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Porn Star Alana Evans Melania Probably Knows About Donald's Affairs 1/26/2018 TMZ.com Alana Evans isn't shying away from the story about Donald Trump's alleged tryst with fellow porn star Stormy Daniels back in 2006 ... because she thinks it's par for the course for guys like him. We got the porn Hall of Famer at the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo Thursday night in Vegas, and asked her about Stormy's alleged romp with the Prez. Alana suggests we all know what went down, even though Stormy's not talking. More interesting, though, is how Alana feels about the First Lady. She believes Melania should stick with Donald despite his alleged affairs, and says it could be part of their arrangement. Oh, and if the Trumps ever want to party with her, Alana's down ... especially with Melania.
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Business|Chief of Sprout Is Leaving the Companyhttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/business/chief-of-sprout-is-leaving-the-company.htmlCredit...Sprout PharmaceuticalsDec. 9, 2015Cindy Whitehead, who oversaw a long, but ultimately successful, effort to bring to market the first prescription drug to enhance womens sexual drive, is leaving her post as chief executive of Sprout Pharmaceuticals.In August, the Food and Drug Administration approved Sprouts Addyi, often referred to as the little pink pill, after rejecting it in 2010 and in 2013 on concerns about side effects and limited effectiveness.Shortly after the approval, Sprout, which was privately held, agreed to be acquired by Valeant Pharmaceuticals for $1 billion.Thanks to the efforts of Cindy and her team, Valeant has the opportunity to make Addyi broadly available to patients in need of this important medical treatment, Valeants senior vice president for investor relations, Laurie Little, said in a statement. Having built a team to take Addyi to market, we mutually agreed that it was the right time to transition to new leadership for the next phase of global commercialization. After Addyi, also known as flibanserin, was initially rejected by the F.D.A., the pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim dropped it. Ms. Whitehead and her husband, Robert, both pharmaceutical industry veterans, formed Sprout in 2011 to acquire it.For the Whiteheads and other executives, the Valeant acquisition was a financial coup. But the drug has gotten off to a slow start. In the weeks after its October debut, just a few hundred prescriptions were filed for Addyi, according to Bloomberg. That is in sharp contrast to the introduction of Pfizers Viagra, the so-called little blue pill aimed at treating erectile dysfunction in men. Viagra was a blockbuster from the start in 1998 and last year Pfizer sold nearly $1.7 billion of it.With financial help from Sprout, womens groups and other supporters started a campaign to win F.D.A. approval for Addyi, noting that the agency had approved comparable treatments for men.Sprouts effort succeeded but the F.D.A.s approval came with a boxed warning, alerting patients not to take the drug with alcohol. Women with impaired liver function were also advised not to take it.Ms. Whitehead will continue to consult with Valeant and Sprout executives after her departure, according to the statement from Valeant.
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Science|Magnifying the World of Beauty That Lives Under a Microscopehttps://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/science/carl-struwe-microscopic-photography.htmlTrilobitesCredit...Carl StrweApril 5, 2016In the 1920s, before matter could be magnified millions of times under electron microscopes, a German graphic designer was developing his own techniques for capturing the minute wonders of organic life.Carl Strwe never gained fame during his lifetime, but over the decades his stark images of diatoms, spermatozoa and other life under the microscope have gathered admirers for their distinctive artistry. A selection of his works will go on display at the Steven Kasher Gallery in New York starting April 14.ImageCredit...Carl StrweWhen Mr. Strwe began making photographs, he used microscopes that could only magnify items up to 2,000 times. The traditional scientific view under a microscope was rounded, so Mr. Strwe cut black pieces of paper into rectangular shapes and set them over the biological subject matter in his slides. He then pointed his camera into the eye of the microscope, capturing the scene he had composed under the microscope.The thoughtful way that he positioned his subjects in the microscope his canvases is what made his work so pioneering, said Gottfried Jger, a photographer in Bielefeld, Germany, who is the administrator of Mr. Strwes estate. Mr. Strwe saw great artistic potential, Mr. Jger said, where before him, many only saw the objectivity of science.ImageCredit...Carl StrweMr. Struwes work had little impact outside of Germany during his life because he lacked resources and did not speak languages other than German.He was a poor man, not very successful with his work during his own life, said Mr. Jger.Mr. Strwe did make some appearances in the United States, including a Brooklyn Museum show in 1949. A number of his photos were also used in scientific texts, including this biology textbook from 1957.ImageCredit...Gottfried JgerThe work of Carl Strwe may mean more to art history than to science. But Mr. Jger believes there is something to be learned from these photographs, even if they do not do much to further objective knowledge.They open a window in this fantastic, non-visible world, he wrote in an email. He visualizes its meaning and beauty as its own reality.
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Politics|Black voters and faith leaders rejoice at Warnocks historic win: I think it speaks volumes.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/black-voters-and-faith-leaders-rejoice-at-warnocks-historic-win-i-think-it-speaks-volumes.htmlCredit...Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesJan. 6, 2021ATLANTA Michael Simmons, 63, has not missed voting in a major election since 1976. The most important for him was 2008, when he cast a ballot for President Barack Obama. But his votes in Novembers general election and the Senate runoffs on Tuesday were ranked closely behind.The Rev. Raphael Warnocks success in the Senate runoffs sent a jolt of jubilation through much of Georgias African-American community, as they saw a Black man taking an office that had been held by segregationists when he was born. There was also a level of pride in having an emissary of the Black church serve in the highest levels of government.I never would have thunk put that down, thunk! Id see this happen, said Mr. Simmons, a manager at a nonprofit organization in downtown Atlanta. Personally, I dont expect the world to change because we have a Black man in the Senate, but we can see progress.The office of the nonprofit where Mr. Simmons works is just a few blocks from Ebenezer Baptist Church, the renowned congregation that Mr. Warnock leads. Mr. Simmons often saw Mr. Warnock walking around the neighborhood.The win carried enormous significance for him: This was a place where for many years we got the short end of the stick, Mr. Simmons, who grew up in Alabama and moved to Atlanta after college, said.He also thought the rest of the country now owed a debt to Georgia for the work of the states Black voters and particularly the efforts of Stacey Abrams. I think there ought to be a lot of gratitude for what weve done.Dorothy Boler, who moved to Atlanta from Chicago 25 years ago, said she had been proud to cast her ballot for Mr. Warnock during the early voting period. I praised the Lord he got in there, she said. Were going to make history.African-American faith leaders said on Wednesday that they, too, were thrilled with Mr. Warnocks victory, which they also saw as a rebuke of his Republican opponent, Kelly Loeffler, who had portrayed him as a radical and socialist and had attacked him using excerpts from his sermons that he and his supporters said were taken out of context. I went all over this state, said Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, the presiding prelate in Georgia of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Blacks couldnt wait to get to the polls. She gave us more reasons to get out to vote couldnt wait to vote just to vote against her.On Wednesday afternoon, he compared the celebration in Georgia with the turmoil in Washington, where a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, and said it underscored for him a transformation happening not just in his state but across the country, one that gives him optimism.I think it speaks volumes and I think that, despite what you see on television like this, there is still a part of this country that is coming together, Bishop Jackson said. Thats the group that Trump speaks for, he added, referring to the rioters, but its a dwindling portion of the country.
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United States 7, Slovakia 1Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesFeb. 13, 2014SOCHI, Russia His familys background could have made the game more complicated for United States forward Paul Stastny, so on the eve of his Sochi Games debut, his father, Peter, kept his advice simple. Have fun, he told his son, and savor every shift.Stastny, a second-time, second-generation Olympian, appreciated the reminder. After the Americans 7-1 victory over Slovakia in the teams tournament opener at Shayba Arena, he said, All of us are at such a young age, we take everything for granted.The Slovakian hockey family a group that includes the Stastnys is still working through a mournful reminder of lifes unpredictability, which is why Stastny, 28, was hardly the only player fighting through labyrinthine emotions Thursday.For the first time since 1998, the Slovakian Olympic squad does not include Pavol Demitra, a center who was quick with his stick and a quip. At the 2010 Olympics, he scored one of the more memorable goals, flipping the puck past Ilya Bryzgalov to give Slovakia a 2-1 shootout victory over Russia.Demitra, who finished as the leading scorer in Vancouver for the fourth-place Slovaks, died in the 2011 plane crash that killed 43 members of the Kontinental Hockey League team Lokomotiv.Demitra, who was 36, had 21 points in three Olympics. The wings whom he centered in 2010, the brothers Marian and Marcel Hossa, were on the ice against the Americans, but the hole in Slovakias offense was gaping. The U.S. team outshot Slovakia, 11-4, in the first period and 33-23 over all.ImageCredit...Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesWeve got different team than in 2010, said Marian Hossa, who plays for the Chicago Blackhawks. We dont have lots of big guys on the team. Most of the younger guys, they will have to adjust and prove theyre good players.In Vancouver, Hossa, his brother and Marian Gaborik, who is out of these Olympics with a broken collarbone, shared living quarters with Demitra.It is always in your head, and hes always with us, Marian Hossa said.Marcel Hossa, who plays for the K.H.L. team in Riga, Latvia, said that whenever he is home for a break, he visits Demitras grave and lights a memorial candle for him.Before a practice, Marcel Hossa said, the Slovaks exchanged their favorite stories about Demitra, who was known for his playful nature and for his pressure- and belly-busting jokes.He was a great person, a great leader, Hossa said. We cannot forget about it, you know?Demitra was an ethereal presence Thursday, and not just on the Slovakian side. Stastny, whose father carried the flag in the opening ceremony for Slovakia during its first Winter Olympics as an independent nation in 1994, contributed two goals, both during the Americans six-goal second period.His family, Stastny said, had a close relationship with Demitra, who logged 16 seasons in the National Hockey League. Demitra played for the Kings in Los Angeles, where one of his teammates was Dustin Brown, who scored the United States seventh goal.Asked about Demitra after the game, Brown drew in a deep breath. Everyone who played with Pav understood what type of player he was, but more important, what type of person he was, said Brown, adding that Demitra kept the dressing room loose.He was the guy who would balance out the coach, Brown said with a smile. The coach would come in and say one thing, and in a not-so-direct way, in a good way, right after the coach left, hed say, How about we do it this way?Demitra probably would have had something helpful to say after the United States scored on its first four shots in the second period to break open a 1-1 tie. The scoring flurry prompted the Slovakian coach, Vladimir Vujtek, to pull goaltender Jaroslav Halak. His replacement, Peter Budaj, let in two goals in his first two minutes.The Slovaks, whose lone goal came from the 23-year-old forward Tomas Tatar early in the second, are a team in transition. Two players from Demitras generation, Miroslav Satan and Jozef Stumpel, were not named to the Olympic squad. A third, Zigmund Palffy, retired last year. Until the next wave forms and crests, Demitras absence will be a black veil, darkening these international competitions for those who knew and loved him.You always think about those players that you played with, Brown said, and Pav was one of those players for me.RUSSIA 5, SLOVENIA 2 Alex Ovechkin scored 1 minute 17 seconds after the puck dropped with a wrist shot that made the crowd roar. He made the flag-waving fans gasp 2:37 later with a drop pass to set up Evgeni Malkins goal to give Russia a 2-0 lead.We started well, got the lead, and then we stopped playing, Ovechkin said.The result was a closer-than-expected win over Slovenia, which was playing in the Olympics for the first time.That led one Russian reporter to tell Coach Zinetula Bilyaletdinov that it would be a death sentence to start goaltender Semyon Varlamov, who gave up two goals on 14 shots, against the United States on Saturday.Ziga Jeglic had two goals in the second period for Slovenia one before Malkin scored and one after to pull his team within a goal. (AP)CANADA 3, NORWAY 1 Shea Weber and Jamie Benn scored in the second period to help Canada, the defending Olympic champion, shake off a sluggish start.Patrick Thoresen pulled the Norwegians within a goal on a power play 22 seconds into the third, but Drew Doughty restored the two-goal lead 1:25 later.Canada goaltender Carey Price made 19 saves in his Olympic debut, which included a giveaway that led to the only goal he allowed. Roberto Luongo, who helped the Canadians win gold in 2010 as the host nation, is scheduled to start Fridays game against Austria. (AP)FINLAND 8, AUSTRIA 4 Jarkko Immonen and Mikael Granlund each scored two goals for Finland, which played the final two periods without its injured captain, Teemu Selanne.Selanne, 43, in his record-tying sixth Olympics, is expected to play against Norway on Friday.Michael Grabner of the Islanders had three goals for Austria, which had two early leads before Finland took control. (AP)
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Credit...Katie OBrienMarch 21, 2016With mothers and medical providers clamoring for answers about postpartum depression, scientists are beginning a major effort to understand the genetic underpinnings of mood disorders that afflict millions of women during and after pregnancy.Researchers led by a University of North Carolina team will use a new iPhone app to recruit women who have had postpartum depression. The goal is to collect about 100,000 DNA samples and compare them with DNA from women who have never experienced depression in hopes of discovering genetic factors that could lead to better prediction, diagnosis and treatment for maternal mental illness.Attempts to find clear genetic clues to depression in the general population have yielded few results so far, and some experts questioned whether the new effort, announced Monday, would be any more promising. But the teams theory is that postpartum depression may be distinct, involving genes with more identifiable effects because they act during or soon after pregnancy.From a genetic standpoint, this is the right time biologically to do this, said Dr. Patrick F. Sullivan, director of the University of North Carolinas Center for Psychiatric Genomics, who will lead the projects genetic analysis.The free app, PPD ACT, will be offered in the United States, Australia and Britain, and is likely to be extended to other countries, said Dr. Samantha Meltzer-Brody, director of the University of North Carolinas perinatal psychiatry program and the projects leader. To make sure this is not just a study of iPhone-using people, Dr. Meltzer-Brody said, iPad versions of the app will be available in some urban and rural clinics, and patients who want to provide their DNA will right then and there be offered a spit kit.The app, to be promoted by Apple as an expansion of its ResearchKit software for medical data collection, poses questions about sadness, anxiety or panic after childbirth in an effort to assess whether women have experienced serious postpartum depression. Women with high scores are asked if they want to submit DNA; if so, they will be mailed a kit to donate their saliva. Names and email addresses will be required, Dr. Meltzer-Brody said, but the project will encrypt personal data.Once enough samples are collected, each will be individually genotyped for something like 600,000 genetic markers scattered throughout the genome, Dr. Sullivan said. The comparison group will be demographically similar women who have been pregnant at least twice but never experienced depression. Are there regions of the genome where women with postpartum depression differ systematically from women without? Dr. Sullivan asked.Anjene Addington, chief of the genomics research branch at the National Institute of Mental Health, which is providing the kits to collect saliva, said the project aimed to collect thousands of DNA samples from a diverse group of women.As we learn more about genetic research on psychiatric disorders, we know that we need huge, huge numbers of participants, she said.Compared with many physical illnesses, the genetics of psychiatric disorders have so far proved complex and elusive to understand. Even one of the most heritable disorders, schizophrenia, appears linked to small variations in more than a hundred genetic regions. Recently, though, a genetic variant has been identified that seems to ignite excessive pruning of synapses in a key brain area in people with schizophrenia.Depression has been one of the toughest to figure out, partly because it affects different people in different ways.You might have an 18-year-old woman who is doing self-cutting and shes got depression, Dr. Sullivan said, and a 64-year-old woman with hypertension and Type 2 diabetes and shes got depression.Because postpartum depression afflicts a narrower group of women who have recently given birth, it may be easier to study, Dr. Sullivan said. He said he and some colleagues had recently conducted a study that suggested postpartum depression was more heritable than general depression. Dr. Addington said there might be genes that specifically influence a womans sensitivity to hormonal fluctuations in pregnancy.But David Goldstein, director of Columbia Universitys Institute for Genomic Medicine, who is not involved in the project, said another possibility was that postpartum depressions links to hormonal fluctuations, in addition to emotional and other stresses that can accompany having children, might indicate it was less likely to be genetic.He said he had no objection to the projects goal, but its possible that you can collect information from tens of thousands of individuals and not find anything.Dr. Kenneth S. Kendler, director of psychiatric genetics research at Virginia Commonwealth University, who is not involved in the project, said some evidence suggested that genes involved in postpartum depression differed somewhat from those in general depression. Ideally, the project will find fewer gene variants involved and they are bigger in effect size, he said.Its a reasonable bet, Dr. Kendler added, but its not a slam dunk.
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Credit...Denis Balibouse/ReutersDec. 21, 2015For many in the fashion industry, it appeared to be a smooth and logical merger.The two biggest names in the business of selling luxury fashion online, Yoox and Net-a-Porter, announced plans this spring to combine in a 936 million pound, or $1.4 billion, deal, creating an e-commerce powerhouse in an industry that has been slow to embrace the Internet.I dont think any merger in history has been so perfect on paper, Federico Marchetti, the chief executive of Yoox, told The Financial Times in May.Behind the scenes, however, simmered a corporate battle between the majority owner of Net-a-Porter and one of its original backers.The management of Net-a-Porter and some of its minority shareholders fought against the deal, arguing that the companys majority owner, the Swiss luxury conglomerate Richemont, was selling out at far too low a price, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.One of Net-a-Porters first investors, Carmen Busquets, even cobbled together a group of financiers who she said were prepared to buy back control of the retailer for far more than what Yoox had offered.In numerous letters sent this year copies of which were reviewed by The New York Times Ms. Busquets and Natalie Massenet, the founder and then executive chairwoman of Net-a-Porter, complained bitterly that the company, a pioneer of high-end online fashion sales, was being sold at far too low a price.In a period of two weeks I had secured more than enough equity to buy the entire NAP at a minimum valuation of 1.4bn with an indisputably better partner set up than the Yoox transaction, Ms. Busquets wrote in a letter to Richemonts board on June 12. I am certain that your shareholders will want to understand why your management chose to donate over 400 million and possibly even 500 million of their money to the shareholders of Yoox.The dispute will not derail the merger, which closed in October. But it highlights a peculiar battle between Ms. Busquets, who has sold her shares in Net-a-Porter, and Richemont, which is best known for its luxury watch brands like Montblanc and Piaget.At the heart of the dispute is the future of how high-end fashion with sales of roughly $243 billion last year is sold. While the luxury fashion industry had been slow to move online, believing that customers preferred richer in-person experiences, top labels have come around to courting customers in the digital realm.Analysts at Exane BNP Paribas and ContactLab noted in a report this spring that online sales had jumped to 6 percent of total retail revenue from 3 percent in 2010. And by 2020, the analysts estimate, sales driven by e-commerce and other digital means will make up more than half of all luxury sales, up from a quarter this year.Yet at the same time, specialists in online luxury, including both Net-a-Porter and Yoox, are facing more pressure from traditional retailers as well as individual fashion brands eager to keep their customers rather than sell to them through middlemen.I think their advantage is eroding, said Luca Solca, an analyst with Exane BNP Paribas. My expectation is that more and more luxury goods brands will try to insource their digital resources.Putting together the archrivals Net-a-Porter, a specialist in current-season clothes from the likes of Balenciaga and Saint Laurent, and Yoox, which sells off-season goods, was meant to create a new giant that could compete against those strengthening rivals.Today, we open the doors to the worlds biggest luxury fashion store, Ms. Massenet of Net-a-Porter said in late March when the merger was announced. It is a store that never closes, a store without geographical borders, a store that connects with, inspires, serves and offers millions of style-conscious global consumers access to the finest designer labels in fashion.Investors appear to agree about the potential of the combined company. Shares of Yoox jumped roughly 22 percent on the announcement of the deal, and rose about 44 percent by the time the merger closed. Since early October, shares in the Yoox Net-a-Porter Group have climbed a further 22 percent.Richemont appears to believe in the future of Yoox Net-a-Porter, holding roughly half of the combined e-retailers stock.Ms. Massenet, however, struck a different tone in a Feb. 26 letter to Johann Rupert, the chairman of Richemont. In the letter, Ms. Massenet, who started Net-a-Porter in her London apartment in 2000, complained that she had been notified of the sale talks with Yoox only two weeks earlier.ImageCredit...Denis Balibouse/ReutersMs. Massenet disclosed that she had the backing of a consortium interested in buying control of Net-a-Porter at a valuation of about 1.4 billion, more than 50 percent more than what Yoox was offering. The group included the investment firms Certares, Tiger Global Management and New Enterprise Associates. All the potential investors cautioned that their preliminary valuations were subject to due diligence.Other businesses, including Cond Nast, had also expressed interest in participating, according to that letter.The proposed offer would have allowed Richemont to maintain up to a 40 percent stake in the business, cashing in its remaining stake for 620 million. The promise was that Net-a-Porter would be taken public in perhaps three years, potentially reaping an even higher valuation.We have many concerns around strategic rationale and cultural fit of the businesses, but are particularly surprised at the price ascribed to NAPG in comparison to Yoox, Ms. Massenet wrote.A representative for Richemont declined to comment on Ms. Busquetss contentions.A representative for Yoox Net-a-Porter declined to comment. A spokesman for Ms. Massenet declined to comment.Representatives for Certares, Tiger Global, NEA and Cond Nast declined to comment or did not respond to several inquiries for comments.Analysts over the years have questioned whether Richemont should continue to own Net-a-Porter, asking whether the company primarily known for its high-end watch brands should instead focus on its core business. And Net-a-Porter has posted annual losses while under Richemonts ownership, though its sales have continued to rise.Richemont has said that merging Net-a-Porter with Yoox made sense because it would fuse two of the biggest online fashion retailers to create a new merchant with significant scale.Ms. Busquets, a Venezuelan-born investor who was Net-a-Porters original backer and retained a 2.3 percent stake in the business after selling control to Richemont, proved even more combative in her correspondence. Yoox is simply an inferior business to NAP, she wrote in a March 28 letter to Richard Lepeu, Richemonts co-chief executive.In that letter, Ms. Busquets not only pressed the idea of a management buyout, but floated alternatives, including pursuing a merger with other businesses she believed would have been a better fit, like Barneys.Or, she wrote at the time, she would have been satisfied if Net-a-Porter were valued at about 1.5 billion.By June 12, Ms. Busquets was arguing that Net-a-Porter deserved to be valued even higher, given the companys financial performance. In a letter to Richemonts board, she wrote that bankers at Morgan Stanley, whom she had hired to evaluate the business, had valued Net-a-Porter at more than 2 billion, given its improved financial performance.Ms. Busquets has retained two high-profile law practices, Boies Schiller in the United States and David Gold & Associates in Britain, to explore her legal options, according to people briefed on the matter.Bad blood has lingered between Ms. Busquets and Richemont, stretching back to when the Swiss luxury company bought a majority stake in Net-a-Porter from Ms. Busquetss father and the other minority shareholders, which she has said was done under duress.Ms. Busquets said in a statement: We are reviewing all legal possibilities. I want to make sure future entrepreneurs protect themselves and dont make the same mistakes we have made.Ms. Massenet resigned from Yoox Net-a-Porter in October, just as the merger closed and after she sold her shares.Mr. Solca of Exane BNP Paribas said that he believed the valuation offered by Yoox was fair, but he allowed that Ms. Busquets might hold a different view.This is more art than science, he said.
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SharedElizabeth Wolf lives with her 81-year-old father and 65-year-old mother who both have dementia. Here, Elizabeth helps her mother, Nancy.Credit...Mark Makela for The New York TimesSlide 1 of 15 Elizabeth Wolf lives with her 81-year-old father and 65-year-old mother who both have dementia. Here, Elizabeth helps her mother, Nancy.Credit...Mark Makela for The New York TimesMarch 4, 2016In 2010, Elizabeth Wolf, then 30, was living in Vermont, working for a nonprofit and happily exploring new pursuits, from raising chickens to contra dancing.But after several disturbing phone calls from and about her parents, Louis and Nancy Brood, she moved back into the split-level in Mt. Laurel, N.J., where she and her siblings had grown up, with her now husband, Casey Wolf. She expected to arrange caregiving help for her parents, then return to Vermont. Five years later, she is still taking care of her 81-year-old father and 65-year-old mother, both with dementia. Ms. Wolf, who volunteers with the Alzheimers Assoication, writes about the experience at upsidedowndaughter.com. Her interview has been edited and condensed for space and clarity.My parents called me one day in March and started singing Happy Birthday. It was unsettling. My birthday is in May.My uncle called, too. He and my father had owned an upholstery shop in Philadelphia for 50 years, and it was really bothering him that my dad couldnt do simple math anymore.I dont remember all the doctors appointments that led to Dad seeing a neurologist, but I do remember the appointment where they subjected him to the mini-mental test. He came away from that examination with an Alzheimers diagnosis.We were very concerned about my mother, too. She was asking us the same questions over and over. I said Id talk to the teacher whose classroom she worked in as an aide.The teacher said, Your mother is basically not functioning. She just sits at a table in the back of the classroom and stares out the window.It had been going on for a long time, and we had all been so focused on my dad we had missed it. We ended up taking her to the same neurologist, and she got an Alzheimers diagnosis, too.I told Casey, Were going to come back for two months, October through December. It became apparent very soon that we would need to stay longer.The doctors told me that people with Alzheimers have an average life span, between diagnosis and death, of five to seven years. So I knew were in this for the long haul, whatever that looks like.Now, every morning, I wake up around 6 or 6:30. Ill bring Dad his medicine.I take Mom to the bathroom. I have to take her every couple of hours, otherwise we have what happened this morning, when theres not only a major accident, but the mess ends up everywhere and I have to get her in the bath.I prepare their breakfast. She takes medicine for diabetes, hypothyroidism, high blood pressure, and shes on seizure medication and two antipsychotics because she has hallucinations. She stopped swallowing pills willingly a few years ago we were having all-out wars. Now we hide them in chunks of banana.My dad goes to a day program for adults with Alzheimers and dementia. Five days a week, he gets picked up at 8:40 and comes back between 1 and 1:30.Im always looking for more activities to do with him. I found a local voice teacher, and once a week she plays the piano and they sing together, old songs he has in his deep memory recesses. All the Way. Some Enchanted Evening.My mom doesnt have much of an attention span for activities anymore. A lot of what we do all day is wander and sit and stare out the window.At night, we have a motion sensor so that any time their bedroom door opens if my mom has to go to the bathroom, shell wander into the hallway a receptor in our room bings. It goes off maybe six times a night, on average. Some nights it feels like every half-hour.One night recently my dad was so confused, up so many times, and I was exhausted and full of frustration and anger and overwhelming grief. I just went in there and cried in his arms, begging him, Please, go back to sleep. He didnt understand, but he was holding me and crying, too, and saying, Im so sorry. Ill do better. Ill do better.I dont know how to describe that feeling, where you just dont feel like you can go on anymore. And I know I have a lot of things on my side relative to other people in this situation. A supportive husband. Paid help.We just got a grant from the organization Hilarity for Charity. They gave us 25 hours of care a week for a year. We also have a caregiver from one of the state programs. So now we have help Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sunday mornings.But most of the caregivers arent able to handle my mom in the bathroom or bathe her, so often theyre assisting me. And when I do have help, Im running around trying to do the other thousand things that need to happen to maintain a household. I also work part time from home.Most of my me time is spent going to the gym; I see a therapist and get acupuncture a couple of times a month, too. These are the things I do to stay alive.More than anything, the grief or loss I feel is in the form of loneliness. The isolation. I dont know how to relate to people my age.Once in a while I let myself think about what Ive given up. Casey and I decided not to have children, but I feel like a mother to my parents.I value the incredible intimacy I get to share with them. When I was a teenager, my mother was pretty critical; she ignored me for days at a time. I think she was overwhelmed by motherhood.Now, this role that we share, its changed the dynamic, the history of our relationship. However many years down the line, looking back, Ill think of the moments of tenderness I shared with her, every single day.There was a point in May of 2013 wed been here two and a half years when we had plans to move my parents into a facility. We were going to do a respite stay, and if they fit in, if it went well, wed sell the house.We did everything we could we brought couches and furniture from their bedroom to make the place feel homelike. But it wasnt home. For my dad, it lasted three days. He started having panic attacks, to the point where he was throwing up.He was still with it enough to call us. I remember getting a message from him, weeping. Its Daddy. Please, me and Mom want to come home.Everybody, including his doctor, said, You have to leave him, you have to let him adjust. I couldnt do it. I would never judge the people who do, but I couldnt.Theyve been here 40 years. All my dad ever wanted was this home. Who am I, if I take my dad from his home?
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DealBookCredit...Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for DisneyDec. 21, 2015All anyone can talk about is Star Wars: The Force Awakens and the more than half-billion-dollar haul that the Walt Disney Company pulled in over the weekend.The press has been breathless and Wall Street analysts are mostly giddy about Disneys prospects.But on Friday, just as the entertainment giant was beginning to count its record box office take, Richard Greenfield, a longtime media analyst at BTIG Research, urged his clients to sell their Disney stock. He became the only analyst to have a sell rating on the company.To Mr. Greenfield, Star Wars is a sideshow, masking what he believes are deeper financial and strategic challenges at Disney. The companys problems, he says, have nothing to do with Darth Vader or Donald Duck. Instead, Disney has a looming issue with ESPN, the sports television juggernaut.In a report titled Even the Force Cannot Protect ESPN, he argues that Disneys successful film business, which includes Pixar, has distracted investors from an impending slowdown at ESPN as viewers cancel their cable subscriptions (the cord cutters) or never sign up for cable to begin with (the cord nevers).Investors must remember that at its core, Disney is a cable network company that has the highest level of fixed costs (sports rights) in the industry, he wrote. ESPN now appears poised to become Disneys most troubled business as consumer behavior shifts rapidly.In the past year, HBO and CBS have begun unbundling, meaning that they now offer their programming la carte for a monthly fee thats far less than a bundled cable bill. Mr. Greenfield believes that as more cable networks shift to selling their programming this way, ESPN will have to follow suit. But he says it will not be able to sign up enough viewers to pay a monthly subscription fee that would offset the loss in cable subscribers who now pay a monthly carriage fee (about $7 a household) whether or not they watch ESPN.These lucrative fees currently cover the enormous cost of licensing live sports programing. Mr. Greenfield has been especially critical of ESPNs aggressive sports-rights acquisitions in recent years, which he says has been driven in part to block the growth of rivals like Fox and NBC.ESPNs problems first spilled into the open in August when Disney reduced growth expectations for its cable network division and its shares plummeted. The news alarmed investors in television companies, sending the stocks of Time Warner and 21st Century Fox down along with Disneys.In an interview, Mr. Greenfield said he believed that the expectations seem too high for Disney. He expects the company's stock to fall to $90 in the next 12 months; it closed Monday at $106.58.It puts incredible pressure on the films. They all have to be massive successes. Thats just tough. Mr. Greenfield is especially worried about earnings in 2017 and beyond, when he believes the cord cutting may push Disney to pursue an la carte subscription offering, given that 44 percent of the companys profits currently come from cable television.VideoRich Greenfield, an analyst at BTIG Research, explains why he shorted Disney despite the record debut of 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens.'CreditCredit...CNBCRobert Iger, Disneys chief executive, has said that he could imagine ESPN selling the sports network over streaming video via a so-called over-the-top, or O.T.T., subscription, calling such a move inevitable. But he also seems in no rush to make such a move and for good reason.There are many commonly held beliefs/myths/legends about ESPN, Todd Juenger, an analyst at Bernstein, wrote over the weekend, partly in response to Mr. Greenfield. One such belief, he wrote, is that ESPN is what holds the bundle together. But he said: Maybe that is true, but in a different way than most people intend. If ESPN went O.T.T., we dont think the bundle would collapse because millions of households would drop cable and subscribe to ESPN. Instead, if ESPN went O.T.T., we think other networks would respond in kind, and perhaps millions of households would drop cable to avoid ESPN (and other expensive sports networks) and take advantage of the rich array of entertainment video options.Mr. Iger has acknowledged that television is a mature industry now being disrupted by streaming technology, which makes its future uncertain. But Mr. Iger, 64, may not have to wrestle with these challenges; those will most likely be left to his expected successor, Tom Staggs. (Mr. Igers contract ends in mid-2018.)Most analysts wave off concerns about ESPN, arguing that this wont be a problem for some time and that live sports will remain the most desirable programming for viewers who still want a bundle of channels. And, they say, its the cable companies that will feel the most pain.We think that the turmoil and disruption will most be felt by the distributors and some of the weaker programming content companies, Martin Pyykkonen of Rosenblatt Securities wrote to investors, also seemingly in response to Mr. Greenfield. For Disney, we think its a reasonable bet that they will be a necessary part of almost any skinnier programming package going forward.All that may be true. Its also possible that shifts in television habits will change more slowly than some of the most dire predictions.Disney may have seen all of this coming: It has spent the past decade diversifying its business by adding big franchises like Star Wars, Marvel and Pixar while expanding its theme park business.So while the entire television industry may be challenged, perhaps Disney will be able to weather the storm better than many others. Given all the brands Disney has accumulated, Mr. Greenfield conceded, It would be more fun to be them than anyone else.Still, Mr. Juenger said, We do have concern, however, that once Star Wars is digested, the focus will return to affiliate fees.But at least for now, its a whole lot more fun to talk about Han Solo, lightsabers and Chewbacca than cord cutting, over-the-top and affiliate fees.
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Media|Suit Claims Weeknd Song Infringes on Copyright of Film Soundtrackhttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/business/media/suit-claims-weeknd-song-infringes-on-copyright-of-film-soundtrack.htmlDec. 9, 2015The Weeknds song The Hills became one of the biggest hits of the year with a slithery electronic bass line. But according to a copyright infringement lawsuit filed on Wednesday, that bass line was taken without permission from the soundtrack of a little-noticed science-fiction thriller.The suit was filed in United States District Court in Los Angeles by Cutting Edge Music on behalf of Tom Raybould, a Welsh composer who wrote the music for The Machine, directed by Caradog James, which had its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2013 but was not widely distributed in theaters in the United States.Still, the suit asserts, the music for The Machine reached associates of the Weeknd, whose real name is Abel Tesfaye. On March 9, according to the suit, Mr. Raybould received a direct message on Twitter from Emmanuel Nickerson, a producer and writer known as Million Dollar Mano, that said: I sampled your music might make it 2 the weeknd next album. Huge fan of what u did 4 the machine movie!According the suit, both The Hills and a track on The Machine soundtrack called Revolution feature bass lines performed with almost identical idiosyncratic sounds at the same register and using the same pitch sequence, melodic phase structure and rhythmic durations, along with other similarities. The suit seeks unspecified damages, and it names as defendants several record labels and music publishers involved with the song.The Hills, which was released as a single in May, lists as its songwriters Mr. Tesfaye; Mr. Nickerson; Ahmad Balshe, better known as Belly; and Carlo Montagnese, known as Illangelo. The song spent six weeks at No.1 on Billboards singles chart, and according to Nielsen it sold 2.4 million downloads and has been streamed nearly 400 million times in the United States on audio and video services. This week, the Weeknd was nominated for seven Grammy Awards, including album of the year for Beauty Behind the Madness, on which The Hills appears.A representative of Songs Music Publishing, the publisher that represents the Weeknd, declined to comment on Wednesday, saying that the company had not been served with the complaint. Representatives of Republic Records, the Weeknds label, did not respond to a request for comment.
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Politics|Congressman Steve King Retweets a Nazi Sympathizerhttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/us/politics/steve-king-collett-nazi.htmlCredit...J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressJune 13, 2018Representative Steve King of Iowa, a Republican with a history of making inflammatory and racist statements about immigrants and promoting white nationalist views, drew criticism on Tuesday after retweeting a British activist who is a prominent Nazi sympathizer and has described himself as an admirer of Hitler.The activist, Mark Collett, is the former chairman of the Young BNP, the youth arm of the far-right British National Party, and like Mr. King he has often warned that influxes of immigrants pose a danger to Western countries.Mr. Colletts tweet was a screenshot of a Breitbart article titled Vast Majority of Under-35 Italians Now Oppose Mass Migration, and his commentary: 65% of Italians under the age of 35 now oppose mass immigration. Europe is waking up...Mr. Kings retweet included a comment of his own: Europe is waking up...Will America...in time? As of Wednesday afternoon, it had not been taken down.Mr. Collett was the subject of a 2002 documentary on Channel 4 in Britain titled Young, Nazi and Proud. In it, he says that AIDS is a friendly disease because blacks, drug users and gays have it, HuffPost reported.Nick Ryan, a spokesman for an anti-racism advocacy group based in Britain, Hope Not Hate, told HuffPost that no mainstream politician in their right mind should be retweeting Mark Collett.Mr. Kings office declined to comment on the matter.It was not the first time Mr. King, who was elected to Congress in 2002 and has displayed a Confederate battle flag on his desk in Washington, has promoted extreme anti-immigrant or white nationalist views.In 2013, he said that for every child of undocumented immigrants whos a valedictorian, theres another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds and theyve got calves the size of cantaloupes because theyre hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.Speaking on MSNBC in 2016, he questioned the historical contributions of nonwhite subgroups.Last year, he said that we cant restore our civilization with somebody elses babies, setting off widespread anger that included criticism from his congressional colleagues.But his comment drew praise from other figures, like the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
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Credit...Pawan Kumar/ReutersMarch 18, 2017NEW DELHI Indias governing party on Saturday appointed a firebrand Hindu cleric to lead the countrys most populous state, a turning point for a government that has, until now, steered clear of openly embracing far-right Hindu causes.The choice of Yogi Adityanath who has been repeatedly accused of stirring anti-Muslim sentiments to lead Uttar Pradesh, came as a shock to many political observers here, who have become accustomed to the carefully moderated public positions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in line with his projected image as a pro-development leader and global statesman.Mr. Adityanath has openly called for India to be enshrined as a Hindu rashtra, or Hindu nation, and supports the rebuilding of a temple to the Hindu god Ram, also known as Rama, on the site of a razed 16th-century mosque, a project that was halted after it incited bloody religious riots in the 1990s.With the appointment, Mr. Modi is unveiling a vision of benign majoritarianism, said Shekhar Gupta, a longtime editor and political talk show host. That means its a Hindu country, thats the fact, and well be nice to you if you behave yourself.For Mr. Modi, the appointment represents a final rejection of Nehruvian socialism, which almost gave the minorities a slightly exalted status, said Mr. Gupta, referring to Jawaharlal Nehru, Indias first prime minister and independence leader.Mr. Adityanath, who is often seen wearing the saffron robes of a Hindu priest, told followers he would focus on Mr. Modis economic agenda.I am confident that the state will march on the path of development, he said, in comments carried by The Press Trust of India.India is 80 percent Hindu, 14 percent Muslim and 2.3 percent Christian, according to the 2011 census.Mr. Adityanaths appointment comes on the heels of Mr. Modis greatest political victory since 2014. A week ago, his Bharatiya Janata Party won a landslide victory in Uttar Pradesh, which has a population of more than 200 million and was seen as a gauge of Mr. Modis chances of winning a second five-year term in 2019.The selection of a hard-line Hindu chief minister suggests that the party credits right-wing activists for swinging the vote, said Milan Vaishnav, a senior fellow in the South Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.The only conclusion one can draw is that he feels the base is mobilized and that they helped deliver this, and that there would be pushback if they did not get something in return, Mr. Vaishnav said. He added that he was baffled by the choice, which shifts attention away from the pro-growth, development agenda that has been at the center of Mr. Modis political movement.I think its a regressive choice, and a lost opportunity for the prime minister, he said. This is a huge mandate, a huge victory. But there is going to be a backlash if he doesnt figure out the jobs question. Thats issue No. 1.Party loyalists praised the decision. Some members made the case that Mr. Adityanaths selection did not represent a departure from Mr. Modis 2014 pledge to focus on the economy and create jobs.Others openly celebrated the advent of a more muscular Hindu agenda.Justice to all, appeasement to none, said Sudhanshu Mittal, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader, in comments to NDTV, a cable news station.Appeasement, in this context, is typically understood to mean policies favoring the rights of Indian Muslims.As a devout Hindu sannyasi, or someone who has renounced worldly things, he will guarantee that the state doesnt discriminate, and justice for all, said Tarun Vijay, a former B.J.P. member of Parliament. He added that as chief minister, Mr. Adityanath may make jihadi intolerant Muslims learn an alphabet of humanity and accepting differences as an Indian.Mr. Adityanath, 44, was born Ajay Mohan Bisht, and studied mathematics before joining the priesthood. He rose to prominence as part of the campaign to rebuild the Ram temple, and has repeatedly been charged with fanning religious tensions.In 2007, he spent 15 days in jail on charges of inciting riots, The Hindustan Times reported. He was booked again later in the year, when riots broke out after he made a speech. He is still facing trial in the two cases, the newspaper reported.Mr. Adityanath was a forceful defender of the Hindu mob who lynched Muhammad Ikhlaq, a Muslim man suspected of slaughtering a cow, and argued that Mr. Ikhlaqs family should be prosecuted for possessing the meat. When some Indians complained that they should not be required perform a sun salutation as part of International Yoga Day celebrations, saying it was a religious act, he recommended that those who were offended should drown themselves in the sea.He won his parliamentary seat in 1998, and was re-elected four times.He has particularly strong support among Hindu priests and seers, who urged the B.J.P. to name him chief minister, saying it would clear the way for the construction of the Ram temple.
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Media|Editor Quits After Sheldon Adelson Buys Las Vegas Review-Journalhttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/business/media/editor-quits-after-mogul-buys-paper-in-las-vegas.htmlDec. 22, 2015Credit...Tyrone Siu/ReutersMichael Hengel, editor of The Las Vegas Review-Journal, announced his resignation on Tuesday, less than two weeks after the billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson bought the newspaper and days after it published an article that was indirectly critical of the new owners.In an announcement to the newsroom, Mr. Hengel said he was offered a voluntary buyout, according to reporters who were present at the meeting.The Review-Journal reported last week that Mr. Adelson and his family were behind the $140 million purchase of the newspaper. The identity of the buyer had been kept private after the sale was announced, which raised questions about the new owners transparency.In a statement that was expected to appear on the front page of The Review-Journal on Wednesday, the newspapers new owners said Mr. Hengel had accepted a voluntary buyout offer from the previous owners and that offers were also made to other qualified employees. Other employees have accepted the buyout offer, the statement said.The statement added that an interim editor would be appointed and that a search for a permanent editor would begin immediately.We pledge to publish a newspaper that is fair, unbiased and accurate, the new owners said in the statement. They also said they were committed to making the new investments necessary for the newspaper to succeed, and that they regarded themselves as stewards of this essential community institution.Mr. Hengel could not immediately be reached for comment.Reporters at the newspaper reacted on Twitter, posting photos of Mr. Hengel as he made his announcement. One reporter, Neal Morton, wrote that Mr. Hengel said, I think my resignation probably comes as a relief to the new owners, and it is in my best interest and those of my family.Reporters described the mood after Mr. Hengels announcement as stunned and somber.
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David Beckham Haircut and Chill 1/24/2018 David Beckham doesn't play by the rules when it comes to getting trimmed ... or he's got an incredible hair dresser. Beckham said goodbye to his long coif with the help of a big glass of wine and his feet up on the counter, which had to make getting that perfect line around the ear difficult for the guy blading away. Becks shared pics of what looks like the most laid-back cut Tuesday on his Instagram story, including one of what came off and it certainly looked like a lot. Gotta say, Becks' photography game is getting pretty artsy and we think we know who is to blame.
