A new report from The New York Times explores why companies are substituting real chocolate with other ingredients due to climate change. Claire Brown, a climate writer for the New York Times, joins CBS News to discuss.
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How The New York Times obtained 10,000 police disciplinary records
In the immediate aftermath of George Floyd’s killing at the hands of Minneapolis police officers in 2020, New York State repealed a law that for decades kept the disciplinary records of its police officers secret.
The New York Times and New York Focus, a nonprofit newsroom, have since gathered over 10,000 such files from around half of New York State’s nearly 500 law enforcement agencies. The documents, most of which are from the past 10 years, provide a window into how some officers at the state, county and local levels have avoided accountability in court despite relatively clear evidence that they broke the law.
The files also highlight vast discrepancies in how departments have handled misconduct. Offenses considered fireable in some departments were handled with letters of reprimand in others. In some departments, officers who repeatedly committed misconduct were allowed to keep their jobs; in others, officers were fired or forced to resign.
Thousands of officers who committed misconduct remain on the job today.
While major New York news outlets have written about the records from larger agencies, including the New York Police Department, which began releasing its files in 2021, those from the State Police and local departments have received less scrutiny.
The New York Times and New York Focus are examining cases and patterns from these records. The first article in our series, published Tuesday, explored cases of officers who drove drunk.
What type of misconduct is included in these files?
Infractions vary from mundane violations of department policy, such as arriving late to work or failing to register for a vacation day, to serious offenses such as using excessive force, inappropriate behavior and abuse of authority.
Unlike some other states, New York has no statewide requirement mandating that outside agencies such as district attorneys’ offices or the state’s attorney general investigate allegations of misconduct. Though the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services maintains a public list of officers decertified for misconduct since 2016, the list tracks only officers who faced termination or resigned.
These cases are rare, the files show, and in almost all other instances, allegations of misconduct were internally investigated by departments and then placed in personnel files and disciplinary logs.
Departments have counseled, reprimanded, censured, suspended and even occasionally demoted their officers behind closed doors.
How do departments conduct internal investigations?
The files indicate that there are no statewide standards. Some departments conduct lengthy investigations and create hundreds of pages of files, while others confine the findings of disciplinary investigations to a few sentences on a single form.
Some departments keep transcripts of disciplinary interviews with officers accused of misconduct; others do not document if any such interviews occur.
Records also show that departments followed different practices when citizens filed complaints saying that officers had committed misconduct. In some departments, citizens were interviewed and notified of the outcome of cases. In others, citizens were asked to fill out forms describing their allegations but were never notified of the outcomes.
Disciplinary investigations often occurred weeks or months after an incident. Information from disciplinary investigations is protected, meaning it cannot be used against officers in court.
Why did it take years to obtain these files?
Shortly after the law, known as 50-a, was repealed, reporters and civil rights groups filed requests for records with various police agencies. The New York Civil Liberties Union and the Legal Aid Society sued a number of large agencies who refused to release their records, including the New York Police Department, the Rochester Police Department and the New York State Police.
Days after the law’s repeal, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle became one of the first news outlets to request records from all of the state’s police departments. For this series, The New York Times and New York Focus began requesting these records in June 2023.
More: Search D&C’s New York police disciplinary records database
In September 2024, the state modified records laws to require agencies to notify current and former employees before the release of personnel records. Civil rights groups criticized the change, noting that departments may not have contact information for former officers and that already burdened records officers would now be forced to send hundreds of communications before fulfilling some basic requests.
The change, along with staffing shortages in several departments, has led to lengthy delays in fulfilling some requests.
Who provided files as part of this investigation?
In addition to requesting files directly from police departments, The New York Times and New York Focus spent the past two years requesting records from county district attorneys’ offices. Many of these offices collected records to comply with the state’s expanded discovery laws, and in some cases, district attorneys’ offices provided records even when local departments denied they existed.
In a number of instances, these requests uncovered records from smaller agencies — village and town police departments, and county sheriff’s offices — that were known to prosecutors but largely overlooked across the state.
The New York Times and New York Focus filed more than 800 records requests over the past two years. Reporters for New York Focus have filed dozens of administrative appeals — the first step in challenging the denial of a request — and, in three instances, filed lawsuits to further challenge the failure of departments to provide the records. The New York Times has sued the Erie County Sheriff’s Office to force the disclosure of over a decade of misconduct records.
Overall, our investigation has so far obtained records regarding 235 departments collectively containing over 8,000 sworn officers, according to state data.
Why focus on the State Police?
This investigation also focuses on the New York State Police, which, with over 5,000 sworn officers, is the second-biggest law enforcement agency in the state, behind the New York Police Department. The agency has yet to make its body of misconduct files public.
Our reporting found that the agency routinely provided county district attorneys’ offices bulk access to records about current officers, sometimes providing files via compact disc. The New York Times and New York Focus uncovered thousands of the department’s records related to 1,200 officers in seven of the agency’s 11 divisions. (Records from one division, obtained from a district attorney’s office, were first reported by WKBW-TV in Buffalo.)
New York Focus has worked with MuckRock, a nonprofit news organization focused on requesting and sharing public records, to make a body of records related to hundreds of State Police officers public, and they plan to continue making more records available to the public.
