Tag: new york times

After a massive earthquake in Russia’s eastern Kamchatka Peninsula, tsunami waves began pounding the U.S.’s West Coast early this morning.

Hawaii has downgraded the tsunami but urges citizens to stay alert. People in the Pacific Northwest, however, are facing life-threatening waves:

The waves, measuring at 3.6 feet, slammed into the Northern California coastline near the small enclave of Crescent City and Humboldt Bay, the National Weather Service Eureka announced.

The entire US West Coast had been under a tsunami advisory for hours after the world’s largest earthquake in 14 years struck 8.2 miles southeast of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia at around 7:24 p.m. ET….

Large parts of Russia, China, Japan, Guam, Canada, Mexico and Central and South America were all under tsunami warnings or advisories after the quake.

We will keep those affected by the tsunami in our thoughts and prayers.

The New York Times reports on the four innocent and outstanding victims murdered in yesterday’s shooting spree in midtown Manhattan. One victim was Blackstone executive Wesley LePatner; trolls are already making sick Luigi Mangione-inspired memes out of his death. A news story in the Wall Street Journal takes us inside 345 Park Avenue, the office building under attack, as frantic employees set up barricades. There were some lucky escapes.

The lobbying for more gun control began just as quickly as the memes. “Even New York’s Strict Gun Control Laws Couldn’t Prevent the Midtown Shooting,” is the headline on a New York Times story. But the shooter, Shane Tamura, obtained his concealed carry permit in Nevada, you say. That’s the trouble, the New York Times contends: piecemeal gun laws across the country. Tamura was obviously nuts and had had previous known bouts with mental instability. How about we strictly enforce the gun laws on the books before we go for a national gun control law?  (Tamura had made the gun himself.)

Mayoral aspirant Zohran Mamdani responded to the shooting spree long distance from his Ugandan Shangri-La. New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin found Mamdani’s response consisted of “shallow platitudes:”

Sensible New Yorkers didn’t need yet another reason to vote against Zohran Mamdani for mayor, but Monday’s horrific Midtown slaughter provided a clear illustration of why the radical Democrat must not win the keys to City Hall.

Not only is Mamdani on record as ardently supporting defunding the police but he lacks the seasoning, Goodwin writes, of Mayor Eric Adams and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who were on the spot:

Meanwhile, Mamdani is a rich-kid socialist whose wealthy parents made it possible for him to avoid work and try to become a rap artist.

Indeed, he seems never to have held an actual job before winning election to the Assembly four years ago, which should never be confused with full-time work.

One of the few things he’s done is steep himself in the toxic brew of NYPD hatred.

And yet … a stunning poll reveals that Mamdani’s rivals for Mayor of New York have little chance, even if they team up.

Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley has something to say about policing in his column this morning. It is headlined “Violent Crime Is in Decline. Why?” Riley argues that protests and passive policing during Covid, not illegal immigration, were the major factors:

The rise in crime that the U.S. experienced during Covid began before the pandemic. Laws had been passed that decriminalized lawbreaking. Progressive policies had been enacted that made it more difficult to prosecute offenders and keep violent suspects off the streets.

What Democrats have taken away from this experience is an open question. On the one hand, cities like Baltimore and San Francisco now have mayors and district attorneys who take crime control seriously. On the other hand, Zohran Mamdani, the leading candidate to be the next mayor of New York, is a socialist who once tweeted that the New York City Police Department “is racist, anti-queer and a major threat to public safety.”

If Mr. Mamdani wins, his police detail might want him to elaborate on that sentiment.

Threatened City: New York City remains a target of single-actor terror, according to City Journal’s Nicole Gelinas.

Don’t Everybody Answer at Once: “Why are Democrats so darned unpopular?” asks novelist and political commentator Mark Halprin. Halpin’s piece at The Liberal Patriot is so interesting that it’s hard to decide which point to tempt you with, so you’ll just have to read the whole thing.  

Mr. Halpin has been a busy bee. He has a piece headlined “Trump Blinders in His Fight with Harvard” in the Wall Street Journal. Halprin argues that universities need reform but are likely to believe they can weather the current storm.

“Why Is Trump Winning His Fight with the Institutions?” is the headline on Matthew Continetti’s Free Press column. “The ultimate cause of the progressive implosion isn’t external force. It’s internal rot,” Continetti argues. In the same outlet, Joe Nocera wonders if the Fed will be the next institution to fall.

Chief Political Correspondent Byron York has a good piece headlined “For Now the Big Fight Is Democratic Anger vs. Trump Achievements.” Byron addresses the Dem mania for the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. They don’t even have to trap President Trump in anything wrong—they simply have to drag out the Epstein matter for mileage. (Speaking of Dem anger, Spartacus Has Pitched Another Hissy Fit. But at least this one didn’t take 25 hours.)

Everybody suddenly wants to hear from Epstein’s procurer of underage girls. Ghislaine Maxwell is doing 20 years for her role in the Epstein horror, and she wants a deal to tell what she knows. Tina Brown, formerly Queen of Glitzy Journalism, has remarkable insights into Maxwell. Here is Ms. Brown’s lead sentence:

The reason why Ghislaine has never spilled what she knows before is that she has always pretended she doesn’t know anything. …

Maxwell probably won’t get liberated, but National Review hails EPA administrator Lee Zeldin as the liberator of American industry:

In March, we cheered the news that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin planned to “reconsider” the Obama EPA’s 2009 “Endangerment Finding.” That finding allowed the EPA to regulate fossil fuel emissions under the Clean Air Act. On Tuesday, Zeldin announced that the EPA intends to rescind the finding, a step he described as “the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States.” This strikes a major blow against intrusive regulation of the energy, automotive, and manufacturing sectors.

The New York Times has “stunningly” admitted the truth about the picture of an emaciated child it used to illustrate starvation in Gaza:

The New York Times appended a story it published last week containing a shocking image of a child purportedly suffering from starvation in Gaza with an editor’s note Tuesday.

The note informs readers that Mohammed Zakaria al Mutawaq — the Gazan boy “diagnosed with severe malnutrition” and pictured in the article — also suffers from “pre-existing health problems.” 

“We recently ran a story about Gaza’s most vulnerable civilians, including Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, who is about 18 months old and suffers from severe malnutrition,” a spokesperson for the outlet said in a statement.  

The New York Times admission may have been prompted by readers who noticed the unfortunate child’s mother did not look underfed.

Alex Berenson comments “urgently” on the New York Times’ Gaza coverage:

But the vaguely worded correction does not explain a far more serious problem. As part of the article, the paper ran a huge photo that seems to show the boy is dying of malnutrition — but excluded his brother, who is clearly of normal weight.

The Atlantic profile of Rep. Jasmine Crockett (“A Democrat for the Trump Era”) is behind the paywall. But tidbits have leaked out, including that Crockett tried to shut down the profile when the reporter began interviewing her colleagues. The Federalist’s Ed Scarry says the mouthy Ms. Crockett isn’t really a new kind of Dem. His headline:

The Democrat Party Has Always Been As Foul As Jasmine Crockett

Good News from the Same ish of the Atlantic: “Why Marriage Survives,” by Brad Wilcox. (You can read this one.)