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Guess Who This Top Hat Tot Turned Into! 1/30/2018 Before this dressed-up Disney star was singing about the summertime, he was just another fancy fella growing up in Hollywood, Florida. Can you guess who he is? Share on Facebook TWEET This See also celebrity kids Photo Galleries
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Science|Letters to the Editorhttps://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/science/letters-to-the-editor.htmlReactionsMarch 28, 2016Nuclear PowerShort-Term ThinkingTO THE EDITOR:Re Amid a Graying Fleet of Nuclear Plants, a Hunt for Solutions, (March 22): The fading of enthusiasm for nuclear power in the United States is part of the pattern of our abysmal failure to address climate change. It is a function of markets that are distorted to reward the very short term and to neglect indirect costs. The biggest competitor to nuclear, and to unsubsidized wind and solar, is natural gas. Cheap now, but costly in greenhouse gases emitted. While some regions are finally getting the message, providing potential subsidies to keep their nuclear units running, it is far from adequate.Theodore M. Besmann Columbia, S.C.The writer is a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of South Carolina.AppendicitisMerits of AntibioticsTO THE EDITOR: Re A Choice for Treating Appendicitis, March 22: As a Hospital Corpsman in the Navy in 1945, I was already aware of the use of antibiotics in the treatment of appendicitis. If a Corpsman had the responsibility of treating a person with appendicitis while out at sea, it was preferable to use penicillin (available at that time to the armed forces) and local freezing rather than attempt to do an operation for which we were inadequately prepared.Dr. Sheldon Lichtblau, Fort Lee, N.J.TO THE EDITOR:I had an intelligent patient in my office, just yesterday, who related that his appendix had ruptured last September, while his providers had put him on antibiotics, as they watched and waited. He volunteered that, if he had not been able to reach the hospital rapidly after his symptoms suddenly took a turn for the worse, he may have died. Before CT scans and M.R.I.s, before antibiotics, surgeons knew, not to let the sun set on an acute abdomen and that, if the surgical pathology report did not come back negative for appendicitis 5-10 percent of the time (upon which, todays plaintiffs lawyers would pounce), the surgeon was underoperating. This meant that the surgeon was, therefore, missing life-threatening cases of true appendicitis. Contrary to Ms. Brodys contention, this was not a matter of surgeons greed, it was a matter of saving lives.Barry Miles Belgorod, M.D.New YorkParrotsA Special BirdTO THE EDITOR:Re Parrots Are a Lot More Than Pretty Bird, (March 22): Having lived in Venezuela for many years, I had close contact with these uniquely beautiful creatures. A baby parrot I brought up after it fell from the nest was bilingual and loved only me and greeted me with outspoken affection: Hola and then Goodbye when I left; in short, imprint marked our relationship. It would fly in and out of its large cage and one day did not return. I chose to think it had found a mate that surpassed me.Mara Arreaza-CoyleRockford, Ill.
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TV SportsFeb. 5, 2014NBCs moneyed grip on the Olympics means that it has traveled a technological path that no other network has. It has shown the Games entirely on broadcast television. It has added multiple cable networks. Now, it is live-streaming virtually every event to an ecosystem increasingly populated by tablets and smartphones.With the Winter Games from Sochi, Russia, almost here, it is worth remembering that four years ago NBC streamed only hockey and curling from Vancouver. Now, all 15 sports will be streamed live to those authenticating their cable, satellite and telephone accounts from Vladimir V. Putins subtropical wonderland. NBC believes that its television viewership throughout the day and, in particular, during prime time, will be enhanced by fans who are watching live on their computers or iPads. NBC arrived at this realization two years ago during the Summer Games in London, where all events were streamed live.I think four or five days in, we felt a degree of confidence that we had a formula that was working well, Mark Lazarus, the chairman of the NBC Sports Group, said Wednesday from Sochi.Research from the London Games found that the more devices on which people watched the Olympics, the more they watched television.Someone watching the Olympics only on television breathed in 4 hours 19 minutes of coverage daily, according to the research. Add a personal computer or a laptop, and TV consumption rose to 4:28. With a mobile phone added, TV viewing rose to five hours, and with a tablet tossed in, the average time watching TV shot up to 6:07. Now, of course, tablets and smartphones are far more prevalent, raising the likelihood that viewing on all screens will increase, making NBC executives happier than they were in London.A relatively small number of people is streaming during the day, but they are fans and theyre very enthusiastic, said Alan Wurtzel, NBC Universals president of research and media development. They primed the pump and let people know that something incredible was going on. Simultaneous viewing is a rising tide that benefits all boats.The research also found that 64 percent of live streamers shared the results. All live streams will be replayed later in the day, but well before prime time, and then archived for viewing on demand the next day.The technology of streaming has improved since the London Olympics, as has the ability of devices to show the programming. NBC is relying on those upgrades to increase the multiple-screen viewing and the time spent watching.Were 16 to 18 months further along, Lazarus said. Were hopeful that when people get bothered by streaming problems and well take some of the blame sometimes its the carriers and sometimes its the connection in home. But all in all, the chain is stronger for everybody.Despite the digital revolution, NBC is still focused on its Olympic prime-time show. It is where most of the viewers are. It is where the advertisers pay the most for commercials. It is where what NBC calls the curated version of what happened in daylight in Sochi along with features, studio commentary and commercials will be shown to the evening audience. The opening ceremony Friday will not be streamed live, but will be only on NBC in prime time. This has been sacrosanct territory for NBC. Perhaps even when Olympic sports are streamed through your contact lenses, this exception will remain intact. The rationale is that it is not an event with a final score. It is a national, choreographed pageant that requires narration and geographic context.Sometimes, of course, the opening ceremony defies explanation to audiences of different cultures. And some people believe that they should be able to see it as it unfolds, regardless of any confusion, and they are not wrong. But to NBC, this is pure entertainment, part of an expensive purchase of rights, which it can use to garner high ratings through a delayed showing.Ive seen the show twice in rehearsal, Lazarus said, and Im thoroughly convinced that a raw stream would be very difficult for people to understand the context and historical context that its creator was trying to express.There will be nothing live on television in prime time on NBC. Sochi time is nine hours ahead of Eastern time. But there will be about 246 hours of live television, on all coasts, on NBCSN (which will be flush with live figure skating), on USA and on MSNBC, as well as the 1,000 hours of live streaming on NBCOlympics.com.Jim Bell, the executive producer of NBC Olympics, said last month that it was not a difficult decision to show so much figure skating live.Its one of the crown jewels of the Winter Olympic sports, he said. Its great for NBC, NBCSN, and its weatherproof.The only exception to NBCs vow of all live figure skating will be Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern, when NBC will carry taped team figure skating, womens moguls and snowboard slopestyle, as the appetizers to Fridays opening ceremony.
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Americas|In a Rare Survey, Cubans Express a Hunger for Economic Growthhttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/world/americas/cuba-survey-economic-growth-and-opportunity.htmlCredit...Tomas Munita for The New York TimesMarch 21, 2017MEXICO CITY A hunger for economic opportunity. An embrace of tourism. Hope in a new era of normalized relations with the United States.These are some of the predominant sentiments expressed in a rare survey of 840 Cubans conducted in the country late last year by an independent research group, asking for opinions on topics from free speech to diplomatic ties to crime.What emerges most clearly from those interviewed is a desire to enjoy a more certain, and robust, economic future.In this, the Cuban people seem to be in agreement with their government. For the Cuban state, led by Ral Castro, allowing entrepreneurs to open small businesses, normalizing relations with the United States and expanding tourism have been central to the countrys hunt for economic growth.These three policies were among the most highly supported by the Cubans interviewed in the survey, done by the independent research group NORC at the University of Chicago. Eight of 10 Cubans interviewed felt tourism to the country should be increased, and 95 percent said having a high level of economic growth was an extremely or very important goal.And yet Cubans seemed to have little faith in their governments capacity to deliver on those goals. Only three in 10 felt the economy would improve in the next three years. And just 13 percent said the current economy was good or excellent. Three-quarters of Cubans believed they must be careful in saying what they think, at least sometimes.Over half of those Cubans interviewed said they would like to leave the country if given a chance, and 70 percent of those individuals said they would move to the United States if they could.The interviews were conducted in person in October and November, before the inauguration of President Trump, who has threatened to rescind President Obamas 2014 decision to restore diplomatic ties between the nations.While Mr. Trump has remained relatively quiet about Cuba since taking office, his administration announced it is conducting a full review of the policy and could decide to cut off ties again.But that would not be what Cubans themselves appear to want.Of those interviewed, 55 percent felt that better relations with the United States would be a good thing, while only 3 percent felt it would be mostly bad.
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Philadelphia Eagles Fan Slamming into Pole, Subway ... ... NEW Hilarious Angle!!! 1/22/2018 That Philadelphia Eagles fan who ran smack into a pole and bounced off a subway train is in even more pain than you thought ... as this new angle of his asinine celebration reveals. Waiting for your permission to load the Facebook Video. The guy was all pumped up underground Sunday on his way to see his Eagles in the NFC Championship. He and some pals were standing around yelling, "Whooooo," and not really making much of an effort to board a waiting subway train. Of course, once the train started moving, the guy decided to drunkenly chase it down the platform. The chase was over pretty quickly ... courtesy of a giant pole he never saw for some reason. #Booze
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Credit...Patrick Semansky/Associated PressJune 15, 2018WASHINGTON Election law experts from across the political spectrum largely agreed that the New York attorney general made a compelling case this week that President Trumps campaign and his charitable foundation violated federal campaign finance laws during the 2016 election.What they could not agree on, though, was whether any federal investigators will pick up the case.The allegations were detailed in filings released Thursday by the attorney general, Barbara D. Underwood, as part of a lawsuit her office brought in state court accusing Mr. Trump and his three oldest children of using the Donald J. Trump Foundation for political and business purposes. That constituted a violation of New York State laws governing charities, as well as federal tax and election laws, the lawsuit charged.But Ms. Underwoods office lacks the authority to prosecute federal matters. So, when she filed the lawsuit, she simultaneously sent letters to the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Election Commission asking those agencies to investigate the alleged violations of federal tax laws and campaign finance laws, respectively.And, for good measure, on the letter to the F.E.C., she copied two top officials from the Justice Departments Public Integrity Section, which is charged with investigating and prosecuting criminal violations of election laws.The copying of the letter to the Justice Department attracted wide notice in Washingtons close-knit election-law bar, as did the claim in the lawsuit that the use of the Trump Foundation to benefit the Trump campaign was willful and knowing.That phrase, combined with the cc, appears to be an effort to set the stage for a criminal election-law prosecution. That would be handled by the Justice Department rather than the F.E.C., which can only levy civil penalties and fines.The evidence collected by the attorney general is so compelling that she was able to make a case that the Trump Foundation knowingly and willfully violated the source prohibitions and dollar limits of the Federal Election Campaign Act, said Brett Kappel, an election lawyer with the firm Akerman who has represented clients on both sides of the aisle, including the former Texas congressman Ron Pauls 2012 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.The referral to the Justice Department cheered advocates for more aggressive enforcement of election laws, who have bemoaned what they see as the F.E.C.s plunge in recent years into a state of near-constant deadlock and almost complete toothlessness. The agency, which by statute is composed of six members evenly split between appointees from both parties, has two vacant seats, leaving it with only four commissioners. Thats the number required to advance a complaint or referral for formal investigation, meaning that the two Republican appointees would have to join the two Democratic counterparts to proceed with an investigation of a sitting Republican president a highly unlikely outcome.There are certainly grounds to open an investigation on the merits, said Paul S. Ryan, vice president for policy and litigation at the campaign finance advocacy group Common Cause. But the F.E.C. has been dismissing complaints that I think are much stronger slam dunks than this.ImageCredit...Hans Pennink/Associated PressThe Justice Department, on the other hand, has ramped up its prosecutions of election law violations in recent years, pursuing high-profile cases against operatives for misleading fund-raising and misappropriating political committee funds.Violations related to campaign finance laws are among the charges brought by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, against 13 Russians and three companies that tried to boost Mr. Trumps campaign.And the Justice Department is currently investigating Mr. Trumps longtime attorney, Michael S. Cohen, for possible violations of campaign finance laws related to payments to two women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump.While the F.E.C. mostly directs enforcement actions at campaigns and their treasurers, the Justice Department can bring criminal charges that can carry jail time against anyone involved in a campaign finance violation.If the Justice Department takes up the referral from the New York attorney general, Democrats and government watchdog groups can be expected to call for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself as he did from the investigation of Russian meddling because of his involvement in the Trump campaign.The campaign finance violations alleged by the New York attorney general primarily center on a fund-raiser for veterans groups held by the foundation in Iowa ahead of the states pivotal caucuses, which fell on Feb. 1, 2016. The fund-raiser which had many trappings of a campaign rally, including a speech by Mr. Trump skewering his opponents and celebrating his own accomplishments raised more than $2.8 million for the foundation for distribution to other charities benefiting veterans.But records the attorney general obtained show that officials for Mr. Trumps campaign, including the digital operative Brad Parscale, who is now the manager of Mr. Trumps re-election bid, were involved in planning the fund-raiser and raising money for it. Other officials, including the campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, were involved in directing how and when the money was disseminated to the veterans groups, according to emails obtained by the attorney general.In one email, Mr. Lewandowski wrote to a foundation official, I think we should get the total collected and then put out a news release that we distributed the $$ to each of the groups. He later sent a list of veterans groups, and asked that some of the disbursements be made in Iowa in the days before that states presidential nominating caucuses, which mark the kickoff of the primary calendar.The activity around the fund-raiser ran afoul of campaign finance laws on two main fronts, Ms. Underwoods office charges. The $2.8 million raised for the foundation amounted to illegal and undisclosed in-kind donations that exceeded the federal contribution limit of $5,400 per election cycle per person. And Ms. Underwoods lawsuit says that the communication between the campaign and the foundation represented a violation of rules barring campaigns from coordinating with nonprofit groups or other entities in the spending of funds. The referral to the F.E.C. also asks it to investigate a $25,000 donation made by the foundation in 2013 to a nonprofit that was devoted to helping the political prospects of an ally of Mr. Trump.The letter is pretty devastating in terms of building the case that bedrock campaign finance principles and laws were violated, said Meredith McGehee, executive director of Issue One, a nonprofit government ethics group.Republican campaign finance lawyers mostly declined to comment for attribution on the case, though several said that the best defense for the Trump Foundation and campaign may be that they simply didnt know the laws, and therefore couldnt knowingly and willfully violate them.
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VideotranscripttranscriptWho Is the Real Melania Trump? Who Knows?Melania Trump prizes her privacy. But the first ladys absence from the public eye has led to very different narratives about who she is.Melania Trump. Is she trapped? A reluctant first lady? Or is she poised, polished and a quiet, but supportive, first lady? Who is the real Melania? Very few, at least among those who are speaking publicly, will say. Im very strong. People, they dont really know me. People think and talk about me like, Oh, Melania. Oh, poor Melania. Dont feel sorry for me. Dont feel sorry for me. I can handle everything. But as Donald Trumps presidency has progressed, the first lady has become a versatile avatar, her image split sharply down political lines. In one version of the public imagination, Melania is unhappy. She dislikes her husband and disagrees with his policies. She may even be mulling a divorce. This Melania has shown up on late-night TV and in tabloids. Youre beautiful, dutiful Melania. I cant take it anymore. Then theres the other version of Melania, painted by conservative media as confident, fashion forward, graceful and adored. I have been so impressed with, not just her quiet dignity, as you brought up, but also just this diplomatic use of fashion. This version is closer to the official portrayal of Melania. Through her spokespeople, the first lady says she is supportive of her husband and focused on raising their son, Barron. I support my husband 100 percent. But we have a 9-year-old son together, Barron. And Im raising him. She says she prefers to take a back seat to her husband, to keep his place in the limelight. Its not the first time Melanias been in the public eye. You spin, baby, you spin. Shes a former model and jewelry designer. I love when idea comes to life. And I study architecture and design and its something very creative for me. Im very passionate about what I design, and there are some beautiful pieces. When they got together in the late 1990s, the Trumps say their chemistry was instant. We were both at the same party and thats how we met. He came to me... Like her right away? I went crazy. Melania and Donald became synonymous with the New York social scene. Theyve stood did together for a number of years now. New Yorkers have come to know them as a very solid couple. And in 2005, they married. Hi, fans. Im going to Metropolitan Gala. In the following years, Melanias social media posts focused on fashion, travel, fitness and spending time with family. Now as the first lady, next to one of the most outspoken presidents in recent history, Melanias silence has taken on a life of its own. The most important thing is just to be you. Thats the end.Melania Trump prizes her privacy. But the first ladys absence from the public eye has led to very different narratives about who she is.CreditCredit...Al Drago/The New York TimesJune 6, 2018WASHINGTON After spending nearly a month out of the public eye, Melania Trump emerged from the White House on Wednesday, putting an end to at least a few of the theories some her husband has repeated to his 52 million Twitter followers that blossomed like swampland ragweed during her time in seclusion.Dressed in a trench coat and heels, the first lady accompanied President Trump to the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to attend a briefing on the coming hurricane season. Sitting nearly still, Mrs. Trump cut a totemic figure alongside Mr. Trump as they sat around a conference table at the agencys headquarters.The president, reading from a notecard, introduced our great first lady to several members of his cabinet, Vice President Mike Pence and an assembled group of reporters.She went through a little rough patch, but shes doing great, Mr. Trump said, patting his wife on the hand. The people love you. Thank you, honey.Mrs. Trump spent five days at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in May to treat what her aides called a benign kidney condition, and had not appeared in public since before entering the hospital.On Twitter Wednesday morning, Mr. Trump bitterly complained about the speculation by the public and some journalists about her absence. But in attacking what he said were several conspiracy theories the news media had generated about his wifes absence, he ended up repeating the kind of unfounded rumors about his wife that would normally attract legal action from him and his notoriously litigious family.The Fake News Media has been so unfair, and vicious, to my wife and our great first lady, Melania, wrote the president, who has long reveled in conspiracy theories. During her recovery from surgery they reported everything from near death, to facelift, to left the W.H. (and me) for N.Y. or Virginia, to abuse. All Fake, she is doing really well!By attacking journalists who have speculated or asked questions about his wife, the president put himself at odds with his own personal history of using his platform and a number of his supporters to target women and effectively amplify rumors about their health, appearance and personal relationships.On the campaign trail, he repeatedly attacked Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent, suggesting that she was not loyal to her husband, President Bill Clinton; questioning her physical stamina for the job; and suggesting that she was mentally ill. Mr. Trumps campaign also aired at least one TV ad that pointed to conspiracy theories about Mrs. Clintons health.And he later took aim at two female journalists Megyn Kelly and Mika Brzezinski describing them in pejorative terms. He said that he once saw Ms. Brzezinski at a gathering at his Florida estate bleeding badly from a face-lift and that she had a low I.Q.In Mrs. Trumps case, the White House has insisted that she is entitled to the same privacy that would shield any other patient.She surfaced for the first time on Tuesday in a closed White House event, but was spotted around the White House last week. Apparently referring to this, the president said on Twitter that reporters had seen the first lady merrily strolling in the White House over the past week, but never reported the sighting because it would hurt the sick narrative that she was living in a different part of the world, was really ill, or whatever. Fake News is really bad!But at least one reporter noted on Twitter that he had seen the first lady with her aides in the White House, and her office has said Mrs. Trump has taken several internal meetings during her recovery.With the White House declining to issue updates on the first ladys recovery, the guesswork about her whereabouts and her health expanded beyond the news media: On Tuesday, as Mrs. Trump attended the event with Gold Star families, a contingent of observers on Twitter wondered whether the sparse footage captured of the event was indeed from that day.Historians say no modern first lady has prized her privacy more than Mrs. Trump, but the timing of Mrs. Trumps departure from the public eye was abrupt and baffling: It came as she was ramping up her public appearances and in the midst of rolling out her official platform, Be Best, which will focus on childrens issues.Mrs. Trumps stay in the hospital was also shrouded in secrecy. In the hours after her procedure, aides wore scrubs around her but said the procedure had been successful and without complications.In any case, the first ladys public re-emergence is tied to one of her interests. Stephanie Grisham, her communications director, said in an email that Mrs. Trump would be attending the hurricane briefing because it is an issue that she cares very much about.Last year, the first lady and her husband traveled to Puerto Rico to visit families affected by hurricanes, serving them food and visiting relief centers.When asked about the first ladys health, Ms. Grishams response was brief.She feels great, Ms. Grisham wrote, doing well.At the FEMA briefing, Mrs. Trump did not speak publicly, but listened, smiling at her husband and nodding as he spoke. As the event drew to a close, the president referred to his wife and Mr. Pence.Speaking for Melania and Mike, Mr. Trump said, we thank you all very much.
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Technology|Owners of BitMEX, a Leading Bitcoin Exchange, Face Criminal Chargeshttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/01/technology/bitmex-bitcoin-criminal-charges.htmlBitMEX made itself a haven for hackers and illegal transactions, American prosecutors said.Credit...Xyza Bacani/ReduxOct. 1, 2020American authorities brought criminal charges on Thursday against the owners of one of the worlds biggest cryptocurrency trading exchanges, BitMEX, accusing them of allowing the Hong Kong-based company to launder money and engage in other illegal transactions.BitMEX is far from the first cryptocurrency company to be suspected of facilitating criminal activity. But it is the largest and most established exchange to face criminal charges.Federal prosecutors in Manhattan indicted the chief executive of BitMEX, Arthur Hayes, and three co-owners: Benjamin Delo, Samuel Reed and Gregory Dwyer. Mr. Reed was arrested in Massachusetts on Thursday, while the other three men remained at large, authorities said.Prosecutors said BitMEX had taken few steps to limit customers even after being informed that the exchange was being used by hackers to launder stolen money, and by people in countries under sanctions, like Iran.BitMEX made itself available as a vehicle for money laundering and sanctions violations, the indictment released on Thursday said.BitMEX has handled more than $1.5 billion of trades each day recently, making it one of the five biggest exchanges on most days. BitMEX and Mr. Hayes have been known for pushing the limits in the unregulated cryptocurrency industry.After it was founded in 2014, BitMEX grew popular by allowing traders to buy and sell contracts tied to the value of Bitcoin known as derivatives, or futures with few of the restrictions and rules that were in place in other exchanges. That allowed investors to take out enormous loans and make risky trades.The relaxed attitude also made it possible for people all over the world to easily move money in and out of BitMEX without the basic identity checks that can prevent money laundering. In August, BitMEX put in place some of those verification checks.Mr. Hayes is from Buffalo, and previously worked as a trader at Deutsche Bank and Citi after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania. He incorporated BitMEX in the Seychelles even though its offices were in Hong Kong and New York.Mr. Hayes chose Seychelles because it cost less to bribe Seychellois authorities just a coconut than it would cost to bribe regulators in the United States and elsewhere, according to the indictment.A spokesman for HDR Global Trading Limited, one of the corporate entities controlling BitMEX, said: We strongly disagree with the U.S. governments heavy-handed decision to bring these charges, and intend to defend the allegations vigorously.BitMEX has been reported to be under investigation by American authorities since last year. On Thursday, American cryptocurrency experts said they were not surprised that the exchange would attract scrutiny given its freewheeling attitude.The vast majority of firms that service the U.S. are compliant, so its not surprising that the government would now turn to those that refuse to follow the law, said Jerry Brito, the executive director of Coin Center, a research and lobbying group in Washington.
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Media|Shareholder Calls for Check of Sumner Redstones Conditionhttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/03/business/media/shareholder-calls-for-check-of-redstones-condition.htmlDec. 2, 2015One of the largest shareholders in Viacom and CBS voiced concerns on Wednesday about the health of the 92-year-old media mogul Sumner M. Redstone and whether he should continue in his role as executive chairman of the companies.One week ago, a former companion of Mr. Redstone filed a lawsuit challenging his mental competence. Mr. Redstones lawyers have asked the court to dismiss the suit, calling the claims a meritless action, riddled with lies. On Wednesday, a Viacom director said Mr. Redstone was mentally capable. Mario Gabelli, whose investment firm, Gamco, is the second-largest voting shareholder in Viacom and CBS behind Mr. Redstone, said that he sought more information about Mr. Redstones health and involvement at the companies after reading through the suit. The court filings included claims that Mr. Redstone was incontinent, required suctioning to remove phlegm up to 20 times a day and was obsessed with eating steak even while on a feeding tube.Mr. Gabelli said that if Mr. Redstone got paid anything in 2015, it would have a hard time passing any smell test based on the descriptions in the suit.Do I think he should be drawing any money? Mr. Gabelli asked. Clearly, one has to look at how much a chairman gets paid relative to the value added.Mr. Redstone controls about 80 percent of the voting stock in the two media companies, which have a combined market value of $45 billion. His total compensation for the 2014 fiscal year was $13.2 million at Viacom and $10.8 million at CBS. His compensation for the fiscal 2015 year will be disclosed in regulatory filings.Mr. Gabelli added that he had received calls from clients about Mr. Redstone, which spurred him to ask Viacom for clarification about Mr. Redstones role at the companies. They have got to say something, he said. You cant run a public company like this.He said that the same questions applied to CBS, but that he did not call the company.In response, Viacom released a statement on Wednesday from William Schwartz, chairman of its boards governance and nominating committee.As has been widely and publicly disclosed, Mr. Redstones physicians have publicly attested that he is mentally capable, and this information is consistent with other medical and other information available to me, he said in the statement.Court filings from Mr. Redstones lawyers also included statements from his doctors who saidthat while Mr. Redstone had various ailments, the results of a recent brain scan were quite good. A statement fromPhilippeDauman, Viacoms chief executive, said that Mr. Redstone was engaged and attentive.A spokesman for CBS declined to comment.
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The suit, led by Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas, seeks to give the vice president the power to reject electoral votes that were cast for Joseph R. Biden Jr.Credit...Lynne Sladky/Associated PressDec. 31, 2020[Heres what you need to know about President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.s Inauguration Day.]The Justice Department asked a federal judge on Thursday to reject a lawsuit seeking to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results of the election, pitting the department against President Trumps allies in Congress who have refused to accept President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.s victory.The department, acting on behalf of Mr. Pence, said that Republican lawmakers, led by Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas, could not invalidate the more than century-old law that governs the Electoral College process to expand an otherwise ceremonial role into one that has the power to reject electoral votes that were cast for Mr. Biden.In a last-ditch bid to subvert the outcome of the election, Mr. Gohmert, along with other Republicans in Congress and electors in Arizona, filed a lawsuit against Mr. Pence on Sunday in an effort to force him to take on this expanded role. As the presiding officer of the Senate, Mr. Pence has the constitutionally designated responsibility of opening and tallying envelopes sent from all 50 states and announcing their electoral results when Congress convenes next week to certify the count. But changing his role would allow Mr. Trump to pressure his vice president to invalidate the results.The Justice Department also made clear in its filing that it welcomed any comments from the federal judge in the case, Jeremy D. Kernodle of the Eastern District of Texas, that would clarify that Mr. Pences role in the election was purely procedural.The White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, and the chief of staff, Mark Meadows, were aware the Justice Department was filing on Mr. Pences behalf before it happened, according to two people briefed on the discussions.If a judge were to make clear that Mr. Pence does not have the authority to reject votes or decide the results, it could alleviate pressure on him. Since the election in November, Mr. Trump has become singularly focused on the proceedings of the Electoral College. He cut short his vacation at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to return to Washington early, at least in part to push Republican lawmakers to reject the results when they meet on Jan. 6 to count the votes.Should Judge Kernodle confirm that Mr. Pence has no influence over the Electoral College votes, Mr. Gohmerts lawsuit could have the opposite of its intended effect.In its response, the department also said that Mr. Gohmert did not have standing to sue Mr. Pence over performing the duties as defined by the act; rather, he and the other plaintiffs should sue Congress, which passed the original law.The Justice Departments move to squash an 11th-hour attempt to undo Mr. Bidens victory could put it more at odds with Mr. Trump.The president has been furious that former Attorney General William P. Barr refused to bolster Mr. Trumps false claims of widespread voter fraud and instead affirmed Mr. Bidens victory.Mr. Trumps relationship with Mr. Barr, whom he had once seen as the greatest ally he had in his cabinet, further soured after the president learned that he kept an investigation into the tax affairs of Mr. Bidens son, Hunter Biden, under wraps during the election. Although it is department policy not to discuss investigations that could affect the outcome of an election, Mr. Trump accused his attorney general of disloyalty for not publicly disclosing the matter during the campaign.And at his final news conference, Mr. Barr said that he did not see any reason to appoint a special counsel to oversee a tax investigation into the younger Mr. Biden or to dig into unfounded allegations that Mr. Trump lost because of widespread voter fraud.Some inside the department believed that Mr. Barrs statements may have helped Jeffrey A. Rosen, the acting attorney general. Mr. Rosen is likely to face tremendous pressure from the president to appoint additional special counsels and use the departments other powers to help him undo Mr. Bidens victory.But now the department under Mr. Rosen has taken a step that Mr. Trump may see as an overt act intended to thwart one of his allies, opening it up to possible retaliation.A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.Michael S. Schmidt contributed reporting.
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Credit...Lluis Gene/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesDec. 30, 2015Edward Hugh, a freethinking and wide-ranging British economist who gave early warnings about the European debt crisis from his adopted home in Barcelona, died on Tuesday, his birthday, in Girona, Spain. He was 67.The cause was cancer of the gallbladder and liver, his son, Morgan Jones, said.Mr. Hugh drew attention in 2009 and 2010 for his blog posts pointing out flaws at the root of Europes ambition to bind together disparate cultures and economies with a single currency, the euro.In clear, concise essays, adorned with philosophical musings and colorful graphics, Mr. Hugh insisted time and again that economists and policy makers were glossing over the extent to which swift austerity measures in countries like Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal would result in devastating recessions.Mr. Hughs insights soon attracted a wide and influential following, including hedge funds, economists, finance ministers and analysts at the International Monetary Fund.For those of us pessimists who believed that the eurozone structure was leading to an unsustainable bubble in the periphery countries, Edward Hugh was a must-read, said Albert Edwards, a strategist based in London for the French bank Socit Gnrale. His prescience in explaining the mechanics of the crisis went almost unnoticed until it actually hit.As the eurozones economic problems grew, so did Mr. Hughs popularity, and by 2011 he had moved the base of his operations to Facebook. There he attracted many thousands of additional followers from all over the world.If Santa Claus and John Maynard Keynes could combine as one, he might well be Edward Hugh. He was roly-poly and merry, and he always had a twinkle in his eye, not least when he came across a data point or the hint of an economic or social trend that would support one of his many theories.His intellect was too restless to be pigeonholed, but when pressed he would say that he saw himself as a Keynesian in spirit, but not letter. And in tune with his view that economists in general had become too wedded to static economic models and failed their obligation to predict and explain, he frequently cited this quotation from Keynes:Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past, the ocean is flat again.Edward Hugh Bengree-Jones was born in Liverpool, England, on Dec. 29, 1948. He moved to London and received an undergraduate degree from the London School of Economics. He pursued his doctoral studies at Victoria University in Manchester, although he never completed them.In an interview with The New York Times in 2010, Mr. Hugh said that his interests were too many for him to buckle down and actually earn a doctorate in a single topic. He read widely and relentlessly, becoming an expert on a variety of matters like demography, migration, independent cinema and the social tendencies of the bonobo ape.Throughout the 1970s and 1980s he bounced from job to job, mostly in education, taking on projects such as teaching English to Chilean refugees.In 1990 he moved to Barcelona, having fallen in love with the citys multicultural flair during a holiday visit. He quickly became fluent in both Spanish and Catalan and decided that Barcelona would become his home.He would became a champion of Catalonias push for independence and was an informal adviser to senior Catalan politicians, including Artur Mas, the leader of the movements main party.While Mr. Hughs pointed pen often ruffled feathers, especially in Spain, he did become a local celebrity of sorts. He was a regular presence in the papers and appeared frequently on television, where he would expound for hours in Spanish and Catalan.On occasion his prognostications were overly pessimistic, and Spains surprisingly quick economic recovery was an event that he, along with many others, did not foresee.Until this summer, when his cancer worsened, he spent his days posting daily economic snippets on Facebook, digging deep into independent films from around the world, and having long, lazy lunches with local notables and friends.That he never finished his doctorate or wrote his great work never truly bothered him, he said in his interview with The Times.The last time I was asked what it was I did, I replied rather cantankerously, that I dont do, I think, he recalled.Besides his son, Morgan, his survivors include his wife, Barbara; a brother, David, and a half sister, Anne.
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TV SportsFeb. 3, 2014The Super Bowl can be a great game or a bad game, a dramatic struggle or a laugher. And viewership hardly wavers.Seattles 43-8 dissection of Denver on Sunday night tied for the third-biggest blowout in Super Bowl history, yet an average of 111.5 million people watched, more than any single television show in United States history. The previous record of 111.4 million was set two years ago when the Giants beat New England, 21-17. That made sports sense: The Giants won that game on a touchdown with about a minute left.But Sundays game was a rout and a dud. The competitive aspect appeared to have ended with the errant snap on the Broncos first possession. This is where sports sense ends.The Super Bowl long ago stopped being regarded as a season-ending football game. It defies predictions that smaller-market teams (Seattle is the 13th-ranked television market, Denver the 17th) cannot sustain big national audiences. It overwhelms, for a few hours, concerns about the potential neurological effects of concussions. The power of the Super Bowl as one-of-a-kind, must-watch entertainment leads rival networks not to compete seriously. Its such a uber-iconic event that even if you have a lopsided game, people will stick around, said Bill Wanger, the executive vice president for programming and research at Fox Sports. He suggested that if the game had been tight and exciting to the end, it might have attracted as many as 118 million viewers. Wanger said that more viewers than ever watched the first half-hour of the game intrigued, he believed, by the matchup of the No. 1 offense against the top-ranked defense; the leading personalities (Peyton Manning and Richard Sherman); and the possibility of a snow-globe experience at MetLife Stadium. The snow that the league and the organizers feared came Monday.Fox was, in fact, able to set its record despite having lost viewers in the second half as Seattles domination escalated.The first-half viewership peaked from 7:30 to 8 p.m. Eastern, at 115.9 million. From 8 to 8:30, 115.3 million were tuned to the Bruno Mars halftime show, exceeding Madonnas previous record of 114 million two years ago, and then spiked to 116.8 million during the next half-hour when play resumed. But 12 million viewers eventually found something else to do by the time the game ended before 10 p.m. Eastern.VideoEvery so often, the Super Bowl turns into a rout, which is exactly what happened on Sunday night at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.CreditCredit...Carlo Allegri/ReutersAlmost 1.1 million people watched the game in Spanish on Fox Deportes and on a live stream on Fox Sports GO app and on Foxsports.com.The story of Super Bowl viewership is of decade-by-decade growth. The universe of television homes has grown, but so have entertainment choices and technologies. In the 1970s, the Super Bowl drew an average viewership of 58.1 million. That rose to 81.6 million in the 1980s, to 85.3 million in the 1990s, and to 90.4 million in the first 10 years of the new century.Now, the audience has reached a new normal. Since 2010, it has never been smaller than the 106.5 million who watched New Orleanss 14-point win over Indianapolis.This just means the Super Bowl is something people want to watch, no matter what is really happening, Wanger said.Telling the story of a one-sided Super Bowl was left, in many ways, to faces. Fox had plenty of shots of Manning and Denver Coach John Fox in stages of anger, frustration and distress. The network showed Manning in a vigorous sideline chat with his center, Manny Ramirez, after the snap miscue, and another of Manning seeking solutions on the sideline with his overmatched offensive line.On the Seattle side, Fox told the personal story of the rout in its frequent cuts to Coach Pete Carrolls exuberant clapping; the most telling showed him, from behind, cheering in slow motion as Denver was called for a false start.The analyst Troy Aikman was unavoidably critical of the Broncos tackling when Seattles Percy Harvin ran the second-half kickoff back for a touchdown. Later, after Seattle receiver Jermaine Kearse evaded five Broncos for a touchdown, Aikman simply said, This is terrible defense. Seattles final touchdown prompted him to say: I dont know what Denver is doing. Theyre playing so soft. Aikmans analysis was generally decent, especially when it addressed passing routes and Seattles pass coverage. But there were several times when he should have given the audience more. In addition to praising Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson as more than a mere game manager, Aikman, a former quarterback, should have explained why Wilson, at 5 feet 11 inches, was so effective. Aikman also should have quickly questioned Denvers early decision to throw a challenge flag on a pass by Wilson, rather than be asked about it by his partner, Joe Buck. He also should have asked why Seattle, ahead by 35 points, ran on fourth down with 2 minutes 5 seconds left in the game, and why Manning was in the game on the final series, with no chance at a comeback. And I waited for a sequence of replays about Mannings wobbly and erratic passes for Aikman to analyze. But it never came.
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Philadelphia Eagles Another Fan Punches Police Horse 1/22/2018 For the second time in 2 weeks ... a Philadelphia Eagles fan has been arrested for punching a police horse at the stadium. This time, the perp is Andrew Tornetta -- who cops say was going H.A.M. during a pre-game tailgate at Lincoln Financial Field before the Eagles took on the Vikings in the NFC Championship. Cops say mounted Pennsylvania State Police units were breaking up a crazy situation when Tornetta refused to comply with orders to disperse. Instead, Tornetta punched a police horse twice in the right shoulder and then socked the human officer in the face ... according to cops. Tornetta allegedly tried to flee -- and removed his sweatshirt to try to evade police -- but was eventually caught and arrested for aggravated assault, simple assault, recklessly endangering another person, and related charges. As we previously reported, another fan was arrested for punching a police horse in the face at Lincoln Financial Field the previous weekend ... when the Eagles defeated the Falcons.
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Facebook, Fearing Public Outcry, Shelved Earlier Report on Popular PostsThe company praised itself this week for being the most transparent platform on the internet.Credit...Jeff Chiu/Associated PressPublished Aug. 20, 2021Updated Oct. 25, 2021When Facebook this week released its first quarterly report about the most viewed posts in the United States, Guy Rosen, its vice president of integrity, said the social network had undertaken a long journey to be by far the most transparent platform on the internet. The list showed that the posts with the most reach tended to be innocuous content like recipes and cute animals.Facebook had prepared a similar report for the first three months of the year, but executives never shared it with the public because of concerns that it would look bad for the company, according to internal emails sent by executives and shared with The New York Times.In that report, a copy of which was provided to The Times, the most-viewed link was a news article with a headline suggesting that the coronavirus vaccine was at fault for the death of a Florida doctor. The report also showed that a Facebook page for The Epoch Times, an anti-China newspaper that spreads right-wing conspiracy theories, was the 19th-most-popular page on the platform for the first three months of 2021.The report was nearing public release when some executives, including Alex Schultz, Facebooks vice president of analytics and chief marketing officer, debated whether it would cause a public relations problem, according to the internal emails. The company decided to shelve it.We considered making the report public earlier, said Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesman, but since we knew the attention it would garner, exactly as we saw this week, there were fixes to the system we wanted to make.Mr. Stone said Mr. Schultz had advocated releasing the original report but eventually agreed with the recommendation to hold off. Facebook released the report on Saturday after the publication of this article.Facebook did not say why it decided to produce a popularity report, but it has faced increasing scrutiny over the data it shares with the government and the public, particularly over misinformation about the virus and vaccines. The criticism has escalated as cases from the Delta variant of the coronavirus surged. The White House has called on the company to share more information about false and misleading information on the site, and to do a better job of stopping its spread. Last month, President Biden accused the company of killing people by allowing false information to circulate widely, a statement the White House later softened. Other federal agencies have accused Facebook of withholding key data.Facebook has pushed back, publicly accusing the White House of scapegoating the company for the administrations failure to reach its vaccination goals. Executives at Facebook, including Mark Zuckerberg, its chief executive, have said the platform has been aggressively removing Covid-19 misinformation since the start of the pandemic. The company said it had removed over 18 million pieces of misinformation in that period.But Brian Boland, a former vice president of product marketing at Facebook, said there was plenty of reason to be skeptical about data collected and released by a company that has had a history of protecting its own interests.You cant trust a report that is curated by a company and designed to combat a press narrative rather than real meaningful transparency, Mr. Boland said. Its up to regulators and government officials to bring us that transparency.ImageCredit...Christian Sorensen Hansen for The New York TimesIn this weeks report, which covered public content viewed in Facebooks News Feed from April 1 to June 30, popular links included local news stories, a cat GIF and a Green Bay Packers alumni website. Popular posts, which were seen by tens of millions of accounts, included viral question-and-answer prompts and memes.Most of the companys draft report, like the one Facebook released on Wednesday, showed that the 20 most-viewed links on Facebook in the United States were to nonpolitical content, like recipe sites and stories about the United Nations Childrens Fund.But the rejected report also included the article about the doctors death in Florida. The headline of the article, from The South Florida Sun Sentinel and republished by The Chicago Tribune: A healthy doctor died two weeks after getting a COVID-19 vaccine; CDC is investigating why.This link was viewed by nearly 54 million Facebook accounts in the United States. Many commenters on the post raised questions about the vaccines safety. Six of the top 20 sharers came from public Facebook pages that regularly post anti-vaccination content on Facebook, according to data from CrowdTangle, a social media analytics firm owned by Facebook. Other top sharers of the story included Filipino Facebook pages supporting President Rodrigo Duterte, a pro-Israel Facebook group and a page called Just the Facts, which described itself as putting out the Truth even when the media wont.Months later, the medical examiners report said there wasnt enough evidence to say whether the vaccine contributed to the doctors death. Far fewer people on Facebook saw that update.The 19th-most-popular page on the social network in the earlier report was Trending World by the Epoch Times, a publication that has promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory and spread misleading claims about voter fraud before the 2020 presidential election. The Epoch Times is barred from advertising on Facebook because of its repeated violations of the platforms political advertising policy.Trending World, according to the report, was viewed by 81.4 million accounts, slightly fewer than the 18th-most-popular page, Fox News, which had 81.7 million content viewers for the first three months of 2021.Facebooks transparency report released on Wednesday also showed that an Epoch Times subscription link was among the most viewed in the United States. With some 44.2 million accounts seeing the link in April, May and June, it was about half as popular as Trending World in the shelved report.Sheera Frenkel and Mike Isaac contributed reporting. Jacob Silver and Ben Decker contributed research.
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Asia Pacific|Pakistan Reopens Border With Afghanistan for 2 Dayshttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/world/asia/pakistan-afghanistan-border.htmlCredit...Muhammad Sajjad/Associated PressMarch 7, 2017ISLAMABAD, Pakistan Pakistan temporarily reopened its border with Afghanistan on Tuesday, 18 days after sealing it over security concerns.More than 2,000 Afghans have so far moved across the border, Shamsul Islam, an official at the border crossing at Torkham, said by telephone.Thousands of others are waiting to be allowed exit into Afghanistan, he said. There are long queues. Clearance and immigration take time.Pakistan announced late Monday that it would open the border for two days on humanitarian grounds to allow Afghans stranded in Pakistan to leave for home.The move came after protests about the closing from Afghanistan, which warned of a looming humanitarian crisis. Afghanistans ambassador to Pakistan, Omar Zakhilwal, said on Sunday that his government might be forced to airlift its stranded citizens out of Pakistan.Pakistan shut the border crossings last month after a series of bombings rocked the country. Pakistani officials say that militant groups operating from Afghanistan carried out the attacks, and they urged Kabul to capture the militants inside Afghan territory.Afghan officials have complained about the presence of Afghan Taliban militants on the Pakistan side of the border and say that senior officials of the militant group have managed to find havens inside Pakistan. Both sides claim that they have no control over the militants hiding inside their borders.Pakistani border officials say that Afghan citizens with valid travel documents would be allowed to cross back into Afghanistan during the temporary reopening period. Undocumented Afghans were not being allowed, Mr. Islam said. Undocumented Afghans are routinely rounded up in the country and deported. However, in the current standoff with Afghanistan, they are not being allowed to leave.He said that nearly 400 Pakistanis with travel documents, who had been stranded in Afghanistan, were also allowed to enter the country.Trade between the two countries remains suspended and containers laden with good destined for Afghanistan remained stranded in Pakistan.It remains unclear how long Pakistan plans to keep the border closed after the brief reopening this week.
