Elections

Jeremy Newton owes us an explanation.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesMONDAY PUZZLE — In a themed crossword, constructors tend to include a revealer, a kind of breadcrumb trail that leads us definitively to the puzzle’s trick. In today’s puzzle, in contrast, Jeremy Newton seems to have scattered the entire loaf — if we’re sticking with the bread analogy — throughout his grid.After I got the gist of Mr. Newton’s theme, it was a delight to keep discovering new dimensions of its execution. Joel Fagliano, a senior puzzle editor for The New York Times, echoed this sentiment in his commentary on what made the grid stand out. “It’s so hard to come up with a simple concept that involves multiple layers like this,” he said. Mr. Fagliano also cited today’s crossword, which he said “unfolds beautifully,” as one of his favorite Monday puzzles of the past few years. And lucky us, we get to solve it now.Today’s ThemeBefore proceeding, I should apologize: The summary of today’s column is a play on words. I’m not saying that Mr. Newton owes us an explanation — I mean that he O’s us one. Because we learn, “by following the path of O’s in this puzzle’s grid” (33A), exactly what Mr. Newton is up to.These O’s, which “Zig or zag” (11A) — i.e. TURN — through a winding route from left to right, represent a ball in a game of MINIGOLF (18A). I was especially delighted by this game’s alliterative clue: “Popular pastime played with putters.”Holes in MINIGOLF are often designed so that their walls can act as conduits for the ball. And here, our ball ricochets from the TEE (58A) right into the CUP (8A), scoring a HOLE-IN-ONE SHOT (33/34/35A)! Solvers of the digital version should see a whimsical completion animation of the winning putt.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 mayor praised the work of a migrant welcome center, which he visited at the end of a three-day trip, during which he also met with Pope Francis.It didn’t take long for Mayor Eric Adams of New York to articulate what he liked about a welcome center for migrants and asylum seekers that he visited on Sunday in Rocca di Papa, a town about 15 miles outside Rome.“In two months they’re going from migrant to participating in society,” Mr. Adams said after a 30-minute tour of the center, where migrants from countries including Syria and Sudan are processed, take Italian lessons and receive health care before being sent out for job opportunities.The mayor, who has called on the federal government to expedite work permits and relocation assistance for migrants, repeated that appeal after visiting the center, which is run by the Red Cross and receives funding from the Italian government. He said he wanted help from the Biden administration to develop something similar in New York, where more than 190,000 migrants have arrived over the last two years.Mr. Adams’s visit came on the last day of a three-day trip to Rome, where he met Pope Francis at the Vatican and spoke at an international conference on peace. The trip was a brief respite from varied troubles at home — protests over the Israel-Hamas war, a federal investigation into his campaign’s fund-raising, lagging poll numbers and possible challengers in next year’s primary — and Mr. Adams said it had inspired him and given him ideas that he would use in New York.“The big takeaway for me is the similarities of these cities,” he said.Mr. Adams met with Victor Fadlun, president of the Jewish Community of Rome, a nonprofit organization, in the city’s Jewish Quarter.Alessandro Penso for The New York TimesThe mayor was received warmly in Rome: On Saturday, his often-used line comparing New York to other cities — in this case, “New York is the Rome of America” — drew applause. On Sunday, a child asked for his autograph.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 Justice companies have long had a reputation for not paying their debts. But that may be catching up to them.Jim Justice, the businessman-turned-politician governor of West Virginia, has been pursued in court for years by banks, governments, business partners and former employees for millions of dollars in unmet obligations.And for a long time, Mr. Justice and his family’s companies have managed to stave off one threat after another with wily legal tactics notably at odds with the aw-shucks persona that has endeared him to so many West Virginians. On Tuesday, he is heavily favored to win the Republican Senate primary and cruise to victory in the general election, especially after the departure of the Democratic incumbent, Joe Manchin III.But now, as he wraps up his second term as governor and campaigns for a seat in the U.S. Senate, things are looking dicier. Much like Donald J. Trump, with whom he is often compared — with whom he often compares himself — Mr. Justice has faced a barrage of costly judgments and legal setbacks.And this time, there may be too many, some suspect, for Mr. Justice, 73, and his family to fend them all off. “It’s a simple matter of math,” said Steven New, a lawyer in Mr. Justice’s childhood hometown, Beckley, W.Va., who, like many lawyers in coal country, has tangled with Justice companies. Mr. Justice and his scores of businesses would be able to handle some of these potential multimillion-dollar judgments in isolation, Mr. New said. But “when you add it all up, and put the judgments together close in time, it would appear he doesn’t have enough,” he said.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

