filename
stringlengths 11
116
| text
stringlengths 1.42k
26k
| input_text
stringlengths 411
673
| target_text
stringlengths 860
17.8k
|
|---|---|---|---|
81. Georgia’s Close Elections Sent Republicans After a Republican.txt
|
By Richard Fausset and Stephanie Saul
ATLANTA — Brad Raffensperger, the beleaguered top elections official in Georgia, considers himself the most loyal of Republicans. There was no question which candidates he would support in last week’s election.
“I’ve only ever voted for Republicans,” Mr. Raffensperger said in an interview in his office at the State Capitol on Tuesday. “I’ve been a Republican, or conservative, you know, since I was a teenager.”
Indeed, since taking office in January 2019, Mr. Raffensperger, the secretary of state, has been a target for Democrats in Georgia’s high-stakes, passionate and bitterly partisan voting wars.
In his nearly two years on the job, he has championed policies to guard against a threat of voter fraud that Democrats say hardly exists. He has been the subject of multiple lawsuits, and of television ads blaming him for presiding over a botched June primary that left voters waiting for hours in long lines. Democrats have also accused him of “state sponsored voter intimidation.”
But this week, he became the target of his own party, with the state’s two incumbent Republican senators calling for his resignation and condemning the presidential election as an “embarrassment,” an allegation he called “laughable.” On Wednesday, he authorized a hand recount of Georgia’s ballots for the presidential race — a move championed by President Trump but one officials have said was unlikely to erase President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s narrow but significant lead in the state.
Now Mr. Raffensperger, a civil engineer and a numbers guy who received high marks from national experts on the smooth election operations in Georgia on Nov. 3, finds himself defending an electoral process that he said has no reason to be mistrusted.
Criticism has come from Mr. Trump and the state’s senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who are each facing competitive January runoffs that could determine control of the Senate. The senators declared in a joint statement on Monday that Mr. Raffensperger had “failed the people of Georgia” and did not deliver “honest and transparent elections.”
“I was fully expecting it to come from the one side,” Mr. Raffensperger said of the criticism. But, he added, “not from your own ranks.”
It was a twist that few saw coming.
Mr. Raffensperger said he had no plans to step down, and emphasized that the statewide vote count was legitimate. There may have been “isolated incidents” of irregularities, he said in the interview this week, and his office was investigating those.
A Guide to the Various Trump Investigations
Confused about the inquiries and legal cases involving former President Donald Trump? We’re here to help.
“But we have not heard of any widespread voter fraud,” he said.
The Trump campaign, however, has continued to claim that much went wrong in Georgia’s elections, part of a broader narrative of national voter fraud that has been almost uniformly rejected by elections officials from both parties.
On Tuesday, the campaign and the Georgia Republican Party sent Mr. Raffensperger a letter claiming “hundreds of reports of voting discrepancies,” including “tens of thousands of ballots being unlawfully counted.”
The letter demanded, among other things, a hand recount of the nearly five million votes cast. It also asked that Mr. Raffensperger “trace the chain of custody of the ballots from printing to sending, from receipt to counting” in an election that, because of the coronavirus pandemic, involved hundreds of thousands of mail-in absentee ballots — not unlike the situation in dozens of other states.
On Wednesday morning, Mr. Raffensperger announced a hand recount of ballots in all 159 counties, an order that applies only to the presidential ticket. Even if Mr. Trump were to win Georgia, Mr. Biden has already won the national election.
This week, other Republicans have also raised questions about the election process that Mr. Raffensperger has overseen. Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican and the former secretary of state, said Mr. Raffensperger needed to take “a serious look” at allegations of irregularities. All members of the 2021 House Republican delegation from Georgia made a similar request.
In his office on Tuesday, Mr. Raffensperger, a tall, silver-haired man with an austere mien, seemed both calm and cautious as he described Georgia’s predicament — as well as his own. Sometimes he looked to Jordan Fuchs, the deputy secretary of state, who reminded him of the first words of answers they had apparently rehearsed.
Asked if he thought he was being thrown under the bus by fellow Republicans, he took what seemed like subtle digs at Mr. Trump, who on Wednesday was trailing Mr. Biden by about 14,000 votes in Georgia, and Ms. Loeffler and Mr. Perdue.
“Well, in Georgia, you have to win over 50 percent, and then you’re not in a runoff,” he said of the senators. “And if you win big, this wouldn’t be an issue.”
The attacks on Mr. Raffensperger have cracked the facade of Republican unity before some of the most important runoff elections in recent American history. They also appear to be a way for Ms. Loeffler and Mr. Perdue to curry favor with Georgians who, like the senators, are devoted fans of the president and outraged about the vote count.
But the strategy also carries some risk. Telling Trump supporters the election process is rigged in Georgia could dissuade them from voting in the runoffs. And the anger over Mr. Raffensperger’s treatment is simmering among some longtime Republicans.