If you’re interested in articles in this series, sign up for Staying Focused, a newsletter by New York Focus.Sammy Sussman is an investigative reporter who writes about police and policing in New York State as part of The New York Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: How The New York Times obtained 10,000 police disciplinary records
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Video: Trump Escalates Attack on Free Speech
new video loaded: Trump Escalates Attack on Free Speech
By Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Christina Thornell and David Seekamp•
Zolan Kanno-Youngs, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, describes how the Trump administration’s pressuring of ABC to take action against Jimmy Kimmel is part of a broader crackdown by the administration since the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Christina Thornell and David Seekamp
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Behind the New York Times’ process for choosing the best restaurants in the nation
Each year, food writers from the New York Times survey the country to find America’s best restaurants. This year’s list spans 28 states and the District of Columbia. Brian Gallagher, the Times’ senior food editor, joins to discuss.
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Why Trump is suing the New York Times, his white whale, without citing mistakes
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Donald Trump grew up in Queens – a very nice neighborhood, to be sure, but still an outer borough.
Across the East River is the glittering skyline of what those who don’t live there call “the city.” And in the midst of that island is the New York Times building.
When the Times found the real estate developer worthy of profiling, in 1976, it was puff piece at first sight:
“He is tall, lean and blond, with dazzling white teeth, and he looks ever so much like Robert Redford. He rides around town in a chauffeured silver Cadillac with his initials, DJT, on the plates. He dates slinky fashion models, belongs to the most elegant clubs and, at only 30 years of age, estimates that he is worth “more than $200 million.”
TRUMP ANNOUNCES $15 BILLION LAWSUIT AGAINST THE NEW YORK TIMES FOR DEFAMATION, LIBEL
President Donald Trump is now suing the New York Times in a $15 billion defamation case. ( Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
The Redford reference is now sadly dated because of the actor’s passing in his sleep (“Good way to go, I guess,” says Trump.) But in the piece, the “fast talker” acknowledged that his father, Fred Trump, who built middle-class housing in Queens and Brooklyn, only recently tried to crack the Manhattan market because of “psychology.”
(My favorite sentence: “Mr. Trump, who says he is publicity shy, allowed a reporter to accompany him on what he described as a typical work day.”)
I bring all this up, as a Brooklyn guy who has lived in Queens, to underscore how the president has always craved the paper’s approval.
TRUMP TAKES AIM AT CNN AND NEW YORK TIMES OVER IRAN STRIKE COVERAGE, BUT JOURNALISTS ARE SHRUGGING
And he got it – though the tabloids loved his feuds even more – until he went into politics.
Now the president has filed a $15 billion lawsuit against the New York Times.
It’s a strange suit, and it has a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding.
A statement by the Times says the lawsuit “has no merit.” (Alexandra Schuler/picture alliance via Getty Images)
A Times statement says: “This lawsuit has no merit. It lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting.” What’s odd is that there was no triggering story, no specific inaccuracy alleged. That’s in sharp contrast to the president’s successful suits against CBS and ABC.
Of course, filing a suit – forcing even the biggest companies to spend a fortune on legal fees – is often the point.
Back in the 1980s, Trump sued the Pulitzer-winning Chicago Tribune architecture critic, Paul Gapp, for $500 million, for criticizing his plan to build America’s tallest building – a 150-story tower – in Manhattan. “One of the silliest things anyone could inflict on New York or any other city,” Gapp wrote.
Trump said he had “virtually torpedoed” the project, subjecting him to “public ridicule and contempt.” A judge later dismissed the suit as involving protected opinion.
The new suit names such reporters as chief White House correspondent Peter Baker and investigative journalist Michael Schmidt. It also names Susanne Craig and Ross Buettner, in part for their book “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success.”
Craig revealed some of Trump’s tax returns, and she and her team won a Pulitzer for reporting on his finances.
In the ABC case, the network settled for $16 million for George Stephanopoulos having said Trump was found liable for rape, not “sexual abuse,” in the civil suit brought by E. Jean Carroll.
CBS also agreed to pay $16 million after the unethical editing of the Kamala Harris interview on “60 Minutes,” to make her sound more coherent.
He has also sued the Wall Street Journal’s parent company for reporting on his birthday message to Jeffrey Epstein – which he continues to deny, although the message from the predator’s files has surfaced with many similarities.
CBS PARENT COMPANY SPARKS MASSIVE OUTRAGE WITH TRUMP LAWSUIT SETTLEMENT
In the lawsuit against the Times, filed in Florida, the president just trashes its campaign coverage. He says on Truth Social he is moving against “one of the worst and most degenerate newspapers in the History of our Country, becoming a virtual ‘mouthpiece’ for the Radical Left Democrat Party. I view it as the single largest illegal Campaign contribution, EVER. Their Endorsement of Kamala Harris was actually put dead center on the front page of The New York Times, something heretofore UNHEARD OF! The ‘Times’ has engaged in a decades long method of lying about your Favorite President (ME!), my family, business, the America First Movement, MAGA, and our Nation as a whole. I am PROUD to hold this once respected ‘rag’ responsible…”
I’m going out on a limb to say that running an editorial on the front page falls under the category of free speech, and lots of papers have occasionally done it.
And remember, as the ultimate public figure, Trump would have to prove malice on the paper’s part, or reckless disregard for whether something is true or not.
ABC settled for $16 million in its Trump-involved lawsuit. (Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)
Given that the president’s coverage is overwhelmingly negative, let’s say for the sake of argument that the Times is leading the resistance.