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Credit...Suzi Eszterhas/Minden PicturesScience Times at 40Mountain gorillas are faring better perhaps because some humans just wont listen to reason.A 10-month-old mountain gorilla in Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda.Credit...Suzi Eszterhas/Minden PicturesNov. 19, 2018Last Thursday there was a bit of good news relating to the impending extinction and destruction of everything. The mountain gorilla, a subspecies of the Eastern gorilla, was upgraded from critically endangered to endangered. There still are only about 1,000 of them, up from a low point of a few hundred, so its not like they were declared vulnerable (better than endangered), or just fine (not a real category). And the Eastern gorilla as a species overall is still critically endangered.But the mountain gorillas are in fact doing better, according to the announcement from the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. It bases its decisions on information gathered from scientists and conservation experts. The gorillas population has been increasing for about 30 years. And it has taken a tremendous amount of struggle and work to get this far. That raises a question: If things have improved so much for an animal in such a dire situation as the mountain gorilla, should we then give in to hope?[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]I know this isnt the accepted way of speaking about the planet and its creatures. In public discourse, hope is the one thing you should never give up. But in our minds (well, in my mind, anyway, and I cant be the only one), the reasoning behind that often expressed sentiment is not so clear. What if a rational look at the facts points in the other direction? What if, for instance, the planet were getting warmer every year, and there was a lack of political will to try to stop the trend? What if we were in the middle of a mass extinction caused by humans? Imagine, just for a moment, that the planet had 7.7 billion people, who had already used up a lot of the space for bears and wolves and lions and oh, I dont know gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans. Suppose that all of the great apes were either endangered or critically endangered. And, just as a thought experiment, what if there were going to be 9.8 billion people in 2050 and 11.2 billion people in 2100? Imagine that the population of Africa, where all gorillas live, is one of the fastest growing, with 26 countries expected to double in size by 2050. ImageCredit...Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, via Associated PressOf course, all those things are actually true. Perhaps I am blinded by my own pessimism, but I do often wonder whether hope is a rational response to reality.On the other hand, hope does seem to have played a role in the mountain gorillas rebound. After we reduced them to a point where it seemed they would go extinct by the year 2000, some humans worked incredibly hard to protect them. And the gorillas survived, even through the very dark period of the Rwandan genocide.Their success so far, according to Tara Stoinski, a scientist who has studied gorillas for more than 20 years and is the head of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, is the result of intensive work, of the gorillas charismatic appeal, of the buy-in to conservation on the part of government, and finally the result of an extremely high commitment of resources that she calls extreme conservation. The gorillas are watched over by lots of field staff 20 times the global average per square kilometer in protected areas. What makes that possible is ecotourism, which is made possible by the great charisma of gorillas. If they were legless skinks, it might be hard to work up that kind of support.But that is a quibble. What is clear is that irrational hope combined with dedication and decades of work culminated in pulling back mountain gorillas one step from the brink.So, should we give in to hope? I think that Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford professor, neuroscientist, author of many books and giver of many talks, has the answer. Hes a public science star of sorts. He may not be as well-known as Neil deGrasse Tyson, but hes doing pretty well for a (self-described) strident atheist who points out in his recent book, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, that free will, the way we usually imagine it, is an illusion. Hes not a Pollyanna, is my point. No sugarcoating from Dr. Sapolsky.But, surprisingly, he is an eloquent admirer of certain forms of irrationality. He gave a funny, rich and convincing talk in 2009 to Stanford seniors on what separates humans from animals. I know its not brand new, but I still turn to it occasionally because its so clear and persuasive. It has more than 400,000 views online. After describing many differences between humans and animals, even our close relatives, like the mountain gorillas, Dr. Sapolsky presents what he sees as one of the most remarkable human qualities: the ability to hold on to two contradictory ideas at once and find a way forward.His main example is Sister Helen Prejean, who wrote the book Dead Man Walking, based on her work ministering to death row inmates. She said that the more unforgivable the sin, the more it must be forgiven, and the more unlovable the person, the more important it is to love him or her.That is not, Dr. Sapolsky argues, a conclusion any animal could come to. But a human can spend her life acting on that conviction. And that ability, he said, is the most irrational, magnificent thing that we are capable of as a species.ImageCredit...Christophe Courteau/NPL, via Minden PicturesIn fact, he tells the Stanford graduates-to-be that this is precisely what they need to do. He acknowledges that they have probably learned enough to realize that its impossible for any one person to make a difference in the world. But, the more clearly, absolutely, utterly, irrevocably, unchangeably clear it is that it is impossible for you to make a difference and make the world better, the more you must.Im sure this is completely obvious to people who actually do things, rather than write about them: that you dont have to give in to hope, but that you shouldnt always give in to reason, either. If you take the long view, the good news for gorillas may be a bit like a Mega Millions lottery ticket. But somebody won more than a billion dollars recently.Dr. Sapolskys concluding challenge to the well educated, well connected, savvy Stanford seniors could be taken to heart by anyone burdened by the weight and apparent rationality of their own pessimism, which may be why Ive listened to it more than once.Theres nobody out there who is in a better position to be able to sustain a contradiction like this for your entire life and use it as a moral imperative. So do it.
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The first checks could be cut in April. The money from the nations three major pharmaceutical distributors and Johnson & Johnson will be used for addiction treatment and prevention.Credit...Patrick Semansky/Associated PressFeb. 25, 2022The nations three largest drug distributors and a major pharmaceutical manufacturer announced Friday that a supermajority of states and localities had accepted the terms of their $26 billion offer to settle thousands of civil claims related to the deadly opioid crisis. The first checks are expected to go out in early April.Through its pharmaceutical division, Janssen, Johnson & Johnson will pay $5 billion, broken into annual payments over nine years. McKesson, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen, the distributors, will pay a combined $21 billion over 18 years. At least 85 percent of the payments will be dedicated to addiction treatment and prevention services. By signing onto the deal, thousands of local governments as well as states have agreed to drop their opioid lawsuits against the companies and also pledge not to bring any future action.In its sweep and bottom line, the deal is second only to the Big Tobacco settlement of the late 1990s as a multistate agreement.The total amount includes almost $2 billion that will cover fees and costs for the platoons of lawyers nationwide who represented local governments as well as some states and built much of the legal strategy in the cases. Those payments will go out over roughly seven years.There are no separate funds to compensate families and individual victims of the opioid crisis.The announcement is a milestone in the nationwide opioid litigation, which began in 2014 with a few cities and counties filing lawsuits against five drug manufacturers. But as thousands of governmental plaintiffs eventually filed claims, the cases reached across the pharmaceutical industry, to distributors and retailers as well. The actions gelled into a modern legal behemoth that is still far from fully resolved, featuring, most prominently, the cases against Purdue Pharma.The crisis continues to take a terrible toll: More than 500,000 Americans have died from overdoses to prescription and illegal street opioids since 1999, according to federal data.The distributors and Johnson & Johnson released statements Friday morning, noting that the deal is not an admission of wrongdoing and that they strongly dispute the allegations. The distributors said in a joint statement that they believed that the implementation of this settlement is a key milestone toward achieving broad resolution of governmental opioid claims and delivering meaningful relief to communities across the United States that have been impacted by the epidemic.Johnson & Johnson also added that it would continue to defend itself against any litigation that this final settlement agreement does not resolve, noting that it no longer sells prescription opioid medication in the United States.When Johnson & Johnson, the distributors and a smaller group of states announced their proposed settlement in July, the companies said they required an unspecified majority of plaintiffs to sign on, to guarantee an end to litigation. The announcement Friday morning signals that a sufficient threshold has been reached, or at least 90 percent of those governments eligible to participate, and 46 of 49 eligible states for the distributors and 45 for Johnson & Johnson. Courts in each state will now have to sign off on the agreements, a process that is expected to go relatively smoothly and swiftly.According to the agreements, a state will get its full allocation if all its local governments sign on to the deal. For example, all 100 North Carolina counties and 47 municipalities have agreed, and the state will get its allotment of $750 million.North Carolina communities will begin to receive money this year to help people struggling with substance abuse, said Josh Stein, the states attorney general and a leader of a bipartisan coalition of states that negotiated with the companies and local governments for nearly three years. The treatment, recovery, prevention and harm reduction services that will be available across the state will help people regain control over their lives and make North Carolina safer.A few holdout states and localities still remain against either the distributors or Johnson & Johnson, including Washington, Oklahoma and Alabama. But legal experts say that stance could be perilous: The outcomes from a few completed trials point to favorable resolutions for the companies, suggesting that continuing to do battle with those governments who declined the deal is a risk the companies are willing to take.This month, the same companies announced a tentative settlement with Native American tribes that have suffered disproportionately high addiction and death rates during the opioid epidemic. In combination with a $75 million deal that distributors struck with the Cherokee Nation last fall, the 574 federally recognized tribes could receive $665 million in payouts over nine years. An overwhelming majority of tribes are expected to sign on to the proposal.A major theme coursing throughout the opioid litigation has been the aggressive marketing of the drugs, which went all but unchecked for years. Distributors almost never sent up warning flares when pharmacy clients took deliveries of quantities of opioids that were wildly disproportionate to the local population. A central feature of the new deal is that the distributors must set up an independent clearinghouse to track and report one anothers shipments, a mechanism intended to raise red flags immediately when outsize orders are made.During the settlement negotiations, a secondary series of talks between the states and the local governments over the allocation of the funds was also unfolding. By now, about two dozen states have worked up their own distribution plans with local cities and counties that also sued the companies.The executive committee of lawyers, including Joe Rice, Elizabeth Cabraser and Jayne Conroy, who negotiated for local governments, released a statement saying, We arrived at this moment after years of work by community leaders across the country who committed themselves to seeking funds they need to combat the opioid epidemic.They continued, While this is a vital step, it is only one of the many that are necessary to put an end to this crisis.
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Dr. Oz To Air Nicole Eggert Show 1/30/2018 The Dr. Oz Show Nicole Eggert will be featured on Wednesday's 'Dr. Oz Show' ... this after producers shelved the program claiming they had issues with Nicole's timeline. We've learned after Nicole appeared on Megyn Kelly's show Tuesday, Oz's producers called Nicole's lawyer Lisa Bloom and her manager David Weintraub, saying they had a change of heart and would air the program after all. As we reported, the show was filmed January 10 but after receiving a blistering cease and desist letter from Scott Baio's lawyer which, among other things, questioned her timeline for the alleged molestation, the show was put on ice. Nicole, Lisa and David went to Oz's studio Tuesday and shot some additional footage for the program.
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Machine LearningVideoMolly Wood says bigger may be better when it comes to smartphones.Feb. 26, 2014The tablet and the phone are fast becoming the same device, and I for one cant wait.Bigger phones have been a big trend over the last couple of years, and despite a somewhat mocking moniker, the phablet (phone plus tablet) is here to stay. I predict that within a few years, seven- and eight-inch tablets, like the iPad mini, will begin to disappear, replaced by phones that are nearly equal in size.Tablets were a revolution in consumer electronics, mainly because they made us realize how much more we could do with our portable touch screens. The first tablets, like the original iPad and the Google Nexus 10, were 10 inches, great for watching movies and TV shows. But despite rocketing sales growth at first, most people found that a laptop with a keyboard is still better for getting work done. And at 1.5 to 2 pounds, those early tablets were slightly big and heavy to hold for reading, or to carry around day to day.Thus, the smaller tablet was born the Google Nexus 7, the Amazon Kindle and Apples reluctantly birthed iPad Mini. At 7 inches (or 7.9 inches, in the case of the iPad Mini), those tablets are lightweight, easy to toss in a purse or backpack, and better for use as a multimedia-enabled e-reader because they are more comfortable to hold. For a brief halcyon period, sales of smaller tablets began to crush sales of 10-inch devices.Now, even those tablet sales have slowed. The research firm IDC predicts that tablet sales growth, though still expanding, will slow to the single digits by 2017, with sales of smaller tablets falling the fastest. It seems that many of us come to the conclusion Ive reached of late: I dont want a smaller tablet. I want a bigger phone.Big phones may take some getting used to theyre less pocketable and a little comical when used for actual talking but theyre much more useful than small tablets for unifying your communications on one device. Theyre always connected and more portable than a tablet, and the phone is already the device youre using for texting, taking pictures and browsing the web. Why not a bigger screen for watching videos and reading email?At the moment, the industry is still trying to figure out exactly what size phone makes sense, but the new norm in screen size keeps creeping up. Some phones are clearly considered or labeled phablets, like the LG Optimus G Pro 2, announced this week at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain. Its screen is 5.9 inches, or just about an inch smaller than the Nexus 7. The Chinese manufacturer ZTE announced its Grand Memo II phablet, with a 6-inch display; Chinas Huawei dropped all pretense with the 7-inch MediaPad X1, with 4G LTE connectivity built into a device that is almost all tablet, hardly any phone.But even phones that arent strictly phablets are getting bigger. Samsung announced its Galaxy S5 this week in Barcelona, and its screen measures in at 5.1 inches. LG has been successful with the 5.2-inch LG G2; 4.6-inch displays are almost the new minimum. When Samsung introduced a Galaxy S4 Mini, its screen was 4.3 inches 0.3 inches larger than the iPhone.Apple now stands as the last holdout against the big phone trend. The iPhone 5S screen is stubbornly stuck at four inches, which seems tiny when stacked up against current Android phones. The iPhone 4S has an eye-squinting 3.5-inch screen. Analysts, consumers and even Donald Trump have begged Apple to make a bigger phone. Rumors abound that one or even two new bigger-screen iPhones could be in development for September. Apple declined to comment on whether a bigger iPhone is in the works.But while youre waiting for Apple, there are other good options to consider.Ive spent the last couple of weeks with the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, which has a 5.7-inch screen and includes a stylus, and I think its the best of the bunch. I also love the LG Optimus G Pro; I expect its successor, the LG Optimus G Pro 2, to be excellent, although it may not be picked up by United States carriers.That leaves us the Note 3. The original Galaxy Note really kicked off the phablet craze. It was introduced in 2011, and had a then-astonishing 5.3-inch screen. Despite the mockery from a lot of circles, the Note became a cult hit. It sold 10 million units and broke new ground on screen-size acceptance.The Note 3 has been a success, as well; Samsung said it sold 10 million Note 3 devices in just 60 days after its introduction in September. I can see why; the Note 3s screen is absolutely luxurious for reading email, scrolling through Twitter, looking at photos and, most of all, for playing Candy Crush. Try it: Youll never play on an iPhone again.The Note 3 is lightweight, with a faux-leather back that makes it feel refined in a vegetarian sort of way. It weighs about six ounces to the iPhone 5Ss four, which is not significantly heavier to hold and type on. And the typing itself is comfortable and natural; the screen is big enough that theres room for a row of numbers above the qwerty keys, so no switching between the letters and symbols menu when you need to add numbers. Theres even room for a period key. What a concept, right?The stylus is a big differentiator between the Note 3 and other phablets. I could take it or lose it. It adds functionality, like the ability to quickly and easily take a screenshot that you can then draw on and share, or a quick way to scribble a memo or scrapbook a page for later. But the LG Optimus G Pro lacks the stylus, and I find it just as usable.Im happiest when Im using the Note 3 just as Id use a tablet: playing games, browsing the web, checking Facebook, watching video, reading books and magazines, and sending email. But what makes the phone better than the tablet is one-stop shopping for all my communications. I can also text, Instagram and even make a call, without switching devices.Our smartphones remain the center of our connected lives; bigger screens make them that much more useful and immersive, even if they may also require bigger pockets, purses and man purses. Embrace the phablet and use Bluetooth for making calls. Youll feel much less silly that way.
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Sports of The TimesCredit...Nathan Denette/Canadian Press, via Associated PressJeff Z. Klein and Stu HackelFeb. 1, 2014The Olympic fate of Canadas Steven Stamkos, who has not played since breaking his leg in November, could be decided this week.Stamkos, who twice led the N.H.L. in goals, has been skating in practice with the Tampa Bay Lightning. Last Monday, he took the ice for only a moment because, he said, his leg did not feel right. But the next day he skated with his teammates before their game in Toronto, saying he felt much better.Stamkos, however, did not engage in light contact drills until Friday in Montreal. Afterward, he said certain movements still caused him discomfort.Tampa Bay Coach Jon Cooper had said that Stamkos would have to begin more physical practices if he had any hope of playing in the Olympics. Canadas first game in Sochi, Russia, is Feb. 13. Whether Stamkos will be strong enough to play a game before the Olympic break is a question.Stamkoss aim was to begin playing in Saturdays game against Montreal. Then it was to play at least one game before the Olympics. Now even that is uncertain.Last week, neither Stamkos nor Steve Yzerman, the general manager for the Lightning and for Canada, would rule out his being placed on the final Olympic roster. If Stamkos is not ready, Yzerman will have to choose a replacement.The sentimental choice among fans would almost certainly be Martin St. Louis, Stamkoss Tampa Bay linemate, whose exclusion from Canadas initial roster last month caused an outcry.Going into Saturdays game against the Canadiens, St. Louis had eight goals and seven assists in the 12 games he had played since the team was announced. St. Louis, 38, denied that the Olympic snub had played a role in his scoring binge, but Cooper said he believed it had been motivation.Others whom Yzerman might consider to fill Stamkoss spot are Pittsburghs James Neal, a pure goal scorer like Stamkos; Philadelphias Claude Giroux, a versatile forward like Stamkos who can play wing or center; and Carolinas Eric Staal, who had four goals and five assists in nine games since he was left off the roster. A Change in Brodeur For the first time in 20 seasons, Martin Brodeur, the goalie with the most victories in N.H.L. history, is not the main man in the Devils net. And last week, Brodeur spoke about leaving the team.During stops in St. Louis and in Dallas, Brodeur, 41, said he was open to finding a better situation, whether in New Jersey or elsewhere. He encouraged General Manager Lou Lamoriello to ask him about a trade. Brodeur said he did not think he would request a trade unless his status deteriorated further in the next few weeks. Those were the strongest statements he had ever made about parting with the Devils.The change may have been spurred by Brodeurs experience against the Rangers last Sunday at Yankee Stadium. In the run-up to the game, Brodeur sounded as if he were loosening his emotional ties to the club. He talked about his surprise that the Devils were finally chosen for a showcase event, and that he hoped Coach Peter DeBoer would choose him to start the game because of the way I play now, not what I did in the past.Then Brodeur allowed a couple of soft goals, and his teammates left him out to dry for four other scores. He came out of the net after 40 minutes in the 7-3 loss.Afterward, DeBoer said Brodeur had suggested that he leave the game for Cory Schneider.DeBoer said Brodeur had asked, How about we give Schneids the experience of a period in this environment?That request may turn out to be the beginning of the end of Brodeurs record-breaking career with the Devils. Kick Save by the Bard Last Wednesday at Edmonton, Oilers goalie Ben Scrivens set a modern goalkeeping record. He stopped all 59 shots he faced in a 3-0 victory against the San Jose Sharks, making the most saves in a regular-season shutout since the expansion era began in 1967.Scrivens, a 27-year-old Cornell graduate nicknamed the Professor, was making his fourth start for Edmonton since his Jan. 15 trade from Los Angeles.A mask he wore with the Kings this season was covered with quotations from Shakespeare, including one from Macbeth that seemed to fit this performance.The cry is still They come! Our castles strengthWill laugh a siege to scorn.I tried to pick a couple that might loosely relate to hockey, Scrivens said, his choices worthy of his nickname.
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Credit...John Taggart for The New York Times.June 21, 2018WASHINGTON Americans have done more and more of their shopping online in recent years, drawn by the promise of low prices, wide selection and buy-from-home convenience. But e-commerce has also had another edge: Many of those sales were, in effect, tax-free.The Supreme Court on Thursday moved to close that loophole, ruling that internet retailers can be required to collect sales taxes even in states where they have no physical presence.The decision, in South Dakota v. Wayfair Inc., was a victory for brick-and-mortar businesses that have long complained they are put at a disadvantage by having to charge sales taxes while many online competitors do not. And it was also a victory for states that have said that they are missing out on tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue.State and local governments have really been dealing with a nightmare scenario for several years now, said Carl Davis, research director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington think tank. This is going to allow state and local governments to improve their tax enforcement and to put local business on a more level playing field.In Thursdays ruling, the court effectively overturned a system that it created. In 1992, the court ruled in Quill Corporation v. North Dakota that the Constitution bars states from requiring businesses to collect sales tax unless they have a substantial connection to the state. The Quill decision helped pave the way for the growth of online retail by letting companies sell nationwide without navigating the complex patchwork of state and local tax codes.But as online retailing has grown, the dynamics have shifted. Online sellers are no longer scrappy upstarts competing with more established businesses. Amazon had $119 billion in revenue from product sales last year, making it bigger than all but the largest traditional retailers.And state budgets are increasingly feeling the pinch. Writing for the majority in the 5-to-4 ruling, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the Quill decision caused states to lose annual tax revenues of up to $33 billion.Quill puts both local businesses and many interstate businesses with physical presence at a competitive disadvantage relative to remote sellers, he wrote. Remote sellers can avoid the regulatory burdens of tax collection and can offer de facto lower prices caused by the widespread failure of consumers to pay the tax on their own.Justices Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch joined the majority opinion.In dissent, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. agreed that the courts rulings in this area had been wrongly decided, but said there were insufficient reasons to overrule the precedents. Any alteration to those rules with the potential to disrupt the development of such a critical segment of the economy should be undertaken by Congress, he wrote.Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined the dissent.In the years since 1992, three members of the court had indicated that they might be ready to reconsider the Quill decision. In a 2015 concurring opinion, for instance, Justice Kennedy seemed to call for a fresh challenge.South Dakota responded by enacting a law that required all merchants to collect a 4.5 percent sales tax if they had more than $100,000 in annual sales or more than 200 transactions in the state. State officials sued three large online retailers Wayfair, Overstock.com and Newegg for violating the law. Lower courts ruled for the online retailers, citing the Quill decision.Marty Jackley, South Dakotas attorney general, called Thursdays ruling a big win for South Dakota and Main Streets across America. He said the decision could be particularly significant for rural areas where local businesses have been hit hard by competition from online retailers.Mr. Jackley is a Republican. But South Dakotas appeal drew bipartisan support, including from attorneys general in 35 states and the District of Columbia.Mr. Jackley estimated that South Dakota would be able to begin collecting sales tax on online purchases in 30 to 90 days. Other states may be close behind: Anticipating Thursdays ruling, several states, including North Dakota, have passed laws modeled on South Dakotas.President Trump, who has previously accused Amazon of avoiding taxes, wrote on Twitter that the decision was a great victory for consumers and retailers.Other states will have to change their laws if they want to take advantage of the decision, said Hayes Holderness, a law professor at the University of Richmond. He predicted a flurry of activity in legislatures.Many of those laws could face their own legal challenges. Justice Kennedys decision left open the possibility that some transactions were so small and scattered that no taxes should be collected. The court also did not decide whether states may seek sales taxes retroactively, which South Dakotas law does not.Thursdays ruling should benefit local coffers as well, at least where local sales taxes are collected at the state level. But it wont help municipal governments in states such as Pennsylvania and New Mexico where quirks in tax codes prevent local jurisdictions from taxing remote sellers.For consumers, the reversal of Quill could mean paying more for products bought online. In theory, most states already require consumers to pay a use tax equivalent to the state sales tax when buying online. But in practice, few consumers do so.Owners of brick-and-mortar stores welcomed the ruling.I firmly believe that its a huge stride in leveling the playing field, said Jason Patton, owner of Oz Music in Tuscaloosa, Ala. In my record store, the average price point is around $20. Im not going to say I continually lost customers because of the sales tax, but on higher-ticket items, that tax absolutely matters.Shares in Amazon fell 1.1 percent on Thursday, and other online retailers took a bigger hit. Overstock.com shares were down more than 7 percent.Today, the U.S. Supreme Court has reshaped the interstate commerce landscape in a move that could impact small business innovation on the internet, which has been a driving force behind our nations economy for the last 15 years, said Jonathan E. Johnson III, a member of Overstock.coms board.Overstock said the decision would have little impact on its business but argued that with more than 12,000 different state and local taxing districts, the ruling would present a compliance challenge for internet start-ups. Chief Justice Roberts made a similar argument in his dissent.Many experts, however, played down that problem. When the Supreme Court decided the Quill case in 1992, complying with various state and local tax laws would have been a major hurdle for small businesses. But today, many companies offer software that helps small businesses navigate local laws.The digital and internet revolution contributed to the problem, but those same factors contributed to the solution, which is easy-to-use tax-automation software, said Daniel Hemel, a University of Chicago law professor.Wayfair, in a statement, said it already collected sales tax on approximately 80 percent of its orders in the United States. As a result, we do not expect todays decision to have any noticeable impact on our business, the company said.The impact on Amazon could be even smaller: As of last year, the company collected sales tax in the 45 states that have one.But about half of Amazons total online sales come from independent merchants who simply post their inventory on the online store. In most states, those merchants are responsible for calculating and paying the various state taxes if they are owed. In the past year, Washington State and Pennsylvania have enacted laws requiring internet retailers to collect taxes on third-party sales. More states are expected to follow suit.Amazon declined to comment on the ruling.In his ruling on Thursday, Justice Kennedy wrote that world had changed since 1992, when mail-order sales totaled $180 million. Last year, remote sellers racked up sales exceeding half a trillion dollars, he noted.That growth seems unlikely to slow. Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a group that supports independent businesses, said the tax-free nature of online retail had given Amazon and other internet sellers a big advantage when they needed it most.Its hard to overstate how much not having to collect sales tax mattered in the first 15 years of Amazons growth, Ms. Mitchell said.
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Credit...Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesMarch 7, 2017Between seemingly nonstop political jolts and springlike winter days, the world has felt like a pretty unstable place lately. As news alerts buzz your phone and temperatures fluctuate wildly from day to day, you may ask yourself, are there any stable places left in the world?The answer is yes. So, relax.An annual survey of the best countries in the world was released on Tuesday by U.S. News & World Report, along with Y&Rs BAV Consulting and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Their 2017 rankings prioritized countries that enjoyed some measure of peace, quiet and prosperity.Our data captured widespread global concern for the social and geopolitical changes that cast many nations into uncertainty and turmoil, said John Gerzema, chief executive of BAV Consulting. The new rankings reflect peoples desire to restore some sense of order by rewarding nations they perceive as championing neutrality, stability and diplomacy.The survey was conducted after the 2016 United States presidential election and polled more than 21,000 people described by organizers as business leaders, informed elites and general citizens. America slid three spots and was ranked the seventh-best country in the world.The results are broken down into a range of categories that include the most powerful country, the best country to invest in, and the best country for women, children and retirees. Here is a quick look at their findings to satiate your escapist fantasies.The Best CountriesImageCredit...Clara Tuma for The New York TimesSwitzerland took the top spot for the first time based on a combination of its attitude toward education, democracy, business and quality of life. Canada was ranked second and Britain third. Germany, last years winner, slid to fourth in part because of a string of terrorist attacks and political tension over its decision to admit large numbers of refugees. Japan came in fifth place.The United States dropped to No. 7. Survey respondents gave it lower marks on business friendliness, respect for human rights and democracy, and educational quality; they also said they had less desire to visit the country. Nearly 75 percent of respondents said they lost some degree of respect for the United States after the election of Donald J. Trump as president.The Most Powerful CountriesImageCredit...Stephen B. Morton for The New York TimesThat said, Americas slide in the general rankings did not diminish respondents sense that it is the most powerful country in the world, based on military and economic might and its political influence across the globe.The United States leads the world in military spending the military gets a larger share of the federal budget than any other part of government and President Trump has called for that to grow by $54 billion. Following the United States on the list were Russia, China, the United Kingdom and Germany.The Best Countries for WomenImageCredit...Rob Schoenbaum for The New York TimesSweden was ranked the best country in the world for women. That may come as a surprise to American conservatives, some of whom like the Fox News host Bill OReilly have argued in recent weeks that criminal hordes of Muslim immigrants have forced frightened Swedish women to barricade themselves at home.That Sweden had a temporary mansplaining hotline last year which women could call to report condescending instances of men explaining things to them that they already knew may have helped matters. The United States was ranked 16th.The ranking was based on how survey respondents viewed a countrys position on human rights, gender equality, income equality, safety and overall progressive attitude. Scandinavia did well, with Sweden followed by Denmark and Norway. The Netherlands was fourth and Canada fifth.The Best Countries for ChildrenImageCredit...David Ramos/Getty ImagesScandinavia also dominated the rankings when respondents were asked what they thought would be the best country to raise children in. Sweden came in first again, followed by Denmark, Norway, Finland and Canada. The United States did not fare too well in this category: It came in 19th, behind much of Europe but ahead of Japan.The results were based on how respondents ranked each country in terms of its commitment to human rights, gender equality, income equality, public education and health. Respondents were also asked if they thought each country was generally happy and safe.The Best Countries for RetireesImageCredit...Fiona Goodall/Getty ImagesPerhaps because this survey was partly conducted by a business school and a consulting firm, it also asked respondents which countries they would consider moving to in their retirement if price was no obstacle. The United States did not rank in the top 20.The No. 1 response was New Zealand, followed by Australia, Switzerland, Canada and Portugal. Respondents thought these countries had nice climates and were affordable, friendly, committed to public health care and respectful of property rights. They also thought taxes would be low.
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Comedian Steve Brown Viciously Attacked During Set 1/22/2018 Tumika LaSha -- Cops say the suspect's first name is Marvin, and ... shocker ... he was boozing at the club. We're told 4 people in the club, aside from Steve, were injured and they want to press charges. He also did $400 in damages ... smashing the mic, dishes and glasses. One of the victims is a security guard who says he got punched in the face before Marvin bolted in a car. Comic Steve Brown probably wishes he just got heckled Sunday night at a comedy club, because a disgruntled "fan" seemed gunning to kill him. Steve was doing a set at the Comedy House in Columbia, South Carolina when a guy in the audience jumped onstage and just went insane, first trying to viciously strike Steve with the mic stand and then a stool. Steve ducked out of the way and, a good 30 seconds into the attack, a few people at the club had the presence of mind to subdue the guy, who was taken outside but then came back. The Richland County Sheriff's Dept. responded to the club, and has opened an investigation. So far, no arrests. Steve escaped unharmed, but he's blasting the club for lack of security. Waiting for your permission to load the Instagram Media.
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Credit...Kim Joon-beom/Yonhap, via ReutersMarch 2, 2017BEIJING The Chinese government is ratcheting up pressure on South Korea over its plans to deploy an American missile defense system, with the state-controlled news media urging the public to boycott South Korean retail products and threatening diplomatic and even military repercussions.Chinas latest pronouncements follow months of not-so-subtle punitive measures that have already taken a toll on the South Korean economy, including an unofficial ban on Korean television shows and pop stars. The campaign risks a backlash in South Korea even as Beijings relations with North Korea have also grown strained a sign of how recent advances in the Norths nuclear program have put China in a bind and are upsetting the regional security balance.On Thursday, South Korea and the United States began talks in Seoul to finalize details of the deployment of the so-called Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense System, or Thaad, according to the Souths Foreign Ministry. Both countries say the systems purpose is to defend the South against North Koreas growing missile and nuclear threat, but China has objected strongly to the system, which it sees as an American attempt to encircle it.No date has been set for the systems deployment, but the Pentagon said on Wednesday that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis wanted it in place as soon as feasible. Military experts said the United States could use C-17 transport aircraft to quickly move the systems truck-mounted launchers, interceptors, radar, fire control units and support equipment to South Korea.China responded with anger when South Korea agreed in July to accept the Thaad system, and it has made its displeasure known as plans have moved toward the final stages in recent days.An outspoken Chinese general, Luo Yuan, now retired, recommended a tough series of responses in an article on Thursday, going so far as to suggest a military strike against the missile system. We could conduct a surgical hard-kill operation that would destroy the target, paralyzing it and making it unable to hit back, General Luo wrote in the Global Times, a state-run newspaper that often features strident, nationalist views.ImageCredit...Kim Hong-Ji/ReutersSince the United States, Japan and South Korea choose not to respect Chinas major security concerns, China does not need to be a gentleman on everything, the general wrote. We must not undermine our own security interests while respecting the security interests of others.Peoples Daily, the Communist Party newspaper that is often considered the official voice of the leadership, said in its international edition this week that China should consider a de facto severance of diplomatic ties with South Korea.It said in a commentary that China should take political and military measures against South Korea and that it should consider coordinating with Russia in dealing with what it called the U.S.-Japan-South Korea antimissile network. The paper was referring in part to statements by Japan that it might consider using Thaad as a defense against North Korea.China has said that the Thaad system would threaten its nuclear deterrent capacity. It said the systems powerful radar would make it much easier for the United States to detect Chinese missiles and would give the American military much more time to intercept them.Chinese state news outlets have also suggested a consumer boycott of South Korean products. Much of Chinas anger has been borne by Lotte, a South Korean conglomerate that provided the government with land for the Thaad deployment in a deal that was finalized this week. Lotte has stores and shopping malls across China, and modest groups of mostly older Chinese held protests at the companys outlets in several cities on Thursday.On Wednesday, the Lotte website serving Chinese shoppers was hacked, the company said. On Thursday, another hacking attack shut down its duty-free shops website for several hours. Lotte also said that some construction had been stopped by the Chinese authorities on the grounds that it had failed a fire inspection.ImageCredit...U.S. Department of Defense, via ReutersIn recent months, popular South Korean stars have been denied visas to perform in China, and South Korean TV shows have been blocked from Chinese video streaming websites. Many in South Korea say they believe those actions are in retaliation for the Thaad issue, though China has denied any link.One of the musicians denied a visa was Sumi Jo, a coloratura soprano who has toured China almost every year for the past decade. Her brother, Jay Jo, said that she had been unable this year to get the government-approved invitation letter required for an entry visa.As soon as the opportunities reopen, she will resume her concerts in China, Mr. Jo said. But right now, we have no idea when that will happen.Trade experts said Beijing might be reluctant to take more extreme economic measures. China is South Koreas largest trading partner by far, but South Korea is also Chinas fourth-largest, and Beijing would probably be reluctant to damage those ties during the current economic slowdown.South Korean politicians have said that Washington wants the Thaad system deployed by mid-May, when many expect presidential elections to be held in the South. President Park Geun-hye was impeached by South Koreas legislature in December over a corruption scandal, and she awaits a ruling by the countrys Constitutional Court on whether she will be permanently removed from office. The courts decision is expected in the coming weeks, and if it rules against her, a new president will be elected 60 days later.South Koreas progressive opposition is seen as having a strong chance of winning the presidency should that election be held. Opposition politicians have expressed skepticism about the Thaad system, and some have charged that the United States wants to rush the deployment to ensure that it is completed before a new president takes office.ImageCredit...Pool photo by Kim Hong-JiMembers of the largest opposition party, the Democratic Party, have visited China twice since August. In January, in an unusual development, a delegation from the party met with the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi.China had hoped it could persuade the Souths next president to refuse to agree to Thaad, said Cheng Xiaohe, an associate professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. Now China is afraid Thaad will be deployed before the new president of South Korea is in office, he said.Even as Chinas fury toward the South is on full display, it is also at odds with the North. A North Korean diplomat, Ri Kil-song, arrived in Beijing on Tuesday for five days of talks, an apparent effort by Pyongyang to reach out to China, its economic and political benefactor.Mr. Ri and Mr. Wang, the Chinese foreign minister, made soothing public statements on Wednesday about the traditional friendship between their two countries. Behind the scenes, though, things are unlikely to have been so smooth.Last month, China suspended its imports of North Korean coal for the rest of the year, a surprise move that appeared to be a response to the brazen killing in Malaysia of Kim Jong-nam, the estranged half brother of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un. South Korea has accused the North of carrying out the attack.The killing may have been taken as an affront by Beijing because the victim had lived in Macau, a Chinese special administrative region. Kim Jong-nam had expressed admiration for Chinas market economy, and some analysts have speculated that China saw him as a potential replacement for his erratic half brother.One thing after another is happening, Mr. Cheng, the Renmin University professor, said of Chinas simultaneous troubles with the Koreas. Not good things all bad things.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/business/international/japan-economy-grows-avoiding-a-recession.htmlCredit...Yoshikazu Tsuno/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesDec. 7, 2015TOKYO Japans latest recession turns out not to have been a recession at all.The government said on Tuesday that the economy grew at a relatively robust pace last quarter, reversing a more pessimistic estimate it published three weeks ago.Output in Japan, Asias second-largest economy, expanded at an annualized rate of 1 percent in the three months through September, according to the revised assessment by the Cabinet Office. The office had originally said the economy contracted by 0.8 percent.The latest report, which reflected more buoyant data on business investment and a rosier view of consumer spending, painted a broadly positive picture of the economys recent performance. Estimates for previous quarters were also lifted, showing stronger gains and less severe reversals.The report could relieve the pressure on Japans central bank to do more to support growth. Some economists had been predicting that the bank would soon be forced to expand a stimulus program under which it injects trillions of yen into the economy by buying up government bonds.The strategy is meant to lower borrowing costs and encourage consumers and businesses to spend, but the apparent recession, and an accompanying decline in consumer prices, had raised questions about its effectiveness.The report also could cheer Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who gained office three years ago on a pledge to ramp up growth. So far his Abenomics program, in which the central banks stimulus efforts have played a crucial role, has lifted the stock market and helped multinational companies by lowering the yens exchange rate. But it has been less successful in passing the gains on to average workers.Sharp revisions to Japanese gross domestic product numbers are not unusual, though the change announced on Tuesday was larger than some in the past. The governments first estimates are announced before data on certain kinds of economic activity are fully available notably changes in corporate investment and inventories.In an economy where trend growth is only slightly above zero, like Japans, revisions can more easily make the difference between an increase in output and a decline.The latest numbers will be subject to further review in the future, though revisions tend to grow smaller as time passes.The Japanese stock market opened higher after the report was announced, but quickly gave up those gains, possibly reflecting lower expectations for fresh central bank stimulus. In late morning trading, the Nikkei 225 average was down roughly 0.2 percent.In the biggest change from the initial estimate last month, businesses appeared more confident in their production plans. According to the revised gross domestic product data, spending on new factories and equipment by businesses rose at an annualized rate of 0.6 percent last quarter, compared with an initial estimate of a 1.3 percent decline.Household spending increased 0.5 percent, slightly more than the first estimate of 0.4 percent, and businesses reduced their inventories less aggressively than initially believed.Through the first three quarters of the year, the economy grew at an average rate of about 1.6 percent, according to the latest data roughly twice its typical pace of growth over the past two decades. The performance was volatile, however: Output contracted 0.5 percent in the second quarter after surging 4.4 percent in the first.
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As vaping grows more popular, especially among teens, here are answers to some basic questions about its health effects.Credit...Joshua Bright for The New York TimesNov. 15, 2018The term electronic cigarette refers to a battery-powered device that heats a tank or cartridge of liquid usually containing nicotine, flavorings and other chemicals, but not the cancer-causing tar found in tobacco cigarettes. Users inhale and exhale the vapor. The devices come in numerous shapes, including ones that look like pens, flash drives and hookahs. Many consumers are confused about the health implications of e-cigarettes. This is a primer about what research so far shows about these devices.Are they safer than traditional cigarettes?Yes. But that does not mean they are safe. E-cigarettes contain far fewer dangerous chemicals than those released in burning tobacco. Tobacco cigarettes typically contain 7,000 chemicals, including nearly 70 known to be carcinogenic. E-cigarettes also dont release tar, the tobacco residue that damages lungs but also contributes to the flavor of tobacco products. In the United States, cigarettes are associated with 480,000 deaths a year from coronary heart disease, stroke and numerous cancers, among other illnesses.The research on e-cigarettes is young because the products have only been around for a little over a decade. Exacerbated by the voltage of a given device, certain e-cigarette flavors can irritate the airways, researchers say: benzaldehyde (added to cherry flavored liquids), cinnamaldehyde (gives cinnamon flavor), and diacetyl (a buttery flavor that can cause lung tissue damage called popcorn lung.) Some flavors become irritants when added to vaping liquids. The process of turning liquid chemicals into vapor releases harmful particulates deep into the lungs and atmosphere, including heavy metals. Can they really help smokers quit?Its unclear. The Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved the marketing of e-cigarettes as smoking cessation aids. Observational studies of their effectiveness reveal mixed results. Some show that a majority of adult users are former smokers, suggesting the devices are useful in helping them quit. Others reveal that many e-cigarette users also smoke conventional cigarettes. Still others say that a large percentage of e-cigarette users, particularly teenagers, never smoked traditional cigarettes. A 2018 study concluded that e-cigarettes did not help smokers quit at rates faster than smokers who did not use them. But this summer, a British Parliament committee resoundingly endorsed them, even going so far as to suggest that e-cigarettes be made available by prescription through the National Health Service.Does nicotine have risks?Nicotine is not known to cause cancer. It is a stimulant and a sedative, helping to release dopamine in the brains pleasure centers. Some research suggests it can improve memory and concentration although long-term smoking has been associated with cognitive decline. Inhaled nicotine can increase heart rate and blood pressure. The major cause for alarm is that nicotine is highly addictive. It is the chemical in tobacco and e-cigarettes that binds the user.The nicotine in smoking cessation aids like gum, patches and lozenges is absorbed more slowly than in cigarettes. In tobacco smoke, the nicotine is delivered to the lungs, which have a large surface area, said Maciej Goniewicz,a pharmacologist and toxicologist at the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, N.Y. In one or two puffs, the smoker feels the nicotine go right to brain. The e-cigarette brand Juul in particular seems to closely match tobacco cigarettes in terms of the speed and amount of nicotine delivery, said Dr. Goniewicz, who studies the absorption of such chemicals.[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]What are the concerns about teenagers and e-cigarettes? The human brain develops into the mid-20s. Researchers worry that adolescents who vape will be most affected by nicotine addiction, which they can develop with less exposure than adults require.Though studies have not conclusively shown that e-cigarettes can be relied upon to help adult smokers quit, there is substantial evidence that teenagers who use them have a higher risk of smoking cigarettes.Teens are also using vapes to inhale marijuana. It seems that kids who use e-cigarettes are more likely to use marijuana in general smoked or vaped. Is there a gateway effect? Were just getting data now. But its concerning, said Dr. Rachel Boykan, an associate professor at Stony Brook medical school who researches adolescence and tobacco control.Can parents tell if their teenagers are vaping?E-cig use can be very challenging to detect because they are discreet devices that dont emit much odor, said Dr. Sharon Levy, director of the adolescent substance use and addiction program at Boston Childrens Hospital.Parents can look online for photos of devices and pods. If you find those items in your childs room, pockets or backpack, you should assume that your child is using it, Dr. Levy said, not just holding it for a friend. If children say they have only tried e-cigarettes a few times, Dr. Levy said, ask them to stop. Then tell them you will check their room and backpack. And then do it. Kids who have used only sporadically should be able to stop without much intervention.How can you treat teen nicotine dependence?There arent widely accepted protocols for teenagers. Dr. Levy urges families to consult a medical professional. Limited interventions with nicotine replacement therapies like patches, gum or medications may be effective in older teens, she said. But this should be done in conjunction with a good evaluation, since mental health disorders like depression and anxiety and use of other substances are common in kids with nicotine use disorder, she cautioned.On Dec. 5, the Food and Drug Administration is holding a public hearing to discuss possible nicotine withdrawal therapies specifically for teenagers which, if restrictions on flavored e-cigarette brands proceed, could be an imminent challenge.