Leo Smith, a consultant with Mr. Raffensperger’s office and a former diversity recruitment director with the state’s Republican Party, called the criticism of the Georgia vote “an insult to those hard-working, committed Republicans who oversaw the election.” In an interview, Mr. Smith described Mr. Raffensperger’s critics as “people who were caught in this poor leadership from a petulant president who has lost, and is using his loss to bully other Republicans into complying with conspiracy theories about voting.”
Mr. Raffensperger, 65, began his political career on the City Council in the affluent northern Atlanta suburb of Johns Creek. In public, he exhibits a kind of punctilious blandness, with a voice that rarely rises above the dispassionate tone of a functionary behind the desk at a Department of Motor Vehicles office.
Even so he is considered highly ambitious, and observers note that Mr. Kemp showed how the secretary of state’s office could be used as a springboard.
After his City Council stint, Mr. Raffensperger, who is married and has two living adult sons and a third who died in 2018, spent a few years in the State Legislature. In his 2018 bid for the secretary of state, he lent his campaign hundreds of thousands of dollars, telling voters he would focus on “protecting our elections,” particularly from immigrants who entered the country illegally.
He did not garner more than 50 percent of the vote and ended up in a runoff with a Democrat, former U.S. Representative John Barrow, at a time when much of the nation had begun asking whether Georgia’s election system was truly fair.
A few weeks earlier, Stacey Abrams, a rising star in the Democratic Party, had narrowly lost to Mr. Kemp in her bid to become the state’s first Black governor. Along the way, she and her supporters had argued that Mr. Kemp had been helped by voter suppression tactics he had engaged in as secretary of state.
Shortly after Ms. Abrams’s loss, an organization she founded, Fair Fight Action, filed a lawsuit that claimed the state had dropped more than 100,000 inactive voters from its rolls. As a result of the lawsuit, 22,000 were reinstated.
Last year, state lawmakers passed legislation that lengthened how long registered voters could be inactive before their names could be purged. The Legislature also virtually eliminated a rule that signatures on voter registration cards had to be matched to other records.
Fair Fight Action has continued to take a central role in criticizing Mr. Raffensperger’s election policies in a state where Republican dominance has been challenged by a resurgent Democratic Party, fueled in part by changing demographics.
In April, Lauren Groh-Wargo, Fair Fight Action’s chief executive, criticized Mr. Raffensperger after he announced the creation of an absentee ballot fraud task force, anticipating the widespread use of such ballots during the pandemic.
When Mr. Raffensperger took office last year, he inherited litigation that challenged the safety of the state’s voting machines, claiming they were vulnerable to hacking, and was charged with introducing a new system. Its complexity — combined with no-shows by hundreds of poll workers who feared catching the virus — led to a meltdown during Georgia’s primary in June, with machine malfunctions and long lines.
Hoping to avoid a similar disaster during the general election, county officials, aided by the state and nonprofit groups, began a massive poll worker recruitment effort and Mr. Raffensperger vowed to send technicians to every polling site on Election Day. Voters across Georgia were inundated with the message that they should vote by absentee ballots or at early voting sites.
The result was record turnout in Georgia and smooth in-person voting on Nov. 3.
Andrea Young, the executive director of the A.C.L.U. of Georgia, praised Mr. Raffensperger’s handling of this year’s general election and characterized this week’s criticism as “voter suppression 2.0.”
“As a child of the South,” she said, “it just sounds like too many Black people voted and we don’t like it.”
But now those numbers are being questioned. Mr. Raffensperger said he only wanted to inspire trust in the system, even as it appeared to be slipping away.
“At the end of the day, half the people will be happy. Half the people will be sad,” he said. “But what our goal is, is that 100 percent of the people have confidence in the result of the elections.”
Richard Fausset reported from Atlanta, and Stephanie Saul from New York. Danny Hakim contributed reporting from New York.
|
By Richard Fausset and Stephanie Saul
ATLANTA — Brad Raffensperger, the beleaguered top elections official in Georgia, considers himself the most loyal of Republicans. There was no question which candidates he would support in last week’s election.
“I’ve only ever voted for Republicans,” Mr. Raffensperger said in an interview in his office at the State Capitol on Tuesday. “I’ve been a Republican, or conservative, you know, since I was a teenager.”
Indeed, since taking office in January 2019, Mr. Raffensperger, the secretary of state, has been a
|
target for Democrats in Georgia’s high-stakes, passionate and bitterly partisan voting wars.
In his nearly two years on the job, he has championed policies to guard against a threat of voter fraud that Democrats say hardly exists. He has been the subject of multiple lawsuits, and of television ads blaming him for presiding over a botched June primary that left voters waiting for hours in long lines. Democrats have also accused him of “state sponsored voter intimidation.”
But this week, he became the target of his own party, with the state’s two incumbent Republican senators calling for his resignation and condemning the presidential election as an “embarrassment,” an allegation he called “laughable.” On Wednesday, he authorized a hand recount of Georgia’s ballots for the presidential race — a move championed by President Trump but one officials have said was unlikely to erase President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s narrow but significant lead in the state.
Now Mr. Raffensperger, a civil engineer and a numbers guy who received high marks from national experts on the smooth election operations in Georgia on Nov. 3, finds himself defending an electoral process that he said has no reason to be mistrusted.