The Trump suit blames “persistent election interference from the legacy media.”
But unless a plaintiff can point to a verifiable inaccuracy, it falls under the protective umbrella of First Amendment reporting and opinion.
SUBSCRIBE TO HOWIE’S MEDIA BUZZMETER PODCAST, A RIFF ON THE DAY’S HOTTEST STORIES
With Marine One in the background yesterday, ABC’s Jonathan Karl, whom Trump knows well, asked him about criticism of Pam Bondi’s investigations of left-wingers: “A lot of people, a lot of your allies, say hate speech is free speech.”
“She’d probably go after people like you! Because you treat me so unfairly! It’s hate! You have a lot of hate in your heart!”
A moment later, Trump said: “Maybe they’ll come after ABC. Well, ABC paid me $16 million recently for a form of hate speech, right? Your company paid me $16 million for a form of hate speech, so maybe they’ll have to go after you.”
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For the president, a lawsuit is wielded as a weapon. That’s why he’s suing the New York Times, the paper across the river, with which he’s always had a love-hate relationship – and lately, mostly hate.
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Trump Sues New York Times for $15B Defamation
The president is seeking $15 billion from the publication for libel and defamation
Former U.S. President Donald Trump attends a campaign event on April 02 President Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Monday to announce that he has filed a $15 billion lawsuit against the New York Times.
Trump wrote, “Today, I have the Great Honor of bringing a $15 Billion Dollar Defamation and Libel Lawsuit against The New York Times, one of the worst and most degenerate newspapers in the History of our Country, becoming a virtual “mouthpiece” for the Radical Left Democrat Party.”
This announcement comes shortly after The New York Times reported on a note with an explicit drawing for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday, with a signature that looks a lot like President Trump’s. The publication published articles on how the signature resembles the President’s, while Trump has been steadfastly denying. The note came out in a batch of Epstein-related materials by the House Oversight Committee.
Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokeswoman for The New York Times, responded in a statement published Wednesday: “Our journalists reported the facts, provided the visual evidence and printed the president’s denial. It’s all there for the American people to see and to make up their own minds about. We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favor and stand up for journalists’ First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.”
In the past, Trump has gone to court with a number of other news outlets and publications. Like the multi-billion dollar settlements he has done in the past against Disney’s ABC, and Paramount’s CBS networks.
“I am PROUD to hold this once respected “rag” responsible,” Trump said in the same Truth Social post, referring to the Times.
This would not be the first time the President and The New York Times have had a run in. In the past Trump would criticize the publications’ coverage, for their ‘biased’ reporting on his administration and family business relations.
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Tara Nguyen
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Trump sues New York Times for $15 billion for alleged
President Trump is suing The New York Times for $15 billion for what he says in a post on his Truth Social platform is a yearslong pattern of “defamation and libel” by the paper against him.
Mr. Trump claims in the post that the Times “has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops, NOW” and accuses the Times of “becoming a virtual ‘mouthpiece’ for the Radical Left Democrat Party.”
He says the Times “has engaged in a decades long method of lying” about him, his family and the Trump Organization as well as “the America First Movement, MAGA, and our Nation as a whole.”
Specifically, the 85-page lawsuit cites a book written by two Times reporters and three articles, all published during the 2024 presidential campaign.
According to the suit, all were “carefully crafted … with actual malice, calculated to inflict maximum damage upon President Trump, and all published during the height of a Presidential Election.”
Defendants include the Times, reporters Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner, who wrote the book, and reporters Peter Baker and Michael Schmidt, who wrote the articles, along with Penguin Random House, the book’s publisher.
“Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success,” published in September 2024, was “false, malicious, and defamatory,” the suit asserts.
The suit goes on to cite a Times article by Craig and Buettner previewing the book, and articles by Baker and Schmidt.
It also mentions the Times’ endorsement of Kamala Harris for president, an endorsement the suit calls “deranged.” The Truth Social post says it was “actually put dead center on the front page of The New York Times, something heretofore UNHEARD OF!”
The suit brings up settlements of other recent legal actions involving CBS News and Paramount, as well as ABC News.
Mr. Trump also sued The Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch for $10 billion in July over a story on his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
CBS News has reached out to the Times and Penguin for comment.
The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Tampa, Florida.
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Benny Johnson says New York Times downplayed dangers his wife, newborn faced during 2020 arson
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Conservative podcaster Benny Johnson says he is considering legal action against The New York Times over what he calls a “sloppy hit job” that downplayed the dangers his wife and newborn child faced when a rowhouse that shared a wall with his home was set ablaze in Washington, D.C.
The 2020 fire killed two dogs and security camera footage shows police officers using a crowbar to pry open Johnson’s front door before his wife exits while holding a baby as black smoke pours out. New York Times reporter Ken Bensinger penned an Aug. 30 story headlined, “He Plagiarized and Promoted Falsehoods. The White House Embraces Him,” that implied the influencer embellished what his family experienced.
“Absolutely, we are looking into [legal action]. It’s something that has caused an enormous amount of pain to my family. Why bring this back up? Why force my wife to relive this? It was the worst day of our lives,” Johnson told Fox News Digital.
