Anna Edwards

It was 4:20 a.m., long before dawn on Monday, when a driver approached the house of a missing girl in upstate New York, placing a note in the black mailbox before darting off through a dark spider web of country roads.It might have been a note of condolence, or sympathy or even a tip. Instead, it was a ransom note, the state police said, one that led to the dramatic rescue later that day of the 9-year-old girl, found hidden in a cupboard in a rundown camper, just 14 miles from her home.The story of how state troopers, S.W.A.T. teams,…

Several teachers whom I spoke with or who responded to my questionnaire mentioned policies stating that students cannot get lower than a 50 percent on any assignment, even if the work was never done, in some cases. A teacher from Chapel Hill, N.C., who filled in the questionnaire’s “name” field with “No, no, no,” said the 50 percent floor and “NO attendance enforcement” leads to a scenario where “we get students who skip over 100 days, have a 50 percent, complete a couple of assignments to tip over into 59.5 percent and then pass.”It’s hard to find national data about…

Former President Donald J. Trump went on trial this month in a New York courtroom, facing a threat to the business empire that informed his public persona and undergirded his run for the White House. Friday was the trial’s fifth day.Much of the action happened outside the courtroom on Friday. Mr. Trump’s legal team tried and failed to pause the trial itself, but succeeded in delaying the implementation of a sweeping order by the trial judge that had been expected to have a serious impact on Mr. Trump’s real estate business.The trial stems from a lawsuit brought last year by…

The boy had seemed destined for a life of affluence and earthly pursuits. Born into the family behind a major mining conglomerate in Mongolia, he might have been picked to someday lead the company from its steel-and-glass headquarters in the country’s capital.Instead, the 8-year-old is now at the heart of a struggle between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese Communist Party.He was just a toddler when everything changed. On a visit to a vast monastery in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, known for a towering Buddha statue gilded in gold, his father brought him and his twin brother into a…

Shortly after he left office, former President Donald J. Trump shared apparently classified information about American nuclear submarines with an Australian businessman during an evening of conversation at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, according to two people familiar with the matter.The businessman, Anthony Pratt, a billionaire member of Mar-a-Lago who runs one of the world’s largest cardboard companies, went on to share the sensitive details about the submarines with several others, the people said. Mr. Trump’s disclosures, they said, potentially endangered the U.S. nuclear fleet.Federal prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, learned about Mr. Trump’s…