Criticism has come from Mr. Trump and the state’s senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who are each facing competitive January runoffs that could determine control of the Senate. The senators declared in a joint statement on Monday that Mr. Raffensperger had “failed the people of Georgia” and did not deliver “honest and transparent elections.”
“I was fully expecting it to come from the one side,” Mr. Raffensperger said of the criticism. But, he added, “not from your own ranks.”
It was a twist that few saw coming.
Mr. Raffensperger said he had no plans to step down, and emphasized that the statewide vote count was legitimate. There may have been “isolated incidents” of irregularities, he said in the interview this week, and his office was investigating those.
A Guide to the Various Trump Investigations
Confused about the inquiries and legal cases involving former President Donald Trump? We’re here to help.
“But we have not heard of any widespread voter fraud,” he said.
The Trump campaign, however, has continued to claim that much went wrong in Georgia’s elections, part of a broader narrative of national voter fraud that has been almost uniformly rejected by elections officials from both parties.
On Tuesday, the campaign and the Georgia Republican Party sent Mr. Raffensperger a letter claiming “hundreds of reports of voting discrepancies,” including “tens of thousands of ballots being unlawfully counted.”
The letter demanded, among other things, a hand recount of the nearly five million votes cast. It also asked that Mr. Raffensperger “trace the chain of custody of the ballots from printing to sending, from receipt to counting” in an election that, because of the coronavirus pandemic, involved hundreds of thousands of mail-in absentee ballots — not unlike the situation in dozens of other states.
On Wednesday morning, Mr. Raffensperger announced a hand recount of ballots in all 159 counties, an order that applies only to the presidential ticket. Even if Mr. Trump were to win Georgia, Mr. Biden has already won the national election.
This week, other Republicans have also raised questions about the election process that Mr. Raffensperger has overseen. Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican and the former secretary of state, said Mr. Raffensperger needed to take “a serious look” at allegations of irregularities. All members of the 2021 House Republican delegation from Georgia made a similar request.
In his office on Tuesday, Mr. Raffensperger, a tall, silver-haired man with an austere mien, seemed both calm and cautious as he described Georgia’s predicament — as well as his own. Sometimes he looked to Jordan Fuchs, the deputy secretary of state, who reminded him of the first words of answers they had apparently rehearsed.
Asked if he thought he was being thrown under the bus by fellow Republicans, he took what seemed like subtle digs at Mr. Trump, who on Wednesday was trailing Mr. Biden by about 14,000 votes in Georgia, and Ms. Loeffler and Mr. Perdue.
“Well, in Georgia, you have to win over 50 percent, and then you’re not in a runoff,” he said of the senators. “And if you win big, this wouldn’t be an issue.”
The attacks on Mr. Raffensperger have cracked the facade of Republican unity before some of the most important runoff elections in recent American history. They also appear to be a way for Ms. Loeffler and Mr. Perdue to curry favor with Georgians who, like the senators, are devoted fans of the president and outraged about the vote count.
But the strategy also carries some risk. Telling Trump supporters the election process is rigged in Georgia could dissuade them from voting in the runoffs. And the anger over Mr. Raffensperger’s treatment is simmering among some longtime Republicans.
Leo Smith, a consultant with Mr. Raffensperger’s office and a former diversity recruitment director with the state’s Republican Party, called the criticism of the Georgia vote “an insult to those hard-working, committed Republicans who oversaw the election.” In an interview, Mr. Smith described Mr. Raffensperger’s critics as “people who were caught in this poor leadership from a petulant president who has lost, and is using his loss to bully other Republicans into complying with conspiracy theories about voting.”
Mr. Raffensperger, 65, began his political career on the City Council in the affluent northern Atlanta suburb of Johns Creek. In public, he exhibits a kind of punctilious blandness, with a voice that rarely rises above the dispassionate tone of a functionary behind the desk at a Department of Motor Vehicles office.
Even so he is considered highly ambitious, and observers note that Mr. Kemp showed how the secretary of state’s office could be used as a springboard.
After his City Council stint, Mr. Raffensperger, who is married and has two living adult sons and a third who died in 2018, spent a few years in the State Legislature. In his 2018 bid for the secretary of state, he lent his campaign hundreds of thousands of dollars, telling voters he would focus on “protecting our elections,” particularly from immigrants who entered the country illegally.
He did not garner more than 50 percent of the vote and ended up in a runoff with a Democrat, former U.S. Representative John Barrow, at a time when much of the nation had begun asking whether Georgia’s election system was truly fair.
A few weeks earlier, Stacey Abrams, a rising star in the Democratic Party, had narrowly lost to Mr. Kemp in her bid to become the state’s first Black governor. Along the way, she and her supporters had argued that Mr. Kemp had been helped by voter suppression tactics he had engaged in as secretary of state.
Shortly after Ms. Abrams’s loss, an organization she founded, Fair Fight Action, filed a lawsuit that claimed the state had dropped more than 100,000 inactive voters from its rolls. As a result of the lawsuit, 22,000 were reinstated.