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Jay-Z I Fought to Save My Marriage ... After Infidelity 1/28/2018 CNN Jay-Z says he was straight with Beyonce and dealt with his infidelity head on to save his marriage, because she was his soul mate and it was definitely worth fighting for. Jay appeared on CNN's Van Jones show Saturday night where he said issues like infidelity have to be addressed head-on, and if they're not the marriage is going to blow up. He says, "For us, we chose to fight for our love, for our family, to give our kids different outcome, to break that cycle for black men and women." The famous couple hit up Clive Davis' pre-Grammy party Saturday night ... and there's little doubt their marriage is now strong.
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White House MemoWhen President Trump comes to visit, world leaders face the challenge of finding ways to entertain and impress a leader who relishes spectacle.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesFeb. 23, 2020NEW DELHI One of the most nerve-racking moments for any world leader these days comes with these six words: President Trump is coming to town.Hosting any American leader is demanding enough with the usual requirements of diplomacy, protocol and geopolitics, but with Mr. Trump comes an additional challenge: how to entertain and impress a president who relishes spectacle and cherishes anything that is the first, the most or the biggest.The British have a queen, so they made a grand show of a state dinner at Buckingham Palace. The French have Bastille Day, so they invited the president to view their elaborate military parade down the Champs-lyses. The Japanese have an emperor, so they invited Mr. Trump to be the first foreign leader to visit their newly installed monarch and threw in a sumo match with a special presidential trophy for good measure.Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India opted to appeal to Mr. Trumps first love crowd size as he stages a rally of more than 100,000 people in Ahmedabad on Monday after a drive in from the airport along roads where perhaps 100,000 more will line the motorcade route. The president will almost certainly not be greeted by the 10 million people he expects, but it will look like an enormous crowd nonetheless and, the Indians hope, satisfy his need for affirmation.[Read: America loves India, Trump declares at rally with Modi.]World leaders are vying with each other to appeal to President Trumps vanity, said R. Nicholas Burns, a former under secretary of state under President George W. Bush who helped pave the way for agreements with India during that administration. They understand his foreign trips are more about the image he wants to strike rather than substantive breakthroughs between governments.White House aides deny that the presidents trips are all about show. The United States and India have important issues involving trade and security for Mr. Trump and Mr. Modi to discuss, although administration officials briefing reporters before the presidents departure from Washington on Sunday made clear that the comprehensive trade agreement he seeks with India remains far-off.What has seemed to animate Mr. Trump the most, though, are Mr. Modis promises of cheering crowds. He told me well have seven million people between the airport and the event, Mr. Trump told reporters last Tuesday.Two days later, Mr. Trump ratcheted up the estimate to eight digits. I hear theyre going to have 10 million people, he said at a campaign rally. They say anywhere from six to 10 million people are going to be showing up along the route to one of the largest stadiums in the world.By Sunday as he was leaving the White House to begin his long trip, it had become millions and millions of people. Some people say the biggest event theyve ever had in India, Mr. Trump told reporters. Thats what the prime minister told me.A crowd of 10 million would exceed the entire population of Ahmedabad, estimated at eight million. Local officials estimate that it will be more like 100,000, making Mr. Trump off by only 99 percent. But Motera Stadium, which is not really fully built yet, is supposed to become the largest cricket arena in the world.Other countries could not muster that show of force and so have taken advantage of whatever local assets they might have when Mr. Trump has come to visit. For Britain, of course, that would be Queen Elizabeth II, the worlds longest-reigning monarch, who welcomed him to Buckingham Palace last year with an 82-gun salute and a lavish white-tie state banquet.Crowd size is important to this president, so he was clearly thrilled to be told there would be seven million people on the streets in India, said Peter Westmacott, a former British ambassador to the United States. We couldnt manage that in the U.K., but twice in the space of a year he seemed bowled over by the warmth of the welcome he received from the royal family.Mr. Trump was so blown away by the Bastille Day military parade in Paris when President Emmanuel Macron of France invited him in 2017 that the president insisted on organizing his own American equivalent along the streets of Washington as part of last years Independence Day celebration.Perhaps with that in mind, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is trying to entice Mr. Trump to come to Moscow in May by inviting him to the Red Square parade marking the 75th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany. Mr. Trump, however, appears wary of the awkward politics of such a visit given the election year and Russias continued interference in American campaigns.Japan eschews militarism and therefore military parades, but it sought to make Mr. Trump feel special by making him the first foreign head of state invited to meet Emperor Naruhito after his ascension to the throne. The Japanese also asked Mr. Trump to present his own trophy at a sumo champion match a four-foot-tall object duly labeled the Presidents Cup for the event.World leaders have learned to shorten or scrap the historical tours, remove local delicacies from the menu and focus on one thing only: feeding his ego, said Julianne Smith, the director of the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Thats taken different forms in recent years, but the goal is always the same make Trump feel like hes getting something unique: a parade in Paris, a grand state dinner at Buckingham Palace or a sumo match with a Presidents Cup in Japan.Not every country can compete. When Mr. Trump was due to travel to South Korea last year, the government in Seoul fretted over what it could come up with that would seem special. The South Koreans have no queen or emperor. But what they do have is a Demilitarized Zone, where Mr. Trump could visit and even, in a surprise first of its kind, step across into North Korean territory and stage a theatrical last-minute meeting with Kim Jong-un.Critics said that meeting, like a parade or a banquet, was just for the pictures, with no lasting result, and that the president should focus more on policy initiatives when he arrives in India. Trump would be far wiser to frame the visit on substance our strong military collaboration with India, Japan and Australia in limiting China, for example, rather than on seeking applause from crowds in a stadium, Mr. Burns said.But symbolism has its value as well, and if a major trade agreement is not in the offing, then the Indians are determined that Mr. Trump go home with warm feelings about their country, throwing in a sunset tour of the Taj Mahal and a state dinner as well.I think the optics, he will get more of them than other presidents do, because I think the Indians recognize that that is something that he will want and will appreciate and will perhaps keep them in good stead over the next few months, said Tanvi Madan, the director of the India Project at the Brookings Institution.And in addition to the crowds, India may have something to offer that other countries do not. I would not be surprised if the Indians named something after President Trump, Ms. Madan said. Like a village, something they did for President Jimmy Carter when he visited. I think you will see them take extra efforts on the optics front for this president.
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Politics|Is this a coup? Experts say no, but that it could be just as dangerous.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/us/politics/is-this-a-coup-experts-say-no-but-that-it-could-be-just-as-dangerous.htmlCredit...Jason Andrew for The New York TimesJan. 7, 2021Call them rioters. Or armed insurrectionists. But Erica de Bruin, a political scientist who literally wrote the book on how to prevent coups, said she would not call it a coup.I dont object to anyone wanting to use the term coup at this point, she said in an interview. The word coup conveys seriousness, and I dont want to police the language of politicians or activists or those trying to oppose Trumps actions. But I dont think were there yet.The crucial factor, she said, is that a coup attempt requires force or the threat of force from an organized armed group, usually, though not necessarily, a military. And while many in the violent mob of President Trumps supporters that stormed the Capitol building on Wednesday were armed, they did not appear to be part of any organized paramilitary organization.Naunihal Singh, a professor at the Naval War College whose research focuses on coups, said he did not think this was a coup because President Trump encouraged the insurrectionists in his capacity as head of their movement, but did not do so via the powers of the president. We can deal with this sort of power grab far more easily than one which uses presidential authority, if were willing to treat him the same way we would treat any regular citizen doing the same, he said. (Dr. Singh spoke in his personal capacity.)The scenes at the Capitol bear an obvious resemblance to coups, which often involve an armed takeover of legislative buildings. But the resemblance, Dr. de Bruin said, is a superficial one. Theyre emulating coup plotters, she said. But when coup plotters do that, its because they think that occupying that position makes them look like they are holding political power. No one thinks that this group is actually in control.Both experts, however, cautioned against concluding that this is not a serious threat to American democracy.Coups arent that common these days, Dr. de Bruin said. The way we tend to see democracies fail these days is through this subtle undermining and chipping away of democracy.
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TrilobitesCredit...Viacheslav Manichev and Stanislas Von Euw/RutgersJune 1, 2017Coral reefs are sprawling, intricate ecosystems that house an estimated 25 percent of all marine life and can sometimes be seen from space. Yet they are formed by a process invisible to us.A study published in Science on Wednesday now presents a microscopic picture of the biology that makes corals skeletons grow. The findings suggest that coral may be more robust in the face of human-driven ocean acidification than commonly thought.Corals grow their armor by diligently secreting a chunk of hard skeleton smaller than the width of a human hair each day. This process is called calcification and scientists have debated which parts of it are most important for decades.One view prioritizes chemical interactions with the seawater. Using ion pumps, corals can possibly decrease the acidity of seawater enough that calcium carbonate the stuff of limestone and chalk and the basis of coral skeletons forms spontaneously. Under these circumstances, if oceans become more acidic a potential consequence of human-emitted carbon dioxide in the atmosphere being absorbed by the seas coral may struggle to form a skeleton.The alternative view contends that calcification is primarily a biological process, coordinated by proteins similar to the ones that help us make our teeth and bones. The new study provides evidence for this perspective and some hope for corals in a world with more carbon.ImageCredit...Viacheslav Manichev and Stanislas Von Euw/RutgersCoral is not just a rock, said Paul Falkowski, a professor of marine sciences at Rutgers University and senior author of the study. And because of that, were pretty confident that theyll be able to continuing making their skeletons even if the ocean becomes slightly more acidic.Not all scientists agree.The problem is, we have lots of data that show many coral species are very sensitive to environmental change, said Alexander Venn, a senior scientist at the Scientific Center of Monaco, who was not involved in the study. While this paper builds a strong model for the biological control of calcification, there are still pieces of the puzzle missing.Dr. Falkowski and his colleagues used ultrahigh-resolution microscopic imaging and techniques for observing the structure of molecules to study skeletal branches from smooth cauliflower coral, a well-studied species common in the Indo-Pacific.The result is a model of coral calcification that starts with a malleable form of calcium carbonate, called amorphous calcium carbonate.The researchers say they believe that amorphous calcium carbonate is initially formed by proteins. Through a process not yet fully understood, little balls of the material then give way to aragonite, the form of calcium carbonate that makes up a mature coral skeleton.Similar transitions have been observed in sea urchins and shellfish, and some scientists even suspect amorphous calcium carbonate may be a common precursor for calcification across the tree of life.ImageCredit...Viacheslav Manichev and Stanislas Von Euw/RutgersWhen we precipitate aragonite in the lab, just in a bucket of seawater, it forms this very characteristic pattern with very long, needle-shaped crystals, said Nicola Allison, a lecturer in earth sciences at the University of St. Andrews, who did not participate in the research.This is the first report of amorphous calcium carbonate in coral, and it really does suggest the organism is able to control how solid material is deposited, she added.Alex Gagnon, an assistant professor of oceanography at the University of Washington who was not involved in the research, suggested it was an oversimplification to take seawater chemistry out of the equation. Acid dissolves calcium carbonate, so the more acidic the ocean is, the more difficult it is for corals to organize that first bit of skeleton.At the end of the day, the fundamental rules of chemistry and physics still apply, he said.Its true that corals lose calcium carbonate in a more acidic environment but they maintain the ability to grow back that skeleton, which is good news, Dr. Falkowski said.Given current projections of ocean warming and acidification, he is more concerned about warming, which stresses the algae living inside corals and causes coral bleaching.That said, Dr. Falkowski acknowledges that the cause of warming and acidification is one and the same: carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning. For all intents and purposes, theyre linked, he said.
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Global SoccerCredit...Juan Carlos Cardenas/European Pressphoto AgencyFeb. 2, 2014LONDON If ever a picture served as the perfect epitaph to a life, it was the one in Austrias national stadium in Vienna after Spain became the champion of Europe in 2008.The young players rounded up their old trainer. They lifted him, and threw him into the air above their heads five, six times. Their many hands were ever careful, treating the Mister as if he were porcelain.This was sport in its essence: The tutor in the hands of pupils he had shown the way to win.Mister Luis Aragons died in Madrid early Saturday morning. He was 75. He had, typically, kept his serious illness to himself. The tributes came like confetti from Spain, from royalty down to the people on the streets. The ones that would have meant the most to the thoroughly old-fashioned Aragons came in the modern form of instant communication, from the Facebook and Twitter accounts of his players.And not just from those Spaniards who went on to become world champions in 2010 before they defended their European title in 2012. Samuel Etoo, a Cameroon international whose career might never have been fulfilled but for the personal mentoring of Aragons, messaged from London where he is now a Chelsea player.My heart is in deep pain, Etoo wrote, in Spanish. A great man has left us. More than a trainer, Luis Aragons was like a father to me. I keep wonderful moments of our relationship and my experience at Mallorca.Dear Papa, thank you for all you taught us, in football and in life. Aragons and Etoo had much in common. Both were goal scorers. Both suffered rejection early in their careers at Real Madrid, when the impatient club bypassed young men who still were in the awkward phase of needing time to grow into their talents. Real instead went out and bought the finished product. Aragons did not have to move far. He became Atltico Madrids record striker, known as Zapatones, or Big Boots, for his mighty free kicks. He scored 172 times in 372 games for the red and whites. His pursuit of the main goal converting ability into trophies was single-minded, inexhaustible, and at times as rough as he felt he needed to be to get there.Between 1965 and 1974, he won three La Liga titles and two Copa del Generalsimo titles with Atltico.One might think that the rivalry that divides Madrid would fester. But there is no reason to doubt the words from Reals president, Florentino Perez: Luis Aragons, said Perez, ennobled this sport, and all Spanish fans owe him gratitude and respect. Today is a day of mourning, but it should also be a day of recognition for a legendary figure who was vital in giving us a glorious period with our Spanish national team. There was no trick, no magic wand from Aragons.He did not create the talents of an Andrs Iniesta, a Xavi Hernndez, an Iker Casillas or a Sergio Ramos. He merely selected them for the red national jersey. He took the pattern of play, the tiki-taka short-passing rhythm that the Barcelona players in particular were comfortable with, and instilled in the players the concept of hard work, perseverance and self-confidence. In Samuel Etoo, the kid from Cameroon, and in the Spanish players who time and time again succeeded in youth soccer but trembled in the mans game, Luis Aragons gave the same thing.He cajoled, nurtured and bullied them across the threshold of believing they could be world-beaters.For 44 years, Spains senior national team had not won anything. It was always promising, ever easy on the eye, but somehow it was a team, a nation, that did not have that final push, that arrogance perhaps, to cross the line ahead of the Germans, Brazilians, Italians, French and English who made the trophies their own.Aragons believed. He could kick the backsides of players, officials and journalists. Some of us probably deserved it, in particular the English who seized upon an insulting term the coach used when trying to goad a player on the Spanish national team.It was picked up on a TV microphone, a reference to Thierry Henrys black skin in a phrase barked out by the coach to a player who lived in Henrys shadow when the two both were Arsenal employees.For that one remark, Aragons was branded a racist. The message from Etoo, Africas finest center forward, and from Brazilians who served on Aragonss teams is crystal clear.After observing Aragons on the training fields of some of the 15 career stops he made as a coach, I never saw a man of prejudice in any way, shape or form.An elderly, slightly portly figure, not unlike an irritable professor, he could be rude, irascible and uncompromising.He shed two core players, the striker Ral and the defender Mchel Salgado, from the Spanish team he inherited. He was a man of Madrid who unashamedly took the Barcelona style that had been inculcated in Catalonia by the Dutchman Johan Cruyff.Aragons built on it, rehearsed it and loved it, and he was as coarse and impatient at converting it into victories as he once was in putting his foot so forcefully behind his free kicks.So, yes, he made enemies along the way. Winners do.But what no one else did in 44 years and what nobody can take away, at least, until the World Cup in Brazil later this year was that he handed over men who could take on, beat, and adorn the global game. Vicente Del Bosque, another man of Madrid, succeeded Aragons as the national trainer after the triumph over Germany in Vienna.Del Bosque, as serene as Aragons could be gruff, paid his tribute on the Spanish federations website ahead of Sundays funeral in the capital.Without a doubt, Del Bosque stated, he marked the road in this final successful phase. I felt a great deal of appreciation toward him.The final tribute is that nothing had to change. Aragons made Spain believe.
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Sports of The TimesCredit...Richard Heathcote/Getty ImagesFeb. 6, 2014KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia When Don Catlin, the former head of the U.C.L.A. Olympic Analytical Laboratory, heard that three biathletes had tested positive for a nonspecific substance about a week before the Olympics, I could hear him sigh over the phone.Im not surprised, he said. Youve got to wonder if its the tip of the iceberg.Catlin had a good reason to be grim about the possibility that more biathletes were doping, which in this most recent case involved a designer version of the endurance-boosting drug EPO, according to two scientists with knowledge of the matter. He told me that biathletes were always at the center of looking for new drugs.He would know. Twelve years ago, Catlin led the team of scientists at the Salt Lake City Games that discovered three positives for a new EPO-like drug, darbepoetin, on the final day of those Games. The athletes two Russians and a Spaniard who failed that test were from cross-country skiing, a sport that makes up half of the biathlon. The other half of biathlon is shooting.Catlin last week admitted publicly for the first time that those three positive tests at the Salt Lake Games were only the tip of the iceberg of the positive tests for darbepoetin in Salt Lake City. He told me that two biathletes from those Games had also tested positive for the drug on the final day, but that he and the International Olympic Committee president at the time, Jacques Rogge, had decided against pursuing their cases because it would raise a huge stink around the world. It also could have created major legal problems. Catlin and Rogge suspected that the first three athletes who tested positive for darbepoetin would challenge those cases at the Court of Arbitration for Sport. They would question the science, the paperwork and the procedures. For Catlin and the I.O.C., it would require putting together three complex, but airtight, legal cases. Preparing two extra cases, Catlin said, seemed untenable.If you lose in C.A.S., you got a lot of egg on your face, so Jacques asked me one question, Can you win the C.A.S. case? Catlin said of the initial three positives. I said, Yes, but it will take a lot of work just for these three. So we decided to stop there. We couldnt risk taking on all five. Lose just one of those and your credibility on the issue is shot.So the two biathletes, who were never identified publicly, got lucky. Thats such an outrageous notion that I had Catlin repeat it to me several times.The I.O.C. should have pushed forward with those cases. To bury them was wrong. But the flood of positive tests during the sports biggest event was a testament to how far biathlon had fallen. Last week, biathlon stumbled yet again, when three biathletes two Russians and a Lithuanian were suspended. I still believe that most of the top people are not doping, said Sara Studebaker, an American biathlete who will compete in Sochi. But I guess it really doesnt matter what you believe. Theres a dark cloud over our sport, and now the Russians they have a big stain on them. Its bad for everybody.Tim Burke, the top American biathlete in Sochi, suggested to me on Thursday several ways to persuade biathletes to stop doping. He suggested a lifetime ban for athletes who test positive even once, and said the national federations also should be penalized.Burke is on to something. If countries not just Russia fail to control their athletes year after year, its time to make the national federations and Olympic committees accountable. Limit their participation on the World Cup circuit. Bar them from the Olympics. Whatever the penalty, it should be something painful enough to make national governing bodies invested in cleaning up their sports mess.In biathlon and cross-country skiing, that mess has existed for decades. The sports remain the Winter Games version of cycling, which for generations has been mired in the doping problems that are rife in endurance sports.Anders Besseberg, president of the International Biathlon Union, said the organization had been doing all it could. It uses a biological passport program to monitor certain biological markers in athletes urine and blood. Any variation of those markers could suggest that the athlete is doping, and that athlete is then targeted for extra testing.But no matter what the I.B.U. does, there will always be athletes who cheat.Im so sorry to say that in certain countries there is still a culture of cheating, and I think thats the main problem now, he said. Those people think they are smarter than us, that well never catch them.Some athletes will never be scared clean. But after all the money that the Brooklyn Nets billionaire owner Mikhail D. Prokhorov has poured into the Russian biathlon federation, of which he is the president, it looks as if he could have spent more on antidoping measures.At the very least, he should have been aware that his athletes might have been tempted to use drugs to cheat, since at least one has served a suspension before. And while biathlon is one of the top winter sports in Russia with great rewards for those who succeed in it it also appears easy to obtain performance-enhancing drugs in this country.In a report this week by the German broadcaster WDR, two journalists traveled to Moscow to buy a powerful drug called full-size MGF, which increases muscle size and strength but has been tested only on animals. They said the person who sold them the drug, which is not detectable using current antidoping drug screenings, was a scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences.To be sure, Russia is not the only country with a doping problem, but it is clear that the nations government and sporting officials must do something monumental to address the issue.They need to find a way the Olympic movement needs to find a way to ensure that nothing lurks below the tip of the iceberg.
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Health|Zika Study Could Help Overcome an Obstacle to Vaccine Researchhttps://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/health/zika-virus-mouse-model-vaccine.htmlGlobal HealthMarch 28, 2016Credit...Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, via ReutersThe first new mouse model in which the Zika virus can be tested was described in a medical journal on Monday.Research into drugs or vaccines that might work against Zika has been hampered because there have been no approved animal models in which to test them. Testing is normally done first in cell lines, then in mice and finally in monkeys before human testing can ethically begin.In The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, virologists at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston announced that they had found a type of immune-deficient mice that lost weight, became lethargic and died when infected. Normal laboratory mice do not.The work was done in January, and other researchers may have found other mice in which to do testing, said Shannan Rossi, the studys lead author. But this was the first mouse model to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.Because virus samples from Latin America were not available in January, researchers went to the library of virus samples maintained by the UTMB World Reference Center for Emerging Viruses and Arboviruses, and used a sample collected in 2010 from a Cambodian girl who had had the Asian strain of Zika.They found that it sickened AG129 mice, which lack the genes to mount an interferon-based immune reaction. The virus became concentrated in the brains and testes, reflecting the damage it is thought to cause in humans, Dr. Rossi said.In the years after the Zika virus was discovered in 1947, researchers tested it in rhesus monkeys, guinea pigs, rabbits and mice. But they never got animals to consistently sicken or die which is needed to know whether a new drug or vaccine works.UTMB and other institutions are now working on monkey models.That will also be a race, Dr. Rossi said. Well see who wins.
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Credit...Youssef Badawi/EPA, via ShutterstockJune 7, 2018WASHINGTON An American citizen detained by the military in Iraq as a suspected Islamic State member will be released back into Syria, the Trump administration has told a judge a plan that his lawyers called a death warrant.The move would avoid a fight in court over the high-stakes question of whether the government has the legal authority to put Islamic State suspects in indefinite wartime detention as enemy combatants. If a judge were to rule against the government on that question in the detention case, it would jeopardize the underpinnings of the entire war effort against the Islamic State.But lawyers for the man, whose name has not been made public, vowed to fight the planned transfer in court. The plan was the latest twist in a habeas corpus case that has raised novel legal issues about the rights of individual Americans and the governments wartime powers.The American Civil Liberties Union planned to file an emergency request for a temporary restraining order against the military on Thursday, said Jonathan Hafetz, an A.C.L.U. lawyer who is the lead attorney for the man.In its filing late Wednesday disclosing the governments Syria release plan, the Justice Department said the military intended to release the man in an unidentified Syrian city after at least 72 hours had passed.The Pentagon, it said, had decided that releasing the man in Syria would be consistent with traditional military practice and with the departments obligations under the law of war. It had given the man two options release either in a town or outside an internally displaced person camp but the man had balked at both, so the Pentagon picked the town option for him.In a declaration that was partially unsealed on Thursday afternoon, Mark E. Mitchell, a senior Pentagon official, provided further details about the plan. The man, he said, would be given a new cellphone in its original sealed packaging, enough food and water to last for several days, his legal papers, and $4,210 in cash the same amount he had when captured.Mr. Mitchell further said that the Pentagon would notify the Syrian Democratic Forces, military allies of the Americans, that the man would be released and was likely to be traveling through its checkpoints, and tell them that the United States is not seeking and/or requesting that the man be detained again.It is not clear whether the man would have a right to a court order requiring some safer outcome. Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing the habeas corpus case, has already made clear that she does not think he has a right to be brought back to the United States.The man is a dual citizen of the United States, where he was born, and Saudi Arabia, where he was raised. He was captured by a militia in Syria in September and turned over to the American military, which has been holding him at a base in Iraq as an enemy combatant for nearly nine months.The man said he went to Syria to be a journalist and was arrested by the Islamic State, then worked for the group as a condition of being freed from prison. But the government has said that Islamic State records show he registered with the group as a fighter, and his social media postings indicate he sympathized with the group. It has not accused him of fighting for the group.What to do with the man has been a dilemma. Prosecutors have deemed his case difficult to charge in civilian court; much of the evidence against him may not be admissible under courtroom standards. As an American, he is also not eligible for charges before the troubled military commissions system. But security officials have wanted to keep him locked up, or at least out of the United States.This spring, the government struck a deal with another country apparently Saudi Arabia to take custody of him. But the man balked at the proposed arrangement, and Judge Chutkan blocked the military from carrying out the transfer to that country against his will a decision upheld last month by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.It has not been clear how or where the man would be released if he won his lawsuit. There is no evidence the man was in Iraq before the American military brought him there, and it would apparently require the consent of the Iraqi government to release him on its soil. Moreover, he would risk being immediately rearrested there, and the Iraqi courts have been giving 10-minute trials and death sentences to Islamic State members.Mr. Hafetz maintained that if the government wanted to release his client, it must do so to a location that is not a war zone, and he has to be provided with some identity documents or something that establishes that he is in the territory legally and he has to not be subject to physical harm and basically almost automatic re-detention.He added, They have to find a safer place, and if they cant, they have to release him in the United States.The court rulings blocking the mans forcible transfer to apparent Saudi custody had seemed to clear the way for a hearing later this month on the most important issue raised by the case: whether it is lawful for the government to indefinitely detain the man without charges as part of a wartime enemy force.The Obama and Trump administrations argued that the government needed no new authorization from Congress to fight the Islamic State. But that claim is contested.The government has sought to throw up one roadblock after another to avoid the basic question of whether they are holding this man legally, Mr. Hafetz said. If they are not, or if they dont want to charge him or hold him, the answer is to release him in a way that guarantees his safety and doesnt condemn him to danger or possible death.
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Business BriefingDec. 11, 2015Greg Creed, the chief executive of Yum Brands, told investors that he thought the conglomerates struggling Pizza Hut unit should worry less about making better food and worry more about making its food easier to buy. He said inspiration came not from Pizza Huts rivals but from the ride-hailing service Uber. Its easy to use, its easy to pay, its very easy to track, Mr. Creed said on Thursday. He added that there was a time when the way to beat the competition was to have a better product, but now he believes that convenience trumps quality, and that nothing beats making better easy. Mr. Creed said that insight easy beats better will also help Yum energize its other fast-food chains, KFC and Taco Bell. That means shaving time off drive-through waits, and moving into areas like delivery and mobile ordering. With Pizza Hut in particular, Yum notes the chains sales have flagged even as it is cited as a favorite among consumers. One problem, company officials said, is that Pizza Hut generally takes longer to deliver. Sales at established locations last year fell 3 percent, after a 2 percent drop in 2013.
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On BaseballCredit...Barton Silverman/The New York TimesFeb. 12, 2014The greatest compliment we can give Derek Jeter, as he prepares to leave the grandest stage in baseball, is that he never let us down. He has made thousands of outs and hundreds of errors and finished most of his seasons without a championship. Yet he never disappointed us.This is no small feat for the modern athlete, in an age of endless traps and temptations. From cheating to preening to taunting even to defensible acts, like fleeing to a new team in free agency the hero, almost invariably, breaks our heart sometime. Not Jeter.He grew up beside a baseball diamond in Kalamazoo, Mich., dreaming of playing shortstop for the Yankees, and that is what he has done. He has never played another position, never been anything but No. 2 for the Yankees. But this season, he announced Wednesday, will be his last.The one thing I always said to myself was that when baseball started to feel more like a job, it would be time to move forward, Jeter said in a statement on Facebook, adding later: I could not be more sure. I know it in my heart. The 2014 season will be my last year playing professional baseball.When Jeter played his first game at the old Yankee Stadium, on June 2, 1995, the announced crowd was 16,959. By 2008, when he closed the ballpark with a speech to the fans, the average attendance topped 53,000. For the Yankees, Jeter was the right player at the right time, a model of stability and the embodiment of their ideals.Jeter has compiled 3,316 hits (10th on baseballs career list), winning five championships while making more than $250 million in salary. But his impact has always been greater than his numbers.When Jeter joined the organization, as a high schooler drafted sixth over all in 1992, the Yankees were enduring their fourth consecutive losing season, driven to disarray by the principal owner, George Steinbrenner, who was suspended at the time. Jeter would become a centerpiece of the Yankees rebuilding, and the team has had only winning records since, building a new stadium and launching a lucrative cable network in the process.Jeter has had plenty of help, from homegrown stars like Bernie Williams and Jorge Posada to pricey imports like Mark Teixeira and C. C. Sabathia. But Jeter, the captain, has always been out front. When injuries limited him to 17 games last season, the Yankees lost attendance and ratings and fell in the standings. Ive gone to Yankees games and Ive asked kids outside the park, Who are you going to go see? said Dick Groch, the scout who signed Jeter. Nine out of 10 kids say, Derek Jeter. What a marquee player.Groch, who now works for the Milwaukee Brewers, continued: Remember that word: marquee. Babe Ruth was marquee. The money Ruth brought to the Yankees was unbelievable, and Derek Jeters done the same thing. You could look at tons of statistics, but theyll never show you that.Jeter is perhaps the most secure, self-confident player in baseball, a sharp contrast to the disgraced Alex Rodriguez, whose season-long suspension means that he will never again be teammates with Jeter. Groch said he noticed these traits while scouting Jeter, who smiled under pressure and showed the leadership skills of a chief executive. His skills stood out, too, of course, and the inside-out swing that would rifle so many hits to right field intrigued Groch. Sometimes, if a hitter punches too many balls the opposite way, it means he cannot catch up to the fastball. Groch asked the young Jeter if he or the pitcher was dictating the action.Jeter replied that it was his choice. He was using his ability to wait a split-second longer so he could react to more pitches. And when he got a letter-high fastball over the middle, Groch said, Jeter could still pull it over the left-field wall, the way he would for a pivotal homer in the 2000 World Series against the Mets, and for his 3,000th hit in 2011.By then, Jeter was so accomplished that it was easy to forget his initial struggles, his 56 errors in Class A in 1993. His defense, especially his lack of range, would remain a flash point deep into his career, with many believing he was vastly overrated in the field. But he made himself reliable enough to stay at shortstop, and in 1994 he was the consensus minor league player of the year. He was on his way.Jeter was the American League rookie of the year in 1996, when the Yankees won the World Series, and the glare never bothered him. He remains a bachelor who dates starlets, but his rules of engagement with the news media have worked because of his unrelenting consistency. He never answers questions about his personal life ever and so is rarely even asked.No superstar in sports is more accessible than Jeter, who is available by his locker before and after almost every game, mainly to take pressure off teammates. Group interviews can play out like jousting matches, which Jeter always wins. He cannot be baited into saying something that will linger as a story. He does not raise his voice, rarely shows irritation and never goes off the record.Jeter is often called boring, but that is not quite right. His reverence for Yankees history, and his place in it, is endearing. He insists on using a recording of the late Bob Sheppard, the public-address announcer whose career began the same day as Mickey Mantles, before his home at-bats.At the old Stadium, Jeter dressed next to the empty locker of another captain, Thurman Munson, who was killed in a plane crash in 1979. When Phil Rizzuto, his long-ago predecessor at shortstop, died in 2007, Jeter revealed that Rizzutos autograph was the only one in his collection.Jeter asked for just one artifact from the original Stadium: the overhead sign from the dugout runway with Joe DiMaggios famous quotation, thanking the Lord for making him a Yankee. In his retirement statement on Wednesday, Jeter began by saying thank you.By announcing his intention, Jeter all but ensures a farewell tour with gifts at each opposing ballpark, as Mariano Rivera experienced last season. Ceremony does not seem to be Jeters style, but he said he wanted to soak in his final moments, and who would deny him the privilege?Last week, Groch sent an email to Jeters agent, Casey Close, a former minor leaguer he also signed years ago. Groch asked Close to give his regards to Jeter and his family, and added a plea about the captains exit.Dont let him go out not playing shortstop, Groch said he told Close. Dont let him go out playing left field or third base. Let him go out like Mo. Let him go out the way he deserves.
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Credit...Tom Brenner/The New York TimesJune 12, 2018WASHINGTON After frenzied late-night negotiations, Speaker Paul D. Ryan defused a moderate Republican rebellion on Tuesday with a promise to hold high-stakes votes on immigration next week, thrusting the divisive issue onto center stage during a difficult election season for Republicans.The move by Mr. Ryan, announced late Tuesday by his office, was something of a defeat for the rebellious immigration moderates, who fell two signatures short of the 218 needed to force the House to act this month on bipartisan measures aimed more directly at helping young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children.Instead, the House is most likely to vote on one hard-line immigration measure backed by President Trump and conservatives and another more moderate compromise bill that was still being drafted, according to people familiar with the talks.Had the rebels secured just two more signatures for their discharge petition, they would have also gotten votes on the Dream Act, a stand-alone bill backed by Democrats that includes a path to citizenship for the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers, and another bipartisan measure that couples a path to citizenship for Dreamers with beefed-up border security.Mr. Ryan desperately wanted to avoid bringing those bipartisan measures to the floor. On Wednesday morning, he is expected to present a detailed plan for next weeks votes to his conference.Members across the Republican conference have negotiated directly and in good faith with each other for several weeks, and as a result, the House will consider two bills next week that will avert the discharge petition and resolve the border security and immigration issues, a spokeswoman for Mr. Ryan, AshLee Strong, said late Tuesday.Tuesday nights developments were a high-wire act for Mr. Ryan and the House moderates. Under House rules, Tuesday was the deadline to force votes in June, and as moderates and conservatives met separately late into the night, the moderates insisted that they had the signatures needed to put their petition over the top.We have people waiting to sign; well see how the rest of the night unfolds, Representative Carlos Curbelo, Republican of Florida and a leader of the petition drive, said shortly before the speakers announcement.But those signatures failed to materialize, significantly weakening their hand. The chairman of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, said before Mr. Ryans announcement that his group wanted the House to hold votes on two immigration bills: the conservative-backed bill, which is sponsored by Representative Robert W. Goodlatte of Virginia, and the still-unfinished compromise bill. He appears to have gotten just that.Right now, we have a framework of a bill, and theres no legislative text, Mr. Meadows told reporters Tuesday night. There is a whole lot that needs to still be worked out with that.Democrats pounced on the setback for the moderates, many of whom such as Mr. Curbelo and Representatives Jeff Denham of California and Will Hurd of Texas are high on their target list in November.House Republicans latest failure to deliver for Dreamers is made all the more inexcusable by their many empty promises that they would get the signatures and move on the discharge petition, said Javier Gamboa, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. If vulnerable members like Carlos Curbelo, Will Hurd and Jeff Denham cant get the job done with their party controlling all of Washington, they have no business serving in Congress.But Mr. Curbelo called Mr. Ryans announcement a major development.Our goal has always been to force the House to debate and consider meaningful immigration reform, he added, and today were one step closer.In gathering signatures for their petition, the moderates were seeking to protect hundreds of thousands of Dreamers, who have been shielded from deportation under an Obama-era program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. Mr. Trump moved last year to end the program.In order to force the votes, the petition needed a majority of the House 218 signatories which would require 25 Republican signatures if all 193 Democrats signed on. Twenty-three Republicans signed, and by Tuesday night, all Democrats had, as well.Mr. Ryan had feared a debate on immigration would divide the party just as lawmakers who are trying to defend their seats have to face voters. But leaders of the petition drive, many of them with large Hispanic constituencies, had argued that to ignore the immigration issue would put them in political peril.There have been some critics who say that this could cost us our majority, Mr. Denham said in a recent interview. My concern is if we do nothing, it could cost us our majority. So yes, its risky. But its the right thing to do.In effect, Mr. Curbelo, Mr. Denham and the other moderates did force Mr. Ryans hand. For the past several weeks, House conservatives have been in intense talks, conducted in Mr. Ryans office, with Mr. Denham and Mr. Curbelo. But coming up with a compromise on immigration that is acceptable to the vast majority of House Republicans is challenging, given the differing views within their conference.Among the particularly thorny questions were whether to provide a path to citizenship for DACA recipients, precisely which young immigrants would be eligible for that path and how it would be structured. Any so-called special pathway for DACA recipients could be viewed by conservative members as offering amnesty and could prompt a backlash from the partys right flank.Another critical question was what immigration enforcement measures might be included in the compromise bill a priority for conservatives.The petition effort got underway in May, when more than a dozen House Republicans defied Mr. Ryan by signing on. It is extremely unusual for the party in power to use such petitions; ordinarily they are a tool of protest used by the minority party.The last successful discharge petition drive came in 2015 when Republicans and Democrats forced a vote to revive the Export-Import Bank, which guarantees loans to overseas customers buying American exports.The petition revived an immigration debate in Congress that had been all but dead. The Senate spent a week debating immigration legislation in February, and passed nothing. The conventional wisdom was that immigration would become an issue to be fought over during elections. And some lawmakers said there was no urgency, noting that the DACA program is continuing, at least for now, at the direction of the federal courts.But heart-rending stories featuring young immigrants continue to emerge, such as a recent Des Moines Register article about Manuel Antonio Cano Pacheco, who arrived in the United States at age 3, was forced by immigration authorities to leave his home in Iowa in April, just before his high school graduation, and was killed in Mexico.
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41 Cities, Many Sources: How False Antifa Rumors Spread LocallyClaims about the involvement of anti-fascist activists in protests of racism show the many ways false information spreads inside communities online.Credit...Erin Bormett/The Argus Leader, via Associated PressPublished June 22, 2020Updated March 1, 2021In recent weeks, as demonstrations against racism spread across the country, residents in at least 41 U.S. cities and towns became alarmed by rumors that the loose collective of anti-fascist activists known as antifa was headed to their area, according to an analysis by The New York Times. In many cases, they contacted their local law enforcement for help.In each case, it was for a threat that never appeared.President Trump has spread some unfounded rumors about antifa to a national audience including his accusation, without evidence, that a 75-year-old Buffalo protester who was hospitalized after being knocked down by a police officer could be an antifa provocateur.But on the local level, the source of the false information has usually been more subtle, and shows the complexity of stunting misinformation online. The bad information often first appears in a Twitter or Facebook post, or a YouTube video there. It is then shared on online spaces like local Facebook groups, the neighborhood social networking app Nextdoor and community texting networks. These posts can fall under the radar of the tech companies and online fact checkers.The dynamic is tricky because many times these local groups dont have much prior awareness of the body of conspiratorial content surrounding some of these topics, said Rene DiResta, a disinformation researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory. The first thing they see is a trusted fellow community member giving them a warning.Here are four ways that antifa falsehoods spread in local communities.After One Tweet, Dozens of Calls to the PoliceOn the last weekend in May, the police in Sioux Falls, S.D., decided to investigate whether busloads of antifa protesters were headed to town. It shows what can happen from a single tweet.They were responding to a rumor spreading quickly among residents online, and first posted to Twitter by the local Chamber of Commerce.Were being told that buses are en route from Fargo for todays march downtown, the group posted on Twitter. Please bring in any furniture, signs, etc. that could be possibly thrown through windows.The tweet was later deleted, but not before the rumor spread verbatim on Facebook, where it was even translated into Spanish. On Facebook, screenshots of the tweet and other posts about the groups message collected more than 4,600 likes and shares according to CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned tool that analyzes interactions across social media.These included shares by the Facebook pages of three local news outlets with a combined reach of 36,238 followers, and two posts in Spanish-speaking local Facebook groups, which reached 2,611 followers.Twitter said it had taken down hundreds of groups under its violent extremist group policy and continues to enforce our policies against hateful conduct every day across the world. Facebook said its fact-checking partners rate many false claims about the protests, including about antifa.The rumor led dozens of people to reach out to the local police that Sunday, according to Sam Clemens, the public information officer at the Sioux Falls Police Department.But on the day of the protests, we didnt have any evidence of any buses coming from out of town carrying people, Mr. Clemens said. The vast majority of protesters were local residents, he said.The Greater Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce said it had gotten the information from sources it knew and believed to be credible.We received information that led us to believe there was a cause for concern. As such, we wanted to encourage local business owners to take responsible, precautionary steps for their businesses, said Jeff Griffin, the groups president. We removed the post when we realized it was contributing to a different message that we did not intend.From YouTube to InfowarsA false rumor about antifa protesters in Yucaipa, Calif., a city about 70 miles from Los Angeles, started with one viral YouTube video about the city. Before long, it had even reached a national audience.A YouTube video posted on June 2, featuring scenes of men in masks and holding guns, purportedly residents of the city preparing for potential antifa looting ahead of a planned BLM protest, has collected 17,200 views in the days since. Facebook posts of photos claiming to show the Yucaipa residents defending their town were posted at least 587 times in Facebook groups, and amassed over 24,000 likes and shares, according to the Times analysis. They were shared in pro-Trump and far-right Facebook groups, as well as other local community groups.Farshad Shadloo, a YouTube spokesman, said that, like Facebook, the video service uses fact-checking panels to flag false information, and that the company aims to promote videos from authoritative sources about the protests.On the same day, the conservative commentator and former Fox News host Todd Starnes published a blog post titled, TOWN FIGHTS antifa: They Just Beat the Ever-Loving Snot Out of Them. It collected over 48,000 likes and shares, and reached three million followers on Facebook.A day later, the conspiracy website Infowars posted an article about the false narrative, which spread it further among followers of conspiracy groups and several Facebook groups dedicated to praising Mr. Trump.A representative for Mr. Starnes said he was unavailable to respond.The Yucaipa Police Department confirmed on Twitter that it had responded to reports of fights in public on June 1, but did not mention the involvement of antifa. A public information officer for the department pointed to a YouTube video posted last week, in which a Yucaipa police lieutenant, Julie Brumm-Landen, said the city had not experienced looting or destruction from protests of racism.The information about antifa or planned criminal activity in Yucaipa is nothing more than internet speculation and false rumors, Lt. Brumm-Landen added. Any peaceful protests that takes place will have the full support and protection of the Yucaipa Police Department. That video was viewed just 100 times.Warnings From a Congressional CandidateA congressional candidate over 2,000 miles away from Yucaipa started to spread a similar message. The episode highlights how even when a tech company removes bad local information, it can happen too late.Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican in northwest Georgia and a professed member of the fringe conspiracy theory group QAnon, tweeted an ad for her House campaign showing her holding an AR-15-style rifle and threatening antifa activists. You wont burn our churches, loot our businesses or destroy our homes, she said in the ad. It was retweeted 20,000 times.That same campaign ad was removed from Facebook two days later but not before it racked up over 1.2 million views. According to the social network, the video violated the companys policies against promoting the use of firearms.We removed it because it advocates the use of deadly weapons against a clearly defined group of people, which violates our policies against inciting violence, said Andrea Vallone, a Facebook spokeswoman.No group of antifa activists arrived in Georgia. But that didnt seem to hurt Ms. Greenes political campaign. One week after her ad posted, she finished first in her primary, winning 41 percent of the vote in the strongly Republican 14th Congressional District, and has a strong chance of winning a runoff vote in August.Ms. Greene, who has a history of making offensive remarks about blacks, Jews and Muslims, appears to have no remorse about spreading unfounded rumors of antifa coming to town.Im sick and tired of watching establishment Republicans play defense while the Fake News Media cheers on antifa terrorists, B.L.M. rioters and the woke cancel culture as they burn our cities, loot our businesses, vandalize our memorials and divide our nation, Ms. Greene said in an emailed statement.Facebook Group Posts, Then Text MessagesIn late May to early June, there was a rumor that two bus loads of antifa were heading to Locust, N.C., about 25 miles east of Charlotte. The rumor was shared in text messages among people in the area far out of sight of any fact-checking organization.On June 1, the rumor surfaced in Facebook groups with names like DeplorablePride.org and Albemarle News and Weather.That same evening, the police in Locust posted a screenshot of a text that had been circulating in the community over the weekend. The text falsely claimed that police officers had been knocking on doors to warn that a black organization is bringing 2 bus loads of people to walmart in locust with intentions on looting and burning down the suburbs. The post, on Facebook, assured residents that the Police Department had not been spreading the rumor.Jeffrey Shew, the assistant chief of police, said all the residents who reached out to the department to report the buses had no direct knowledge of violent protesters coming to town. He said they were only sharing what they had seen on social media. By midnight on June 1, Mr. Shew said, it was clear that the rumors were untrue.No protests, groups looking to protest or groups looking to riot occurred, he said.On June 2, the police posted another message on Facebook emphasizing that the rumors had no substance. It exemplified that often, community members themselves are the ones on the front lines of debunking false rumors.We had absolutely zero confirmed credible information related to these activities however out of an abundance of caution we did arrange or stage extra resources and officers in Locust in the event there was any legitimacy to the posts, the post by the Locust Police Department read. Now in the morning after, we can 100% confirm there was zero truth to any of the posts that we observed.Posts containing the original rumor reached 27,855 followers on Facebook, according to the Times analysis. The polices posts reached 2,966 followers on Facebook.