A Ukrainian military unit said that its troops were forced to retreat from several positions and that one settlement had been captured by Russian forces.Russian forces continued their advance across northeastern Ukraine on Sunday, seizing a number of small settlements along the border and forcing Ukrainian troops to retreat from some positions, according to the Russian and Ukrainian militaries, as well as aid workers.Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Sunday that its troops had captured four more settlements — all but one located directly north of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city — as they pressed ahead with a new offensive launched on Friday. Aid workers confirmed that Russian troops had advanced deeper inside Ukrainian territory and were now threatening several small towns on the outskirts of Kharkiv.A Ukrainian military unit fighting in the area said the Russian forces were pushing hard from the Russia-Ukraine border toward Kharkiv.“Today, during heavy fighting, our defenders were forced to withdraw from a few more of their positions, and today, another settlement has come completely under Russian control,” said a video statement released on Saturday night by Hostri Kartuzy, a Ukrainian special forces unit. “The Russians are dying in droves. But they are pressing on regardless and succeeding in some areas.”Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s top military commander, said that the situation in the Kharkiv region had “significantly worsened” this past week, but that Russian attempts to break through Ukrainian defensive lines had been unsuccessful so far.A Ukrainian tank on Sunday near a damaged car in the Vovchansk district of the Kharkiv region.Roman Pilipey/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWe 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

A mash-up of geology and art history has identified a likely setting for one of the world’s most famous paintings.She’s been smeared with cake and doused with acid. Vigilantes have stolen her, and protesters have defaced her. She’s been lasered and prodded, displayed for the masses, and relegated to her own basement gallery. More recently, thousands urged billionaire Jeff Bezos to buy her, and then eat her.There is no bottom, it seems, to the mysteries of the Mona Lisa, the Leonardo da Vinci painting that has captivated art lovers, culture vultures and the rest of us for centuries. Who is she? (Most likely Lisa Gherardini, the wife of an Italian nobleman.) Is she smiling? (The short answer — kind of.) Did da Vinci originally intend to paint her differently, with her hair clipped or in a nursing gown?While much about the art world’s most enigmatic subject has been relegated to the realm of the unknowable, now, in a strange crossover of art and geology, there may be one less mystery: where she was sitting when da Vinci painted her.According to Ann Pizzorusso, a geologist and Renaissance-art scholar, da Vinci’s subject is sitting in Lecco, Italy, an idyllic town near the banks of Lake Como. The conclusion, Pizzorusso said, is obvious — she figured it out years ago, but never realized its significance.“I saw the topography near Lecco and realized this was the location,” she said.The nondescript background has some important features; among them, a medieval bridge that most scholars have held as the key to da Vinci’s setting. But Pizzorusso said it is rather the shape of the lake and the gray-white limestone that betrays Lecco as the painting’s spiritual home.“A bridge is fungible,” said Pizzorusso. “You have to combine a bridge with a place that Leonardo was at, and the geology.”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 auction house failed to regain control of its official website on Sunday but said that its spring auctions would go on, in person and by phone.People gathered at Christie’s New York on Saturday to view art and luxury items that are scheduled to be auctioned. They relied on printouts of catalogs after Christie’s lost control of its official website, which was brought down by a cyberattack.Li Qiang for The New York TimesOfficials at Christie’s auction house said on Saturday that the marquee sales that account for nearly half of its annual revenue would continue, despite the company having lost control of its official website last Thursday in a hack that is testing the loyalty of its ultrawealthy clients amid its spring auctions.Natasha Le Bel, a spokeswoman for the auction house, said that Christie’s New York sales of modern and contemporary art “will take place as planned,” but did not respond to questions of how the online portion of the auction would continue. “We remain committed to providing the highest level of service to our clients and look forward to a successful week,” she said.On Thursday, Christie’s experienced what it called a “technology security issue” that took its company website offline, leaving in place an apology and the promise to provide “further updates to our clients as appropriate.” By Sunday, the site was still down.It was the second time in less than a year that Christie’s had suffered a breach. In August, a German cybersecurity company revealed a data breach at the auction house that leaked the locations of artworks held by some of the world’s wealthiest collectors.Over the weekend, dozens of those potential buyers gathered at the company’s galleries at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan to view the expensive artworks that have a total high estimate of nearly $840 million, and to discuss bidding. Employees led private tours past the giant Andy Warhol “Flowers” silk-screen painting from 1964 that carries a high estimate of $30 million, and down toward the more modestly priced day sales, where a Barbara Kruger artwork proclaiming “You can’t drag your money into the grave with you” had a high estimate of $600,000.Christie’s employees assured some clients in the galleries that its website would be fixed “imminently,” but on Saturday afternoon, when the company still had not regained control, it replaced a temporary landing page on the site since Thursday with another temporary website produced through a free web design company called Shorthand. The temporary site lets viewers browse online catalogs of upcoming sales but does not allow online bidding or registration.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

