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    Is It Harris’ or Harris’s? Add a Walz, and It’s Even Trickier.

    With Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz running on the same ticket, grammar geeks are in overdrive.When Vice President Kamala Harris chose Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota as her running mate, she put to rest weeks of speculation over the future of the Democratic ticket. But the battle over apostrophes was just getting started.Where were voters (and journalists) supposed to place the possessive squiggle?It all felt a bit, as some social media users described, like apostrophe hell: Would it be Ms. Harris’s and Mr. Walz’s or Ms. Harris’ and Mr. Walz’s? The Harrises and the Walzes? The Harrises’ family home and the Walzes’ family dog? It was enough to see double, made worse by the fact that stylebooks, large news organizations and grammar geeks were all split or contradicted one another.“Anyone who tells you there are universal rules to how to add an apostrophe ending in S is either wrong or lying,” Jeffrey Barg, a grammar columnist, said. “You can’t be wrong as long as you’re consistent.”The Associated Press Stylebook, widely considered to be the gold standard among news organizations, is clear on its rule for the possessive of singular proper names ending in S — only an apostrophe is needed (Harris’), though there are always exceptions. The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal all do the opposite, opting for ’s to mark a singular possessive and a simple apostrophe for plural possessive (Harrises’ and Walzes’).Merriam-Webster, the oldest dictionary publisher in America, splits the difference: For names ending in an S or Z sound, you can add ’s or just an apostrophe, though the dictionary says ’s is the more common choice.“People want to know what the rules are because they want to do this correctly,” said Mr. Barg, who was raised on The A.P. stylebook. But at the same time, “you can’t impose language from the top down — it’s a bottom-up thing,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a learning experience for us as a country.”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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    Ex-Green Beret Goudreau, Who Planned Failed Venezuela Coup, Is Arrested

    Jordan Goudreau, 48, had taken credit for a failed coup attempt against Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela. He faces federal charges of illegal arms smuggling.A former U.S. Green Beret who orchestrated a disastrous failed coup attempt against the authoritarian president Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela in 2020 was arrested Tuesday in New York on federal arms smuggling charges.The federal authorities accused Jordan G. Goudreau, 48, and a co-conspirator, Yacsy Alexandra Alvarez, of exporting military-style rifles, night vision devices, lasers, silencers and other military equipment without a license to Colombia beginning in November 2019 for use in carrying out “activities in Venezuela,” the Justice Department said in a news release on Wednesday.The charges appear to refer to the botched cross-border raid carried out in May 2020 by dozens of armed, self-declared freedom fighters, including former Venezuelan soldiers and former American Special Forces operators, who aimed to topple Mr. Maduro.Mr. Goudreau, of Melbourne, Fla., who did not participate in the raid, publicly took credit for the failed incursion known as Operation Gideon, which he said he had planned with disaffected Venezuelan officials. The audacious rebellion left observers around the world wondering why a decorated former U.S. Special Forces soldier who had served several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan was leading a foreign insurrection.A group of only about 60 men had planned to land on Venezuelan soil near the capital, Caracas, from speedboats and ultimately capture Mr. Maduro. But they were repelled by the Venezuelan security forces. Six men were killed and 13 others were detained, including two former Green Berets who were said to have been recruited by Mr. Goudreau, according to The Associated Press. The Americans were sentenced to 20 years in prison by the Venezuelan authorities in August 2020 but were released in a prisoner exchange deal with the United States late last year.Mr. Goudreau and Ms. Alvarez, a Venezuelan national who lives in Tampa, Fla., face charges of conspiracy to violate export laws, smuggling goods from the United States and violating federal firearm export control acts, prosecutors 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