Last year, state lawmakers passed legislation that lengthened how long registered voters could be inactive before their names could be purged. The Legislature also virtually eliminated a rule that signatures on voter registration cards had to be matched to other records.
Fair Fight Action has continued to take a central role in criticizing Mr. Raffensperger’s election policies in a state where Republican dominance has been challenged by a resurgent Democratic Party, fueled in part by changing demographics.
In April, Lauren Groh-Wargo, Fair Fight Action’s chief executive, criticized Mr. Raffensperger after he announced the creation of an absentee ballot fraud task force, anticipating the widespread use of such ballots during the pandemic.
When Mr. Raffensperger took office last year, he inherited litigation that challenged the safety of the state’s voting machines, claiming they were vulnerable to hacking, and was charged with introducing a new system. Its complexity — combined with no-shows by hundreds of poll workers who feared catching the virus — led to a meltdown during Georgia’s primary in June, with machine malfunctions and long lines.
Hoping to avoid a similar disaster during the general election, county officials, aided by the state and nonprofit groups, began a massive poll worker recruitment effort and Mr. Raffensperger vowed to send technicians to every polling site on Election Day. Voters across Georgia were inundated with the message that they should vote by absentee ballots or at early voting sites.
The result was record turnout in Georgia and smooth in-person voting on Nov. 3.
Andrea Young, the executive director of the A.C.L.U. of Georgia, praised Mr. Raffensperger’s handling of this year’s general election and characterized this week’s criticism as “voter suppression 2.0.”
“As a child of the South,” she said, “it just sounds like too many Black people voted and we don’t like it.”
But now those numbers are being questioned. Mr. Raffensperger said he only wanted to inspire trust in the system, even as it appeared to be slipping away.
“At the end of the day, half the people will be happy. Half the people will be sad,” he said. “But what our goal is, is that 100 percent of the people have confidence in the result of the elections.”
Richard Fausset reported from Atlanta, and Stephanie Saul from New York. Danny Hakim contributed reporting from New York.
|
30. Jovan Adepo Pushes Through With Rachmaninoff and ‘Love Island’.txt
|
By Fahima Haque
Jan. 1, 2021
Jovan Adepo, known for his breakout turn in “Watchmen,” wasn’t familiar with “The Stand,” Stephen King’s dark fantasy novel about the survivors of an apocalyptic pandemic, before filming the TV adaptation that premiered as a mini-series in December on CBS All Access — and had no idea how close to home it would hit.
Filming in Vancouver wrapped up in March, shortly before some parts of North America went into lockdown because of Covid-19. “To look back now, and comparing some of the imagery that we have in ‘The Stand,’ if you see some of the stills of guys in hazmat suits and how it kind of mirrors some of the actual photos we’re seeing in the world now — it’s eerie,” he said.
Since returning to Los Angeles, Adepo said, the pandemic has forced him, like many others, to try and embrace different routines and hobbies. He shared the highlights of what he has read, watched and listened to this year. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
1. “Ishmael” by Daniel Quinn I read through it once, and I’m actually passing through it again because there were some topics that I didn’t grasp as strongly as I wanted to. It gives an interesting take on our purpose as humans on this planet and how it relates to animals and other beings. It’s been an interesting eye-opener for me.
2. “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius I guess you would consider it a collection of anecdotes or sayings from Marcus Aurelius about leadership, courage, fear; about all things that we experience as people and the best way to handle obstacles that present themselves in your life.
3. Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G minor There’s a darkness to it. I was listening to this a lot when I was filming “The Stand.” A lot of classical pieces tell stories, and as you know, there’s no lyrics in these pieces. But if you’re careful and you’re quiet, you can really sense the story that the composer is telling. That’s just one particular song, of many songs, that I’ve always been attracted to because even though it is very dark, it still has a sweetness and a tenderness to it that I was really attracted to. In certain seasons, for whatever reasons, you come back to a song. When it resurfaced in my playlist, I was like, yeah, this is something that’s going to sit in a different way.
4. “Contagion”
The things that creep me out the most are the movies where whatever is going on in the film could actually happen. If it’s super fantastical or whimsical, then you’re like, OK, this is obviously not real. But with anything that has to do with the plague, those stay with me when the credits are done. When I turned it off, I was like, I hope we’re not in this lockdown forever! But it’s all good. Movies are movies.
5. “Love Island”
I ended up knocking out four seasons in like a weekend. It was bad; there was a period where I wasn’t watching anything but “Love Island.” And I’m usually not even a fan of reality TV.
6. “It”
I’m referring to the remake with Bill Skarsgard, who I thought was brilliant as [Pennywise]. The kids were all super funny and they all played off each other well, and their comedic timing was just like A-1.
7. The “Evil Dead” series
The remake that came out in 2013 was also done really well. It’s just about imagery. It doesn’t always have to be super gory, but it’s how the images stick with you after the movie is done. I couldn’t stand them when I was younger, but then I was like, we’re in lockdown, whatever, I’m an adult, I’ll be fine. I won’t be scared. And then I rewatched it again, and I made it.