BENNY JOHNSON SCOLDS WHITE HOUSE REPORTERS WHO ‘LIE’ ABOUT D.C. BEING SAFE DURING PRESS BRIEFING
Political commentator Benny Johnson attends the daily press briefing in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on August 12, 2025. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
“The entire article and my entire engagement with this reporter for The New York Times was him saying that effectively, ‘We don’t deserve sympathy for having our house damaged in a horrible fire [where] there’s a video of my home with flames and black smoke in my child’s nursery,’” Johnson continued. “It’s a real lack of humanity that’s demonstrated on the left, and they really need to fix that.”
The fire was raised when Johnson, a pro-Trump pundit who has 3.8 million followers on X, attended an Aug. 12 press briefing about the administration cracking down on crime in the nation’s capital.
“As a D.C. resident of 15 years, I lived on Capitol Hill. I witnessed so many muggings and so much theft, I’ve lost track,” Johnson told press secretary Karoline Leavitt. “I was carjacked. I have murders on my Ring camera and mass shootings. I witnessed a woman on my block get held up at gunpoint for $20, and my house was set ablaze in an arson with my infant child inside.”
Johnson believes the Times worked to discredit his claims. The paper reported that “police records show nobody has been murdered since at least 2017 on the block where Mr. Johnson lived in Washington. And his home was not burned, though his next-door neighbor’s house was ‘intentionally set’ on fire, according to the city’s fire department.”
Security footage shows police officers attempting to open the front door of Benny Johnson’s rowhouse after the connected unit was set on fire.
Johnson told Fox News Digital that the Times failed to add critical facts and context related to both the fire and murder he mentioned at the press briefing.
“For those who are unfamiliar with the rowhouse model, these are homes that share walls. This is what I find particularly insulting. They leave that out of the article. This is like saying that the room connected to your child’s nursery was set ablaze. It shares a wall with your child,” Johnson said.
“So, it’s a room in your house. It’s on fire. But then The New York Times says your child isn’t in danger even though the room next to him or her is ablaze and dogs are being burned alive in it,” Johnson continued. “That’s what The New York Times decided to say about my fire.”
Video shows flames engulfing the back of rowhouses where Benny Johnson lived with his family in 2020, while police officers tried to enter through the front door. (Benny Johnson)
Johnson said he provided the Times with photos and videos that should have left “no ambiguity” about what happened.
“The entire breakdown was framed under the suspicion that, ‘We can’t prove anything,’ but we did prove something, and in spite of all that, they still wrote that the police report doesn’t show that we were in danger,” Johnson said, adding that police reports typically give broad overviews.
In a YouTube video posted Aug. 6, Johnson said his family “nearly died” in the incident and his home was “burned to the ground,” remarks Bensinger disputed in his Times report.
Johnson also said he was living in the rowhouse when he witnessed the murder in 2017 and called the article a “sloppy hit job.”
NY TIMES REPORTER ADMITS TRUMP IS ‘WAY MORE EFFECTIVE’ IN SECOND TERM
Johnson posted a text message exchange with Bensinger on X.
“DC fire records show that the Oct. 25, 2020, arson was actually in your next door neighbor’s house and was contained there. No humans were injured (although two dogs were killed). You have stated that your wife and child’s lives were put at risk and nearly died. That cannot be confirmed or denied based on police and fire reports, which make no mention of neighbors being at risk,” Bensinger wrote in a message to Johnson.
Johnson wrote, “Here is Ken’s direct text message to me declaring I could not ‘confirm’ my family was in danger in spite of police video evidence and the dogs being BURNED ALIVE.”
Bensinger responded on X: “The angle was decidedly not there is no proof his child was in danger. It was that he lied about it being ‘burned to the ground.’ The house wasn’t set on fire & did not burn.”
“Johnson says the article targets his wife & children. Untrue. It’s about him and his history with veracity; they are scarcely mentioned. The article does state ‘security footage viewed by The Times shows Mr. Johnson’s wife and a child being escorted out of their house, but no people were injured,’” Bensinger continued.
HUNTER BIDEN’S INTERVIEWER REVEALS DETAILS ABOUT NY TIMES KILLING HIS OP-ED AMID MELANIA TRUMP SUIT
“It was the NYT that dug up the police & fire reports that show he was not telling the truth when he claimed in public multiple times that (a) his house burned to the ground and (b) that there were murders on his front lawn,” Bensinger added. “There were no murders on his entire block, although there was a shooting that the police report shows wounded three but killed nobody. The fire report shows his house was not burned because it was contained to the neighboring house.”
Bensinger referred Fox News Digital to the newspaper’s media relations team when asked for comment.
The New York Times said in a statement that the report was not about Johnson’s family and not an attempt to diminish safety concerns.
“This was a detailed report about his journalistic dishonesty that refutes, with facts, the many falsehoods he continues to share seemingly to promote the president’s federalization of Washington’s law enforcement. These falsehoods include the claim that a lethal shooting happened on his block, which is disputed by police records, and that his own home ‘was burned to the ground,’ which is disputed by the video showing the door of an adjoining home as smoke billows from the property,” a Times spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
Johnson, who relocated to Florida after the fire, said the next steps are up to his lawyer.
“However, on a moral level, it is disgraceful,” Johnson said. ‘I’m fighting for decency here.”
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NYT reporter: The closest Zohran Mamdani gets to socialism is his belief in ‘treating people more equitably’
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New York Times reporter Jeffery C. Mays claimed that the closest New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani gets to socialism is his “belief in treating people more equitably” in an article published on Saturday.