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on techApple says it will make it tougher for apps to track you. It will also help you wash your hands.VideoCreditCredit...By Dae In ChungJune 23, 2020This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it weekdays.Greetings, friends! Im your personal tech columnist. Ill be taking the wheel for todays intro.This week is a big one for Apple, which is hosting its annual conference for the software developers who make apps for Apple phones, tablets, watches and computers. The company started the weeklong event with a video presentation streamed on Monday, outlining its new features.The presentation was chock-full of jargon and deeply technical stuff that only engineers would understand. But heres the news that you may care about:Apple is making it tougher for apps to track you. Unbeknown to many of us, thousands of apps that we lovingly use on our smartphones have invisible trackers running in the background. The trackers may be collecting and sharing our personal information, like our location, email address and phone number, with businesses and other entities for the purpose of serving targeted ads. You cant opt in or opt out of app tracking.That may soon change. Apple said that beginning this fall with its next mobile operating system, iOS 14, it will require so-called third-party apps to ask for your permission to track you.Apple will also give iPhone and iPad users more control over how their location is shared. Instead of sharing your precise location with an app, you will be able to share your approximate location, giving a developer a rough idea of where you are. That could be helpful if you are using a news app, for example, and you want to see articles about your hometown but dont want to share precisely where you live.In the past, Apple and Google have required apps to ask for permission to access sensors, such as your camera and microphone. These new protections expand on Apples efforts to give users greater transparency and control over the data collected about us. (Your move, Google.)The Mac is about to make a big shift. Have you ever noticed how sluggish Macs feel compared to Apples mobile devices? Macs use Intel processors, but mobile processors have outpaced Intel chips in terms of speed and power efficiency. Even the cheapest new Apple phone, the $399 iPhone SE, by some measures outperforms the most powerful Mac laptops, which cost more than $2,500.Thats why its a big deal that this week Apple announced the beginning of the Macs transition to Apple-made silicon, which will be based on the same chip architecture powering iPhones and iPads. If all goes well, we can expect Macs with snappier performance and much longer battery life, and they should also be able to run iPhone and iPad apps.The transition to Apple chips is expected to take two years. If you buy a Mac in 2022, it should have the horsepower of an iPad, but work with a mouse and keyboard.The Apple Watch is trying to be more helpful during the pandemic. Apple said the next version of the Apple Watch operating system, WatchOS 7, would take advantage of the watchs motion sensors to detect when you are washing your hands and start a 20-second timer to ensure you scrub thoroughly. The watch will also use its sensors to track sleep patterns. These are relatively minor new features, but we could all probably use better sleep and hygiene these days.Seeking therapy through screensThanks to Brian for tag-teaming with me. This is Shira Ovide for the rest of todays dispatch.The last few months have been A LOT. As the stresses on our bodies, finances, families and minds have piled up, its gotten more complicated to seek help as physicians and mental health specialists paused seeing patients in person because of coronavirus fears.But a silver lining, said Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a psychologist and founder of the mental health resource Therapy for Black Girls, is that moving therapy sessions online has been more rewarding for some people although that hasnt been true for everyone.For some, taking face-to-face interaction out of therapy makes difficult conversations easier. Adding a screen is just enough of a barrier where it maybe feels safer to share something, Dr. Bradford said.Dr. Bradford had advice for people seeking therapy right now through online appointments. During virtual sessions, try to find a private, personal space even if that means taking a video call alone in your car, while on a walk or in the bathroom with the door closed.She also advised people to give themselves a time to transition after sessions end, rather than jumping right back into family or work obligations.Dr. Bradford also said people shouldnt be afraid to find a new therapist if their current one isnt a good match, for example a practitioner who isnt responsive to the added stresses that some black people are feeling.For people worried about costs, Dr. Bradford said some individual therapists and apps such as Talkspace offer free appointments, and a number of health insurers have been waiving co-payments for people to speak to therapists virtually during the coronavirus.And nonprofit groups including the Loveland Foundation, Open Path Psychotherapy Collective and the Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation offer financial assistance or lower-cost options for people who are seeking therapy.Before we go Never waste a crisis, I guess? Companies are repurposing their technology products as untested and sometimes comical-sounding coronavirus-fighting systems. My colleagues Natasha Singer and Julie Creswell write about software for tracking product inventory that has been remade into an employee virus-tracking system. Income verification software has been pitched for workers to report their health status to employers.I want to know everything about K-pop fans: The New York Times pop music writer Joe Coscarelli explains the internet might of Korean pop music fans, who often use their online savvy to support their favorite boy bands and now are taking credit for helping inflate attendance expectations for President Trumps Tulsa rally.Also, read the Times Opinion writer Charlie Warzel fretting about oversimplifying young peoples motivations in the online information wars.Your regular reminder to be cautious of what you see and share online: A Times team found 41 U.S. cities and towns where false rumors spread about anti-fascist activists coming to cause mayhem. Davey Alba and Ben Decker traced the origins of how friends, neighbors and trusted businesses in four towns sometimes unwittingly spread bogus fears and forced law enforcement to respond.Hugs to thisRescued baby swans! Look how fuzzy they are! (Thanks to my colleague Dodai Stewart for sharing this one.)We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else youd like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. Get this newsletter in your inbox every weekday; please sign up here.
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Credit...Kim Hong-Ji/ReutersJune 18, 2018WASHINGTON The Pentagon announced on Monday that it was suspending a major military exercise with South Korea that President Trump had criticized as a waste of money.The decision to cancel at least for now the large-scale, long-planned Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise set for August had been expected after Mr. Trumps surprise announcement in Singapore that he was ending joint military exercises as an inducement for North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program.Consistent with President Trumps commitment and in concert with our Republic of Korea ally, the United States military has suspended all planning for this Augusts defensive war game, the Pentagon spokeswoman, Dana W. White, said in a statement released on Monday night.We are still coordinating additional actions, Ms. White added. No decisions on subsequent war games have been made.Defense Department officials had said on Friday that they expected the exercise to be canceled or scaled back, and that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and his South Korean counterpart, Song Young-moo, discussed canceling the exercises during a telephone call on Thursday.The possibility was kicked around last week of shrinking the sprawling Ulchi Freedom Guardian down to a so-called tabletop exercise, which would be less visible but stop short of a cancellation. But Mr. Trumps assertion that he was canceling war games made it difficult to conduct the exercise in any form without the risk that North Koreas leader, Kim Jong-un, would accuse the United States of failing to keep its word.Mr. Mattis will meet at the Pentagon later this week with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the national security adviser, John R. Bolton, to discuss the issue, Ms. White said in the statement, adding that it will not affect exercises in the Pacific outside the Korean Peninsula.Last year the Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise ran for 11 days and involved 17,500 American forces, including about 3,000 from outside the peninsula, and 50,000 South Korean troops. The exercise includes computer simulations carried out in a large bunker south of the capital, Seoul, intended to check the allies readiness to repel aggressions by North Korea.The announcement on Monday seemed to clear the way for routine training between American and South Korean troops that takes place throughout the year, culminating in major war games in the spring and summer.Current and former Pentagon officials and senior military officers have said the United States combat readiness would not suffer dramatically by skipping one major war game, but that could shift dramatically if several big exercises were canceled over time.Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., a former head of the Pentagons Pacific Command and the administrations nominee to be United States ambassador to South Korea, said at his Senate confirmation hearing last week that he supported suspending the war game in August.We should give exercises, major exercises, a pause to see if Kim Jong-un is in fact serious about his part of the negotiations, Admiral Harris said. Ive spoken in the past about the need to bring Kim Jong-un to his senses and not to his knees.After the summit meeting in Singapore last week, Mr. Trump characterized the annual exercises as very provocative a description that aligns with North Koreas views and sharply deviates from those of his own Defense Department. The Pentagon has long insisted that the exercises are not meant to provoke North Korea; rather, military officials said, they underline the United States commitment to its allies in the region and seek to ensure that South Korea, in particular, can defend itself.As of Monday, the Pentagon still did not have an answer to Mr. Trumps other big complaint: the cost of the war games.Officials said that was still under review.
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Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesFeb. 18, 2014KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia Yankees-Red Sox. North Carolina-Duke. Real Madrid-Barcelona.There are fierce rivalries throughout sports, but when it comes to cross-country skiing, nothing tops Norway-Sweden. The two powerhouses have battled for decades for supremacy on the trails, and for many years the Norwegians have come out on top. It is their national sport, and they take particular pride in beating their bigger Scandinavian cousin.But a strange thing has been taking place here the last 10 days: Sweden has been beating Norway, sometimes badly, including in the all-important team relays over the weekend a kind of Super Bowl of cross-country skiing in which Sweden won both golds and Norway was shut out of the medals.With four cross-country events left, Sweden has won nine medals to Norways seven. (Every other nation combined has eight.) Norwegian news outlets have used words like catastrophe and disaster. Social media in the country are abuzz with calls for answers.The turning of the tables has the Norwegian skiers and their handlers looking for scapegoats, starting with the wax that is critical to providing traction or glide on the trails. Norways wax technicians, considered some of the best, have been unable to find the right mix for the warm weather here.Ive been working very hard for many years to do well here, said Chris Andre Jespersen, part of Norways 4x10-kilometer mens relay team, which finished a distant fourth. When the skis are that bad, its just awful. Its not fun to race when its like this.After a disastrous weekend, Norways waxing chief, Knut Nystad, said during an unusually long news conference Monday that the inability to find the right wax for his teams skis was a crisis, deepening the feeling that the team was rattled.He also caused a kerfuffle when he said a wax supplier that he declined to identify had been sharing its stashes with other nations, but not with Norway. Talk of a so-called superwax also circulated. Suppliers were not pleased.If we did that, we would lose all credibility as a wax supplier, said Ulf Bjerknes, the chief executive of Swix Sport, a Norwegian company that supplies wax to many teams in Sochi. Cross-country skiing in Norway is a cult or religion, and when the Norwegian team lost two relays in a row, he was under a lot of pressure, he said of Nystad.Bjerknes added, There are just some teams that have tackled the conditions better than other teams, and there is no superwax.There is no evidence that the shifting balance of power in cross-country skiing will undermine the otherwise friendly relations between the Nordic neighbors. But it has, at least for now, caused so much of a stir in Norway that Prime Minister Erna Solberg weighed in on the teams losses to Sweden.The Swedes are not gloating. But they dismissed any notion that wax was to blame for Norways performance.Theres no secret, just really hard work, said Johan Olsson, a member of Swedens relay team. We made the race our own, we set the pace, and we knew we were the strongest team.Looking at the medal tables, it may be hard to see what the fuss is about. Through Tuesday, Norway had won 18 medals, behind 19 for Russia and 20 for the United States and the Netherlands. Stars like Marit Bjorgen in cross-country and up-and-comers like Kjetil Jansrud in Alpine skiing and Tiril Eckhoff in the biathlon have grabbed medals. On Tuesday, Norway won a Nordic combined and a biathlon event.But Norway will have to pick up the pace if it hopes to reach its goal of breaking its record of 26 Winter Games medals, set on its home turf in Lillehammer in 1994. Along with Norways cross-country flops, its top Alpine skier, Aksel Lund Svindal, left without a medal. The mens hockey team finished 12th out of 12 teams in the first round and was bounced from the tournament by Russia on Tuesday. The mens ski jumpers finished sixth in the team event, and the mens curlers were eliminated Tuesday.ImageCredit...Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesWell have to see on Sunday whether we get 26, but more than 20 is O.K., said Inge Andersen, the secretary general of the Norwegian Olympic Committee. The lack of medals in cross-country has been difficult for people at home, but it says everything about the interest.Interest remains high, but so does the frustration with the dozen or so cross-country technicians who have been unable to find the right balance of waxes to give their skiers an edge. With a mix of science and alchemy, technicians must gauge the condition of the snow hours before a race. Different race styles require different waxes.In wax cabins hidden from public view, workers try to find the right mix. It is messy work that requires bronze brushes, cork with sandpaper, scrapers, waxing irons and surgical masks. Glide waxes are chosen based on the estimated temperature, humidity and moisture of the snow. Kick wax, a sticky material, provides traction on the uphill portions of the course.The warm weather here has produced more moisture in the snow, and rapidly changing temperatures in a location where few Olympic teams have raced have complicated matters.It has been tricky conditions for sure, said Peter Johansson, the head wax technician for the United States cross-country team. Other teams have problems, but for the Norwegians, its such a big sport, and its closely watched they are under the eye all the time.Andersen, of the Norwegian Olympic Committee, said that perhaps Norways waxers, armed with the latest technology and a big budget, might be overthinking matters and might need to get back to basics. Sometimes, he said, we make it too complicated.Norway still has a chance to even the tally with Sweden, starting with the team sprint classic on Wednesday, in which Norway is favored. All the Norwegians are blaming their skis, but they have some mental problems, said Tomas Pettersson, a columnist who writes about cross-country skiing for the Swedish newspaper Expressen. Theyre used to being No. 1, and theyre not used to being in this position.
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Health|A second booster helped protect older people from Omicron infection, but waned quickly, an Israeli study says.https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/05/health/a-second-booster-helped-protect-older-people-from-omicron-infection-but-waned-quickly-an-israeli-study-says.htmlCredit...Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesApril 5, 2022A second booster shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine provides additional short-term protection against Omicron infections and severe illness among older adults, according to a large new study from Israel.But the boosters effectiveness against infection in particular wanes after just four weeks and almost disappears after eight weeks. Protection against severe illness did not ebb in the six weeks after the extra dose, but the follow-up period was too short to determine whether a second booster provided better long-term protection against severe disease than a single booster.The study focused on adults ages 60 and older, and did not provide data on the effectiveness of a second booster in younger populations.The findings, published on Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggest that additional boosters are likely to provide fleeting protection against Omicron infections in older recipients, and are consistent with evidence that vaccine effectiveness against infection wanes faster than against severe disease.For confirmed infection, a fourth dose appeared to provide only short-term protection and a modest absolute benefit, the researchers wrote.The results come in the midst of a debate over whether and when Americans might need additional boosters. The Food and Drug Administration is convening a panel of outside advisers on Wednesday for discussion on the broader U.S. booster strategy.The rapid spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant, which can evade some of the bodys immune defenses, has intensified the discussion of whether second boosters are broadly necessary.Last month, the F.D.A. authorized second booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines for adults ages 50 and older, as well as immunocompromised people ages 12 and older. The agency also authorized an mRNA booster for adults who have already received two doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.Its likely to be a tough sell: While 66 percent of Americans have been vaccinated, just 30 percent have received a booster shot.It is clear that the Omicron variant has blunted the effectiveness of Covid vaccines, but data on the benefits of a second booster remains limited. A previous study from Israel, which has not yet been published in a scientific journal, found that older adults who received a second booster were 78 percent less likely to die of Covid-19 than those who had received just one booster shot.But scientists criticized the studys methodology, and the benefits of a second booster for young, healthy adults are less clear. Some experts note that most adults who have been vaccinated and boosted once are already likely to be protected from severe illness and death.On Jan. 2, Israel authorized a fourth dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for adults ages 60 and older and members of other high-risk populations who had received their third shots at least four months earlier. Israels vaccination campaign has relied heavily on the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.The new study is based on records from the Israeli Ministry of Health on more than 1.2 million older adults who were eligible for the fourth shot between Jan. 10 and March 2, when Omicron was the dominant variant in the country.The researchers compared the rate of confirmed virus infections and cases of severe Covid-19 among those who had received a fourth dose to those who had received just three doses.Protection against infection appeared to peak four weeks after the fourth shot: the rate of confirmed infections was twice as high in the three-dose group as in the four-dose group. By eight weeks after the fourth shot, however, the additional protection against infection had almost disappeared, the researchers found.Rates of severe disease were 3.5 times higher in the three-dose group than the four-dose group four weeks after the booster shot, the researchers found. That protection did not appear to wane and actually ticked up slightly by the sixth week after the shot, when rates of severe disease were 4.3 times higher in the three-dose group.But the study covered a relatively short period, and whether the benefits against illness hold up over the longer term remains unknown. The study did not report data on deaths.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/technology/personaltech/free-movies-public-domain.htmlTECH TIPLike books that have lost copyright protection, thousands of movies are in the public domain to watch on your computer or mobile device, or through a set-top TV box.June 26, 2018Q. Amazon and other e-bookstores have a free section of old books in the public domain. Is there a similar place to find old movies that have lost their copyright and that I can legally watch for free on my phone or computer?A. Thousands of films have either lost their copyright or been released into the public domain by their owners, and you can find them in several repositories around the web. Many of the available movies are from the mid-20th century and include works in a variety of genres, including the 1940 comedy His Girl Friday, with Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant; the 1946 Judy Garland musical Till the Clouds Roll By; and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, a 1964 science-fiction romp. ImageCredit...The New York TimesWikipedia has a long list of the major films in the public domain you can browse to get a better idea of whats out there. The visual quality of the digitized movies may vary, but free is free.With its colossal amount of content, YouTube is one place to browse. Some users have created channels devoted to public-domain films you can find by searching the site. In addition to its desktop website, YouTube has mobile apps for streaming video on the go; you can also lean back and watch at home through the YouTube app on many set-top TV boxes.Some websites devoted to collections of public-domain films may simply link to content on YouTube anyway, as the Public Domain Flix site does. Public Domain Movies also has an organized collection of free movies, along with links to download MP4 copies to watch or copy to a mobile device when you have no internet connection.The Internet Archive is another vast online vault of old movies to stream or download, including a large selection of feature films. The site also hosts thousands of short-format movies, video clips from NASA and the quirky Prelinger Archives of industrial and public service films among its extensive collection.Personal Tech invites questions about computer-based technology to techtip@nytimes.com. This column will answer questions of general interest, but letters cannot be answered individually.
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Soccer|Liverpool and Manchester City Will Play at Yankee Stadiumhttps://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/sports/soccer/liverpool-and-manchester-city-will-play-at-yankee-stadium.htmlFeb. 20, 2014Liverpool and Manchester City will play at Yankee Stadium on July 30 as part of a multicity preseason tournament featuring some of Europes top soccer clubs.The eight-team tournament, the International Champions Cup, will take place from July 26 to Aug. 4 and include games in nearly a dozen American cities: Denver, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Washington, Dallas, New York, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Charlotte and Miami.Liverpool and Manchester City will be joined in the field by their Premier League rival Manchester United, as well as the Italian giants A.C. Milan, Internazionale and Roma. Real Madrid, which won the tournament last year, will return, and Olympiakos of Greece will complete the field.In every case, the teams rosters could be affected by this years World Cup, which ends July 13 and might preclude some top players from taking part. Spain, England, Italy and Greece have all qualified for the World Cup, and most of the clubs also employ players from various countries that could make deep runs in the tournament.Still, the commitments from so many top clubs indicate a continued willingness to market themselves to a growing and increasingly knowledgable American soccer audience. The tournament will mark Citys second straight summer tour of the United States and the second year in a row the club has played at Yankee Stadium. Liverpool last played in North America in 2012, when it visited Boston, Toronto and Baltimore. United is embarking on its first American tour since 2011.Milan and Inter, like Real Madrid, played in the I.C.C. tournament last year. Roma has spent its past two preseason in the United States; last year, it served as the opponent in the M.L.S. All-Star game.Its really all about branding, the former Manchester City forward Mike Summerbee said. Everybody wants to come and play in America.A second game in the New York metropolitan area will pit Milan against Olympiakos at Citi Field on July 24.The clubs are divided into two groups for the tournament. Group A consists of Manchester United, Real Madrid, Inter and Roma, with Group B made up of Liverpool, City, Olympiakos and Milan. Each team will play the other clubs in its group once, and the group winners will meet in the final at SunLife Stadium outside Miami on Aug. 4.
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BitsCredit...Suzie Howell for The New York TimesMay 24, 2019Each week, we review the weeks news, offering analysis about the most important developments in the tech industry. Want this newsletter in your inbox? Sign up here.Hi, Im Jamie Condliffe. Greetings from London. Heres a look at the weeks tech news:President Trumps latest swipe at Huawei could be the start of a deep transformation of the tech sector.Citing national security concerns, the Commerce Department said this month that American companies would need special permission to sell some products to Huawei and other Chinese companies. This past week, things escalated.Companies including Google, Qualcomm and Broadcom froze some of the supply of products to the Chinese technology giant. (Google, for instance, will no longer offer Huawei the full version of its Android operating system.) The crackdown may expand, with a ban on sales to Chinese surveillance companies possible.Third-country suppliers also need a license to sell products to Huawei if content from the United States contributes more than 25 percent to their value, and the British semiconductor designer ARM said it would stop licensing technology to Huaweis chip unit. (Mobile carriers in Britain also stopped offering Huawei phones to some customers, over Android support concerns.)What now? The United States government offered a 90-day grace period for some transactions between American companies and Huawei. That doesnt mean much, Ren Zhengfei, Huaweis founder, said, but it could signal that the overarching ban is little more than short-lived trade posturing.Still, the Trump administration has spoken repeatedly about its desire to blunt Chinas technological development, and China threatened to retaliate. So this could be the start of a long fight the raising of a digital Iron Curtain, as my colleague Li Yuan put it.This is a turning point, said Xiaolan Fu, the director of the Technology and Management Center for Development at Oxford University. It is changing the direction to a more closed, protectionist approach.If the freeze-out persists, the near term looks rough for Huaweis smartphone division. It has stockpiled Western chips, maintained supply from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (the worlds largest contract chip maker) and developed its own phone software. But it could be crippled by an inability to source components and may struggle to find markets outside China for its devices.In the long term, the ban could push the world toward divided technologies.The lesson the Chinese have taken from the Trump administrations trade strategy is that the U.S. is pursuing a technology containment approach, said Adam Segal, the director of the digital and cyberspace policy program at the Council on Foreign Relations. The solution is independence something China has pushed for by encouraging domestic tech prowess, including in chip production.I think we are moving toward a bifurcated technology system, Mr. Segal said. China uses Chinese products, and America uses American products.A big question then: Which side do other countries take? The United States probably assumes the West will follow its lead. But nations like Britain and Germany arent yielding to American pressure to block Huawei from building next-generation 5G wireless networks over national security risks.Poorer countries are likely to be won over by price: Huawei is one of the leading, and cheapest, developers of 5G technology. For some countries wanting to jump-start economies with fast wireless networks, siding with China may be the only option.Such fragmentation may affect consumers. Ms. Fu points out that in a globalized economy, manufacturing takes place in the most efficient location.A move to protectionism would prompt China and the United States to relocate production domestically, or at least to ally nations, which could drive up prices of devices. And the development and deployment of 5G in a fragmented environment could lack economies of scale afforded by globalism, Mr. Segal said. That could potentially delay its rollout and increase cost.Welcome to techs Cold War.Qualcomms court lossGeopolitics isnt the only force of change in the smartphone industry: So is the tech industrys new obsession, antitrust.On Tuesday, Judge Lucy Koh of United States District Court in San Jose, Calif., ruled that Qualcomm had suppressed competition in the smartphone chip market and charged onerous fees for the use of its patents.Qualcomms licensing practices have strangled competition, she wrote. It must now strike new licensing agreements and be monitored for seven years to ensure compliance.Phone makers, particularly Apple, had bristled at Qualcomms royalties, which could be as high as 5 percent of a handsets wholesale price. (Apple turned the other cheek and settled its royalty case with Qualcomm last month, sacrificing $27 billion in damages and making a payment of at least $4.5 billion to use Qualcomms 5G chips.) So the ruling could reduce costs for smartphone makers and consumers.It also undercuts Qualcomms business model, which is largely based on profits from patent fees. It could also complicate efforts by the United States to assert itself in the creation of 5G networks.Americas first A.I. rulesThe Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development announced a set of principles on Wednesday to guide the development of artificial intelligence. Conspicuous by its presence on the list of nations backing the rules: the United States.The Trump administration long shied away from such policies. But as my colleague Steve Lohr reported in April, it was spurred into action by a wave of tech regulation particularly Europes new General Data Protection Regulation. The realization: Regulations that would affect the nations tech industry were coming, and federal officials needed to participate if they were to shape them.So the administration decided to collaborate with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and this is the first time that it has formally endorsed a set of international A.I. guidelines.The guidelines which suggest that A.I. should benefit people and the planet, and be designed to respect the rule of law and human rights, among other things arent legally binding.But Jack Clark, the head of policy at OpenAI, an artificial intelligence lab in San Francisco, said it was quite significant that the United States had signed on to them. It is, he said, a sign that the administration is putting its weight behind the development of A.I.Some stories you shouldnt miss Big Tech seized the protectionist narrative. Executives have suggested that strict regulation of their companies could hand advantages to the Chinese. Cleaning up Facebook brings its A.I. whiz to tears. When its chief technology officer discussed the complexity of using artificial intelligence to cure toxic content problems, he welled up. Tech jobs have the potential to propel people into the middle class. But so far, such results have been few and far between. Google Glass still exists. The latest incarnation of the smart spectacles, heavily upgraded and priced at $999, is still firmly aimed at workplace users. Theres bipartisan support for facial recognition regulation. At a House committee hearing on Wednesday, lawmakers agreed that it seems to infringe civil liberties. Hackers have held Baltimore hostage. A ransomware attack took down services including systems used to pay bills, fines and taxes. Voice assistants are fueling gender bias. Their typically female voices and often submissive styles reinforce problematic stereotypes, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization says. Your post could be delivered by robots. Kind of: The United States Postal Service is testing autonomous trucks. The most popular lines in Amazons cashierless stores? Snacks.
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Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesFeb. 12, 2014SOCHI, Russia Wednesday was supposed to provide the latest milestone moment in a career full of them for the American Shani Davis. Instead, it featured another dominant performance by the mighty Dutch speedskating team.Davis failed in his bid to become the first male speedskater to win three consecutive Olympic gold medals in the same event, managing only an eighth-place finish in the 1,000 meters.Stefan Groothuis of the Netherlands atoned for a fall in the 500 meters and won the gold medal. Denny Morrison of Canada took silver, and Michel Mulder of the Netherlands, winner of the 500, won the bronze.ImageCredit...Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesThe result was almost an underachievement for the Dutch men, who had claimed all three medals in both the 500 and the 5,000 meters at these Games. The Dutch women have won two medals in two events, including a gold.Davis took to the ice in the third-from-last pairing, chasing a leading time of 1 minute 8.39 seconds, a track record set by Groothuis. He fell off the pace quickly, and he knew it. I could see my split time, so I knew it wasnt good enough, Davis said. He finished in 1:09.12.I honestly couldnt tell you what it was, he said. Theres no excuse. Nothing physically went wrong.Davis, 31, from Chicago, has been the dominant speedskater at the middle distances for almost a decade. He has 48 World Cup medals in the 1,000 meters in his career, and 26 more in the 1,500.In winning the 1,000 at the 2006 Games, Davis became the first African-American to win an individual Winter Olympic gold medal. In 2010, he became the first man to repeat in the event.The world-record holder, at 1:06.42, Davis had won three of the four World Cup events at 1,000 meters this year, and he was a clear favorite to win again Wednesday.Groothuis is also a veteran, at 32, but he had never won an Olympic medal. He was fourth in this event at the 2010 Vancouver Games. It was really unexpected, he said Wednesday. The last two Olympics werent my favorite thing, and I was happy to go home, but now its different.Davis still has a chance for a medal Saturday in the 1,500 meters. He won silver medals in that event in the last two Winter Olympics and said he had hope for the race. But he acknowledged the strength of the Dutch team.Obviously I will have to figure something out really quick, he said.
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A new report from the inspector generals office criticized insurers for overstating patients illnesses without adequate documentation to obtain more federal money. Credit...Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call, via Associated PressDec. 12, 2019A government report released Thursday found health insurance companies had combed through patient charts to obtain billions of dollars of additional payments from the federal Medicare program. The report, from the federal inspector generals office, examined payments billed by insurers for those covered by private Medicare Advantage plans, which are increasingly popular and heavily promoted by the Trump administration. The findings showed that insurers were adding on conditions like diabetes and even cancer, reporting that patients were sicker, to receive higher payments from Medicare. While the inspector generals office did not conclude that insurers were overbilling the program, it raised concerns about whether the payments were justified and whether patients were getting appropriate care.About 21 million people enrolled in these private plans in 2018, accounting for well over a third of those covered under the federal insurance program for those who are over 65 or have disabilities. Of the $711 billion spent last year on the Medicare program, $210 billion went to Medicare Advantage. Not only has the administration increased allocations for the private plans, it also has permitted them to offer more benefits like telemedicine visits and transportation for medical appointments to attract customers. Trump officials have heralded the administrations efforts to expand the private plans as one of its most significant health care achievements. What works in the Medicare program is Medicare Advantage because plans are competing on the basis of cost and quality, driving toward value and increasing choice to beneficiaries, Seema Verma, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in a recent speech. Ms. Verma has pointed to the additional number of plans and lower premiums as evidence of the programs success.But Medicare Advantage plans have come under intensive scrutiny for their use of additional diagnoses to justify receiving higher payments from the government. The report cited one Medicare estimate that the program distributed $40 billion in overpayments from 2013 and 2016 to plans that included diagnoses that were not supported by a patients medical records. The Justice Department has brought several lawsuits against health plans for overbilling the government.An earlier report from the inspector generals office also raised concerns about Medicare Advantage, concluding last year that plans were inappropriately denying medical claims as a way to increase profits.The agency has ongoing work in Medicare Advantage, said Linda Ragone, a regional inspector general in Philadelphia and an author of the report. The inspector general conducted the study to examine how health plans were using a patients chart to justify higher payments, and whether Medicare should more closely monitor how the plans used patient information in billing the program and caring for patients, she said.Virtually all of the reviews used by the insurers led to reporting additional diagnoses, like heart disease or cancer, amounting to an additional $6.7 billion in payments in 2017, according to the report.The report also found that almost half of the insurers received higher payments for patient illnesses, although there was no documentation that medical care for those conditions had been provided. The discrepancy could indicate the insurers may not have provided appropriate treatments and services to individuals with serious illnesses, the authors said.Health insurers said the report was based on old and incomplete information, using what is called encounter data rather than an actual review of medical records. It wasnt examining medical care and whether that care or payments were appropriate, said Kristine Grow, a spokeswoman for Americas Health Insurance Plans, a trade association in Washington.But the reports authors said use of that data was accepted by both Medicare and the plans. C.M.S. has been working with the plans to ensure the data is correct, Ms. Ragone said.In its recommendations, the inspector generals report said that Medicare should provide more oversight of the plans use of chart reviews, including audits to verify the addition of patient diagnoses. It also said the agency should consider the effect of allowing the plans to conduct chart reviews that were not linked to actual service records to determine payments.While a spokesman for Medicare raised questions about the reliability of the reports findings, it agreed with the recommendations. The agency will ensure that Medicare Advantage plans submit accurate information, a spokesman said in an emailed statement. [Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]
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Credit...Center for Strategic and International StudiesMarch 4, 2017Washington usually cloaks its most critical defense programs in secrecy.But in the case of using cyberstrikes, electronic warfare and other exotic forms of sabotage to redefine antimissile defense for the United States, many high-ranking officials and officers have been talking openly, often to persuade Congress to fund the secretive efforts.The public conversation about the new antimissile approach, known as left of launch, has been careful. Typically, military leaders and contractors have spoken vaguely about technologies and targets. But at moments they have also declared that it is all about North Korea and Iran, at least for now.The idea is to strike an enemy missile before liftoff or during the first seconds of flight. The old approach waited until much later after swarms of warheads had been released, had traveled thousands of miles and were racing toward targets at speeds in excess of four miles a second.Officials have praised left-of-launch strikes as a novel way of knocking out enemy missiles at a tiny fraction of the usual cost. In presentations and congressional testimony, senior officials have described the method as a potentially revolutionary way to strengthen the defenses of the United States.The public unveiling began in late 2013 when Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nations highest-ranking military officer, warned of falling budgets and rising missile threats. That dilemma, he wrote in a policy guidance document for American troops, called for the development of unconventional defenses that would be far cheaper than traditional rocket interceptors.In 2014, Adm. James A. Winnefeld Jr., vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told the Atlantic Council that left-of-launch strikes would, by definition, remain a novel adjunct to wider antimissile efforts.While we would still obviously prefer to take a threat missile out while its still on the ground, he said, we wont always have the luxury of doing so. The result, he added, would be the continuing need for solid right-of-launch capability in other words, the traditional methods.In 2015, top antimissile experts gathered at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. Archer M. Macy Jr., a retired Navy rear admiral, said the Defense Department was developing ways not only of preventing successful missile launches but of interfering in their flights and navigation.Kenneth E. Todorov, a retired Air Force brigadier general, raised the question of how to authorize what would amount to pre-emptive war of attacking first to gain a strategic advantage. Are we, as a military and a nation, he asked, prepared to go after potential targets in advance? No consensus emerged.Raytheon, the nations top antimissile contractor, went wide rather than deep. In a conference presentation, it disclosed that the new developments included not just cyber and electronic strikes but the targeting of enemy factories, hinting at industrial sabotage. The glossy presentation included a lineup of sophisticated adversaries, including Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader.Last year, the Pentagons budget request for 2017 said an antimissile program known as Nimble Fire had advanced General Dempseys goals by exploring electronic attack and offensive cyber operations. The details, it said, were classified secret.In April, a number of budget hearings in the House and Senate focused on left-of-launch programs. Some of the most revealing testimony came before Senator Jeff Sessions, then chairman of the Strategic Forces subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee and now attorney general.Vice Adm. James D. Syring of the Navy, director of the Pentagons Missile Defense Agency, described left-of-launch strikes and other unorthodox approaches as game changing because they reduced the need to rely exclusively on expensive interceptors.Brian P. McKeon, then the Pentagons under secretary of defense for policy, said the Defense Department sought new and old antimissile arms to deal with the threat of missiles from either North Korea or Iran. Of all the nations that might threaten the United States, he noted in his testimony, those two countries are driving our investments.At a House hearing, Adm. William E. Gortney, then head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which has the responsibility for firing the nations antimissile weapons in time of war, was asked what Congress should do to ensure our military forces can execute left-of-launch strikes.Admiral Gortney said that in the committees secret session he could discuss the development of classified technologies where investments are absolutely critical.
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United States 5, Slovenia 1Credit...Larry W. Smith/European Pressphoto AgencyFeb. 16, 2014SOCHI, Russia Both goaltenders making their Sochi Games debuts in Sundays round-robin game between the United States and Slovenia had a certain measure of international success in 2010.The American Ryan Miller won a silver medal at the Vancouver Olympics and was named the tournaments most valuable player. The Slovene Luka Gracnar was on the inline hockey team that placed fifth in Sweden at the world championships.Miller, 33, entered the N.H.L. with the Buffalo Sabres when he was 22 and won the Vezina Trophy in 2010. Gracnar, 20, whose dream is to one day play in the N.H.L., has already cradled the Stanley Cup. His countryman Anze Kopitar, a forward for the Los Angeles Kings, took the trophy to their hometown, Jesenice, after the Kings beat the Devils in the 2012 finals.The gap in experience between Miller and Gracnar was glaring on Sunday, but no more so than the divide between the seasoned American skaters and their counterparts from Slovenia, which is competing in mens hockey at the Olympics for the first time.Gracnar, who plays for E.C. Red Bull in Salzburg, Austria, was not prepared for the speed of the American forward Phil Kessel, who flew in from the neutral zone and fired the first shot of the game, with 64 seconds gone, into the back of the net. He scored again in the fifth minute and finished with a natural hat trick, and Miller made 17 saves as the Americans cruised to a 5-1 win at Shayba Arena. Kessels hat trick was the first by an American since John LeClair scored three goals against Finland at the 2002 Salt Lake Games.The victory propelled the United States into a Wednesday quarterfinal against the winner of a Czech Republic-Slovakia qualification-round match Tuesday.Miller, who sat without complaint as Jonathan Quick started the first two games of these Olympics, lost his shutout bid with 18 seconds remaining in the game. Marcel Rodman scored on a screened shot, a goal Miller described as unfortunate. In the big picture, the win was all that mattered. Though Miller was fresh, he said he could tell that his teammates, who defeated Russia in a shootout 24 hours earlier, were struggling. You can see some fatigue setting in, he said. Thats why it was important to win today.The difficulty of getting back up to play the day after an emotionally charged game was also borne out by the Russians, who were extended to a shootout by Slovakia at the same time as the United States-Slovenia game.Russias Alexander Radulov, whose play against the Americans was roundly criticized, and Ilya Kovalchuk, formerly of the Devils, got consecutive shots past Slovakia goaltender Jan Laco in the shootout to secure the 1-0 victory.Russia will face Norway in the qualification round, with the winner meeting Finland in the quarterfinals on Wednesday. Canada, which beat Finland, 2-1, in overtime on Sunday, heads to the quarterfinal round to face the winner of Latvia-Switzerland. The other quarterfinal qualifier, Sweden, will play the winner of Slovenia-Austria.Slovenia was also coming off an emotional game, a 3-1 victory over Slovakia on Saturday. The win was the teams first in Olympic competition, a major achievement for a country that has seven hockey rinks and fewer than 200 registered senior-level players.Kopitar is the only Slovene player in the N.H.L., and he missed the third period Sunday because of a stomach virus that sapped his energy. He did not have a shot in the 11 minutes 31 seconds he spent on the ice. The Slovenes were also without Sabahudin Kovacevic, second to Kopitar in minutes in the first two games, who was serving a one-game suspension for a hard elbow to the neck of Slovakias Tomas Kopecky.Kopitars father, Matjaz, is the Slovene coach, and he made no apologies for starting Gracnar, who made 23 saves, over the 30-year-old Robert Kristan, who had a save percentage of .905 in the first two games.While the United States is playing for the gold medal here, Slovenia is playing for the future, one that it hopes includes many more Olympic appearances.His goals in hockey are high, also, Matjaz Kopitar said, referring to Gracnar. We just gave him a chance. He deserved it. I hope hes going to get something from this game. I hope he learns how to play against these superstars.Gracnar said it was kind of a dream come true to start against the Americans. Its a good experience for me to see where I am, to see if I can compete against these guys, he said.When Miller was Gracnars age, he was at Michigan State testing himself against the likes of Michigan and Notre Dame. He said he could not imagine facing at 20 the likes of Kessel and T. J. Oshie, the shootout star against Russia, who received the loudest cheer during the player introductions Sunday.In the 24 hours since his star turn in the Americans win over Russia, Oshie had gained more than 100,000 followers on Twitter and received a congratulatory tweet from President Obama.How can you top that one? Oshie said.Against Slovenia, Oshie picked up an assist on the Americans fourth goal, by Ryan McDonagh; killed penalties with his usual aplomb; and logged 14:40.Oshie seemed to be taking his celebrity in stride. People are probably going to be bored by my tweets, he said, and hit the unfollow button.
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Credit...Darek Delmanowicz/EPA, via ShutterstockNov. 5, 2018WARSAW Despite making major gains in provincial assemblies, Polands populist ruling party suffered a sweeping defeat in municipal voting in a set of elections that concluded on Sunday, confirming that Poland is a nation ever more deeply divided between its liberal cities and its conservative countryside.In elections for local and regional offices around the country, the governing Law and Justice won just four of 107 mayoral races, down from the 11 it won four years ago.Yet the party secured the most seats in nine out of 16 provincial assemblies and won outright majorities in six of them a significant gain from the one provincial government it controlled after the elections in 2014.The recent elections, which were the first nationwide vote since Law and Justice swept to power in a parliamentary vote in 2015, had the highest turnout in local contests since the fall of communism in 1989. The turnout in the first round of balloting was 17 to 20 percentage points higher than that four years ago, and the turnout in the runoff round, which is usually lower, was in many places almost identical to that from the first round, said Lukasz Pawlowski, the head of the Institute of Local Government Studies.This never happens, he said. The emotions from the three years of Law and Justice in power are running incredibly high.The ruling party appears to have gained strength in poor and rural communities where its generous social policies, anti-immigrant sentiment, skepticism of the European Union, and message of national pride steeped in conservative values resonate most. But it lost ground among the more liberal, pro-European electorate in urban areas, failing to capture mayoralties in any of the major cities like Warsaw, Krakow, Wroclaw, Gdansk and Lodz.That schism seems likely to continue into parliamentary elections next year.Law and Justice led the balloting for provincial assemblies four years ago, but in several states it remained out of power, as opposition parties were able to piece together governing majorities. Its improved showing this year will give it outright control of several regions, though it remains to be seen whether it can form coalitions in others.The first round of local voting was held on Oct. 21, though many of the results were not clear for days. In races for provincial assemblies, the leading candidates won even if they attracted less than 50 percent of the vote; in a mayoral election, if no one won a majority in the first round, a runoff was held on Sunday between the top two finishers.ImageCredit...Agencja Gazeta/ReutersIn many cities, notably Warsaw, opposition candidates for mayor unexpectedly won in the first round, without runoffs.In the big cities, thousands of demonstrators have regularly filled the streets to protest government changes to the judicial system, including the forced retirement of more than two dozen Supreme Court judges. Critics say the changes undermine the independence of Polish courts.The governments attempts to reshape the judiciary have been deemed by the European Commission a severe threat to the rule of law. Poland became the first member of the bloc to trigger a process that could lead to it being stripped of its voting rights.Two weeks ago, the European Unions top court ordered Poland to suspend the law that purged the Supreme Court. It is not yet clear how the government will respond.By Monday afternoon, most senior officials from the ruling party had yet to comment on the final election results.Jaroslaw Sellin, a Law and Justice lawmaker and deputy minister of culture, said on Monday that his party has a problem in big cities that are the base of the left-wing and centrist electorate.Mr. Sellin said that ahead of elections next year for the European Parliament and the national Parliament, the party will have to analyze the problem thoroughly.Well try to show these Poles that all the good policies of the current government are dedicated also to them, he said in an interview with a private news channel, TVN24.Grzegorz Schetyna, leader of the biggest opposition party, Civic Platform, said on Sunday that Poles have demonstrated through great mobilization and high turnout that they want to defend the independence of institutions, the independence of local governments.Im convinced that next year, in the European election, Poles will also defend Polands place in Europe, and then, in the national election, they will defend our democracy, he told his supporters.