8. “Jazz” by Ken Burns
A colleague of mine that I worked with on “Jack Ryan,” Wendell Pierce — we share a really strong love and respect for jazz music, and I get that from my father as well. That was a series that he asked me to look into just for further education and further awareness about the music.
I think the documentary is probably most beneficial to people who just aren’t familiar with the genre and who are interested in the history. They highlight Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis, all of the great artists and the inception of jazz into the American history of music.
9. “Lush Life,” by John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman
John Coltrane has his own version of that album, but this one is with the singer Johnny Hartman. There’s a few tracks on this album that I liked — there’s the titular song, which I think is worth the listen, but I have to warn you, it can be depressing if you listen to it in the wrong light. He’s almost talking about all of his unfulfilled dreams. He’s like, no matter what, I’m going to have this glass of whatever he’s drinking, and I’m going to live a lush life in one small dive.
10. “Texas Sun,” by Khruangbin and Leon Bridges
I got it right when I got home from Vancouver. My favorite song on the vinyl is called “Conversion.” It can play as a spiritual or religious song, but it can also play as just whatever it is. It’s a beautiful song. It’s just a funky album. “Conversion” is a slower tune and the other tracks on there are kind of upbeat and seaside.
|
By Fahima Haque
Jan. 1, 2021
Jovan Adepo, known for his breakout turn in “Watchmen,” wasn’t familiar with “The Stand,” Stephen King’s dark fantasy novel about the survivors of an apocalyptic pandemic, before filming the TV adaptation that premiered as a mini-series in December on CBS All Access — and had no idea how close to home it would hit.
Filming in Vancouver wrapped up in March, shortly before some parts of North America went into lockdown because of Covid-19. “To look back now, and comparing some of the imagery that we
|
have in ‘The Stand,’ if you see some of the stills of guys in hazmat suits and how it kind of mirrors some of the actual photos we’re seeing in the world now — it’s eerie,” he said.
Since returning to Los Angeles, Adepo said, the pandemic has forced him, like many others, to try and embrace different routines and hobbies. He shared the highlights of what he has read, watched and listened to this year. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
1. “Ishmael” by Daniel Quinn I read through it once, and I’m actually passing through it again because there were some topics that I didn’t grasp as strongly as I wanted to. It gives an interesting take on our purpose as humans on this planet and how it relates to animals and other beings. It’s been an interesting eye-opener for me.
2. “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius I guess you would consider it a collection of anecdotes or sayings from Marcus Aurelius about leadership, courage, fear; about all things that we experience as people and the best way to handle obstacles that present themselves in your life.
3. Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G minor There’s a darkness to it. I was listening to this a lot when I was filming “The Stand.” A lot of classical pieces tell stories, and as you know, there’s no lyrics in these pieces. But if you’re careful and you’re quiet, you can really sense the story that the composer is telling. That’s just one particular song, of many songs, that I’ve always been attracted to because even though it is very dark, it still has a sweetness and a tenderness to it that I was really attracted to. In certain seasons, for whatever reasons, you come back to a song. When it resurfaced in my playlist, I was like, yeah, this is something that’s going to sit in a different way.
4. “Contagion”
The things that creep me out the most are the movies where whatever is going on in the film could actually happen. If it’s super fantastical or whimsical, then you’re like, OK, this is obviously not real. But with anything that has to do with the plague, those stay with me when the credits are done. When I turned it off, I was like, I hope we’re not in this lockdown forever! But it’s all good. Movies are movies.
5. “Love Island”
I ended up knocking out four seasons in like a weekend. It was bad; there was a period where I wasn’t watching anything but “Love Island.” And I’m usually not even a fan of reality TV.
6. “It”
I’m referring to the remake with Bill Skarsgard, who I thought was brilliant as [Pennywise]. The kids were all super funny and they all played off each other well, and their comedic timing was just like A-1.
7. The “Evil Dead” series
The remake that came out in 2013 was also done really well. It’s just about imagery. It doesn’t always have to be super gory, but it’s how the images stick with you after the movie is done. I couldn’t stand them when I was younger, but then I was like, we’re in lockdown, whatever, I’m an adult, I’ll be fine. I won’t be scared. And then I rewatched it again, and I made it.
8. “Jazz” by Ken Burns
A colleague of mine that I worked with on “Jack Ryan,” Wendell Pierce — we share a really strong love and respect for jazz music, and I get that from my father as well. That was a series that he asked me to look into just for further education and further awareness about the music.
I think the documentary is probably most beneficial to people who just aren’t familiar with the genre and who are interested in the history. They highlight Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis, all of the great artists and the inception of jazz into the American history of music.
9. “Lush Life,” by John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman
John Coltrane has his own version of that album, but this one is with the singer Johnny Hartman. There’s a few tracks on this album that I liked — there’s the titular song, which I think is worth the listen, but I have to warn you, it can be depressing if you listen to it in the wrong light. He’s almost talking about all of his unfulfilled dreams. He’s like, no matter what, I’m going to have this glass of whatever he’s drinking, and I’m going to live a lush life in one small dive.