Richard Slayman received the historic procedure in March. The hospital said it had “no indication” his death was related to the transplant.Richard “Rick” Slayman, who made history at age 62 as the first person to receive a kidney from a genetically modified pig, has died about two months after the procedure.Massachusetts General Hospital, where Mr. Slayman had the operation, said in a statement on Saturday that its transplant team was “deeply saddened” at his death. The hospital said it had “no indication that it was the result of his recent transplant.”Mr. Slayman, who was Black, had end-stage kidney disease, a condition that affects more than 800,000 people in the United States, according to the federal government, with disproportionately higher rates among Black people.Surgeons performing the world’s first kidney transplant from a genetically modified pig into a living human in March.Michelle Rose/Massachusetts General Hospital, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThere are far too few kidneys available for donation. Nearly 90,000 people are on the national waiting list for a kidney.Mr. Slayman, a supervisor for the state transportation department from Weymouth, Mass., had received a human kidney in 2018. When it began to fail in 2023 and he developed congestive heart failure, his doctors suggested he try one from a modified pig.“I saw it not only as a way to help me, but a way to provide hope for the thousands of people who need a transplant to survive,” he said in a hospital news release in March.His surgery, which lasted four hours, was a medical milestone. For decades, proponents of so-called xenotransplantation have proposed replacing ailing human organs with those from animals. The main problem with the approach is the human immune system, which rejects animal tissue as foreign, often leading to serious complications.Recent advances in genetic engineering have allowed researchers to tweak the genes of the animal organs to make them more compatible with their recipients.The pig kidney that was transplanted into Mr. Slayman was engineered by eGenesis, a biotech company based in Cambridge, Mass. Scientists there removed three genes and added seven others to improve compatibility. The company also inactivated retroviruses that pigs carry and could be harmful to humans.“Mr. Slayman was a true pioneer,” eGenesis said in a statement on social media on Saturday. “His courage has helped to forge a path forward for current and future patients suffering from kidney failure.”Mr. Slayman was discharged from the hospital two weeks after his surgery, with “one of the cleanest bills of health I’ve had in a long time,” he said at the time.In a statement published by the hospital, Mr. Slayman’s family said he was kind, quick-witted and “fiercely dedicated to his family, friends and co-workers.” They said they had taken great comfort in knowing that his case had inspired so many people.“Millions of people worldwide have come to know Rick’s story,” they said in the statement. “We felt — and still feel — comforted by the optimism he provided patients desperately waiting for a transplant.” More

Nearly two weeks after a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles, was attacked by counterprotesters, university officials still have not explained why security officers stood by for hours while the attack was underway, nor have they arrested any of those who swarmed in wielding metal rods, water bottles and firecrackers in one of the worst outbreaks of violence in the college protests that have rocked the country.The extent of the policing failure has become clearer in recent days, as witnesses have come forward to describe a chaotic night of violence on April 30, in which students and bystanders repeatedly called 911 and nonemergency lines, finding little help and calls that were disconnected. A dispatcher told one caller pleading for help that they were ending the call because “I have actual emergencies to handle.”One man was filmed by a local television station on the phone with emergency dispatchers, alerting them that people were getting hurt. “Security has abandoned this encampment,” he could be heard saying before lowering his phone and looking at it. “They just hung up on me again,” he said incredulously.Miles away in Sacramento, staff members in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office contacted the U.C.L.A. chancellor’s office shortly after 11 p.m. to make sure that law enforcement officers were responding to the scene, and were assured that more officers were coming, according to a person familiar with the situation, who described the discussions on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to make them public.Protesters and counterprotesters fought one another for hours before the police intervened.Mark Abramson for The New York TimesBut as the night wore on and there was still no intervention, the person said, the governor’s office moved to circumvent local authority and ordered California Highway Patrol officers to the campus. The state officers began assembling on campus at 1:45 a.m., a few moments before L.A.P.D. riot police arrived, but it took another hour to quell the clashes.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