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AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySports BriefingBy The Associated PressFeb. 6, 2014Marin Cilic of Croatia advanced to the Zagreb Indoors quarterfinals in Croatia by beating Dusan Lajovic of Serbia, 6-4, 7-5. Cilic, the defending champion, has a 16-1 record in his last five appearances at Zagreb, winning titles in 2009, 2010 and 2013. AdvertisementContinue reading the main story
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Mally Mall Trump's Good for Economy ... It's the Racist Stuff I Hate 1/26/2018 TMZ.com Mally Mall doesn't have a problem with the way Donald Trump is handling the economy, only with how the prez handles the American people. We got Mally Mall heading into Lucky Strike in Hollywood Thursday night and surprisingly the rapper had something nice to say about Trump, but only when it comes to the way 45 does business for America. Trump's been shaking the U.S. economy, first by pulling America out of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiated under the Obama administration and now enforcing trade laws. The TTP is now an 11-nation pact that will be signed in March, without the U.S. Mall says he doesn't mind Trump shaking the economy, but when it comes to the people, Trump's been "too real" and needs to stop making racist comments.
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Credit...Poras Chaudhary for The New York TimesMarch 9, 2017NEW DELHI The United States and India were at loggerheads on Thursday over Compassion International, a Colorado-based Christian charity that was forced to shut its Indian operations after 48 years over accusations that it had converted Indians to Christianity.Leaders of the charity complained this week that they were being forced out of India without an opportunity to review the evidence or respond to the accusations.Mark Toner, a spokesman for the State Department, said that Washington would raise the issue with India, and he urged New Delhi to work transparently and cooperatively in enforcing laws regulating foreign aid.Unfortunately, weve seen over the past couple of years a number of foreign-funded NGOs in India that have encountered significant challenges in continuing their operations, he said.These NGOs do valuable work, he added. Certainly, these countries and governments have their own reasons for the laws they pass, but we believe it should be transparent and clear why theyre shutting down these organizations.Gopal Baglay, a spokesman for Indias Ministry of External Affairs, responded hours later, calling the decision a matter of law enforcement, a matter pertaining to following the laid-down laws of the country.Mr. Baglay also dismissed an account by the charitys executives saying that they had been approached in the United States by a representative of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a right-wing Hindu organization associated with the party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and had been offered leniency on the condition that they distribute donations through non-Christian service groups.As far as the alleged role of the R.S.S., he said, I will mention for the benefit of the audience here that any such suppositions are completely extraneous to the matter.Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh also took the rare step of rebutting Compassion Internationals account of a back-channel negotiation with a representative in the United States, describing it as unfair and totally false.The Hindu organization works only in India and has no representative in any foreign country, including U.S.A., said the statement, which was signed by a spokesman, Manmohan Vaidya.The statement went on to condemn a recent New York Times article as an attempt by N.Y.T. to malign the image of R.S.S.Indian officials say the charitys partners in the country had violated the law by engaging in religious activities despite being registered as a social, cultural, economic and cultural organization.They also say Compassion International had declined a government offer to re-register as a religious organization, which would have allowed it to continue its work in India.India has long had a law regulating the use of foreign aid, but Mr. Modis government has applied it more stringently than in the past, refusing to renew the registrations of more than 11,000 nongovernmental groups, most of them small operations.The Foreign Contribution Regulation Act prohibits foreign donations for activities detrimental to the national interest, including those that disturb religious harmony. Charities with religious affiliations, of which Compassion International is the largest, make up more than half of the top 15 donors to India.
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Politics|Supreme Court Wont Hear North Carolina Partisan Gerrymandering Casehttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/us/politics/supreme-court-gerrymander-voting.htmlCredit...Erin Schaff for The New York TimesJune 25, 2018WASHINGTON The Supreme Court passed up an opportunity on Monday to take another look at whether the Constitution bars extreme partisan gerrymandering, returning a case from North Carolina to a trial court there for a further examination of whether the challengers had suffered the sort of direct injury that would give them standing to sue.The move followed two decisions last week that sidestepped the main issues in partisan gerrymandering cases from Wisconsin and Maryland.The new case was an appeal from a decision in January by a three-judge panel of a Federal District Court in North Carolina. The ruling found that Republican legislators there had violated the Constitution by drawing the districts to hurt the electoral chances of Democratic candidates.The decision was the first from a federal court to strike down a congressional map as a partisan gerrymander.The judges noted that the legislator responsible for drawing the map had not disguised his intentions. I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats, said the legislator, Representative David Lewis, a Republican. So I drew this map to help foster what I think is better for the country.The plan worked. In 2016, the court said, Republican congressional candidates won 53 percent of the statewide vote. But they won in 10 of the 13 congressional districts, or 77 percent of them.The Supreme Court blocked the trial courts ruling in January, and it took no action on an appeal from state officials while it considered the Wisconsin and Maryland cases.After the court issued decisions in those cases on June 18, lawyers for the challengers filed supplemental briefs arguing that the new case, Rucho v. Common Cause, No. 17-1295, was not infected by the technical problems that stood in the way of decisions in the cases from Wisconsin and Washington.The Supreme Court has ruled that racial gerrymandering can violate the Constitution. But it has never struck down a voting map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.
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Guess Who This Puppy Lovin' Kid Turned Into! 1/24/2018 Before this red-headed pup was getting snubbed at this year's Academy Awards, she was just another puppet-playing kid growing up in Sacramento, CA. Can you guess who she is? Share on Facebook TWEET This See also celebrity kids Photo Galleries
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The agencys advice on distancing, masks and vaccination brings the coming school year a bit more into focus.Credit...Jae C. Hong/Associated PressPublished July 9, 2021Updated July 22, 2021With less than a month to go before many schools begin reopening for the fall, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday released new guidelines for preventing Covid-19 transmission in schools.The guidelines outline numerous strategies that schools can take to help keep students, teachers and staff members safe, including masking, weekly screening testing and social distancing. But the agency also stressed that schools should fully reopen even if they were not able to put in effect all of these measures.The agency also left much of the decision-making up to local officials, urging them to consider community transmission rates, vaccination coverage and other factors. This approach won praise from some experts, who said that this more nuanced approach makes sense at this stage of the pandemic but criticism from others, who said that state and local officials were not equipped to make those judgments and needed clearer guidance.Here are answers to some common questions about the new guidance.Can my child go back to school full-time in the fall?Almost certainly. The new recommendations make clear that reopening schools is a priority and that schools should not remain closed just because they cannot take all of the recommended precautions.Many families have struggled with remote instruction, which has forced parents to make do without traditional child care and left many children struggling to learn. Preliminary research suggests that the pandemic has widened inequities in education, with students of color falling further behind, compared with white students, and low-income students showing fewer gains, compared with their peers.I really appreciated the top-line focus on the most important thing that we need to have in person learning, said Dr. Benjamin Linas, an infectious disease specialist at Boston University.Virtually all of the nations major school districts plan to offer regular in-person instruction in the fall, and some are not giving parents a choice. New York City public schools, the nations largest school system, will not offer a remote learning option in the fall.Will they have to wear a mask?ImageCredit...Mary Altaffer/Associated PressIt depends.The guidelines recommend that children ages 2 or older who are not fully vaccinated should wear a mask indoors but imply that fully vaccinated students generally do not need to wear masks in the classroom.But the C.D.C. also notes that some schools may choose to require everyone to wear masks. On Friday, California said it planned to do just that. (At least eight states, on the other hand, have already forbidden mask mandates.)Even when such universal masking rules are in place, exceptions should be made for students and staff members with disabilities that make wearing a mask difficult, the guidelines said. I do appreciate that they mentioned that some kids cant wear them, said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University. I think thats really important.Masks are not generally needed outdoors, the agency said, except in limited circumstances, such as in crowded settings in areas where local transmission rates are high.What about social distancing?The agency recommended that students remain at least three feet apart from one another in the classroom, consistent with earlier guidance. Some studies have suggested that three feet of distance is enough to keep students safe when other precautions are in place.But the agency made it clear than schools that do not have the space to keep students so far apart should reopen anyway. In those cases, the guidelines said, it is particularly important to adopt other precautions, including masking, frequent virus testing and improved ventilation.The guidelines also recommend that students remain at least six feet apart from teachers and staff and that unvaccinated teachers and staff remain six feet apart from one another. A C.D.C. official said this recommendation was based on the fact that the studies that suggested three feet of distance could be safe had assessed the amount of space only between students, and not between them and adults.But some experts said that they found the varied distancing suggestions hard to follow and that schools would need clearer guidelines. Im really confused, Dr. Nuzzo said. And I can imagine that school districts that, frankly, need everything spelled out for them clearly and not in a way thats subject to interpretation are going to be really confused.Will vaccines be mandated?There is currently no major effort to mandate vaccines in K-12 schools, though that could change over time.Right now, only children 12 and up are eligible for the vaccine, leaving a huge segment of the younger student population unprotected.And the shots, including the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which is the only one available for 12- to 15-year-olds, were approved under emergency use authorization. Until vaccines are given full approval by the Food and Drug Administration, the timing of which is unclear, experts believe its unlikely that vaccines will be required for school attendance.A vaccine mandate is always a political battle, said Dorit Reiss, a law professor at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, who said that states were unlikely to push forward with mandates until a vaccine had been authorized for students of all ages, and potentially until there was full approval. I just dont see legislators wanting to go through this twice.But the United States has a long history of requiring students to be vaccinated for certain diseases from polio to measles and experts believe Covid-19 is likely to join the list at some point.In the meantime, its possible that schools could ask about the status of older students who are eligible for the vaccine. Chicago Public Schools, for example, has said it plans to ask families to submit Covid-19 vaccine information.I think you can certainly say, We need to know if you are vaccinated, said Eric A. Feldman, a professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. If you are, then X, Y and Z rules apply to you, and if you are not, a different set of rules will apply to you.As for teachers, employers generally have the right to inquire about immunization status and even require vaccination for employees, experts say, though the effort in schools may be complicated by teachers unions.The C.D.C. guidelines note that schools may offer modified job responsibilities for teachers or staff members who have not been fully vaccinated and who are at higher risk for serious Covid-19.When can my elementary schooler be vaccinated?ImageCredit...Christopher Capozziello for The New York TimesProbably sometime this fall. Pfizer has said that it plans to apply this fall for emergency authorization of its vaccine for children between 5 and 11.Moderna has said that the results from its clinical trial of young children are expected before the end of the year. The company last month applied for authorization for use of its vaccine in 12- to 17-year-olds.How worried should I be about the Delta variant?Delta, which is now the dominant variant of the virus in the United States, is highly contagious and has rapidly spread through the country in recent weeks.Fortunately, the vaccines still provide good protection against the variant, especially against the worst outcomes, like hospitalization and death. Folks who are vaccinated dont need to have personal fear of Delta, Dr. Linas said.But the variant may fuel outbreaks in unvaccinated communities and populations.We are vaccinating more people every day, but we are not on a trajectory to be able to interrupt transmission by the fall, said Dr. Sean OLeary, a pediatric infectious disease specialist in Colorado. Unless we can do that, just about everyone I know in the field is very concerned about a fall surge.Children are far less likely than adults to become ill from the virus or its variants. Fewer than 2 percent of children with Covid-19 end up in the hospital, and even fewer 0.03 percent of cases or less have died, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. A small percentage may also develop a rare but potentially serious inflammatory condition.The emergence of the Delta variant is an urgent reason to continue a variety of mitigation measures in elementary schools in particular, said Dr. Linas, who has an 11-year-old daughter who is not yet vaccinated.What other precautions does the agency recommend?The agency recommends what it calls a layered approach, suggesting that schools combine multiple mitigation strategies to reduce risk. (This has also been called the Swiss cheese model.) In addition to masking, distancing and vaccination, schools could put in effect regular screening testing for the virus. Fully vaccinated students and staff members do not need to participate in screening programs or quarantine if they have been in close contact with someone with Covid-19 unless they have symptoms, according to the guidelines.The guidelines also note the importance of ventilation, encouraging schools to bring more fresh air inside by opening doors and windows or changing the HVAC settings. Im glad to see ventilation called out specifically as a stand-alone item, said Joseph Allen, an expert on healthy buildings at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Weve been talking about this for 18 months at this point.Why isnt the C.D.C. setting specific standards for schools?At this stage of the pandemic, the agency said, one set of overarching rules does not make sense. Vaccination rates vary enormously across the country, and communities with low vaccine coverage may see significant outbreaks, especially as Delta spreads.The guidance correctly recognizes that a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach is not the best at this stage of the pandemic, Dr. Allen said. The guidance in Vermont and Massachusetts, where vaccination rates are high and case counts are low, should be different than in states where the opposite is happening.The agency recommends that officials make decisions about which precautions to apply based on local conditions, including vaccination rates, levels of community virus transmission and whether a regular testing program is in place.ImageCredit...John Moore/Getty ImagesAlthough many experts say that a local approach makes good scientific sense, flexibility also comes with risks.The lack of clear, specific guidelines is likely to leave some districts unsure how to proceed and may lead to protracted political fights over exactly how to reopen, Dr. Nuzzo said.Ultimately, experts predicted that a patchwork of different guidelines and requirements will emerge across the country.Quite honestly, I expect well see exactly what we saw last year, Dr. Allen said. And in states that are predominantly blue states, well see a very different approach to schools, even though vaccination rates are higher, than we will see in the more traditional red states, where vaccination rates have been lower and for the most part they kept schools open last year with very minimal controls.
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The new $50 gadget encapsulates a modern quandary: It wants to help you find content to watch. But you have to be willing to share your data.Credit...GoogleOct. 7, 2020Once upon a time, watching TV involved picking up a remote control, pressing the power button and flipping through channels.Boy, have things changed. When you watch TV with the new $50 Chromecast streaming stick from Google, the search giant tries to find content that you may want to watch based on what it knows about you.Before you get started, it wants you to take these steps:1. After plugging the streaming stick into the back of your TV, you press and hold two buttons on the white remote control.2. On your smartphone, you download and open the Google Home app, log in with your Google account and enter the home address where you are using the Chromecast.3. You give the app access to your smartphones location data to help find the nearby Chromecast. (Wait, didnt you just share your home address?)4. You give the Google Home app access to your phone camera to scan a bar code shown on the TV screen to link the app with the Chromecast hardware. (Wait, didnt you just give access to your location to help the phone find the Chromecast?)5. You agree to accept a Google privacy policy and to waive any rights to sue Google, via an arbitration agreement.6. You specify where the Chromecast is your living room, kitchen, bedroom or basement, for example.7. You select your Wi-Fi network to connect Chromecast to the internet.8. You are presented with the option to share more information with Google to help improve the product and services.9. Google asks you to record some voice samples so that its virtual assistant can recognize your voice.10. You pick your streaming apps, like Netflix, YouTube TV and Disney+.Rest assured, Google says you are providing this data so that it can speed up the setup process and show you personalized information, like the local weather and recommendations for TV shows and movies that you may enjoy. Sure beats flipping through a bunch of random TV channels, right?Well, heres how that went for me.Googles goal: to help the content find you.First, a primer on whats new about this Chromecast, which was unveiled last week. The streaming stick includes a remote control and a software operating system for choosing content to watch, similar to Rokus streaming products and the Apple TV set-top box.With past versions of Googles streaming stick you would open a video on your phone and press a button to cast the content to the Chromecast, meaning the phone was essentially your remote.I downloaded my favorite streaming apps to the Chromecast: Netflix, YouTube, YouTube TV, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video and HBO Max. The Chromecast then took information that Google knew about me to come up with a list of recommended programs on a page labeled For you.The For you page is the main screen of the new Chromecast. Google gathered information about activities on my Google account, like my online searches and the YouTube videos I watched, to find content I may enjoy.All told, I was disappointed. Given how much Google knows about me, I was hoping it would do a better job at predicting what I would like to see. In the top row, labeled Top picks for you, Google recommended that I watch The Wendy Williams Show, a celebrity talk show, as well as SportsCenter. (For the record, both my wife and I dont watch talk shows, and were not sports fans.)It also recommended I check out Wonder Park and Bigfoot Junior, both childrens animated movies. (We dont have children.)A few of Googles recommendations were spot on. Snowpiercer, a movie from my favorite Korean director, was a top pick. One row of recommendations was devoted to home improvement shows, which makes sense because Ive been watching dozens of do-it-yourself repair videos to work on my house amid pandemic-induced boredom. Another row presented cooking videos from YouTubers I frequently watch for inspiration in the kitchen.On the other hand, another row listed Comedies about love, including several Adam Sandler movies like Big Daddy and Mr. Deeds. (To put it lightly, I am no fan of Adam Sandler comedies.)Over all, the For you page felt like a grab bag of hits and misses. The Chromecast also has an Apps page that shows a simple grid of my streaming apps for me to open and find content by myself. Thats generally how Roku and Apple TV work, and to me, thats still a better way to watch TV.So what was that all for?I described my experience to Google and pressed the company on why it needed so much information just to set up the Chromecast.The company said the setup process with the Google Home app was an optional shortcut to skip manually entering my Google account information and password with the remote control. Granting access to the location and camera sensors was a security requirement for the setup process. Sharing my home address, it turns out, was also optional, to help Google give updates on local information like the weather.As for the inconsistent recommendations, Google said that it made suggestions from a wide variety of signals of activity on Googles products, including entertainment-related searches and programs added to my watch list, and that the picks would get better over time.So whom is the Chromecast for?I must confess that my struggle with the streaming era is never knowing what to watch. Its the paradox of choice: If we can pick from thousands of TV shows and movies, its tough to be satisfied with whatever we choose. The Chromecast, if it had worked well for me, would have helped solve that problem.Yet Im probably not the target audience: Over the years, Ive taken steps to minimize the data I share with tech companies, including Google and Facebook, and that may be largely why the Chromecasts recommendations were off the mark. So the Chromecast may work for those who dont think twice about sharing information with Google.Come to think of it, thats plenty of people.
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Credit...Gabby Jones for The New York TimesAn experiment under 4,600 feet of Italian rock wasnt immune from the pandemics interruption.Elena Aprile, a dark matter scientist and physics professor at Columbia University, was supposed to return to Italy but has been stranded in Brooklyn.Credit...Gabby Jones for The New York TimesApril 7, 2020Elena Aprile was in a race against time.Her Xenon experiment, one of the worlds largest and most expensive investigations into the nature of dark matter, was coming together beneath Gran Sasso, a mountain in Italy. But Dr. Aprile, a Columbia University physics professor, was stuck in her apartment in Brooklyn as New York entered an indeterminate period of lockdown to contain the spread of the new coronavirus, and she was living on Cheerios and milk, she said.In Italy, about a month into its own lockdown, a skeleton crew was trying to finish assembling her experiments expensive and delicate detector and safely seal it in place deep below the mountains rocks, before the virus brought down the hammer on even this much group activity.What followed was an illustration of how some science is managing to get done during a plague. At stake was perhaps nothing less than the secret of the universe.The dark sideImageCredit...Xenon Dark Matter ProjectAstronomers have reluctantly concluded over the last half-century that most of the matter in the universe is invisible. They suspect that this invisible stuff consists of giant cosmic clouds of subatomic particles called wimps, for weakly interacting massive particles, left over from the Big Bang.Mostly impervious to normal forces like electromagnetism, these particles drift through the world, and through us, like ghosts through a wall.In the quest to spot them, physicists have built a succession of bigger and bigger detectors. But as theyve gained greater and greater clarity, they have seen no wimps, which has created a crisis in physics.In the 1970s and 1980s, fashionable but speculative concepts in particle physics were devised to explain some of the deeper mysteries of fundamental physics. One, supersymmetry, suggested that the universe might be littered with undiscovered particles that could act like dark matter. But over the years, the most promising models of what these particles might have been were slowly crossed out. This leaves many of the mysteries of the universe like why stars are so big and atoms are so small with no plausible explanation.The wimp experiments keep improving. But eventually they could reach a limit called the neutrino floor, becoming so sensitive that they are overwhelmed by neutrinos, ghostly super-elusive particles that flood the universe from the sun, the stars and the Big Bang. Any wimps passing through will be impossible to discern in this sea, and there the wimp search will end.So we have a few more years where this guy can hide, but its not there yet, she said.Dr. Aprile and her team a globe-spanning confederation planned to record the pit-pat of dark matter particles raining into a tank of liquid xenon lined with 500 photomultipliers and other sensors, and placed far underground to shield it from cosmic rays. The hope was that her teams device would spot the rare collision of a wimp with a xenon nucleus, an event she estimated might happen about once a year per ton of xenon.ImageCredit...Stefano Montesi/Corbis, via Getty ImagesImageCredit...Stefano Montesi/Corbis, via Getty ImagesDr. Aprile was reluctant to put a price on the project. An earlier version of the experiment with 3.3 tons of xenon cost $30 million. But that didnt include the people, she said. A big part of the cost is xenon itself, which costs around $2 million per ton, she added. Her new detector will have 8.5 tons.A rival experiment called the LZ Dark Matter Experiment, also using eight tons of xenon, was being assembled in an old gold mine that is now the Sanford Underground Research Facility, in Lead, S.D. And there is a whole alphabet soup of other experiments stashed in old mines and tunnels around the world, with names like PandaX, DarkSide and SuperCDMS.But now coronavirus was infecting even the cosmos. Richard Gaitskell of Brown University, one of the principal scientists of the LZ experiment, said in an email that their project had temporarily been mothballed out of an abundance of caution and to allow personnel to respect shelter in place.Dr. Aprile said, All of us will have delays due to this damn thing. If one of my people gets sick, I will feel so bad.Research on the runDr. Aprile was born in Milan. To say that she lives a peripatetic life would be an understatement. She teaches at Columbia but commutes regularly to LAquila, a town in central Italy near the Gran Sasso National Laboratory, which lies off a tunnel through the mountain of the same name, beneath nearly 4,600 feet of rock.Until March she had been living the typical jet-setting life of particle physicist. In November she attended a physics conference in South Korea. In February, after a brief stop in New York, she was in Italy at Gran Sasso for three days. From there she went to a conference in South Africa, and on to the University of California, San Diego, where she was a visiting professor.Then the universities shut down. Worried about her two daughters, who live in New York, Dr. Aprile returned home. She had planned to return to Gran Sasso in early May after her professorship was done, when they would start testing and running their detector. But the virus had other plans.Stefano Ragazzi, director of the Gran Sasso lab, said that the experiments there are designed to be conducted remotely. As a result, there were only about half a dozen scientists on site in March when the coronavirus hit Italy.It is safer and easier to keep experiments running, rather than shut them off and later switch them back on, he explained, so the labs experiments have continued to operate as they would during the winter holidays.Dr. Ragazzi announced that, to ensure the safety of the people and the equipment, work in Gran Sasso would be limited only to what was necessary.Xenon was amid critical ongoing operations, Dr. Ragazzi said in an email. We asked them to come to a safe stopping point and to pause operations.ImageCredit...Andrea Sabbadini/AlamyImageCredit...Xenon Dark Matter ProjectImageCredit...Xenon Dark Matter ProjectThat stopping point would come once the detector had been sealed in its cryostat a big thermos bottle that could keep the xenon inside at minus 150 degrees Fahrenheit and all the air had been pumped out, Dr. Aprile said: The point is to enclose it in a cryostat, seal it, make it leak-tight. She spoke over the phone after a long day of teleconferencing with Italy.We close this detector for the first time inside this big water tank, she said. Then we spend a few months, if everything goes well, commissioning it to understand how the hell it works. Hopefully it works as you designed. You start to see if theres a signal. And thats when you declare OK, and then you start to work.All did not go well.An important step occurred on March 5, when a team led by Luca Grandi of the University of Chicago installed the detector underground. It had arrived in pieces at Gran Sasso from all over the world, like the pieces of a puzzle, Dr. Aprile said, and had to be assembled in a clean room in a part of the Gran Sasso lab that was aboveground.The finished detector, known as a time projection chamber, is about five feet long and five feet wide, and weighs half a ton without the xenon in it. The team had to rent a special truck and get a police escort to move it to the underground part of the lab, which is accessible through a highway tunnel under the mountain.We didnt realize it would be so hard to handle, Dr. Aprile said.There the detector was installed under the dome of the cryostat. But the cryostat was not ready to be closed. We were almost done, but now we needed special permissions, Dr. Aprile said.Whos in charge there?ImageCredit...Xenon Dark Matter ProjectImageCredit...Gabby Jones for The New York TimesFailure to finish installing the detector would leave the tank open to the air, which would increase the chance of contamination by radon, a radioactive gas found in underground spaces and the main source of contamination in experiments like this one.A minimum of three or four people were needed to handle these final steps. Dr. Aprile had a half-dozen scientists and technicians at the site, so the margin was getting thin. But Dr. Grandi had to leave to teach in Chicago.Dr. Aprile promoted Petr Chaguine, a scientist from Rice University who had been living in Gran Sasso, to direct the team. He reported back to his friends and family in Houston that his Italian colleagues were kindly translating news and new government regulations as they appeared, which was often.For a while, the team members approved by Dr. Ragazzi could car-pool from their homes to the lab. Then the rules changed and they had to drive separately.Another rule required a Glimos Group Leader in Matter of Safety to visit every day to make sure everything was in order. Roberto Corrieri was doing the job, then announced that he would follow governmental instructions and stay home in Assergi; then he changed his mind and stayed. The only other person who could have done the safety inspection had left to join his family in Naples.I did not want to push the boundary if he felt he wanted to stay home, Dr. Aprile said of her conversations with Mr. Corrieri. Luckily he is a good guy and realized that doing it was important for many people, so he agreed to do it.She added, I fear, what happens if the team gets infected or gets hurt. The lab gets the blame."ImageCredit...Masatoshi Kobayashi That left enough people in the lab to continue working. I had to do a lot of encouraging, Dr. Aprile said. It helped that they knew each other, and that there were no strangers on the team: So they were comfortable being close enough to work.On March 20, Dr. Aprile received a photo by email of a pair of her scientists, Masatoshi Kobayashi and Danilo Tatananni. They were garbed much like E.R. doctors, in bunny suits and masks, which are standard apparel for the clean rooms where sensitive scientific gadgets are assembled. The men were standing in front of her detector, which they had just closed up.We did it, the email said.The physicists will now spend two weeks pumping air from the vat, down to a vacuum, at which point it can be monitored remotely. The task of filling the vat with liquid xenon must wait.We cannot test drive our new car, Dr. Aprile said. She was happy and relieved to no longer have to reluctantly urge her colleagues to enter a field of danger.They feel like heroes, she said. Was it worth it? Im wondering myself.[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]
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April 2, 2016MOSCOW Heavy fighting broke out Saturday in Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian separatist enclave in Azerbaijan and a longtime ethnic tinderbox in the South Caucasus region.As the fighting escalated through the day it was unclear whether the use of tanks, artillery and aircraft was merely a flare-up in a long conflict or the start of a new phase.Artillery barrages began early Saturday, threatening a breakdown of a fragile 1994 truce agreement. Armenia and Azerbaijan, both former Soviet republics, blamed each other for the violence. By evening, both sides spoke of dozens of dead, and Azerbaijan claimed that its military had advanced to capture territory, a move that seemed to bode ill for a quick resolution. The ethnic war that began in the late Soviet period between Armenians and Azerbaijanis claimed more than 20,000 lives and ended in a cease-fire but no final settlement. The region became one of the so-called frozen conflict zones in the vast area of the former Soviet Union, with sporadic episodes of violence since the 1994 truce.In response to the fighting, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia called for an immediate cease-fire on Saturday and urged both sides to show restraint. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, through the so-called Minsk Group led by France, Russia and the United States, condemned the violence.The separatist government of Nagorno-Karabakh, whose principal backers are Armenia and Armenian diaspora groups in Southern California and elsewhere, characterized the fighting as the first time since 1994 that all types of heavy weaponry were being used along the front line.Armenias Defense Ministry said Azerbaijan launched a surprise attack using tanks and aircraft around 2 a.m. after firing artillery barrages. Azerbaijans Ministry of Defense, in turn, blamed the Armenian military for the fighting. It said that its soldiers and some residential areas near the front were struck by intensive fire early Saturday, and that its forces had taken urgent measures to respond.Later Saturday, the ministry issued a statement saying it had recaptured strategic heights and a village to prevent attacks from those locations on its territory. It implied that Azerbaijans forces were moving beyond defensive positions and into Nagorno-Karabakh, a potentially destabilizing development in the volatile South Caucasus. Theres real doubt whether Putin will let that stand, Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group, a geopolitical risk analysis company, said in a telephone interview. If we see this last a few days, then we have a new Nagorno-Karabakh war.The Azerbaijani statement said that more than 100 Armenian soldiers had been killed Saturday and that six tanks and 15 artillery pieces had been destroyed. It said 12 Azerbaijanis had become shahids, meaning they died the death of Muslim martyrs.The Nagorno-Karabakh military said it had shot down one of Azerbaijans helicopters, a claim Azerbaijan first denied and then confirmed. An official in Nagorno-Karabakh told Russian news media that 40 to 50 Azerbaijani soldiers had been killed in the fighting.Adding to the dangers of the venomous, local ethnic hatreds between Christian Armenians and Muslim Azerbaijanis, the eerily beautiful mountain highland location of the Nagorno-Karabakh region places it on a crossroads where it is buffeted by the combustible politics of the Middle East and the former Soviet republics.Russia and Turkey, the most important rival powers in the South Caucasus, had in recent years tentatively cooperated in tamping down tensions in Nagorno-Karabakh, but they are now at odds over Syrias civil war. Russia has backed Armenia, while Turkey has backed Azerbaijan.Armenia has joined a Russian-backed economic bloc, while Azerbaijan has aligned with Western governments and oil industry interests, keeping its distance from Moscow.The global oil market, as is so often the case, serves as another backdrop to the bloodshed. After a long oil boom, the drop in global prices for oil, the main source of revenue for Azerbaijan, has weakened its military, a possible factor in the outbreak of violence.
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Sports Briefing | SoccerJan. 31, 2014Arsenal signed the Swedish midfielder Kim Kallstrom on loan, the only major move by a top Premier League club at the transfer deadline. Kallstrom left Spartak Moscow to join Arsenal for the rest of the season.Borussia Dortmund signed the Serbian midfielder Milos Jojic in the Bundesligas top deal at the transfer deadline. In Serie A transfers, the Italian striker Pablo Osvaldo joined Juventus on loan from Southampton, and Inter Milan signed the Brazilian midfielder Hernanes from Lazio.
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Little Women: LA' Briana Renee Quits Divorce Drama Off Limits 1/25/2018 "Little Women: LA" star Briana Renee will not join the cast for season 7 ... TMZ has learned. Production sources tell us Renee -- who has been on the show from its start -- chose not to sign back on at the end of season 6. We're told Bri already knew she'd be filing for divorce from husband Matt Grundhoffer, and she didn't want it to play out on camera. Our sources say Bri will take the time off to focus on herself, her kids and her music career. We're told producers won't replace Bri, and have already started production with the other 6 principal cast members.
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Credit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesNov. 13, 2018MEXICO CITY Time seems to have stopped inside cell number six of Barrientos state prison, where Daniel Garca has been held for more than 16 years without a verdict.His distorted perception of time became clear more than a decade ago, when he sent his two daughters a dollhouse as a gift, seemingly unaware that they had grown into adults since 2002, when he was accused of murder and locked up.Mr. Garca is caught in the legal trappings of Mexicos old judicial system, which allowed those accused of crimes ranging from murder to minor offenses to be held indefinitely as their cases dragged on for years.The Mexican government does not keep track of the average time that suspects like Mr. Garca are kept in pretrial detention. But the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which reviewed his case, has called his arrest arbitrary and described the use of preventive prison in his case as quite exceptional.The working group has urged Mr. Garcas immediate release, but the Mexican government has disregarded the recommendation, blaming the delay on the more than 15 appeal motions filed by Mr. Garcas defense.That argument is a crazy, said Jos Antonio Guevara, the director of the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights. The system punishes people for defending themselves.ImageCredit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesMr. Garcas case is extreme, but he is hardly alone. Nearly 40 percent of Mexicos 204,442 prisoners were in pretrial detention as of March, according to the World Prison Brief compiled by the Institute for Criminal Policy Research in the United Kingdom.An overhaul of the judicial system, passed in 2008, gave hope to prisoners like Mr. Garca, who were languishing in prison without completed trials or sentences and had been arrested under the former rules.Its goal was to transform a slow and opaque process in which trials happened behind closed doors and where, too often, evidence was based on torture, forced confessions or fabricated proofs into one that relied on open-court trials, with a higher threshold for evidence and faster adjudication and sentencing.The legal overhaul also limited the time that suspects could be held in pretrial detention, and allowed the use of alternative measures like house arrest or electronic bracelets.The United States provided hundreds of millions of dollars to facilitate the transition to the new system, which was intended to curb corruption, increase public trust in the justice system and help strengthen the rule of law.But Mr. Garcas case, like others filed before the change, will continue to run under the old rules, even though human rights advocates and criminal justice experts say it exemplifies the flaws of the previous system.The case began in February 2002, when Mr. Garca was arrested in Atizapn de Zaragoza, a town in the State of Mexico, about 20 miles northwest of Mexico City, and accused of ordering the murder of Mara de los Angeles Tams, a town councilor who had been slain five months earlier.ImageCredit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesSoon after Mr. Garcas arrest, and before his trial began, Alfonso Navarrete, who was then the states attorney general and is now Mexicos secretary of the interior, appeared on television accusing both Antonio Domnguez, who was then the towns mayor, and Mr. Garca, who was the mayors private secretary, of murder and drug trafficking.It was the beginning of what Mr. Garca described as an attempt to use him to build a case against Mr. Domnguez.Interviews with the attorneys involved and a review of court documents by The New York Times raise serious questions about the case.Mr. Garca testified in court that, at the moment of his arrest, a local prosecutor said they had no evidence against him but demanded his cooperation to frame Mr. Domnguez. When Mr. Garca refused to do so, the prosecutor threatened to throw him and other members of his family in prison.In the following months, four of Mr. Garcas relatives, including one brother and his father, both city hall employees, were arrested and accused of being co-conspirators in the murder. They were all released shortly after, with no charges.Mr. Garcas attorney, Simn Hernndez, from the Institute of Penal Justice, a legal clinic in Mexico City, said intimidation of this sort is not uncommon. The penal justice system in the State of Mexico is among the most flawed and corrupt in the country, according to the World Justice Project.The case was initially built on the testimony of three witnesses who claimed they had overheard a man named Jaime Martnez Franco claim that Mr. Garca had hired him to kill Mrs. Tams.ImageCredit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesMonths later, a fourth witness, Reyes Alpzar, confessed he went to the victims house with Mr. Martnez and saw the shooting. He was charged with being a participant in the murder.Mr. Alpzar and one of the initial witnesses later recanted their testimony, saying they had been tortured by police into signing false statements.Mr. Alpzar was so brutally beaten he had to go to an emergency room. Medical examinations introduced in court confirmed he had been tortured. But he also remains in prison without a sentence.Almost a year after Mr. Garcas arrest, a local journalist revealed that the alleged gunman, Mr. Martnez, had been in prison in a different state on the day of the murder.Mr. Domnguez, the mayor who faced the same charges as Mr. Garca, was released four years after his arrest.It took eight years for Mexicos landmark judicial reform to be put into effect nationwide. Mr. Garca followed the process closely, including the introduction of new laws that limited to two years the time a suspect could be held in preventive detention. He felt confident the changes would help him.The new rules have, in fact, sped up processing, raised the bar for admissible evidence and improved protections for criminal defendants, making it far less likely that a suspect would be held for as long as Mr. Garca has been, legal experts said. But suspects charged with serious felonies, including murder, kidnapping and drug trafficking, are still automatically thrown in prison and may remain in custody for longer than two years if they choose to appeal court rulings.ImageCredit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesLegal experts argue this element is contrary to the spirit of the legal reform, and against international legal standards.By keeping the compulsory preventive imprisonment, even if it is reserved only for certain crimes, we are left with a glass of clean water with drops of poison, said Jorge Gutirrez, a professor of criminal law in the National Institute of Criminal Sciences, in Mexico City.But this measure does have popular support, he said, adding that in a country dealing with rampant violence and weak institutions, the public often favors such punitive laws. In the midst of a surge in violent crime, several bills are now being debated in congress to increase the number of felonies that would require mandatory preventive custody.There is a collective idea that there is no justice without prison, that imprisonment equals accountability, said Mr. GutirrezMr. Garcas hope now lies with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which has taken on his case and could recommend his release.To ease the sting of loneliness and despair, Mr. Garca spends his days studying the laws that keep him behind bars and refining the art of making time stop, he said in a recent prison interview.It is kind of lost to me somewhere in space, the amount of time I have spent in here, he said. Maybe one day it will hit me, but hopefully I wont be in here anymore.
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Politics|Ronna McDaniel is re-elected to lead the Republican National Committee.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/us/politics/ronna-mcdaniel-is-re-elected-to-lead-the-republican-national-committee.htmlCredit...Al Drago for The New York TimesJan. 8, 2021President Trumps handpicked chairwoman was unanimously re-elected to lead the Republican National Committee on Friday, as committee members ignored his role in inciting supporters who overtook the Capitol this week to affirm his role atop the party.The day before, the president recorded a two-minute video for the partys winter meeting that was played that night. In the video, he spoke only in upbeat terms about the 2020 election and thanked the committee members for their loyalty.Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel faced no opposition and, in her remarks before and after her re-election, thanked Mr. Trump for his faith in her.Ms. McDaniel did condemn the mob attack in Washington, saying we need this to stop, without mentioning the inflammatory rhetoric of the president, his children and top aides at the outset of the protest Wednesday.But she only referred obliquely to transition of power and never directly acknowledged Mr. Trump lost the election. Ms. McDaniel said she was angry about losing critical elections.The two political parties have historically elected new leaders when they lose control of the White House. But Ms. McDaniel, the niece of Senator Mitt Romney, in effect claimed re-election in the weeks after the election thanks to her broad support with the activist-dominated state chairs and committee members who make up the partys governing board.The presidents recorded video came at a time when several Republicans in the Senate and some in the House, as well as former administration officials, are seeking to distance themselves from Mr. Trump after a crowd of supporters quickly went from listening to an inflammatory speech he made on Wednesday to a deadly mob overtaking the Capitol.The president never mentioned the violence during the video to the Republican committee, and he also stayed away from the conspiracy theories and false claims of widespread fraud about the election that he had been spreading for two months.In the video, Mr. Trump thanked all my incredible friends at the R.N.C., and talked about receiving millions more votes than he did in 2016, the number of Republican women who were elected to Congress as well as the coronavirus vaccine.
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Politics|Pompeo Outlines Plans for Global Challenges, Including Venezuela and Palestinian Refugeeshttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/us/politics/pompeo-senate-state-department.htmlCredit...Erin Schaff for The New York TimesJune 27, 2018WASHINGTON Secretary of State Mike Pompeo promised on Wednesday to impose additional sanctions on Venezuela, predicted that the United States would again fund schools for Palestinian refugees in Jordan and said that President Trump viewed Russias return to the Group of 7 as inevitable.Mr. Pompeos remarks came during a hearing in the Senate that was intended to discuss his departments budget. But there was little said about the Trump administrations plans to slash the State Departments funding, and Mr. Pompeo did not try to defend proposals to cut spending on such things as the battle against H.I.V. and AIDS in Africa.It did happen before my time, Mr. Pompeo said of the administrations budget request for next year. The president has lots of things to consider.The hearing, before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee, yielded a more muted, and even respectful, discussion than what Mr. Pompeo had with lawmakers in May, a month after he took over the State Department.But Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, displayed a poster on Wednesday showing dozens of comments by Mr. Trump that had insulted global allies and partners. And Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, asked pointed questions about what was achieved at the recent summit meeting in Singapore between Mr. Trump and Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader.Instead of talking about money during the hearing, Mr. Pompeo and the senators discussed a host of global challenges, including North Koreas nuclear program, the civil war in Syria and Europes growing disenchantment with Mr. Trump.Mr. Pompeo also promised that new sanctions would be placed on Venezuela, in reaction to President Nicols Maduros disputed re-election in May.But asked whether the United States was going to forbid oil imports from Venezuela, Mr. Pompeo merely said a review was still underway. Citgo, a major oil refiner and gas retailer with American headquarters in the Houston area, is wholly owned by the Venezuelan government and provides it with vital financial support.Banning oil imports would almost certainly result in higher gasoline prices in the United States, where prices are already rising in part because of renewed sanctions on Iran.Mr. Pompeo refused to provide specifics about his continuing conversations with North Korea following Mr. Trumps summit meeting this month with Mr. Kim. But he assured senators that North Korean diplomats understood what was expected of them. He also agreed that Pyongyangs nuclear program remained a threat to the United States even though Mr. Trump has insisted in a Twitter post that there is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.Although the United States has vowed to continue sanctions against Pyongyang until North Korea surrenders its nuclear weapons and missile programs, Mr. Pompeo said China was backsliding on those economic penalties by a modest amount.And as schools in Jordan for Palestinian refugees come close to shuttering because of the Trump administrations decision to suspend funding for the United Nations agency that operates them, Mr. Pompeo said that I think were getting closer to a solution that would allow the United States to fund the schools.Mr. Pompeo acknowledged that European allies remained unhappy about the Trump administrations decision to exit the Iran nuclear accord; he described difficult discussions over the issue. But he said that other countries in Asia and the Middle East were also important to pressuring Iran.As for a potential summit meeting next month between Mr. Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Mr. Pompeo insisted that the Trump administration had been tougher on Russia than many previous administrations.Still, he defended Mr. Trumps proposal to allow Moscow back into the G-7 as inevitable, and suggested that an appropriate set of trade-offs could be made even if Russia retains control over Crimea.