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    You Ask, We Answer

    We’re answering reader questions about this newsletter, and the news in general.We recently asked you — the readers of The Morning — to submit questions to us about this newsletter, recent news or anything else on your minds. We’re devoting today’s edition to some of your questions and our answers.We have room for only a small selection in today’s email, but we’ve posted a longer selection online, including answers from Times journalists who cover a range of subjects, whether it’s Moscow or personal fitness. We enjoyed this project so much that I expect we’ll do it again soon.About The MorningI love The Morning. Every morning when I get up, I make a cup of coffee and open the newsletter. I have one wish: Please resist using the awful phrases “modern history” or “recent history.” They are too vague to mean anything. Be precise! — Mark MatassaDavid: Thank you. And noted! We try to avoid vague language, and we will think twice before using these phrases now. I grew up surrounded by discussion of language — my mom was a copy editor, my dad a high school French teacher — and I appreciate it when readers write to us with grammar and usage critiques. Keep ’em coming.I would like to see key business/finance news included each morning. — John W. Morris IIIDavid: My colleagues and I agree that the newsletter has probably been too light on business news recently. We will aim to change that. Thank you for the nudge, John.I enjoy the mix of information you provide in The Morning. Wondering as an addition if you could add a “Good News” section. — Genie MontBlancWe 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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    Pete Wells Will Leave Role as NYT Food Critic

    Pete Wells is moving on from his role as the Times restaurant critic, a job with many rewards and maybe too many courses.Early this year, I went for my first physical in longer than I’d care to admit. At the time, I was about halfway through a list of 140 or so restaurants I planned to visit before I wrote the 2024 edition of “The 100 Best Restaurants in New York City.” It was a fair bet that I wasn’t in the best shape of my life.My scores were bad across the board; my cholesterol, blood sugar and hypertension were worse than I’d expected even in my doomiest moments. The terms pre-diabetes, fatty liver disease and metabolic syndrome were thrown around. I was technically obese.OK, not just technically.I knew I needed to change my life. I promised I’d start just as soon as I’d eaten in the other 70 restaurants on my spreadsheet.But a funny thing happened when I got to the end of all that eating: I realized I wasn’t hungry. And I’m still not, at least not the way I used to be. And so, after 12 years as restaurant critic for The New York Times, I’ve decided to bow out as gracefully as my state of technical obesity will allow.Not that I’m leaving the newsroom. I have a couple more restaurant reviews in my back pocket that will appear over the next few weeks, and I plan to stick around at The Times long after that. But I can’t hack the week-to-week reviewing life anymore.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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    Doug Mills Describes the Trump Shooting Scene

    Doug Mills, a veteran photographer for The New York Times who has been taking photographs of presidents since 1983, was only feet away from former President Donald J. Trump at the rally in Butler, Pa., when shooting started.He spoke with Victor Mather about the experience.What did you see and hear today?It was a very standard, typical rally. The former president was maybe an hour late. The crowd had been hot all day. Donald J. Trump arrived, waving to the crowd, just like any other rally he does.There’s a pool of photographers, maybe four of us, who were in what is called the buffer area just a couple feet from the former president. We were all jostling around in there trying to get our normal pictures.With his Secret Service detail between him and the crowd, Donald Trump walked to the stage in Butler, Pa., on Saturday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAll of a sudden, there was what I thought were three or four loud pops. At first I thought it was a car. The last thing I thought was it was a gun.I kept taking pictures. He went down behind the lectern, and I thought, “Oh my God, something’s happened.”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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    Fact-Checking Biden’s News Conference at the NATO Summit

    The president omitted context or exaggerated in making claims about polling, migration at the border and attacks on his opponent.President Biden fielded questions about foreign policy and his age and fitness for office during a high-stakes news conference on Thursday in which he made clear that he had no intention of leaving the race.The nearly hourlong appearance, coming at the end of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Washington, was his first solo news conference in eight months. Under a dozen reporters pressed him on his candidacy, China and the conflict in Gaza, among other topics.Here’s a fact check of some of his remarks.What Was Said“He’s already told Putin — and I quote — do whatever the hell you want.”This needs context. Mr. Biden leaves out a crucial caveat in characterizing the remarks of his Republican rival, former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Trump, in a campaign rally in February, repeated his misleading claim that some members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization “owed” money to the alliance, referring to informal commitments made by member nations to spend 2 percent of gross domestic product on their own militaries.In Mr. Trump’s telling, after he had delivered a speech urging members to “pay out,” the president of “one of the big countries” asked whether the United States would come to its defense if President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia invaded, but it had failed to meet that 2 percent target.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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    ‘Goodest Job’ or ‘Good as Job’? The White House Wants a Word.