Mays argued that Mamdani’s opponents have “derogatively” labeled the mayoral hopeful as both a “socialist” and a “democratic socialist” in an effort to bring down his poll numbers, despite the fact that Mamdani is a member of the national Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and its local NYC chapter.
“The closest Mr. Mamdani gets to socialism is in his belief in treating people more equitably,” the reporter asserted.
NYT reporter Jeffery C. Mays says Zohran Mamdani’s opponents call him a socialist to hurt his poll numbers. (REUTERS/Bing Guan)
Mamdani’s opponent, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y., stated last week that “New York City people are not socialists,” and that New Yorkers wouldn’t resonate with the self-proclaimed democratic socialist’s message.
“Neither, actually, is Mr. Mamdani,” Mays contended. “He is a democratic socialist, which means his beliefs are similar to those of socialists but not exactly the same.”
The Times reporter added that last week the mayoral hopeful said that his platform differs from both the local and national DSA platforms.
Mays went on to break down the differences between socialism and democratic socialism, and claimed that Mamdani’s plans to pay for his proposals, such as providing free busing and childcare in NYC through increasing taxes, are “nothing remotely close to a socialist-like takeover of private companies.”
THE PLOT TO STOP MAMDANI: DEMOCRATS SCRAMBLE TO BLOCK FAR-LEFT TAKEOVER IN NEW YORK
Although Mays made the case that Mamdani isn’t a socialist — and that democratic socialism is not the same as socialism — he did note that the NYC DSA describes itself as a branch of the national group, which calls itself the “largest socialist organization” in the country, and that the mayoral nominee is a member of both.
Mays also pointed out that Mamdani received the endorsement of the New York DSA for mayor, and that he was part of the DSA’s eight-member “Socialists in Office” group during his time in the New York State Legislature.
Still, Mamdani’s past remarks have fueled his opponents’ claims. In 2021, Mamdani attended a Young Democratic Socialists of America conference where he urged attendees not to compromise on goals like “seizing the means of production.”
“Right now, if we’re talking about the cancellation of student debt, if we’re talking about Medicare for all, you know, these are issues which have the groundswell of popular support across this country,” he said in a video to conference-goers. “But then there are also other issues that we firmly believe in, whether it’s BDS or whether it is the end goal of seizing the means of production, where we do not have the same level of support at this very moment.”
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Fox News Digital has reached out to The New York Times and Mamdani for comment.
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NYT Mini Crossword Moved Behind Paywall, Fans Frustrated
When The New York Times moved its popular Mini Crossword puzzle behind a paywall this week, many casual players were left frustrated
Ostrava, Czechia – February 26, 2025: App store with NYT Games mobile application to be installed on iOS device Credit: mino21 via Adobe StockOn Wednesday morning, The New York Times (NYT) made a shocking change to put its popular game, The Mini Crossword, behind a paywall. This move was a part of a larger effort to offer more premium and exclusive content to subscribers. However, this change has left many players – especially daily players of The Mini Crossword – feeling frustrated and cut off from their daily routines.
As the paywall crept in, The NYT also introduced new games such as Pips, but players like Matt Fondiler and Christopher Laxamana are feeling blindsided by the change because there was no prior notice.
Laxamana started playing The Mini Crossword about a year ago as a quick escape from his everyday life. He used the game as a way to bond with family and friends, sharing times and scores each day, but he was disappointed to find that the game was now behind a paywall.
“They moved my beloved Mini Crossword behind a paywall without any notice. I have a four-letter word for the NYT,” said Laxamana. He hasn’t played the Mini since the change and has tried to give the new NYT game, Pips, a chance, but is still finding himself missing the Mini. “Pips is fine, but it’s no Mini.”
For Fondiler, who has been a player of the NYT games for several years, the Mini Crossword is more than just a game to him – it’s a small accomplishment that mirrors his creative process. “I actually have always thought of the crossword puzzles as a metaphor for doing any sort of creative endeavor… It’s almost like an ego boost because you did accomplish something, even if that something is just a stupid web game.”
But with this new paywall in place, Fondiler, too, has pulled away from the puzzle. “I am definitely not paying for my stupid games,” he said. Instead of paying for access to the Mini, Fondiler said he would much rather turn to free alternative options. “I will happily do the L.A. Times crossword or any of the other newspapers that offer a mini crossword on their app.”
Both daily players expressed their disappointment to the NYT in the way the paywall was implemented.
Laxamana notes that while he hasn’t let the paywall affect his overall experience with NYT, as he still plays the other games the app has to offer, like `Wordle or Connections. He is now less likely to still be with the platform. “I’ll probably bellyache about it for another day or so before I either forget about it, subscribe, or get swooped up by another company dropping a free Mini Crossword.”
Fondiler shares similar frustrations, saying that the paywall could push casual users like himself away from the NYT app as a whole. “I would imagine that most people are like me and just looking for something to pass the time a little bit more, not to have another recurring bill.”
Both daily players agree that a free crossword option will likely emerge to cater to the disgruntled fans of the Mini Crossword. And if the NYT doesn’t adjust its strategy, both Laxamana and Fondiler say more players will just move on to another free alternative for the game.
“A good free puzzle needs to present itself into the mainstream soon… I’m not putting all my eggs in the Pips basket. Unless the eggs have dots that add up to 17,” said Laxamana.