10. “Texas Sun,” by Khruangbin and Leon Bridges
I got it right when I got home from Vancouver. My favorite song on the vinyl is called “Conversion.” It can play as a spiritual or religious song, but it can also play as just whatever it is. It’s a beautiful song. It’s just a funky album. “Conversion” is a slower tune and the other tracks on there are kind of upbeat and seaside.
|
91. Israel Horovitz, Playwright Tarnished by Abuse Allegations, Dies at 81.txt
|
By Neil Genzlinger
Nov. 11, 2020
Israel Horovitz, an influential and oft-produced playwright whose career was tarnished by accusations by multiple women that he had sexually assaulted them, died on Monday at his home in Manhattan. He was 81.
His wife, Gillian Horovitz, said the cause was cancer.
Mr. Horovitz enjoyed his biggest successes Off Broadway and in regional and European theaters, including at the Gloucester Stage Company in Massachusetts, which he helped found in 1979. His plays gave opportunities to a number of young actors who went on to become household names.
A Horovitz double bill of “The Indian Wants the Bronx” and “It’s Called the Sugar Plum,” which enjoyed a long run at the Astor Place Theater in Manhattan in 1968, had a cast that included Al Pacino, Marsha Mason and John Cazale. Two years later his “Line” was staged at the Theater De Lys in Greenwich Village with Mr. Cazale and Richard Dreyfuss in the cast; that play later moved to the 13th Street Repertory Theater. It was still running until recently, and, with an ever-changing cast, was said to be the longest-running play in Off Off Broadway history. (Mr. Horovitz lived in the Village.)
Mr. Horovitz made Broadway twice. In 1968 he wrote the “Morning” segment of “Morning, Noon and Night,” three one-acts; Terrence McNally and Leonard Melfi wrote the other two, and Mr. Horovitz’s cast included a young comedian named Robert Klein. In 1991, his “Park Your Car in Harvard Yard,” a two-hander that had been developed years earlier at Gloucester, went to Broadway with Judith Ivey and Jason Robards; it ran for 124 performances.
Mr. Horovitz occasionally tried Hollywood, perhaps most notably with the screenplay for the 1982 film “Author! Author!,” which starred Mr. Pacino as a playwright dealing with various stresses. In 2014 he adapted one of his plays into the film “My Old Lady,” which he also directed; it starred Kevin Kline, Maggie Smith and Kristin Scott Thomas.
Mr. Horovitz wrote scores of plays: In 2009, the Barefoot Theater Company in New York organized a celebration of his 70th birthday that involved performances and staged readings of 70 Horovitz plays by theater companies around the world.
But his accomplishments were tainted. News reports in the 1990s brought complaints about his behavior to light, and they received new scrutiny in a 2017 article in The New York Times that carried the headline “Nine Women Accuse Israel Horovitz, Playwright and Mentor, of Sexual Misconduct.”
In the article, the women — some were actresses in plays he had written and directed, others had worked for him — recounted instances of assault, including being groped or forcibly kissed by him. One said he had raped her; another said he had forced her hand down his pants. One woman was 16 at the time of the alleged assault.
Decades earlier, in 1993, the weekly newspaper The Boston Phoenix reported that women at Gloucester Stage Company had accused Mr. Horovitz of sexual misconduct, but nothing was done. After The Times article appeared — one of a number of such articles about prominent men that helped propel the #metoo movement — Gloucester Stage severed its ties with him.
A 1993 report in The Boston Phoenix described accusations by women at the Gloucester Stage Company in Massachusetts that Mr. Horovitz had sexually abused them. He founded the company.
Mr. Horovitz, responding to the accusations, told The Times that while he had “a different memory of some of these events, I apologize with all my heart to any woman who has ever felt compromised by my actions, and to my family and friends who have put their trust in me.”
“To hear that I have caused pain is profoundly upsetting,” he added, “as is the idea that I might have crossed a line with anyone who considered me a mentor.”
Israel Arthur Horovitz was born on March 31, 1939, in Wakefield, Mass. His father, Julius, was a truck driver who became a lawyer when he was 50; his mother, Hazel Rose (Solberg) Horovitz, was a trained nurse and homemaker.
Mr. Horovitz traced his stage career to his writing a novel at 13.
“It was praised for having a wonderful childlike quality, but it was rejected in this letter that my mother saved,” he told the entertainment website ClashMusic.com in 2014. “So I wrote a play that was put on when I was 17. Nobody said it was a good play, but everybody said, ‘It’s a play,’ and I thought, So that’s who I am: I’m a playwright.”
He attended Salem Teachers College in Massachusetts in the late 1950s planning to become an English teacher, but left to pursue playwriting while supporting himself as a taxi driver and stagehand. (Years later he earned a master’s degree in English literature at the City University of New York.) In 1962, a fellowship to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art took him to London, and for the 1964-65 season he was playwright in residence at the Royal Shakespeare Theater and the Aldwych Theater in England.