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Scientists released a pair of extensive studies over the weekend that point to a large food and live animal market in Wuhan, China, as the origin of the coronavirus pandemic. Analyzing a wide range of data, including virus genes, maps of market stalls and the social media activity of early Covid-19 patients across Wuhan, the scientists concluded that the coronavirus was very likely present in live mammals sold at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in late 2019 and suggested that the virus spilled over into people working or shopping there on two separate occasions. Members of the Wuhan Hygiene Emergency Response Team leaving the closed Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market on Jan. 11, 2020. Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse The studies, which together span 150 pages, are a significant salvo in the debate over the beginnings of a pandemic that has killed nearly six million people across the world. The question of whether the outbreak began with a spillover from wildlife sold at the market, a leak from a Wuhan virology lab or some other event has given rise to pitched debates over how best to stop the next pandemic. When you look at all of the evidence together, its an extraordinarily clear picture that the pandemic started at the Huanan market, said Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona and a co-author of both new studies. Several independent scientists said that the studies, which have not yet been published in a scientific journal, presented a compelling and rigorous new analysis of available data. Its very convincing, said Dr. Thea Fischer, an epidemiologist at the University of Copenhagen, who was not involved in the new studies. The question of whether the virus spilled over from animals has now been settled with a very high degree of evidence, and thus confidence. Map of Wuhan showing the location of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. But others pointed to some gaps that still remained. The new papers did not, for example, identify an animal at the market that spread the virus to humans. I think what theyre arguing could be true, said Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. But I dont think the quality of the data is sufficient to say that any of these scenarios are true with confidence. In a separate study published online on Friday, scientists at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed genetic traces of the earliest environmental samples collected at the market, in January 2020. By the time Chinese researchers arrived to collect these samples, police had shut down and disinfected the market because a number of people linked to it had become sick with what would later be recognized as Covid. No live market animals were left. Photos of animals for sale in the Huanan market. Animals for sale in the Huanan market in 2019 and 2014, including raccoon dogs, Malayan porcupines and a red fox. Source: Michael Worobey et al., preprint via Zenodo. Photos taken by a citizen and posted to Weibo in 2019 (first three), and by Edward C. Holmes in 2014. The researchers swabbed walls, floors and other surfaces inside the market, as well as meat still in freezers and refrigerators. They also caught mice and stray cats and dogs around the market to test them, while also testing the contents of the sewers outside. The researchers then analyzed the samples for genetic traces of coronaviruses that may have been shed by people or animals. Although the Chinese researchers conducted their study over two years ago, it was not until Fridays report that they publicly shared their results. They reported that the Huanan market samples included two evolutionary branches of the virus, known as lineages A and B, both of which had been circulating in early Covid cases in China. These findings came as a surprise. In the early days of the pandemic in China, the only Covid cases linked to the market appeared to be Lineage B. And because Lineage B seemed to have evolved after Lineage A, some researchers suggested that the virus arrived at the market only after spreading around Wuhan. But that logic is upended by the new Chinese study, which finds both lineages in market samples. The findings are consistent with the scenario that Dr. Worobey and his colleagues put forward, in which at least two spillover events occurred at the market. The beauty of it is how simply it all adds up now, said Jeremy Kamil, a virologist at Louisiana State University Health Shreveport, who was not involved in the new studies. Mapping Cases Although the Huanan market was an early object of suspicion, by the spring of 2020 senior members of the Trump administration were promoting the idea that the new coronavirus had escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a coronavirus laboratory located eight miles away on the other side of the Yangtze River. Theres no direct evidence that the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, was present at the lab before the pandemic. Researchers there have denied claims of a lab leak. But the Chinese government has come under fire for not being forthcoming about the early days of the pandemic. The report from the Chinese C.D.C. about the Huanan markets samples, for example, had remained hidden. Starting in June 2020, two newspapers, The South China Morning Post and The Epoch Times, reported on what they claimed were leaked copies of the report. In January 2021, a team of experts chosen by the World Health Organization traveled to China to investigate. Collaborating with Chinese experts, the group released a report in March 2021 that contained previously undisclosed details about the market. They noted, for example, that 10 stalls in the southwest corner of the market sold live animals. The report also noted that 69 environmental samples collected from the market by the Chinese C.D.C. had turned up positive for SARS-CoV-2. But the frozen meat and live animals had all tested negative. A member of the Wuhan Hygiene Emergency Response Team inside the closed Huanan market on Jan. 11, 2020. Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse Still, the W.H.O. left many researchers dissatisfied. Dr. Worobey and Dr. Bloom both signed a letter, along with 16 other scientists in May 2021, calling for more investigation into the origins of Covid including the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 had escaped from a lab. The W.H.O. experts had identified 164 cases of Covid-19 in Wuhan over the course of December 2019. Unfortunately, the cases were marked by fuzzy dots scattered across a nearly featureless map of Wuhan. Dr. Worobey and his colleagues used mapping tools to estimate the longitude and latitude locations of 156 of those cases. The highest density of December cases centered around the market a relatively tiny spot in a city of 11 million people. Those cases included not just people who were initially linked to the market, but others who lived in the surrounding neighborhood. Spatial analysis of Covid cases in Dec. 2019. Source: Michael Worobey et al., preprint via Zenodo The New York Times The researchers then mapped cases from January and February of 2020. They drew upon data collected by Chinese researchers from Weibo, a social media app that created a channel for people with Covid to seek medical help. The 737 cases pulled from Weibo were concentrated away from the market, in other parts of central Wuhan with high populations of elderly residents, the study found. Spatial analysis of Covid cases in Jan.Feb. 2020. Source: Michael Worobey et al. The New York Times These patterns pointed to the market as the origin of the outbreak, Dr. Worobey and his colleagues concluded. The researchers ran tests that showed it was extremely unlikely that such a pattern could be produced merely by chance. Its very strong statistical evidence that this is no coincidence, Dr. Worobey said. But David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University, raised the possibility that these patterns might be just evidence that the market boosted the epidemic after the virus started spreading in humans somewhere else. The virus would have arrived in a person, who then infected other people, he said. And the neighborhood of the market, or the market itself, became a kind of a sustained superspreader event. Multiple Spillovers Dr. Worobey and his colleagues argue against that possibility, pointing to signs of spillovers within the market itself. The researchers reconstructed the floor plan of the Huanan market based on the W.H.O. report, the leaked Chinese C.D.C. study and other sources. They then mapped the locations of positive environmental samples, finding that they clustered in the area where live animals were sold. Strikingly, five of the samples came from a single stall. That stall had been visited in 2014 by one of the co-authors of the new studies, Edward Holmes, a virologist at the University of Sydney. On that trip, he had taken a photograph of a cage of raccoon dogs for sale at the time. The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China. Diagram of the Huanan market. Distribution of coronavirus samples in the Huanan market. Source: Michael Worobey et al. The New York Times; Satellite image via Google Maps Another co-author, Chris Newman, a wildlife biologist at the University of Oxford, was part of a research team that documented a number of live, wild mammals for sale at the Huanan market in November and December of 2019, including raccoon dogs. Dr. Worobey and his colleagues also carried out a new analysis of over 800 coronaviruses sampled from early Covid cases. They found that both Lineage A and Lineage B underwent separate bursts of explosive growth. The most likely explanation for their results, they concluded, is that Lineage A and Lineage B each jumped on their own from an animal into different people, likely in November. Both jumps, they said, could have happened at the Huanan market. In their analysis, Dr. Worobey and his colleagues found that the two earliest cases of Lineage A involved people who lived close to the market. The Chinese C.D.C. study published on Friday revealed a Lineage A coronavirus on a glove collected when the market shut down. I think weve cracked this case, said Joel Wertheim, a virologist at the University of California, San Diego, and a co-author of the new studies. Dr. Bloom, however, questioned the idea that there had been two separate spillovers. He noted that the Lineage A glove sample from the market was collected some time after the virus had begun spreading in humans, raising the possibility that it had been brought into the market. I am especially unconvinced by the conclusion that there must have necessarily been two different spillovers in the Huanan Seafood Market, Dr. Bloom said. Workers in protective suits disinfect the Huanan market on March 4, 2020. Reuters New evidence could still emerge. The Chinese government, for example, could release samples taken from Wuhan patients who came down with pneumonia in November 2019, noted Dr. Relman of Stanford. Researchers could also learn more by looking at the genetic samples collected by the Chinese researchers. Its possible that the samples included genetic material not just from viruses, but from animals at the market. Sharing the raw data could enable other scientists to investigate the potential spillover in more detail. Kristian Andersen, a virologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., and a co-author of the new studies, said it was important to figure out where the wild mammals for sale at Huanan came from, and to look for evidence of past outbreaks in those places. Its possible, for example, that villagers at the sources of that wildlife still carry antibodies from exposures to coronaviruses. If I had to say what would be most helpful to do now, it would be those types of studies, he said.
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Frequent screening of healthy, vaccinated people will pick up even the mildest infections. How much testing is too much?Credit...Issei Kato/ReutersPublished July 21, 2021Updated July 28, 2021On Sunday, officials announced that two players on South Africas soccer team had become the first athletes to test positive for the coronavirus inside Tokyos Olympic Village. The next day, news broke that an alternate on the American womens gymnastics team, training outside of Tokyo, tested positive.Another cluster of cases has reportedly popped up on the Czech mens beach volleyball team. There will be more.The Olympic Village isnt the type of lockdown bubble that you saw in the N.B.A., said Zachary Binney, a sports epidemiologist at Oxford College of Emory University. So I think you are going to continue to see cases pop up, including among vaccinated people.It is too early to judge what impact, if any, the Olympics will have on the Covid-19 pandemic writ large or if the Games may ultimately fuel larger outbreaks.But the discovery of isolated cases, even in vaccinated athletes, is entirely expected, scientists say, and not necessarily a cause for alarm. This isnt really that much of a surprise, said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan.Still, these cases do raise thorny questions about how to design testing programs and respond to test results at this phase of the pandemic, in which the patchy rollout of vaccines means that some people and communities are well protected from the virus while others remain at risk.As Dr. Rasmussen put it: When does a positive test really indicate that theres a problem?Counting casesCovid-19 tests, which were once profoundly limited, are now widely available in most of the developed world, making it possible for organizations including private employers, schools, professional sports leagues and the Olympics organizers to routinely screen people for the virus.Vaccination is not required for Olympic participants, and officials are relying heavily on testing to keep the virus at bay in Tokyo. Those headed to the Games must submit two negative tests taken on separate days within 96 hours of leaving for Japan regardless of vaccination status, according to the Olympic playbooks, or manuals.At least one of the two tests must be taken within 72 hours of departure. Participants are again tested upon arrival at the airport.Athletes, coaches and officials are also required to take daily antigen tests, which are less sensitive than P.C.R. tests but are generally quicker and cheaper. (Olympic staff and volunteers may be tested less frequently, depending on their level of interaction with athletes and officials.) If a test comes back unclear or positive, a P.C.R. test is administered.Each layer of filtering is a reduction in the risk for everybody else, Brian McCloskey, the chair of the Independent Expert Panel of the International Olympic Committee, told reporters this week, adding that the number of confirmed infections so far are lower than we expected.But when you look that hard for infections especially in a group of people who have recently flown in from all over the globe and have had varying levels of access to vaccines youre all but destined to find some.The bottom line is theres still just a lot of SARS-CoV-2 around the world thats spreading, Dr. Rasmussen said, referring to the virus that causes Covid-19.ImageCredit...Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesSo far, 75 people with Olympic credentials have tested positive for the coronavirus, including six athletes, according to Toyko 2020s public database. That number does not include those who tested positive before their departure to Japan. Little information has been released about the severity of most of these cases, though public reports suggest that the athletes are generally experiencing mild or no symptoms.It is also unclear how many of these athletes have been fully vaccinated. The I.O.C. said that it expected 85 percent of athletes, coaches and team staff staying in the Olympic Village to be vaccinated.The vaccines provide strong protection against severe disease, but they are not an impenetrable shield. There have been concerns, in particular, about the effectiveness of Chinas Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines, which some Olympic participants may have received.Some breakthrough infections are inevitable, even with the best vaccines. And these infections, which tend to be mild and rare, are more likely to be caught and reported when they crop up in Olympians.Youre hearing about cases particularly among famous people and athletes because theyre well known, and theyre being tested frequently, Dr. Binney said. Its not just Olympians. Last week, six Yankees players tested positive for the virus, at least three of whom were fully vaccinated. It was the second breakthrough cluster on the Yankees. Six fully vaccinated state lawmakers from Texas also tested positive for the virus after racing to Washington last week in an effort to stop the passage of a restrictive state voting rights bill.As expected, most of these cases were apparently mild or even entirely asymptomatic. But P.C.R. tests can detect even minute traces of the virus.Youre going to pick up on these low-grade infections, and the players are going to be quarantined and out of competition, said John Moore, a virologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. And theyre probably not going to be ill, because theyre young, healthy athletes.According to the Olympic playbooks, athletes with positive P.C.R. tests are to be isolated at designated facilities, though the location and length of isolation vary depending on the severity of the case. Japans health authorities require a 10-day quarantine at facilities outside the Olympic Village, and multiple negative P.C.R. tests before discharge, an I.O.C. official said in an email.Some athletes who have been flagged as close contacts of positive cases have also been moved into isolation or quarantine, although they may be allowed to continue training or competing on a case-by-case basis.Those who are cleared to compete may have to adhere to enhanced countermeasures, the I.O.C. says, such as eating meals alone, training at a safe distance from others and taking daily P.C.R. tests.Changing courseImageCredit...Loic Venance/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesGiven these kinds of disruptions, some experts say that the benefits of routine testing of asymptomatic vaccinated individuals may not be worth the costs.Many places are still continuing to asymptomatically screen fully vaccinated individuals, which isnt something that the C.D.C. guidance recommends, said Dr. Amesh A. Adalja, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. It lends itself to all of these kind of pseudo outbreaks that you might see with a bunch of asymptomatic infections.Testing remains vital for people who have symptoms of Covid-19, he noted. But it no longer makes sense for those who feel fine and have been fully vaccinated, particularly with one of the big four vaccines Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson or AstraZeneca for which there is the most data, he added.But officials may not always know who has been vaccinated and what vaccine they have received, Dr. Rasmussen noted. In those instances, they really have no choice but to use testing and contact tracing to minimize risks.Moreover, questions about transmission remain unsettled. Vaccinated people with asymptomatic or breakthrough infections may still be able to pass the virus on to others, but it is not yet clear how often that happens.Until that science is more definitive, or until vaccination rates rise, it is best to err on the side of safety and regular testing, many experts said. At the Olympics, for instance, frequent testing could help protect the broader Japanese population, which has relatively low vaccination rates, as well as the support staff, who may be older and at higher risk.Its those folks Im most worried about, really, said Dr. Lisa Brosseau, a research consultant at University of Minnesotas Center for Infection Disease Research and Policy.Not only can they contract the virus, adding strain on the Japanese health care system, but they can also become sources of transmission: Everybodys at risk, and everybody could potentially be infected, she said.According to the Tokyo 2020 press office, all Olympics staff and volunteers have been offered the opportunity to be vaccinated, though officials did not provide data on how many had received the shots.Instead of testing less frequently, officials could rethink how they respond to positive tests, Dr. Binney said. For instance, if someone who is vaccinated and asymptomatic tests positive, he or she should still be isolated but perhaps close contacts could simply be monitored, rather than being placed into quarantine.Youre trying to balance the disruptive nature of what you do when somebody vaccinated tests positive against any gains at slowing or stopping the spread of the virus, Dr. Binney said.Organizations and officials could also adjust their testing protocols, depending on the vaccination rates in a given group and local virus transmission levels. If most people are vaccinated and the virus is circulating at low levels, officials and managers could decide to test less often or use a less sensitive test, said Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.At this stage of the pandemic, there is room to be more strategic about testing, said Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who called for widespread rapid testing when the virus hit last year.I think testing is never going to go away as a way to know whats happening with the virus, he said, noting that it remains particularly important as a strategy for controlling outbreaks.We can do the frequent testing when we need to, but only when we need to, because people are tired, he added. And it can be considered a very dynamic process.
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Credit...Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesNov. 14, 2018MOSCOW Pretty much all seasoned travelers know the frustration of flight delays the time wasted puttering in an airport, waiting in a hotel room or, perhaps worst of all, stuck on the tarmac in an idled plane.But how about three days stranded in Siberia?That was the nightmare experienced by the passengers and crew of Air France Flight 116 this week, when their Boeing 777 was diverted to the city of Irkutsk on Sunday, about 2,600 miles east of Moscow, after an acrid smell and light smoke wafted through the cabin.The 282 passengers sat on the plane for some six hours before being allowed to disembark.But a chilly reception then awaited both literally (at one point it was around 1 degree Fahrenheit, or minus 17 Celsius, outside) and figuratively, with passengers forced to stay within the confines of the airport or two hotels where they were put up because they lacked entry visas. Initially, they were denied access to their luggage as well.To make matters worse, a second Boeing 777 sent from Paris to pick up the passengers, who were traveling from the French capital to Shanghai, also broke down before takeoff in Irkutsk as the hydraulic system froze. That led to another long wait on the tarmac in Siberia, before the passengers were once again told to deplane.We are dirty, we smell, it is now over 30 hours that we are under house arrest, without a suitcase or passport, Eleanor Joulie, one of those stranded, wrote on Twitter on Monday, after the ordeal was barely half over.Finally, a third aircraft flew them to Shanghai Pudong International Airport on Wednesday, according to Air France.Among the travelers stuck in Irkutsk were employees of Louis Vuitton, the luxury goods brand, including several social media managers whose Instagram posts displayed a mixture of frustration and mirth as the misadventure dragged on. They cooled their heels at a London-themed pub in their hotel and posted a six-second video on YouTube pretending to be the opening credits of an imaginary TV series called Stuck in Siberia.The episode prompted plenty of jokes from Russians on social media, partly because the story echoed the plot of a popular 1970s Soviet comedy called The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia.Many also pilloried officials in Irkutsk for not letting the foreigners look around Lake Baikal, one of the wonders of Siberia, was only about an hours drive away. Others offered to show passengers the sights if they returned under more pleasant circumstances.Air France, in a statement, said it regretted the situation and wished to apologize to passengers for the inconvenience and significant delay experienced.As for any recompense such as vouchers, the airline said it had contacted the customers concerned to propose suitable commercial measures.
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AdvertisingCredit...via Toys "R" UsDec. 6, 2015One day last year, Jessica Nelson was surprised to find her toddler, Aiden, watching videos online in which people opened box after box of new toys, from Kinder Surprise chocolate eggs with trinkets inside to all manner of Disney merchandise.The next day we saw him watching more and more and more of them, said Ms. Nelson, who lives in Toledo, Ohio. He was pretty obsessed.She and her son, who turned 3 on Monday, had entered the world of unboxing videos, an extremely popular genre on YouTube where enthusiasts take products out of their packaging and examine them in obsessive detail. This year, according to YouTube, people have watched videos unveiling items like toys, sneakers and iPhones more than 1.1 billion times, for a total of 60 million hours.The videos ability to captivate children has led toy makers, retailers and other companies to provide sponsorships and free toys to some of the most popular unboxing practitioners, who in turn can make a lucrative living. Hasbro and Clorox have ads that YouTube places on the videos.Now, marketers are becoming even more involved. This season, Target hired four YouTube toy experts to create videos of favorite toys. Two of them were prominent child unboxers, including Evan of EvanTubeHD, who turned 10 on Sunday. Running on the retailers website, the videos promote its online childrens gifting hub and wish list app.Other advertisers are diving in deeper. In September, the Walt Disney Company hosted a live, 18-hour marathon of the unboxing of toys and other merchandise tied to this months release of the movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens. YouTube stars around the world opened products starting in Sydney, Australia, and ending at Lucasfilm in San Francisco.Brands being brands, many want to exert even more control over the concept. Toys R Us created stop-action animations in which toys unbox other toys. The two-minute-plus videos, which started in late October on the companys YouTube channel, are a centerpiece of its digital advertising campaign for the holidays.It was inspired by how kids really play, said Richard Lennox, the retailers chief marketing officer. While they use the unboxing concept, the videos have a more overt promotional feel.In the first episode, which has gotten more than one million views, two Little People Knights rescue a Journey Girls Italy Holiday Doll from her plastic box. Oh, you come with so many beautiful accessories, coos one knight.ImageCredit...via Toys "R" UsToys R Us will keep making the videos well beyond the holiday season, said Wil Boudreau, chief creative officer at BBDO Atlanta, the retailers ad agency for its overall holiday campaign.Toy makers especially are intensifying their embrace of the genres stars, in some cases taking the concept into traditional advertising. Last year, Spin Master hired EvanTubeHD for a TV commercial for its Spy Gear toys in addition to YouTube videos. The company attributes a 65 percent jump in Spy Gear sales in 2014 in large part to Evans salesmanship. This year, the company created an animated online series around him and his sister, Jillian.Toys naturally dominate this time of year, but unboxing videos, which began with tech products, are spreading to other brands, including fashion, cars, software and cable TV services.The New York lingerie company Adore Me, whose customers are largely digital-savvy millennials, has created several television ads since the summer that employed unboxing. Morgan Hermand-Waiche, the companys chief executive, said the spots produced about 20 percent better results than its other ads, measured by the response rate and sales generated from them.To meet growing demand from brands, Fullscreen, a network of YouTube creators, has sought to sign up more unboxers, said Kevin McGurn, the companys head of sales.Not everyone is thrilled with the rise of the videos, which skirt digital and parental ad blockers. On Nov. 24, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and the Center for Digital Democracy filed a second complaint with the Federal Trade Commission about commercially oriented YouTube videos, including unboxing. It followed an initial complaint in April that claimed some sponsored videos violated F.T.C. rules because they were not labeled as such.The Toys R Us videos are extended commercials that happen to be on YouTube, said Josh Golin, the executive director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. He is especially concerned that they are aimed at children, who have trouble distinguishing commercial messages from editorial content.Mr. Lennox said that Toys R Uss videos are not advertising according to YouTube rules and that the company complies with existing law. YouTube said it asked creators to disclose if their videos contained paid product placement and that it excluded those from its YouTube Kids site.Marketers appear undeterred. Indeed, the bigger challenge may be overkill. The temptation is to rush in with promotional content and overdo it, said Carol Spieckerman, president of the strategy firm Spieckerman Retail. If viewers perceive that brands exert too much control over YouTube personalities, she said, that could cast doubt on the authenticity that has made them effective.For now, though, the videos still work. Ms. Nelson, for one, has bought her son Easter eggs with surprises inside to supplement his fascination with Kinder egg unboxings.Ive caught myself watching the videos and even getting excited, she said. It gives me good ideas for birthday and Christmas presents.
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Credit...Dan Koeck/ReutersJune 1, 2018WASHINGTON Senator Heidi Heitkamp, the centrist Democrat from North Dakota who is fighting a pitched battle to save her seat, has gotten a lift from an unlikely source: the conservative billionaire Koch brothers.Americans for Prosperity, the political advocacy group backed by Charles G. and David H. Koch, unveiled a digital ad campaign on Friday thanking Ms. Heitkamp for her support of recently passed legislation that loosened regulations on small and medium-size banks that were swept up in the 2010 Dodd-Frank law passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.[David Koch Died on Aug. 23 at the Age of 79]The ad is the latest evidence that the brothers, often at odds with President Trump, may be moving away from strictly partisan work on behalf of Republicans in favor of initiatives that will advance their libertarian-leaning legislative priorities, including free trade, immigration legislation and access to medicines, regardless of party affiliation.Ms. Heitkamp is one of 10 Democratic senators up for re-election in states won by Mr. Trump in 2016, but unlike other Democrats, she has drawn a top-flight challenger in Kevin Cramer, North Dakotas lone House member and a close ally of the presidents. Her seat is one of the keys to Republican efforts to hold on to or expand the partys one-seat Senate majority.But the Kochs may be putting their personal priorities over the Republican Partys. This week, two other groups backed by the brothers Freedom Partners and the Libre Initiative joined with Americans for Prosperity to lash out at Mr. Trump over the tariffs that he imposed on goods imported from China.Ms. Heitkamp was among more than a dozen Senate Democrats several in states that Mr. Trump won who voted with Republicans to roll back the banking rules. She was the lone Democrat invited to the White House to join Mr. Trump as he signed the measure into law.Thank you, Senator Heitkamp, for giving Main Street relief, the ad, which will be distributed on social media, reads. It connects users to a page allowing them to thank Ms. Heitkamp and other lawmakers for backing the Dodd-Frank overhaul bill.The Libre Initiative, which bills itself as an effort to empower the U.S. Hispanic community, recently sent mailers to the constituents of five Democrats and nine Republicans, praising the lawmakers for their efforts to protect the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers.And all three groups singled out another centrist Democrat in a tough re-election fight, Senator Joe Donnelly of Indiana, for praise after he backed legislation giving terminally ill patients greater access to unproven medications. (The groups praised Mr. Trump for supporting the legislation as well.)Ms. Heitkamp often crosses the aisle to work with Republicans and votes with Mr. Trump 56 percent of the time, according to the FiveThirtyEight website. Her unusually close alliance with the president she was briefly considered for a cabinet appointment has been worrisome to Republicans.The Americans for Prosperity ad campaign is not an indication that the group is supporting her re-election bid. It comes just two months after the group spent $450,000 on a television and digital ad campaign attacking Ms. Heitkamp for her vote against the Republicans tax overhaul.While we dont agree with Senator Heitkamp on everything, particularly her vote against tax relief, we commend her for taking a stand against the leaders of her party to do the right thing, Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, said in a statement on Friday, referring to the banking bill.A spokeswoman for the Heitkamp campaign did not address the new Americans for Prosperity campaign directly.Heidi got results for rural North Dakota families and businesses who depend on relationship lending because she is and has always been focused on putting partisan politics aside to deliver for North Dakotans and thats where her focus will remain, the spokeswoman, Julia Krieger, said.
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Health|Health Officials Urge Congress to Fund Zika Researchhttps://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/11/health/health-officials-urge-congress-to-fund-zika-research.htmlCredit...Alvin Baez/ReutersMarch 10, 2016The nations top health officials said Thursday that urgent action was needed to contain the Zika virus and appealed to Congress to allocate money to fighting the outbreak.President Obama has asked for $1.8 billion, but the request is stalled in Congress, with Republicans suggesting that money previously allotted to the Ebola virus be used instead.Health officials contend that most of those funds have already been committed to testing vaccines and to keeping up monitoring in Africa, because another Ebola outbreak could erupt at any time.Describing a recent trip to Puerto Rico to survey efforts there to contain the Zika virus, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the island is on the front lines and facing an uphill battle.The virus has been linked to microcephaly which often results in misshapen heads and brain damage and other birth defects in babies born to infected women. About 34,000 babies are born each year in Puerto Rico, and Dr. Frieden said he anticipated thousands of expectant mothers to become infected during the hot, rainy season, which is just beginning.We know we wont be able to protect 100 percent of the women, but for each case we prevent, we avoid a personal and family tragedy, he said.The lifetime cost of caring for a microcephalic child is $10 million or more, he added; 45 percent of Puerto Ricos population lives below the poverty line.Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the agency had a possible vaccine that might be ready to begin safety testing in humans by this fall. But it would still be a matter of years before any vaccine is approved by the Food and Drug Administration, he said.Better diagnostic tests and an antiviral treatment are also needed, he said. And many important questions remain, including whether asymptomatic infections in mothers are dangerous to babies.The more we learn, the worse things seem to get, he said, ticking off such consequences of infection as birth defects, adult paralysis and sexual transmission harms that until now no tropical disease specialist had seen in a mosquito-borne virus.We really need to stay ahead of this, and we cant do that without the resources, Dr. Fauci said.Teams working on the Zika vaccine are also working on vaccines against the flu, AIDS and respiratory infections and, without more money, may have to slow that research, he said.The government must team with private industry to manufacture large lots of vaccines, he said, but when funding runs out, it brands us as an unreliable partner.
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Credit...Noorullah Shirzada/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesDec. 9, 2015KABUL, Afghanistan Its chief export is opium and its main import is international aid. But Afghanistan is about to join the World Trade Organization, in what officials hope is a sign of better things to come for this impoverished, war-ravaged country.Afghanistan, along with the West African nation of Liberia, is expected to get the approval of member nations at a ministerial conference of the trade organization next week in Nairobi, Kenya.It may be hard to see how membership would make much of a dent in Afghanistans economic woes. But optimists hope that the trade bodys seal of approval would provide a lift for Afghanistan, which gets three-quarters of its gross domestic product from foreign aid and derives more than half of the remainder from the production and export of opium and related products like heroin. Most of the rest comes from agriculture and services.This is really positive news for Afghanistan and the W.T.O., the director general of the trade body, Roberto Azevdo, said in a statement. W.T.O. membership will help to create new trading opportunities and boost economic development.President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan said membership would create a catalyst for domestic reforms and transformation to an effective and functioning market economy that attracts investment, creates jobs and improves the welfare of the people of Afghanistan.Still, the crucial roadblock to economic rebirth is the perilous security situation: The Taliban, the group waging war with the government, have control of more territory than at any time since before the United States-led coalition ousted them in 2001, and road travel is unsafe in much of the country. Other challenges include endemic corruption and a lack of basic infrastructure.As the International Monetary Fund put it succinctly in a recent report, Afghanistan remains a poor, fragile state far from self-reliance. The country ranks 194th of 213 countries by income per capita, the report said, while a large illicit narcotics sector, difficult security conditions, corruption and weak institutions undermine development, constrain growth, and weigh on poverty reduction.While economists generally agree that more trade is a good thing, there are concerns that in desperately poor countries, the benefits of World Trade Organization membership can come at a substantial cost. A United Nations study found that membership would not be an unalloyed positive. While consumers would benefit from lower prices as tariffs on imports fall, the study found, the countrys emerging producers would suffer from new competition, even as government revenues might decline on lower tariff receipts.If approved, Afghanistan and Liberia would become the 163rd and 164th members of the World Trade Organization, and two of the poorest countries to join.The trade group itself might have little else to celebrate at the Nairobi meeting. The so-called Doha Round of talks, begun with great fanfare in 2001 and meant to achieve lower trade barriers for all members, have been stalled for years. Mr. Azevdo was quoted by Reuters as warning on Nov. 26 that moving forward in those talks was impossible at this point in time.Even as those discussions have gone nowhere, the United States and some of its biggest trading partners have been negotiating agreements outside the trade organization. Such pacts include the Trans-Pacific Partnership, involving 12 Pacific Rim nations, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the United States and the European Union.
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Ashanti Mom-Driven Ride Sideswipes Car 1/23/2018 TMZ.com Ashanti and her mom were involved in a car accident in Beverly Hills that left the other driver in tears. Ashanti's mother was behind the wheel of their SUV Monday as they pulled away from a parking spot, and apparently sideswiped a much smaller silver sedan. The damage was pretty obvious, and Ashanti's mom did stop ... momentarily. The other driver told us Ashanti got her number and info, but pulled off without sharing any of hers. She was pretty torn up about it, and she told us she plans on treating this like a hit and run. We've reached out to Ashanti's reps, but no word back yet.
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Kim Zolciak to NeNe I'll Sue You for Calling Me Racist And You Do Have Roaches!!! 10/11/2017 Kim Zolciak is threatening to sue NeNe Leakes for millions of dollars unless she immediately apologizes for calling her and her daughter, Brielle, racists and KKK members. Kim hired Allison Hart at the high-powered law firm Lavely & Singer, and it didn't take long for them to fire off a super threatening demand letter. The letter was triggered by a video Brielle shot which appears to show roaches crawling on NeNe's bathroom floor. The letter, obtained by TMZ, references some choice comments NeNe made on social media, including, "Kim & her child did something very wrong & disgusting! Black people and roaches in the same sentence don't work for me boo." She then went on to call Brielle "#racisttrash" and "#KKK," adding, "Kim & her daughter oops whole family are racists!" The letter calls the statements "outrageous and malicious lies." What's more, the lawyer says Brielle never posted the video showing the cockroaches crawling on the floor, but it was NeNe who got the video and posted it on Twitter and Instagram. The letter makes it clear ... NeNe has roaches, but it's not racist to say that. What's more ... the letter claims NeNe is going after Kim and Brielle out of jealousy. They have a successful show on Bravo, "Don't Be Tardy," and NeNe is trying to get people to boycott the program with hashtags like, #blackpeopleneedtostopsupportingtheprejudice." Attorney Hart wants a prominent retraction on Instagram and Twitter and other social media sites where NeNe posted her comments, along with an apology. If that doesn't happen ... "Your conduct exposes you to multi-million dollar liability." We reached out to NeNe ... so far, no word back.
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Feb. 12, 2014Doug Mohns, a durable and versatile skater who lasted 22 seasons in the National Hockey League, playing in seven All-Star Games, died on Feb. 7 in Reading, Mass. He was 80.The cause was myelodysplastic syndrome, a blood and bone marrow disorder, said his wife, Tabor Ansin Mohns.For most of his career, which extended from 1953 to 1975, Mohns was a stalwart of the old, compact N.H.L. when there were only six franchises, rivalries were especially intense, no one wore a helmet, and players were intimately acquainted with the strengths and weaknesses of players on every other club. He played 11 seasons for the Boston Bruins and had his most productive period in Chicago, playing for the Black Hawks (now the Blackhawks), before finishing his career in the era of expansion with the Minnesota North Stars, the Atlanta Flames and the Washington Capitals. Agile, swift and sturdy on the ice his nickname was Diesel and tough to separate from the puck once he controlled it, Mohns could play both as a wing on the front line and on defense. When he retired, he was in the career top 10 in regular-season games played, with 1,390. (He is still in the top 40.) Though not primarily a scorer, he was, in the early 1950s, among the first wave of players to adopt the slap shot, and he had four consecutive seasons with Chicago, from 1965-66 through 1968-69, in which he scored more than 20 goals, often skating on the left wing with Stan Mikita at center and Ken Wharram on the right, a combination known as the Scooter Line. Over his career, he scored 248 regular-season goals and had 462 assists. Douglas Allen Mohns was born on Dec. 13, 1933, in Capreol, Ontario, where his father worked for a railroad. He was a gifted skater from an early age; according to his website, he was offered a contract with the Ice Capades when he was 7. He began playing organized hockey at 14, became a Canadian junior hockey star with the Barrie Flyers and ascended to the Bruins when he was 19. He scored in his first game, a victory over the Montreal Canadiens (outplaying the heralded young Canadiens star Jean Beliveau, according to a United Press report), though he would have limited luck against Montreal from then on. He never played on a Stanley Cup winner, but he played in the finals three times, in 1957 and 1958 with Boston and in 1965 with Chicago, losing to the Canadiens each time. Mohnss first marriage, to Jane Foster, ended with her death in 1988. In addition to his wife, he is survived by a sister, Erma Wilson; a son, Douglas Jr.; a daughter, Andrea Brillaud; a stepson, Greg Ansin; a stepdaughter, Lisa Ansin; and nine grandchildren. After his retirement, Mohns worked in the human resources department at New England Rehabilitation Hospital in Woburn, Mass. At his death, his home was in Bedford, Mass.Anyone who lasts for decades in the N.H.L. can take care of himself on the ice, and Mohns was no exception. He spent 1,250 minutes not quite a full day in the penalty box and was not averse to throwing a punch. In 1957, still playing with the Bruins, he had his jaw broken by an opponent, Ian Cushenan of the Black Hawks, and he was out for several weeks. Cushenan had taken umbrage after he dropped his stick on the ice and Mohns kept kicking it out of his reach. That made me sore, Cushenan said, and I slugged him.
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Dec. 7, 2015The advertising giant Interpublic Group of Companies is gaining a stronger foothold in Russia.In a deal that has been brewing for years, Interpublic has acquired three Russian creative agencies from ADV, its longtime partner in the country.Interpublic, which is based in New York, has done business in Russia for two decades through ADV, an advertising group that encompasses more than 40 agencies in countries including Russia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan. But with the deal, Interpublic will now directly own advertising agencies in one of the top global markets.We have wanted to own these agencies for years, said Michael I. Roth, the chairman and chief executive of Interpublic. We have a number of global clients that operate in Russia that are very important, and its important for us to have a relationship with our clients in the markets they compete in.Interpublics clients in Russia include LOral and Unilever.The other top holding companies WPP, Omnicom Group and Publicis Groupe also conduct business in Russia.At the moment, relations between the United States and Russia are particularly fraught and the Russian economy is stumbling.Last year, Martin Sorrell, the chief executive of WPP, one of the worlds biggest ad holding companies, warned that the economic sanctions imposed on Russia could threaten the advertising companys profits there.Interpublics media agency, Magna Global, expects industrywide ad spending to decrease 12 percent in Russia this year, largely because of economic strain in the country, according to an annual forecast released on Monday. (The company estimates that the Russian market will account for 40 percent of the $19.3 billion in ad sales in central and Eastern Europe.) Ad spending in Russia will stabilize in 2016, Magna Global predicts.Despite the geopolitical and economic strain, Mr. Roth said that owning agencies in Russia made sense. Our clients are still there, and they still advertise and we need to do the work, he said. Frankly, if we werent there, our competitors would be doing the work.Ad holding companies have also been looking elsewhere for longer-term growth opportunities. Omnicom, for instance, announced in November that one of its divisions, DDB Worldwide, had acquired Grupo ABC, an advertising group in Brazil.With the deal, Interpublic gains a majority stake in the Russian affiliates of three of its most well-known global creative agencies McCann, Mullen Lowe and FCB. ADV shareholders will remain minority owners of the agencies. Financial terms were not disclosed, but a person familiar with the deal said it was valued at between $10 million and $20 million; Interpublic sets aside $150 million a year for acquisitions.The deal will give Interpublic control over talent and management decisions at the agencies and allow the company to record revenue from its Russian operations on its own books.ADV and the French advertising company Havas are also partners in Russia; that relationship will remain intact.
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UFC's Liz Carmouche The UFC Is Ready for a Gay Man ... 'This Is a Safe Place' 1/29/2018 TMZSports.com Liz Carmouche -- the UFC's first openly lesbian fighter -- says public perception has come a long way since she came out ... and the UFC is finally ready to accept a gay male athlete. "I do actually believe that a man could come out as openly gay and he could rise to the top," Liz told TMZ Sports. You might remember ... Liz broke the glass ceiling back in 2013, when she fought Ronda Rousey in the UFC's inaugural women's title fight. Back then, Carmouche had serious doubts about a man following in her footsteps ... but says she feels differently now after experiencing how LGBTQ fighters are treated in MMA gyms like her own (San Diego Combat Academy). Liz -- who recently partnered with HempMeds -- also told us why she thinks the UFC's at a place where it can let its fighters smoke weed ... even though she's way more of an advocate for CBD oil. TMZSports.com
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on techThe arrest of a man for a crime he didnt commit shows the dangers of facial recognition technology.VideoCreditCredit...By Brian Matthew HartJune 25, 2020This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it weekdays.A lot of technology is pretty dumb, but we think its smart. My colleague Kashmir Hill showed the human toll of this mistake.Her article detailed how Robert Julian-Borchak Williams, a black man in Michigan, was accused of shoplifting on the basis of flawed police work that relied on faulty facial recognition technology. The software showed Williamss drivers license photo among possible matches with the man in the surveillance images, leading to Williamss arrest in a crime he didnt commit.(In response to Kashs article, prosecutors apologized for what happened to Williams and said he could have his case expunged.)Kash talked to me about how this happened, and what the arrest showed about the limits and accuracy of facial recognition technology.Shira: What a mess up. How did this happen?Kash: The police are supposed to use facial recognition identification only as an investigative lead. But instead, people treat facial recognition as a kind of magic. And thats why you get a case where someone was arrested based on flawed software combined with inadequate police work.But humans, not just computers, misidentify people in criminal cases.Absolutely. Witness testimony is also very troubling. That has been a selling point for many facial recognition technologies.Is the problem that the facial recognition technology is inaccurate?Thats one problem. A federal study of facial recognition algorithms found them to be biased and to wrongly identify people of color at higher rates than white people. The study included the two algorithms used in the image search that led to Williamss arrest.Sometimes the algorithm is good and sometimes its bad, and theres not always a great way to tell the difference. And theres usually no requirement for vetting the technology from policymakers, the government or law enforcement.Whats the broader problem?Companies that sell facial recognition software say it doesnt give a perfect match. It gives a score of how likely the facial images in databases match the one you search. The technology companies say none of this is probable cause for arrest. (At least, thats how they talk about it with a reporter for The New York Times.)But on the ground, officers see an image of a suspect next to a photo of the likeliest match, and it seems like the correct answer. I have seen facial recognition work well with some high-quality close-up images. But usually, police officers have grainy videos or a sketch, and computers dont work well in those cases.It feels as if we know computers are flawed, but we still believe the answers they spit out?I wrote about the owner of a Kansas farm who was harassed by law enforcement and random visitors because of a glitch in software that maps peoples locations from their internet addresses. People incorrectly thought the mapping software was flawless. Facial recognition has the same problem. People dont drill down into the technology, and they dont read the fine print about the inaccuracies.Hey, big tech: What about big structural change?Tech companies shouldnt say they want to help fight entrenched global problems like climate change and racial injustice without taking a hard look at how their products make things worse.That was the point that Kevin Roose, a technology columnist for The New York Times, made about Facebook, Google and other internet companies that have proclaimed their support for the Black Lives Matter movement and announced donations, changes to their work force and other supportive measures in recent weeks.These are good steps. But as Kevin wrote and discussed on The Daily podcast, the companies havent tackled the ways that their internet hangouts have been created to reward exaggerated viewpoints that undermine movements like Black Lives Matter. They also havent addressed how their rewarding of boundary-pushing online behavior has contributed to racial division.Kevin said the tech companies actions were like fast-food chains getting together to fight obesity by donating to a vegan food co-op, rather than by lowering their calorie counts.I have similar feelings about Amazons creation of a $2 billion fund to back technologies that seek to combat climate change. Previously, Amazon had announced pledges to reduce its own carbon emissions by, for example, shifting its package-delivery fleet to electric vehicles. Again, great. But.Its not clear that Amazons efforts can fully offset the carbon emissions of delivering packages fast, or shipping bottles of laundry detergent across the country, or letting people try to return stuff without thinking twice.In short, Amazons carbon pledges might be nibbling around the edges of a problem to avoid considering how the company has shaped our shopping behaviors in an environmentally harmful way.Big structural changes are incredibly hard for the companies and us. Im not saying big tech companies necessarily have an obligation to fight racism or environmental destruction. But the companies say thats what they want to do. They might not be able to make a big difference without fundamentally changing how they operate.Before we go Great! Now do more: Google said it would start automatically deleting logs of peoples web and app activity and data on our location after 18 months, my colleague Dai Wakabayashi reported. This change applies only to new accounts, but its a healthy step to put some limits on the stockpiles of information Google has about us. Heres one more idea: Collect less data on us in the first place.The trustbusters are working hard on Google: Attorney General William Barr is unusually involved in the Justice Departments investigation into whether Google abuses its power, my colleagues David McCabe and Cecilia Kang write. (Here is my explanation of whats happening with Google.) Barrs interest shows the government is taking seriously its look into the power of big tech companies, but it also risks criticism that the investigation has more political than legal motivations.Tilting at windmills, but President Trumps campaign is considering drawing more supporters to its own smartphone app or other alternatives to big internet hangouts like Facebook and Twitter, The Wall Street Journal reported. Theres no chance Mr. Trump or his campaign can ditch big internet sites, but they are worried about social media policies that have limited some of their inflammatory posts. They share the fears of many people and organizations, including news outlets, that wish they relied less on the large internet hangouts to get noticed.Hugs to thisIts eerie, sweet and funny to see this Barcelona musical performance in a concert hall with houseplants filling the seats. (The plants will be donated to health care workers.)We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else youd like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. Get this newsletter in your inbox every weekday; please sign up here.