    ABC News tweaked its transcript of an intriguing moment in its Friday interview with the president after the Biden administration and news outlets raised questions.ABC News adjusted its initial transcript of a much-discussed moment during President Biden’s Friday interview after White House officials told the network that they believed the president’s words had been inaccurately rendered, according to several people familiar with the discussion.The moment occurred toward the end of Mr. Biden’s interview, when George Stephanopoulos asked the president how he would feel if he stayed in the presidential race and was defeated by former President Donald J. Trump.“I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about,” Mr. Biden said, according to the official transcript that was distributed by ABC on Friday night.By Saturday afternoon, the quote in the network’s online transcript had changed slightly: “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.” The network appended an editors’ note explaining that the transcript “has been updated for clarity.”Mr. Biden’s actual words at that point during the interview were difficult to make out and open to some degree of interpretation.ABC’s standards team decided to review the audio after receiving queries on Saturday from the White House along with several news organizations, asking whether Mr. Biden had said “goodest” or “good as,” according to a person briefed on the network’s discussions.After conducting its review, the network decided to adjust the transcript and append the editors’ note, the person said. The network did not modify the audio and video of the interview itself.After the ABC transcript was adjusted on Saturday, a spokesman for the president’s re-election campaign emailed several reporters for The New York Times requesting that the word “goodest” be changed in the newspaper’s coverage of the interview, citing the updated transcript.The Times has revised Mr. Biden’s quote in its articles about the interview to conform with the updated ABC transcript.At a moment of high political peril for Mr. Biden, and widespread discussion about his physical and mental health, nearly every word he utters in public — particularly in an unscripted setting such as the ABC interview — is under a microscope.Following Friday’s interview, White House stenographers, who are not political appointees and regularly record all of the president’s public remarks, noticed a difference between their recordings and the ABC transcript, according to one person familiar with the situation.That led a White House official to raise the issue of the quote’s accuracy with representatives of ABC on Saturday morning, the person said.The 22-minute interview, which aired on Friday at 8 p.m., was watched by 8.5 million viewers, according to early data from Nielsen. It was ABC’s most-watched prime-time news program, aside from election nights and debates, since Mr. Stephanopoulos interviewed the former F.B.I. director James Comey in April 2018. More

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    Four Takeaways From Biden’s Post-Debate Interview

    He downplayed. He denied. He dismissed.President Biden’s first television interview since his poor debate performance last week was billed as a prime-time opportunity to reassure the American people that he still has what it takes to run for, win and hold the nation’s highest office.But Mr. Biden, with more than a hint of hoarseness in his voice, spent much of the 22 minutes resisting a range of questions that George Stephanopoulos of ABC News had posed — about his competence, about taking a cognitive test, about his standing in the polls.The president on Friday did not struggle to complete his thoughts the way he did at the debate. But at the same time he was not the smooth-talking senator of his youth, or even the same elder statesman whom the party entrusted four years ago to defeat former President Donald J. Trump.Instead, it was a high-stakes interview with an 81-year-old president whose own party is increasingly doubting him yet who sounded little like a man with any doubts about himself.Here are four takeaways:Biden downplays the debate as a one-time flub.The interview was Mr. Biden’s longest unscripted appearance in public since his faltering debate performance. The delay has had his allies on Capitol Hill and beyond confused about what was keeping the president cloistered behind closed doors — or depending upon teleprompters — for so long.The eight-day lag has seen the first members of Congress call for him to step aside and donors demand that the party consider switching candidates. It also heightened the scrutiny of every word Mr. Biden 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