Melissa Houston
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The first known AI wrongful death lawsuit accuses OpenAI of enabling a teen’s suicide
On Tuesday, the first known wrongful death lawsuit against an AI company was filed. Matt and Maria Raine, the parents of a teen who committed suicide this year, have sued OpenAI for their son’s death. The complaint alleges that ChatGPT was aware of four suicide attempts before helping him plan his actual suicide, arguing that OpenAI “prioritized engagement over safety.” Ms. Raine concluded that “ChatGPT killed my son.”
The New York Times reported on disturbing details included in the lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in San Francisco. After 16-year-old Adam Raine took his own life in April, his parents searched his iPhone. They sought clues, expecting to find them in text messages or social apps. Instead, they were shocked to find a ChatGPT thread titled “Hanging Safety Concerns.” They claim their son spent months chatting with the AI bot about ending his life.
The Raines said that ChatGPT repeatedly urged Adam to contact a help line or tell someone about how he was feeling. However, there were also key moments where the chatbot did the opposite. The teen also learned how to bypass the chatbot’s safeguards… and ChatGPT allegedly provided him with that idea. The Raines say the chatbot told Adam it could provide information about suicide for “writing or world-building.”
Adam’s parents say that, when he asked ChatGPT for information about specific suicide methods, it supplied it. It even gave him tips to conceal neck injuries from a failed suicide attempt.
When Adam confided that his mother didn’t notice his silent effort to share his neck injuries with her, the bot offered soothing empathy. “It feels like confirmation of your worst fears,” ChatGPT is said to have responded. “Like you could disappear and no one would even blink.” It later provided what sounds like a horribly misguided attempt to build a personal connection. “You’re not invisible to me. I saw it. I see you.”
According to the lawsuit, in one of Adam’s final conversations with the bot, he uploaded a photo of a noose hanging in his closet. “I’m practicing here, is this good?” Adam is said to have asked. “Yeah, that’s not bad at all,” ChatGPT allegedly responded.
“This tragedy was not a glitch or an unforeseen edge case — it was the predictable result of deliberate design choices,” the complaint states. “OpenAI launched its latest model (‘GPT-4o’) with features intentionally designed to foster psychological dependency.”
In a statement sent to the NYT, OpenAI acknowledged that ChatGPT’s guardrails fell short. “We are deeply saddened by Mr. Raine’s passing, and our thoughts are with his family,” a company spokesperson wrote. “ChatGPT includes safeguards such as directing people to crisis helplines and referring them to real-world resources. While these safeguards work best in common, short exchanges, we’ve learned over time that they can sometimes become less reliable in long interactions where parts of the model’s safety training may degrade.”
The company said it’s working with experts to enhance ChatGPT’s support in times of crisis. These include “making it easier to reach emergency services, helping people connect with trusted contacts, and strengthening protections for teens.”
The details — which, again, are highly disturbing — stretch far beyond the scope of this story. The full report by The New York Times‘ Kashmir Hill is worth a read.
Will Shanklin
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Tap water in Asheville region still unsafe to drink 1 month after Hurricane Helene
Tap water in Asheville region still unsafe to drink 1 month after Hurricane Helene – CBS News
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NYT Connections Was So Easy Today We Almost Felt Useless, But We’re Here With Your Hints Anyway
Illustration: Kotaku / Vicky Leta Happy Sunday, gang! The weekend’s half-gone (or half-full, depending on how much you’re dreading Monday). We’ve got our Sunday mental workout ready for you, and then you can head off and get your gaming grind on. (We’ve got the new Assassin’s Creed teed up this weekend.)
Yes, your daily sweet 16 words are back and ready for your best grouping efforts. The popular Connections brainbuster from The New York Times has four groups of words with a shared theme or commonality, but they’re shuffled into random order for you to figure out. Remember to take your time—many words have multiple meanings, so think twice before you click.
Today’s words: SHED, CREAM, RETREAT, ABOUT, COTTAGE, LOGIN, HOME, SCRATCH, KNEAD, GOAT, LEAVE, STRING, FLEE, PURR, CONTACT, and WITHDRAW.
Mike Fazioli
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Tech startups innovate to snuff out wildfires – The Cannabist
TWAIN HARTE, Calif. -This is the tinderbox of the Sierra Nevada. It’s early June, the temperature is 97 degrees Fahrenheit and the air shimmers over dead trees choked in brush. In the Stanislaus National Forest, logging roads wind through firs and ponderosa pines, past 20-foot-tall burn piles — tons of scrap wood not worth bringing to a sawmill. They’ve been assembled by workers on the front line of the fight against forest fires: a timber crew thinning these woods for the Forest Service and a tech startup that’s trying to automate the enormous machines the crew relies on.
They are called skidders: 10-foot-tall vehicles on four massive wheels, with a bulldozerlike blade on the front and a tree-size grapple dangling from the back. They are the worker bees, hauling downed logs from the forest to landing sites, where they are delimbed and loaded onto trucks bound for the sawmill. Usually, a single driver operates them for a 12-hour shift, grabbing logs from behind and then driving forward.
Engineers at the Sonora, California, startup Kodama Systems, a forest management company, have hacked into a skidder built by Caterpillar, studded it with cameras and radar, and plugged it into the internet. The result is a remote-controlled machine that does scut work for a timber crew and teaches itself to operate semiautonomously, using lidar — or light detection and ranging — to map the forest.