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Nov. 7, 2018LIMA, Peru Police arrested 14 people in Peru and took a five-month-old baby into protective custody, dismantling a human trafficking ring suspected of selling children taken from vulnerable women.The arrests were the result of an early morning raid on Tuesday that targeted a group dedicated to the sale of minors and abortions, the Public Ministry of Peru said. Hundreds of police officers raided 18 homes and businesses in the city of Arequipa as part of the operation.Prosecutors had been investigating the organization since May and dubbed it the Heartless Human Traffickers.One of the men arrested in the raid is the former head of the national police service, General Ral Becerra Velarde, according to the public prosecutor. Mr. Becerra ran the police force from 2010 to 2011 before retiring.Mr. Becerras girlfriend, Cintia Tello Preciado, was also arrested. Local news reports said she was suspected as the mastermind of a plot to buy and sell children.A pediatrician and a gynecologist were also among those arrested. The baby who was taken into protective custody during the raids was found in unsanitary conditions and is currently under the care of the Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations.Rosmery Mendoza Palomino, the prosecutor in charge of the case, said the group paid vulnerable pregnant women to give up their babies, who would later be sold for a profit. Officials also seized a large number of documents, nearly $30,000 in cash, two vehicles and cellphones from the group.Investigators said it is still unclear how many children may have been trafficked, who the group intended to sell them to and why.Local news reports said that at least one woman, a field worker who was eight months pregnant but felt she could not afford to raise the child, was visiting Arequipa to get prenatal care when someone involved with the trafficking group offered to pay her for the baby.Abortion is illegal in Peru except in cases when the life of the mother is directly at risk. So that was not an option for this woman and she agreed to hand her child over in exchange for the equivalent of around $1,200, officials said.Jorge Chavez Cotrina, the coordinating prosecutor for the state attorneys office in Lima specializing in organized crime, said the group likely targeted poor women in desperate straits.He said the traffickers went to these places that exist in different cities where they perform abortions and offered to pay women to have the babies and give them up, or approached destitute women who were in the last months of their pregnancy and offered to pay for their expenses in exchange for the child. Prosecutors suspect two other children had been recently sold.He also said that the biological parents of the baby taken into custody have been detained for selling their daughter.Being in an economic crisis, these women are more easily convinced, Mr. Cotrina said.The arrests came a day before the American Embassy in Lima held an event highlighting a new program in which the United States and Peru would cooperate to provide protections for vulnerable women and children in an effort to prevent them from becoming victims of trafficking.Elvia Barrios Alvarado, a Supreme Court judge, said the countrys judicial system is committed to holding human traffickers accountable and highlighted the disproportionate toll that trafficking takes on women.Its main victims are women, she said. If victims do not find support, if they collide with an adverse judicial decision, the lack of confidence in justice will favor the business of traffickers and impunity to perpetuate this type of crime.Peru has made strides to combat human trafficking, according to a 2018 State Department assessment, but must still improve its record.Complicity of some government officials undermined efforts to combat trafficking, the report said, indicating that the government maintained weak victim protection efforts.
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Credit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesJune 10, 2018WASHINGTON President Trumps top economic adviser said on Sunday that Mr. Trump had pulled out of a joint statement with allies at the Group of 7 meeting over the weekend because a betrayal by the Canadian prime minister had threatened to make Mr. Trump appear weak before his summit meeting on Tuesday with North Koreas leader.The adviser, Larry Kudlow, said that Mr. Trump had no choice but to take the action after the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said in a news conference that Canada would not be bullied by the United States on trade.Mr. Trump is not going to let a Canadian prime minister push him around, Mr. Kudlow said, adding, He is not going to permit any show of weakness on a trip to negotiate with North Korea.Mr. Trudeau made his remarks, which were largely measured in tone, after the president had agreed to sign the joint statement and had left for his historic meeting with Kim Jong-un in Singapore. Negotiators had struggled to write a compromise communiqu addressing trade and other issues that the seven nations could agree on, but issued one on Saturday believing that there would be consensus.In his news conference, the prime minister made a vow to protect his countrys interests that was not unlike the promises Mr. Trump himself has made for the United States. But Mr. Kudlow said that the timing of the comments meant that Mr. Trudeau had stabbed us in the back.We joined the communiqu in good faith, Mr. Kudlow said on CNNs State of the Union program. You just dont behave that way, O.K.? Its a betrayal.He added that Mr. Trump had every right every right to push back on this amateurish Trudeau scheme.Peter Navarro, the presidents top trade adviser, echoed Mr. Kudlows criticism of Mr. Trudeau, though in even harsher terms.Theres a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad-faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door, Mr. Navarro said on Fox News Sunday.On Sunday, Democrats expressed alarm at Mr. Trumps decision to back away from the joint G-7 statement.This wasnt just with Trudeau. This is with our best allies, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California said on CNN. Not to sign a statement of solidarity, which stands for everything that we stand for, is a big mistake.Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, offered a message to foreign nations in a tweet.To our allies: bipartisan majorities of Americans remain pro-free trade, pro-globalization & supportive of alliances based on 70 years of shared values, he wrote on Saturday. Americans stand with you, even if our president doesnt.On Saturday, Mr. Trudeau said Canada would retaliate against United States tariffs on steel and aluminum products. The president apparently heard Mr. Trudeaus comments while flying on Air Force One and quickly lashed out on Twitter.Based on Justins false statements at his news conference, and the fact that Canada is charging massive Tariffs to our U.S. farmers, workers and companies, I have instructed our U.S. Reps not to endorse the Communique as we look at Tariffs on automobiles flooding the U.S. Market! Mr. Trump wrote.He added that Mr. Trudeau was very dishonest and weak and acted so meek and mild.Mr. Trumps response amounted to a declaration of political war on one of the countrys closest allies, and further isolated the United States after months of protectionist threats that have kept Mr. Trudeau on edge.In a tweet on Sunday, Mr. Trudeau chose to focus on what he said was the substance of the summit meeting.The historic and important agreement we all reached at #G7Charlevoix will help make our economies stronger & people more prosperous, protect our democracies, safeguard our environment and protect women & girls rights around the world, he wrote. Thats what matters.The Canadian foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, said on Sunday that Canada does not believe that ad hominem attacks are a particularly appropriate or useful way to conduct our relations with other countries.She added, We particularly refrain from ad hominem attacks when it comes to our allies.Canada was not the only target at the G-7 meeting. During closed-door sessions on Friday, Mr. Trump went around the room, declaring ways that each of the nations had mistreated the United States, according to a European official. Mr. Trump has long maintained that his country has been duped by others into signing disastrous trade agreements.His comments also came just hours after Mr. Trudeau had tried to paint a more civil picture of the summit meeting, which was held in a quiet resort town north of Quebec City.Mr. Trudeau had said he was inspired by the talks between the seven international allies on economic and foreign policy questions. Mr. Trump had posed for pictures with the other world leaders, gripping and grinning amid talks that White House aides insisted were friendly.Mr. Kudlow, a free-trader who joined the administration in March, said on Sunday that the United States had in fact been near a substantive agreement with Canada on the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has been the subject of difficult negotiations.We were very close to making a deal with Canada on NAFTA, bilaterally perhaps, he said on CNN, though he did not elaborate.
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TrilobitesCredit...Zohar LazarMarch 21, 2016The United Nations issues lots of important, if not exactly scintillating, reports. Then there is the annual World Happiness Report, released last week.This one consistently sparks interest beyond the usual coterie of diplomats and foreign-policy wonks. Happiness is a universal aspiration.This year we learn that happiness, like another precious commodity, oil, is not evenly distributed across the globe. Some nations are awash in bliss (see: Denmark), others bone dry (see: Burundi).Every year, happiness rankings capture our imagination. Like sports scores, everyone wants to know how the home team fared. (The United States, according to the United Nations, ranks 13th out of 157 countries.)Do these rankings really mean anything? Not if youre a happiness researcher, it turns out.For us, thats the least important data, said John F. Helliwell, a professor emeritus of economics at the University of British Columbia and one of the new reports co-authors.What really intrigues Dr. Helliwell and other happiness researchers is not where people are happy but why. The U.N. report identifies six key factors: G.D.P. per capita, life expectancy, social support, trust, generosity and perceived freedom to make life decisions.This year, the report also examined, for the first time, the question of happiness inequality. In some countries, such as the Netherlands, happiness levels are evenly distributed. That is, most Dutch people are more or less equally happy, as measured in self-reported surveys.In other nations, particularly those in the Middle East and Latin America, happiness levels vary tremendously. (Unequal income levels explain some, but not all, of the variation.)This inequity matters, the report concludes, because new research suggests that people are significantly happier living in societies where there is less inequality of happiness.In other words, we can achieve only so much happiness if our neighbors are miserable.Which raises an intriguing question: Can you redistribute happiness?Yes, you can, Dr. Helliwell said, and less painfully than redistributing income. Its possible to boost someone elses happiness without subtracting from your own.In fact, several studies have found that acting altruistically makes a person happier. Its one of those win-win games that everyone is looking for, Dr. Helliwell said.The U.N. report is good news for Bhutan, the nation where happiness is most evenly distributed. No great surprise there: The tiny Himalayan nation single-handedly sparked interest in global bliss with its well publicized measurements of Gross National Happiness.And while the countrys prime minister recently said he plans to dial back this approach, the seeds have been exported and planted around the world and now they are growing vigorously, Dr. Helliwell said.The U.K. and France are both actively pursuing ways to translate happiness data into public policy. Last month, the United Arab Emirates appointed a minister of happiness, the first such position in the Middle East, part of an effort to improve its well-being ranking (currently a not terrible 28th).This fascination with the scorecard rankles some happiness researchers, but not Dr. Helliwell, who views them as a kind of loss leader.It gets people in the store, and once theyre in the store they become interested in asking, Well, what makes for better lives? he said.
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Middle East|Egyptian Sentenced to Death in Killing of Christian Doctorhttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/17/world/middleeast/egypt-christian-doctor-islamic-state.htmlNov. 17, 2018CAIRO An Egyptian man accused of supporting the Islamic State was sentenced to death on Saturday in the fatal stabbing of an 82-year-old Christian doctor in Cairo.Prosecutors said the killing in September 2017 happened when the 40-year-old defendant requested to see the doctor, pretending to be a patient.The man, who was not identified, started stabbing the doctor when he was shown into the clinics examination room, and then stabbed the physicians assistant as she intervened to try to stop the attack, officials said.Prosecutors said the defendant had embraced the extremist ideology of the Islamic State. The local affiliate of the group has targeted Egypts minority Christian population as punishment for its support of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who has cracked down on Muslim groups since taking power after the military ouster of President Mohamed Morsi in 2013.The Islamic State in Egypt has expanded an insurgency that started in the Sinai Peninsula in recent years to include attacks on Christians in churches and major cities and outside monasteries.Earlier this month, the militant group said it was behind an ambush on two buses in which gunmen fatally shot dead at least seven Coptic Christian pilgrims and wounded at least 16 others. The attack came after a nearly yearlong lull in major attacks on Copts in Egypt.The two buses were carrying pilgrims left the Monastery of Saint Samuel the Confessor, 85 miles south of Cairo, in Egypts Western Desert.In November 2017, dozens of militants opened fire on a mosque in Sinai affiliated with the Sufi strain of Islam which extremists view as heretical killing at least 311 people, in the deadliest act of terrorism in Egypts modern history.
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VideotranscripttranscriptBaffled by Bitcoin? How Cryptocurrency WorksFrom Bitcoin to Litecoin to Ethereum, we explain how cryptocurrency transactions work.Theres Bitcoin. Theres Litecoin. Theres Ethereum. So just what is cryptocurrency, and how does it work? Essentially, its digital money thats bought and sold online. Theres no bills or coins. Its not based on another asset like gold. And it doesnt go through traditional financial institutions like banks. Instead, these currencies operate in a completely decentralized system that uses so-called blockchain technology to track transactions. To see how this works, lets look at how youd buy something with cryptocurrency. Say that Alice wants to buy a bike from Dan using Bitcoin, her cryptocurrency of choice. Alice begins by logging into her Bitcoin wallet with a private key, a unique combination of letters and numbers. With a traditional financial transaction, the exchanges get sent to banks on each side who record the money being subtracted from one account and added to another. But remember, in this scenario, there are no banks or middlemen. Instead, Alices transaction is shared with everyone in the Bitcoin network. These networked computers add Alices transaction to a shared list of recent transactions, known as a block. Every 10 minutes, the newest block of transactions is added on, or chained, to all the previous blocks. Thats how you get a blockchain. To ensure that each block of transactions on the chain is verified, a subset of Bitcoins network joins a race to solve a difficult math puzzle. And if they solve it first, their record of the block of transactions becomes the official record. Theyre rewarded with Bitcoins of their own, and the network gets a new block on the chain. This entire process is known as mining. But instead of chipping away at rock, youre solving complex puzzles. The fact that many computers are competing to verify a block ensures that no single computer can monopolize the Bitcoin market. To ensure the competition stays fair and evenly timed, the puzzle becomes harder when more computers join in. The Bitcoin protocol says mining will continue until there are 21 million Bitcoins in existence. Thats set to happen around 2140 if Bitcoin lasts that long.From Bitcoin to Litecoin to Ethereum, we explain how cryptocurrency transactions work.June 13, 2018SAN FRANCISCO A concentrated campaign of price manipulation may have accounted for at least half of the increase in the price of Bitcoin and other big cryptocurrencies last year, according to a paper released on Wednesday by an academic with a history of spotting fraud in financial markets.The paper by John Griffin, a finance professor at the University of Texas, and Amin Shams, a graduate student, is likely to stoke a debate about how much of Bitcoins skyrocketing gain last year was caused by the covert actions of a few big players, rather than real demand from investors.Many industry players expressed concern at the time that the prices were being pushed up at least partly by activity at Bitfinex, one of the largest and least regulated exchanges in the industry. The exchange, which is registered in the Caribbean with offices in Asia, was subpoenaed by American regulators shortly after articles about the concerns appeared in The New York Times and other publications.Mr. Griffin looked at the flow of digital tokens going in and out of Bitfinex and identified several distinct patterns that suggest that someone or some people at the exchange successfully worked to push up prices when they sagged at other exchanges. To do that, the person or people used a secondary virtual currency, known as Tether, which was created and sold by the owners of Bitfinex, to buy up those other cryptocurrencies.There were obviously tremendous price increases last year, and this paper indicates that manipulation played a large part in those price increases, Mr. Griffin said.[Steve Bannon has a good stake in Bitcoin and floated the idea of creating a deplorables coin.]Bitfinex executives have denied in the past that the exchange was involved in any manipulation. The company said on Wednesday that it had never engaged in any sort of market or price manipulation. Tether issuances cannot be used to prop up the price of Bitcoin or any other coin/token on Bitfinex, Jan Ludovicus van der Velde, Bitfinexs chief executive, said in a statement.The new paper helped push down the already sinking price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on Wednesday. The price of Bitcoin fell as much as 5 percent after the report was published, approaching its lowest point of the year. Bitcoin is now down more than 65 percent from the highs it hit late last year.The authors of the new 66-page paper do not have emails or documents that prove that Bitfinex knew about or was responsible for price manipulation. The researchers relied on the millions of transaction records that are captured on the public ledgers of all virtual currency transactions, known as the blockchain, to spot patterns. This method is not conclusive, but it has helped government authorities and academics spot suspicious activity in the past.In particular, Mr. Griffin and Mr. Shams examined the flow of Tether, a token that is supposed to be tied to the value of the dollar and that is issued exclusively by Bitfinex in large batches. They found that half of the increase in Bitcoins price in 2017 could be traced to the hours immediately after Tether flowed to a handful of other exchanges, generally when the price was declining.Other large virtual currencies that can be purchased with Tether, such as Ether and Zcash, rose even more quickly than Bitcoin in those periods. The prices rose much more quickly on exchanges that accepted Tether than they did on those that did not, and the pattern ceased when Bitfinex stopped issuing new Tether this year, the authors found.Sarah Meiklejohn, a professor at the University College London who pioneered this sort of pattern spotting, said the analysis in the new paper seems sound after reviewing it this week.Philip Gradwell, the chief economist at Chainalysis, a firm that analyses blockchain data, also said the study seems credible. He cautioned that a full understanding of the patterns would require more analysis.Mr. Griffin previously wrote research pointing to fraudulent behavior in several other financial markets. He drew attention for a 2016 paper that suggested that a popular financial contract tied to the volatility in financial markets, known as the VIX, was being manipulated. A whistle-blower later came forward to confirm those suspicions, and now several active lawsuits are focused on the allegations.Beyond his work at the University of Texas, Mr. Griffin has a consulting firm that works on financial fraud cases, including some in the virtual currency industry.The relationship between Tether and the price of Bitcoin has been flagged for months within the community, said Christian Catalini, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who specializes in blockchain research. It is great to see academic work trying to causally assess if market manipulation is taking place.The new paper is not the first academic work to identify manipulation in the virtual currency markets. A paper published last year by a team of Israeli and American researchers said much of Bitcoins big price increase in 2013 was caused by a campaign of price manipulation at what was then the biggest exchange, Mt. Gox.
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VideotranscripttranscriptJair Bolsonaros Been Called a Misogynist and Fascist. Heres Why Women Still Back Him.Jair Bolsonaro, Brazils newly elected president, is known for his offensive remarks about women, but his hard-line agenda on crime has spurred many to vote for him. We heard from women on both sides.Copacabana. This world-class beach is now party central for Brazils far right. Weekly rallies here celebrate the movements rising star and and now future president, Jair Bolsonaro. If you know anything about Bolsonaro, you likely know that hes made some pretty outrageous remarks, such as calling a fellow lawmaker too ugly to rape and supporting torture. You may also know that women have come out en masse to oppose Bolsonaro, taking to the streets across Brazil under the banner of Ele No, or Not Him. But what may be surprising is that almost as many women support Bolsonaro. Hes polarized the entire country, but women seem especially divided about him. His signature gun gesture here hints at a key reason why. In 1964, women marched against communist reforms, setting the stage for a military coup. Twenty-one years of dictatorship followed. Hundreds of dissidents were killed, and thousands were tortured. Jair Bolsonaro, a former Army captain, is an open admirer of the dictatorship. His only criticism: They didnt kill enough people. At Bolsonaro rallies, people reminisce about the role women played in calling for the coup. Crime and especially violent crime is a huge problem in Brazil. Last year, nearly 64,000 people were murdered. Bolsonaro himself was stabbed in the stomach while campaigning. His popularity surged afterward. To understand how fear of crime is driving Bolsonaros popularity, we went to meet Sara Winter. She used to be a pro-choice activist. Now shes pro-life, and describes herself as a cured feminist. Shes been mobilizing her Facebook followers to show their support for Bolsonaro. Walking the streets of Rio, we hear similar views. Sofia Caputo voted for the left in the last four elections and now supports Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro has seized on peoples fears to justify iron-fisted policing tactics. His pitch isnt exactly new. The military already polices Rios poorest neighborhoods. We embed with Lt. Commander Enrique Amaral as he prepares to lead soldiers through the Babilonia favela. His battalion is part of a federal intervention started earlier this year to crack down on crime. Soldiers are looking for guns and gang members. But really anyone can be a suspect. Its like stop and frisk with M-16s. They see a young man who turns away. The young man stops. Hes standing right outside his house. His name is Renan, and his mother is fuming. Renan was let go. But his mother has reason to be scared. Security forces have killed over 1,000 people in Rio since the federal takeover began. Thats a 42% increase from last year. And those killed are mostly young men. Its why many women here many mothers fear Bolsonaro. He wants to ramp up the militarys role, give police and soldiers more power with less accountability. Her son was 14 years old. He was shot on his way to school. Whats at stake in this election for you? But outside the war zone in the favelas, theres less concern about the cost of fighting violence with more violence. Bolsonaro also wants to make it easier to buy guns, and that resonates with a lot of middle and upper class people worried about a spike in robberies. One woman, Katia Sastre, became a poster child for self-defense. In March, Sastre was with her daughter at a school Mothers Day event standing outside when a young man walked up and tried to rob them at gunpoint. Sastre, off duty at the time, was recorded on CCTV shooting the gunman three times point blank. He died. The video went viral, and she became an overnight sensation. Soon after, Sastre ran for Congress and won by a landslide. The gunmans family is now suing Sastre for replaying the moment of their sons death in her campaign. His name was Elivelton Neves, I believe. He was 21. His family has responded. Do you regret using that video at all? Fear, crime and security. Like Donald Trump in the U.S., Bolsonaro has campaigned on these issues. Bolsonaro wants people to believe that his militaristic some say fascist agenda can solve all of Brazils problems. Bolsonaros supporters want change. They want a new approach. But at what cost for Brazls democracy? Enough women, and men, appear willing to find out.Jair Bolsonaro, Brazils newly elected president, is known for his offensive remarks about women, but his hard-line agenda on crime has spurred many to vote for him. We heard from women on both sides.CreditCredit...Ricardo Moraes/ReutersNov. 1, 2018RIO DE JANEIRO Jair Bolsonaro, Brazils next president, won over millions of voters by vowing to make it easier for the police to kill criminals and crush the nations violent gangs, often flashing a gun sign with his hands.A good criminal is a dead criminal, Mr. Bolsonaro said on the campaign trail.The type of draconian approach Mr. Bolsonaro promised has already been employed for months in Rio de Janeiro, his home state, where the military has overseen security operations since February. It has led to a surge in killings by the authorities and a debate over whether the tactic is working.Between March and September, the police and the army killed at least 922 people in the state of Rio de Janeiro, a 45 percent increase from the same period last year. Nearly one in every four people killed here since March have died at the hands of the state.Opinion polls suggest a broad majority of people in Rio de Janeiro support the military intervention. But while reports of crimes like robberies and cargo theft have declined in the first seven months of the military takeover, the total number of violent deaths in the state has increased.The reduction of violence is strategic to Brazil, said Samira Bueno, the executive director of the Brazilian Forum for Public Security, which studies violence trends. But so far, she added, it has been discussed through myths and formulations that arent fact or evidence based.Brazilians broadly agree that drastic measures need to be taken to curb the extraordinary wave of violent crime in the country, which led to the deaths of a record 63,880 people last year.ImageCredit...Dado Galdieri for The New York TimesIn Rio de Janeiro state alone, more than 5,197 people have been killed this year far more than the 3,438 civilians killed in conflict last year in Afghanistan, according to United Nations figures.The staggering level of violence weighed heavily on voters over the weekend. Along with Mr. Bolsonaro, other politicians who had vowed to hunt down suspected criminals were rewarded at polls, setting the stage for a period of intensified bloodletting.Mr. Bolsonaro, who won by a decisive margin, said in August that police officers who gun down armed criminals with 10 or 30 shots need to be decorated, not prosecuted.Wilson Witzel, a former federal judge who was elected governor of Rio de Janeiro in an upset victory clinched by running as a Bolsonaro ally, put organized crime groups on warning during a speech days before the vote.There will be no shortage of places to send criminals, he said. Well dig graves, and as to prisons, if necessary well put them on ships.This week, he said he favors extending the military intervention, which is set to end in January, for an additional 10 months. And he proposed using snipers, some aboard helicopters, to gun down anyone spotted carrying a weapon in low-income urban communities known as favelas.ImageCredit...Dado Galdieri for The New York TimesJoo Doria, a former mayor who was elected governor of So Paulo on Sunday in a tight race, vowed to raise money so that the best lawyers could defend police officers sued for killing suspected criminals.Drug gangs have controlled scores of neighborhoods in several large cities in Brazil for decades, becoming the de facto authority in areas the police seldom go into. Confrontations for territorial control between rival gangs, and clashes with the security forces, greatly contributed to the record bloodshed last year.Gustavo Bebianno, a prominent member of the Bolsonaro campaign who has expressed interest in serving as his justice minister, said that Brazils growing violence problem will become irreversible unless decisive action is taken soon.If a lowlife is on the street carrying a weapon ostentatiously, he should be a target, Mr. Bebianno said. You dont talk. You talk after shooting. Why would a decent person be carrying a weapon of war ostentatiously on a public street?Gen. Walter Souza Braga Netto, the Army commander who was appointed to lead the military intervention in Rio de Janeiro, said the vast majority of people killed by the police are irrational thugs.Asked to explain the surge in police killings since the intervention began, General Braga Netto explained that his men had trained the police in marksmanship and helped them procure and maintain equipment, leading to better accuracy.ImageCredit...Dado Galdieri for The New York TimesThere was a lot of shooting, and basically no one hit anyone, he said, referring to police operations before the intervention began. We trained the police and they learned how to hit the target.Experts warn that encouraging the police to become even more lethal is unlikely to address the root causes of violence, and may well exacerbate them.Youre implementing the death penalty in the polices day-to-day activities, said Ms. Bueno. In addition to being illegal, contrary to the constitution and immoral, it will make police officers more vulnerable.Much of the violence in Rio de Janeiro is driven by criminal organizations known as militias, made up of active-duty and retired police officers and military personnel acting on their own. They have become increasingly powerful in communities neglected by the state by extorting protection money from residents, operating unlicensed public transportation businesses and muscling into the drug trade.Militias are suspected of some of the worst crimes committed in the city in recent months, including the drive-by shooting of Marielle Franco, a leftist city council member killed in March, and the killing of a judge in 2012.Many residents in areas that have become increasingly lethal battlegrounds dread the prospect of more violence in the months ahead and question whether the military intervention will produce a lasting drop in crime.ImageCredit...Antonio Lacerda/EPA, via ShutterstockIt puts everyone at risk, said Sueli Oliveira, 73, who lives in the Santa Marta favela in Rio de Janeiro. She noted that some of the soldiers who have been deployed to restless favelas in recent months hail from those communities. Theyre pitting the poor against the poor, she said.Senior military leaders also appear far from enthusiastic about the increasing militarization of policing.The armed forces cant keep the public security of states under its guardianship indefinitely, Gen. Braga Netto said. We come, give support, teach them how to manage it, and then we leave.Retired Gen. Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira, whom Mr. Bolsonaro intends to name as defense minister, said that the new president hasnt signaled whether he wants to continue to rely heavily on the military to address urban violence.Its not the mission of our dreams in the armed forces, but if it is necessary, it will continue, Mr. Heleno said.Adriana Beltrn, a security expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, said Latin American leaders are increasingly finding it tempting to rely on the armed forces in areas where the police are outgunned and the criminal justice system is dysfunctional. But Brazilian leaders should take note of what has happened in Mexico and Honduras, she said.ImageCredit...Pilar Olivares/ReutersThe use of the military has not resulted in the disruption of criminal activity or dismantling of criminal networks, Ms. Beltran said. In many cases, gangs and criminal groups have increased their level of organization and sophistication. The cases of Mexico and Honduras demonstrate how the reliance on the military for policing can increase human rights abuses, including torture, disappearances and extrajudicial killings.Beyond proposing to ease the rules of engagement for the police, Mr. Bolsonaro has said that some teenagers should be prosecuted as adults for violent crimes, and he has promised to make it easier for civilians to lawfully carry weapons for self-defense.The rise of tough-on-crime politicians effectively marks the end of the policing strategies that helped drive down violence here in Rio when they were set in motion a decade ago.In 2008, the government established a network of so-called Pacification Police Units in favelas across the city in an effort to wrest territorial control from criminal groups. The government managed to reestablish control of dozens of formerly lawless areas, often without firing a shot, paving the way for promised investments in education, health and sanitation systems.Those investments, however, never fully materialized. And the approach was abandoned amid a budget shortfall in the state, which was exacerbated by a sweeping corruption scandal.Eliana Sousa, who heads Redes da Mar, a community organization in the Mar favela, one of the largest in Rio de Janeiro, said she fears that empowering the police to use greater violence will make matters worse.This shooting-down policy already exists, she said. What is the result? Rising violence.Joelma Viana, a 39-year-old single mother who lives in Chatuba da Penha, a favela in northern Rio de Janeiro, said her life was turned upside down in August during a two-day operation in her neighborhood.Ms. Viana, a restaurant cook, said the police ransacked her home, destroyed a television set and stole a jewelry box, a watch she had bought her son for his birthday and her favorite pair of hoop earrings.The modest amount I have been able to save has been a product of a lot of sacrifice, so in that moment, I felt demolished, said Ms. Viana, who filed a police report on the theft and destruction of her property. After living here for 38 years, I have never faced something like this. I feel humiliated. I want justice.
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A physicist and entrepreneur who cut an imposing figure, he did more than anyone to make optical research a priority in government and corporate budgets.Credit...Joseph McKeown/Getty ImagesPublished Jan. 7, 2021Updated Jan. 11, 2021When Narinder S. Kapany was in high school in the 1940s in Dehradun, an Indian city in the Himalayan foothills, his science teacher told him that light travels only in straight lines. By then he had already spent years playing around with a box camera, and he knew that light could at least be turned in different directions, through lenses and prisms. Something about the teachers attitude, he later said, made him want to go further, to prove him wrong by figuring out how to actually bend light.By the time he entered graduate school at Imperial College London in 1952, he realized that he wasnt alone. For decades researchers across Europe had been studying ways to transmit light through flexible glass fibers. But a host of technical challenges, not to mention World War II, had set them back.He persuaded one of those scientists, Harold Hopkins, to hire him as a research assistant, and the two clicked. Professor Hopkins, a formidable theoretician, provided the ideas; Dr. Kapany, more technically minded, figured out the practical side. In 1954, the pair announced a breakthrough in the journal Nature, demonstrating how to bundle thousands of impossibly thin glass fibers together and then connect them end to end.Their paper, along with a separate article by another author in the same issue, marked the birth of fiber optics, the now-ubiquitous communications technology that carries phone calls, television shows and billions of cat memes around the world every day.In later years, journalists took to calling Dr. Kapany the father of fiber optics, and several even claimed that he had been robbed of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics, which instead went to Charles Kao for his own groundbreaking work in fiber optics.That claim re-emerged after Dr. Kapany died on Dec. 3 in Redwood City, Calif., at 94. His son, Raj Kapany, confirmed the death but did not provide a cause.Whether Dr. Kapanys scientific contributions stand alongside Dr. Kaos can be debated, but his work as an intellectual evangelist for the burgeoning field of fiber optics is undeniable.He was a pioneer, the science journalist Jeff Hecht said in an interview, an enthusiastic promoter of a technology that long seemed more like science fiction than fact. As an academic researcher, and later as the chief executive of one of the first venture-capital-backed companies in Silicon Valley, Dr. Kapany relentlessly pushed fiber optics onto corporate and government research budgets, ensuring that the breakthroughs that he and Professor Hopkins made in the 1950s would bear fruit in the 1960s.According to Mr. Hechts 1999 history of fiber optics, City of Light, between 1955, when Dr. Kapany received his doctorate, and 1965, he was the lead author or co-author of 56 scientific papers an astounding 30 percent of all research published in the field during that decade. He wrote the first book on fiber optics and, in a 1960 cover article he wrote for Scientific American, even coined the term itself.ImageCredit...via Kapany familyNarinder Singh Kapany was born on Oct. 31, 1926, in Moga, a town in Punjab, in northwest India, and raised in Dehradun, about 200 miles to the east. His father, Sundar Singh Kapany, worked in the coal industry; his mother, Kundan Kaur Kapany, was a homemaker. After graduating from Agra University (now Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar University), he worked for a government munitions factory in Dehradun before moving to England.Despite his love for research, Dr. Kapany had never planned on becoming an academic scientist. He had originally moved to Britain for an internship at an optics firm in Scotland, to learn skills he could use in starting his own company back in India. But the opportunity to work with Professor Hopkins, a towering figure in the world of optics, was too tempting to resist.Their relationship, however, though fruitful, proved unstable: Both were physically imposing men with outsize personalities, and they fell out soon after publishing their seminal paper in Nature. Professor Hopkins accused Dr. Kapany of overstating his contribution; Dr. Kapany retorted that only he was able to turn the professors chalkboard musings into reality.In 1954, soon after the Nature article appeared, Dr. Kapany married Satinder Kaur, like him an Indian native, who was studying dance in London. The next year the two sailed to New York after he was offered a job at the University of Rochester and a consulting contract with Bausch & Lomb, the eye care company.Two years later, after the birth of their son, Raj, the Kapanys moved to Illinois, where Dr. Kapany took a job teaching at the Illinois Institute of Technology and where their daughter, Kiran, was born.Satinder Kapany died in 2016. Dr. Kapany is survived by his two children and four grandchildren.Dr. Kapany cut a dashing figure around the Chicago social scene his jackets custom made and slimly cut, his beard knotted tight to his chin and his mustache manicured like David Nivens, his son said, referring to the British actor.ImageCredit...via Kapany familyBut Dr. Kapany was growing restless in academia, and in 1960 he moved his family to California to start a new company, Optics Technology, to commercialize his research. He based it in Palo Alto, then just emerging as a tech hub, and received funding from Draper, Gaither & Anderson, one of the first venture-capital firms on the West Coast.As president and chief of research at the company, Dr. Kapany was focused on product development; to run the business side, the board hired Thomas J. Perkins, a young business executive who would go on to become a Silicon Valley eminence as co-founder of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins.Once again, Dr. Kapany worked closely with a similarly forceful personality, and once again there were fireworks. The two mens epic, sometimes alcohol-fueled fights were ostensibly about where to take the company, whether to move products to market quickly Mr. Perkinss plan or to focus on government-funded research and development.But there was clearly something deeper and more fundamental about their antagonism. It was a mutual hate for each other of near biblical proportions, Mr. Perkins later wrote.I told anyone who would listen, he added, that I wanted engraved on my tombstone, I still hate him.Mr. Perkins eventually demanded that the board choose between them. They chose Dr. Kapany.Dr. Kapany took the company public in 1967, but it was already sinking under the weight of poor sales and a strained budget. He left that year and, in 1973, founded a new company, Kaptron, which made fiber optics equipment. After later selling the business, he founded yet another company, K2 Optronics, with his son in 1999.Even as he filled out his career as a serial entrepreneur, Dr. Kapany never fully left academia: He taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz, from 1977 to 1983, and he later endowed chairs at several University of California schools in optics and in Sikh studies.ImageCredit...via Sikh FoundationDr. Kapany was a practicing Sikh and fiercely proud of his heritage. He amassed one of the worlds largest collections of Sikh art and sponsored rooms to feature it in museums around the country. My father became convinced that the world at large should know who the Sikhs are and that the Sikh people themselves should not forget who they are as they emigrate to other lands far from their original roots, his daughter said.But he was also aware of how exotic he seemed to some as an Indian in early postwar America, before the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 opened the door to millions of Asian immigrants. Whenever he demonstrated fiber optics to visitors, he called it his Indian optical rope trick.And he adopted an American accent, retaining just enough of his Indian and English tenor to make him stand out an aptitude for code-switching that, his son said, contributed to his success in both the science lab and the boardroom.He used that turban like a lethal weapon, his son said. When you see a guy who looked like that and who spoke like J.F.K., youre not going to forget him.
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Washington MemoThose who warned of worst-case scenarios under President Trump only to be dismissed as alarmists found some of their darkest fears realized in the storming of the Capitol on Wednesday.Credit...Jason Andrew for The New York TimesJan. 6, 2021WASHINGTON So this is how it ends. The presidency of Donald John Trump, rooted from the beginning in anger, division and conspiracy-mongering, comes to a close with a violent mob storming the Capitol at the instigation of a defeated leader trying to hang onto power as if America were just another authoritarian nation.The scenes in Washington would have once been unimaginable: A rampage through the citadel of American democracy. Police officers brandishing guns in an armed standoff to defend the House chamber. Tear gas deployed in the Rotunda. Lawmakers in hiding. Extremists standing in the vice presidents spot on the Senate dais and sitting at the desk of the speaker of the House.The words used to describe it were equally alarming: Coup. Insurrection. Sedition. Suddenly the United States was being compared to a banana republic and receiving messages of concern from other capitals. American carnage, it turned out, was not what President Trump would stop, as he promised upon taking office, but what he wound up delivering four years later to the very building where he took the oath.The convulsion in Washington capped 1,448 days of Twitter storms, provocations, race-baiting, busted norms, shock-jock governance and truth-bending prevarication from the Oval Office that have left the country more polarized than in generations. Those who warned of worst-case scenarios only to be dismissed as alarmists found some of their darkest fears realized. By days end, some Republicans discussed removing Mr. Trump under the 25th Amendment rather than wait two weeks for the inauguration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.The extraordinary invasion of the Capitol was a last-ditch act of desperation from a camp facing political eviction. Even before the mob set foot in the building on Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Trumps presidency was slipping away. Democrats were taking control of the Senate with a pair of Georgia runoff election victories that Republicans angrily blamed on the presidents erratic behavior.Two of his most loyal allies, Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, broke with Mr. Trump as never before, refusing to go along with his bid to overturn a democratic election after standing behind him or remaining quiet through four years of toxic conflict, scandal and capriciousness.And following the attack on the Capitol, even more Republicans abandoned him. While most Republicans in the House stuck with him, he lost more than half of the Republican senators who started the day on his side of the battle, leaving him just six on the first Senate vote when deliberations resumed after the rioters were removed.What we have seen today is unlawful and unacceptable, said Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Republican of Washington State, who reversed plans to join Mr. Trumps effort. I have decided I will vote to uphold the Electoral College results and I encourage Donald Trump to condemn and put an end to this madness.Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-ranking Republican in the House, said Mr. Trump was responsible for the violence. Theres no question that the president formed the mob, the president incited the mob, the president addressed the mob, she told Fox News in comments she then posted online. He lit the flames. This is what America is not.Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, another senior Republican, said he had no more interest in what Mr. Trump had to say after the events that forced lawmakers to flee their own chambers. I dont want to hear anything, he told reporters. It was a tragic day and I think he was part of it.The cascade of criticism came even from within Mr. Trumps circle, as advisers expressed deepening concern about how far he has been willing to go to undo an election he lost. At least three aides, Stephanie Grisham, Sarah Matthews and Rickie Niceta, resigned with more expected to follow. After he initially offered only mild statements calling on the mob in the Capitol to be peaceful, several members of Mr. Trumps team publicly implored him to do more.The best thing @realDonaldTrump could do right now is to address the nation from the Oval Office and condemn the riots, Mick Mulvaney, who served as his White House chief of staff and still serves as a special envoy, wrote on Twitter. A peaceful transition of power is essential to the country and needs to take place on 1/20.Others debunked their own former bosss brazenly false fraud allegations. Dear MAGA- I am one of you, wrote Alyssa Farah, who just stepped down as Mr. Trumps communications director last month, noting that she has worked not just for Mr. Trump but also the conservative Freedom Caucus in the House. I campaigned w/ Trump & voted for him. But I need you to hear me: the Election was NOT stolen. We lost.Moments after Mr. Biden went on live television to deplore the insurrection at the Capitol and call on Mr. Trump to go before cameras, the president posted a recorded video online that offered mixed messages. Even as he told supporters it was time to withdraw, he praised them rather than condemning their actions and repeated his grievances against people who were so bad and so evil.I know youre hurt, he told the rioters. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now. He added: We love you. Youre very special. Rather than calming the waters, the video was seen as further roiling them so much so that Facebook and Twitter took it down and temporarily suspended Mr. Trumps accounts.Tom Bossert, the presidents former homeland security adviser, called out his former boss. This is beyond wrong and illegal, he said on Twitter. Its un-American. The President undermined American democracy baselessly for months. As a result, hes culpable for this siege, and an utter disgrace.While Washington has seen many protests over the years, including some that turned violent, the uprising on Wednesday was unlike anything that the city has seen during a transition of power in modern times, literally interrupting the constitutional acceptance of Mr. Bidens election victory.The assault on the Capitol was the first by a large hostile group of invaders since the British sacked the building in 1814, according to the United States Capitol Historical Society. Four Puerto Rican nationalists entered peacefully in 1954 and sat in the House visitors gallery, at which point they pulled out guns and opened fire, injuring five lawmakers. In 1998, a gunman walked into the Capitol and killed two members of the Capitol Police.But none of them was egged on by an American president the way that Mr. Trump seemed to do on Wednesday during a Save America March on the Ellipse south of the White House just as Congress was convening to validate Mr. Bidens election.We will never give up, Mr. Trump had declared. We will never concede. It doesnt happen. You dont concede when theres theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore, and thats what this is all about.As the crowd on the Ellipse chanted, Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! the president lashed out at members of his own party for not doing more to help him cling to power. There are so many weak Republicans, he growled and then vowed to take revenge against those he deemed insufficiently loyal. You primary them, he said.He singled out Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a Republican who angered him by not intervening in the election, calling him one of the dumbest governors in the United States. And he went after William P. Barr, the attorney general who debunked his false election complaints. All of a sudden, Bill Barr changed, he groused.Other speakers, including his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, castigated Republican lawmakers for not standing up for Mr. Trump. Lets have trial by combat, exhorted Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor who has served as the presidents personal lawyer.The people who did nothing to stop the steal this gathering should send a message to them, Donald Trump Jr. said. This isnt their Republican Party anymore. This is Donald Trumps Republican Party.ImageCredit...Pete Marovich for The New York TimesBut the question is for how long. Mr. Trump faced the end of his reign much as he began it, with a fervent, hard-core base but without the support of most Americans. He won in 2016 through the Electoral College with nearly three million fewer votes in the popular tally than his opponent and lost by seven million in November. He did not earn the approval of a majority of Americans in major surveys for a single day of his tenure, unlike any of his predecessors in the history of polling.Had it not been for the attack on the Capitol, the break by Mr. Pence and Mr. McConnell would have been a political earthquake by itself. Mr. Pence rebuffed the presidents demand that he use his role as presiding officer over the Electoral College count to reject electors for Mr. Biden. And Mr. McConnell gave a forceful speech repudiating Mr. Trumps effort to nullify the election.If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral, Mr. McConnell said before the Capitol was overrun.Mr. Pence released a letter saying he did not have the power to do what the president wanted him to do. Vesting the vice president with unilateral authority to decide presidential contests would be entirely antithetical to the constitutional design, he wrote.He added: It is my considered judgment that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not.With Mr. Pence unwilling and unable to stop the count, the presidents supporters made it their mission to do it themselves. And for several hours, they succeeded. But after they were finally cleared out of a ransacked Capitol, lawmakers resumed the process of ending the Trump presidency.Even Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of his strongest allies, essentially declared the Trump era done as he opposed the attempt to override the election results. Enoughs enough, he said on the floor. It is over.
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DealBook|BTG Pactual Partners Take Control From Former Leaderhttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/03/business/dealbook/btg-pactual-partners-take-control-from-former-leader.htmlDec. 2, 2015Credit...Paulo Fridman for The New York TimesRIO DE JANEIRO Andr Esteves, long the force behind BTG Pactual, ceded financial control in the firm he founded to a group of seven partners, the Brazilian investment bank said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday.Rather than selling his shares in an operation that would have required a major cash outlay, the move appears to have been made through an exchange of shares between those Mr. Esteves had in the holding company BTG Pactual Participations and those his partners hold in BTG Pactual itself.In the filing, the bank said that a group of seven participated in the exchange and will now hold control. They are the co-chief executives, Marcelo Kalim and Roberto Sallouti; the executive chairman, Persio Arida; and Antonio Carlos Canto Porto Filho, James Marcos de Oliveira, Renato Monteiro dos Santos, and Guilherme da Costa Paes, all partners at the bank. It did not provide any other details.Mr. Esteves was arrested on Nov. 25 on accusations of obstruction of justice in a broad investigation into corruption involving the state-owned oil giant Petrobras. Initially, Mr. Esteves was thought be the focus of the investigation rather than the bank. But over the weekend, federal prosecutors were said to have found evidence suggesting that BTG Pactual paid 45 million reais, or nearly $12 million, to Eduardo Cunha, the speaker of the lower house in the Brazilian legislature, with the hope of watering down financial legislation.Those accusations led Brazils high court on Sunday to extend Mr. Estevess stay in jail in Rio de Janeiro for an indefinite period. That same day, he resigned as the firms chief executive and chairman.BTG Pactual has denied the most recent accusations, but it still faces enormous pressure.Late Tuesday, Moodys stripped the bank of its investment grade rating, cutting it to junk. The ratings agency cited the challenges the bank faces to conserve liquidity and preserve its franchise.Moodys noted that the bank was making efforts to conserve cash, sell some assets and temporarily suspend originating new loans.Standard & Poors followed suit on Wednesday, saying that the bank has a material liquidity gap in meeting its financial obligations in the next 60 days, unless BTG is able to sell assets or access credit facilities with Brazilian financial regulators.BTG Pactual has also sold its stake in the Brazilian hospital chain Rede DOr So Luiz to GIC, a Singapore sovereign wealth fund, for 2.38 billion reais, or $617 million. That transaction is subject to regulatory approval.Shares of BTG Pactual have fallen 35 percent since the arrest. On Wednesday morning, the shares closed down 1.5 percent after being suspended on the So Paulo bourse as the exchange sought more information on the changes in ownership. The changes will also require approval from Brazils central bank.
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