He returned to the United States and was working in advertising when “The Indian Wants the Bronx” brought him attention and an Obie Award in 1968. The play, about two hoodlums who harass an Indian man named Gupta who speaks no English, was widely staged thereafter; a production by the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago in 1976 had a cast that featured Gary Sinise, John Malkovich and Terry Kinney.
A scene from from the original production of “Line,” performed in 1971 at the Theater De Lys in Greenwich Village with Richard Dreyfuss and Ann Wedgeworth.
The long-running “Line” was the very definition of theatrical simplicity. Mr. Horovitz described the play in a 2012 interview with the website Stage Directions:
“It’s a piece of tape on a barren stage, and five people line up behind this piece of white tape, and they desperately fight to be first. And they have no idea what the line is for. It’s not a play that is going to go out of style. And it adapts to its time.”
Clive Barnes, in his review in The Times in 1971, wasn’t wild about the play but saw potential in the playwright.
“He can write true and dazzling dialogue,” Mr. Barnes wrote, “even when the dialogue has little to be true or dazzling about. Also, he can create people — real breathing, living people.”
As his career advanced, Mr. Horovitz found that his works had particular appeal in France; at his death he had homes there and in Gloucester as well as in the Village. The Cultural Services division of the French Embassy recently called him “the most-produced American playwright in French theater history.” Many of his works drew on his love of France.
“My Old Lady” involved an American who inherits an apartment in Paris and, when he goes there expecting to sell it, finds it occupied by a woman and her daughter. In “Out of the Mouth of Babes” — a comedy that had a run at the Cherry Lane Theater in Manhattan in 2016 with a cast that included Ms. Ivey and Estelle Parsons — four women are drawn together by the death of an instructor at the Sorbonne with whom each had been involved.
Many other Horovitz plays were set in his native Massachusetts, especially in or near coastal Gloucester. In a statement issued on Wednesday, the Gloucester Stage Company said that the accusations against Mr. Horovitz had led it to commit to focusing on works by women, Indigenous people and people of color.
“Israel Horovitz’s dedication to socially relevant and intellectually stimulating theater was the cornerstone of Gloucester Stage Company’s first 40 years,” the statement said. “That concept will live on, through new voices, for the next 40 more.”
Mr. Horovitz and Gillian Adams married in 1981. He had married Elaine Abber in 1959 and Doris Keefe in 1961. In addition to his wife, he is survived by three children from his second marriage: Rachael Horovitz, a film producer; Adam, a member of the Beastie Boys; and Matthew, also a producer. He is also survived by two children from his third marriage, Hannah and Oliver Horovitz; a sister, Shirley Horovitz Levine; and five grandchildren.
|
By Neil Genzlinger
Nov. 11, 2020
Israel Horovitz, an influential and oft-produced playwright whose career was tarnished by accusations by multiple women that he had sexually assaulted them, died on Monday at his home in Manhattan. He was 81.
His wife, Gillian Horovitz, said the cause was cancer.
Mr. Horovitz enjoyed his biggest successes Off Broadway and in regional and European theaters, including at the Gloucester Stage Company in Massachusetts, which he helped found in 1979. His plays gave opportunities to a number of young actors who went on
|
to become household names.
A Horovitz double bill of “The Indian Wants the Bronx” and “It’s Called the Sugar Plum,” which enjoyed a long run at the Astor Place Theater in Manhattan in 1968, had a cast that included Al Pacino, Marsha Mason and John Cazale. Two years later his “Line” was staged at the Theater De Lys in Greenwich Village with Mr. Cazale and Richard Dreyfuss in the cast; that play later moved to the 13th Street Repertory Theater. It was still running until recently, and, with an ever-changing cast, was said to be the longest-running play in Off Off Broadway history. (Mr. Horovitz lived in the Village.)
Mr. Horovitz made Broadway twice. In 1968 he wrote the “Morning” segment of “Morning, Noon and Night,” three one-acts; Terrence McNally and Leonard Melfi wrote the other two, and Mr. Horovitz’s cast included a young comedian named Robert Klein. In 1991, his “Park Your Car in Harvard Yard,” a two-hander that had been developed years earlier at Gloucester, went to Broadway with Judith Ivey and Jason Robards; it ran for 124 performances.
Mr. Horovitz occasionally tried Hollywood, perhaps most notably with the screenplay for the 1982 film “Author! Author!,” which starred Mr. Pacino as a playwright dealing with various stresses. In 2014 he adapted one of his plays into the film “My Old Lady,” which he also directed; it starred Kevin Kline, Maggie Smith and Kristin Scott Thomas.
Mr. Horovitz wrote scores of plays: In 2009, the Barefoot Theater Company in New York organized a celebration of his 70th birthday that involved performances and staged readings of 70 Horovitz plays by theater companies around the world.
But his accomplishments were tainted. News reports in the 1990s brought complaints about his behavior to light, and they received new scrutiny in a 2017 article in The New York Times that carried the headline “Nine Women Accuse Israel Horovitz, Playwright and Mentor, of Sexual Misconduct.”