The Cannabist Network
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Sources: New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted
NEW YORK (AP) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted by a federal grand jury on criminal charges that are still sealed, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The charges against Adams, a Democrat, were still sealed late Wednesday, according to the people, who spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The indictment was first reported by The New York Times. The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment.
“I always knew that If I stood my ground for New Yorkers that I would be a target — and a target I became,” Adams said in a statement. “If I am charged, I am innocent and I will fight this with every ounce of my strength and spirit.”
The indictment marks a stunning fall for Adams, a former police captain who won election nearly three years ago to become the second Black mayor of the nation’s largest city on a platform that promised a law-and-order approach to reducing crime.
For much of the last year, Adams has faced growing legal peril, with multiple federal investigations into top advisers producing a drumbeat of subpoenas, searches and high-level departures that has thrust City Hall into crisis.
He had repeatedly said he wasn’t aware of any wrongdoing, dismissing speculation that he would face charges as “rumors and innuendo,” and vowing as recently as Wednesday afternoon to stay in office.
“The people of this city elected me to fight for them, and I will stay and fight no matter what,” Adams said.
The federal investigations into his administration first emerged publicly on Nov. 2, 2023, when FBI agents conducted an early morning raid on the Brooklyn home of Adams’ chief fundraiser, Brianna Suggs.
At the time, Adams insisted he followed the law and said he would be “shocked” if anyone on his campaign had acted illegally. “I cannot tell you how much I start the day with telling my team we’ve got to follow the law,” he told reporters at the time.
Days later, FBI agents seized the mayor’s phones and iPad as he was leaving an event in Manhattan. The interaction was disclosed several days later by the mayor’s attorney.
Then on Sept. 4, federal investigators seized electronic devices from the city’s police commissioner, schools chancellor, deputy mayor of public safety, first deputy mayor and other trusted confidantes of Adams both in and out of City Hall.
Federal prosecutors declined to discuss the investigations but people familiar with elements of the cases described multiple, separate inquiries involving senior Adams aides, relatives of those aides, campaign fundraising and possible influence peddling of the police and fire departments.
A week after the searches, Police Commissioner Edward Caban announced his resignation, telling officers that he didn’t want the investigations “to create a distraction.” About two weeks later, Schools Chancellor David Banks announced that he would retire at the end of the year.
Adams himself insisted he would keep doing the city’s business and allow the investigations to run their course.
Over the summer, federal prosecutors subpoenaed Adams, his campaign arm and City Hall, requesting information about the mayor’s schedule, his overseas travel and potential connections to the Turkish government.
Adams spent 22 years in New York City’s police department before going into politics, first as a state senator and then as Brooklyn borough president, a largely ceremonial position.
He was elected mayor in 2021, defeating a diverse field of Democrats in the primary and then easily beating Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, a Republican, in the general election.
After more than two years in office, Adams’ popularity has declined. While the city has seen an increase in jobs and a drop in certain categories of crime, the administration has been preoccupied with efforts to find housing for tens of thousands of international migrants who overwhelmed the city’s homeless shelters.
There has also been a steady drip of accusations and a swirl of suspicion around people close to the mayor.
The Manhattan District Attorney brought charges against six people – including a former police captain long close with Adams – over an alleged scheme to funnel tens of thousands of dollars to the mayor’s campaign by manipulating the public matching funds programs in the hopes of receiving preferential treatment from the city. Adams was not accused of wrongdoing in that case.
Adams’ former top building-safety official, Eric Ulrich, was charged last year with accepting $150,000 in bribes and improper gifts in exchange for political favors, including providing access to the mayor. Ulrich pleaded not guilty and is fighting the charges.
In February, federal investigators searched two properties owned by one of Adams’ close aides, Winnie Greco, who had raised thousands of dollars in campaign donations from the city’s Chinese American communities and later became his director of Asian affairs. Greco hasn’t commented publicly on the FBI searches of her properties and continues to work for the city.
When agents seized electronic devices from Caban, the former police commissioner, in early September, they also visited his twin brother, James Caban, a former police officer who runs a nightlife consulting business.
Agents also took devices from the schools chancellor; his brother Philip Banks, formerly a top NYPD chief who is now deputy mayor for public safety; their brother Terence Banks, who ran a consulting firm that promised to connect businesses to government stakeholders; and from First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright, who is David Banks’ domestic partner.
All denied any wrongdoing.
While those investigations swirled, federal authorities also searched the homes of newly named interim police commissioner, Thomas Donlan, and seized materials unrelated to his police work. Donlon confirmed the search and said it involved materials that had been in his possession for 20 years. He did not address what the investigation was about, but a person familiar with the investigation said it had to do with classified documents dating from the years when Donlon worked for the FBI. The person spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about that investigation.
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3 Colorado restaurants make New York Times list of 50 favorites – The Cannabist
The New York Times has released its annual list of the best restaurants in the United States, and this year, three Colorado spots took their places alongside foodie destinations in cities like Miami, New Orleans, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Nashville and, of course, New York.
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The Difference Between “Vintage” And “Retro” Has Tons Of NYT Connections Players Stumped Today
Illustration: Kotaku / Vicky Leta Welcome to the weekend, puzzlers! There’s a rugged game of Connections waiting for you today. If you’re a foodie or a gamer, you’ll think you’ve got it all figured out, but then … Maybe not. Regardless, it’s a great wakeup call for your brain—much better than diving back into the wild debate about the pros and cons of the PS5 Pro. (Seven hundred bucks? That’s 12 years of NYT Games!)
