s spellbinding contralto vocal stylings.The single “We’ve Only Just Begun,” by Mr. Nichols and Paul Williams, rose to No. 2 on he music charts and became a staple of weddings. A&M RecordsWe 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

  • in

    Israel Recovers Body of Thai Farmworker in Gaza

    Nattapong Pinta was taken hostage and later killed by members of a small militant group in Gaza, the Israeli military said.Israeli security forces have recovered the body of a Thai citizen who was abducted and taken back to Gaza in the 2023 Hamas-led attack, the military said on Saturday.Nattapong Pinta was in his 30s and was a farmworker at Kibbutz Nir Oz in southern Israel when he was taken hostage. He was held and later killed by members of the Mujahideen Brigades, a small militant group in Gaza, according to the Israeli military statement.Security forces brought the body back from the Rafah area in southern Gaza after the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency obtained intelligence from a Palestinian militant during an interrogation, the statement added.Palestinian militants took dozens of Thai farmworkers hostage in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack. During a short cease-fire in November of that year, 23 Thai captives were released and five more were freed during another cease-fire this year.A handout photograph from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum showing Nattapong Pinta, left, with his wife and son.Hostages and Missing Families Forum, via Associated PressThat cease-fire broke down and Israel resumed its offensive in Gaza against Hamas in mid-March with regular air bombardments and ground operations.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