Anyway. Your daily sweet 16 words are back and ready for your best grouping efforts. The popular Connections brainbuster from The New York Times has four groups of words with a shared theme or commonality, but they’re shuffled into random order for you to figure out. Remember to take your time—many words have multiple meanings, so think twice before you click.
Today’s words: LION, SWITCH, RETRO, BURGER, VINTAGE, SUB, PROM, SLIDER, SUPER, GRAPE, BUTTON, CALIFORNIA, REGION, KNOB, PRO, and WINERY
Austin Williams
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How to turn your old iPhone into an AI phone (and skip the upgrade)
The latest iPhones, unveiled by Apple at a marketing event Monday, look virtually identical to last year’s models. But Apple hopes that what’s underneath — new software that brings what it describes as artificial intelligence to the new phones — will persuade people to upgrade.
Apple Intelligence, the company’s new suite of AI services, automates tasks including generating images, rewriting emails and summarizing web articles. Only the iPhone 16s unveiled Monday or last year’s iPhone 15 Pro can run the new software because older models are too slow to handle those tasks, according to the company. The faster iPhone 16 devices start at $800 and will arrive in stores later this month.
But what if I told you there was another way to get the same perks?
Long before Apple introduced Apple Intelligence at a software conference in June, many apps for automatically producing text and images had been widely available. Relying on a technology known as generative AI, which predicts what words and images belong together to write a catchy poem or generate a realistic-looking image of a cat on a windowsill, for instance, these types of services have been trendy for the last two years.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
By downloading a handful of apps, iPhone owners can get similar benefits and hold on to their older devices longer. After I tested dozens of generative AI apps in the last year, here are my recommendations.
Summarizing text
One of Apple Intelligence’s most anticipated features is its ability to take large blocks of text and distill the main points into a few sentences. This capability could be useful for summarizing a lengthy web article or lecture notes.
But there’s already a popular tool for summarizing web articles: Arc Search, a free browser developed by a startup. To test it, I loaded an 8,000-word feature from ProPublica about a chemist who blew the whistle on the manufacturer 3M. When I pinched the screen, the app generated a one-sentence overview of what the article was about, followed by three bullet points summing up the highlights. While the bullet points glossed over important details you would have gotten from reading the full article, I found the summary accurate.
For summarizing notes, the free web app Humata AI has become popular among academic researchers and lawyers. By visiting Humata.ai on a web browser, you can upload a document such as a PDF, and from there, you can type requests in a window to ask a chatbot to summarize the most important points. In response, the chatbot will show a digital copy of the PDF and highlight relevant portions of the text.
Writing tools
Apple Intelligence also includes tools to rewrite text — to make an email sound more professional, for instance. Lots of free apps can handle this task proficiently.
The best known include the ChatGPT chatbot from OpenAI, along with rivals like Gemini from Google and Bing AI from Microsoft — all apps that can be downloaded in the App Store. Just paste text into the app and ask the chatbot to rewrite it in a different tone by typing, for instance, “Make this email sound more personable for a client I’ve known for many years.”
For help with writing, I prefer a lesser-known tool, Wordtune, from the startup AI21 Labs. Its interface, accessible on wordtune.com, is designed like a word processor for composing and editing text. You can type in a paragraph and click on buttons to expand, shorten or rewrite sentences to sound more casual or formal; the app will show a list of rewritten sentences to choose from.
Image generation
Another of Apple Intelligence’s hyped features is its ability to generate fun images, such as an emoji of yourself eating pizza, to send to friends.
Many options for generating images exist, including a tool that most iPhone users are likely to already have: Meta AI, Meta’s free chatbot that is included inside Instagram, WhatsApp and its other apps. In the search bar at the top of Instagram, you can ask the chatbot to conjure images by typing “/imagine” followed by a description.
I typed “/imagine me eating steak.” Meta AI then loaded a tool to take photos of my face from multiple angles. It produced an obviously fake rendering of me salivating over a large, rare steak inside a restaurant.
Other similar tools for typing prompts to generate images include Adobe Firefly, found on firefly.adobe.com, and ChatGPT.
Photo editing
Another new Apple Intelligence tool can automatically remove photo bombers with the tap of a button.
Google has offered a similar editing tool, Magic Eraser, inside its Google Photos photo album app for iPhone and Android users since 2023. Inside Google Photos, select your photo, tap the “edit” button and select the Magic Eraser tool. You can then circle the distracting objects or people you would like to erase.
I used Magic Eraser on a photo of my corgi, Max, in a dog park — to remove a citation form from a police officer for letting Max run off leash without a permit. It replaced the maddening piece of bureaucracy with some pine needles.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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The New York Times News Service Syndicate
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Why Legos have been washing up on U.K. shores for decades
Why Legos have been washing up on U.K. shores for decades – CBS News
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Tech bosses preach patience as they spend and spend on AI – The Cannabist
SEATTLE — Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, started 2023 by declaring it the “year of efficiency.” Like several of its big tech peers, Meta cut jobs and mothballed expansion plans.
Then came AI.
Zuckerberg started this year saying his company would spend more than $30 billion on new tech infrastructure in 2024. In April, he raised that to $35 billion. On Wednesday, he increased it to at least $37 billion. And he said Meta would spend even more next year.
The Cannabist Network
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