In the article, the women — some were actresses in plays he had written and directed, others had worked for him — recounted instances of assault, including being groped or forcibly kissed by him. One said he had raped her; another said he had forced her hand down his pants. One woman was 16 at the time of the alleged assault.
Decades earlier, in 1993, the weekly newspaper The Boston Phoenix reported that women at Gloucester Stage Company had accused Mr. Horovitz of sexual misconduct, but nothing was done. After The Times article appeared — one of a number of such articles about prominent men that helped propel the #metoo movement — Gloucester Stage severed its ties with him.
A 1993 report in The Boston Phoenix described accusations by women at the Gloucester Stage Company in Massachusetts that Mr. Horovitz had sexually abused them. He founded the company.
Mr. Horovitz, responding to the accusations, told The Times that while he had “a different memory of some of these events, I apologize with all my heart to any woman who has ever felt compromised by my actions, and to my family and friends who have put their trust in me.”
“To hear that I have caused pain is profoundly upsetting,” he added, “as is the idea that I might have crossed a line with anyone who considered me a mentor.”
Israel Arthur Horovitz was born on March 31, 1939, in Wakefield, Mass. His father, Julius, was a truck driver who became a lawyer when he was 50; his mother, Hazel Rose (Solberg) Horovitz, was a trained nurse and homemaker.
Mr. Horovitz traced his stage career to his writing a novel at 13.
“It was praised for having a wonderful childlike quality, but it was rejected in this letter that my mother saved,” he told the entertainment website ClashMusic.com in 2014. “So I wrote a play that was put on when I was 17. Nobody said it was a good play, but everybody said, ‘It’s a play,’ and I thought, So that’s who I am: I’m a playwright.”
He attended Salem Teachers College in Massachusetts in the late 1950s planning to become an English teacher, but left to pursue playwriting while supporting himself as a taxi driver and stagehand. (Years later he earned a master’s degree in English literature at the City University of New York.) In 1962, a fellowship to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art took him to London, and for the 1964-65 season he was playwright in residence at the Royal Shakespeare Theater and the Aldwych Theater in England.
He returned to the United States and was working in advertising when “The Indian Wants the Bronx” brought him attention and an Obie Award in 1968. The play, about two hoodlums who harass an Indian man named Gupta who speaks no English, was widely staged thereafter; a production by the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago in 1976 had a cast that featured Gary Sinise, John Malkovich and Terry Kinney.
A scene from from the original production of “Line,” performed in 1971 at the Theater De Lys in Greenwich Village with Richard Dreyfuss and Ann Wedgeworth.
The long-running “Line” was the very definition of theatrical simplicity. Mr. Horovitz described the play in a 2012 interview with the website Stage Directions:
“It’s a piece of tape on a barren stage, and five people line up behind this piece of white tape, and they desperately fight to be first. And they have no idea what the line is for. It’s not a play that is going to go out of style. And it adapts to its time.”
Clive Barnes, in his review in The Times in 1971, wasn’t wild about the play but saw potential in the playwright.
“He can write true and dazzling dialogue,” Mr. Barnes wrote, “even when the dialogue has little to be true or dazzling about. Also, he can create people — real breathing, living people.”
As his career advanced, Mr. Horovitz found that his works had particular appeal in France; at his death he had homes there and in Gloucester as well as in the Village. The Cultural Services division of the French Embassy recently called him “the most-produced American playwright in French theater history.” Many of his works drew on his love of France.
“My Old Lady” involved an American who inherits an apartment in Paris and, when he goes there expecting to sell it, finds it occupied by a woman and her daughter. In “Out of the Mouth of Babes” — a comedy that had a run at the Cherry Lane Theater in Manhattan in 2016 with a cast that included Ms. Ivey and Estelle Parsons — four women are drawn together by the death of an instructor at the Sorbonne with whom each had been involved.
Many other Horovitz plays were set in his native Massachusetts, especially in or near coastal Gloucester. In a statement issued on Wednesday, the Gloucester Stage Company said that the accusations against Mr. Horovitz had led it to commit to focusing on works by women, Indigenous people and people of color.
“Israel Horovitz’s dedication to socially relevant and intellectually stimulating theater was the cornerstone of Gloucester Stage Company’s first 40 years,” the statement said. “That concept will live on, through new voices, for the next 40 more.”
Mr. Horovitz and Gillian Adams married in 1981. He had married Elaine Abber in 1959 and Doris Keefe in 1961. In addition to his wife, he is survived by three children from his second marriage: Rachael Horovitz, a film producer; Adam, a member of the Beastie Boys; and Matthew, also a producer. He is also survived by two children from his third marriage, Hannah and Oliver Horovitz; a sister, Shirley Horovitz Levine; and five grandchildren.
|
43. Brexit Customs Checks Make a Quiet Debut at U.K. Ports.txt
|
By Eshe Nelson
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 4, 2021
LONDON — At the ports and terminals on Britain’s southeastern coast, a new era began on Friday morning without much fuss. Ferries and trains that carry goods to France from Dover and Folkestone were running on time, and drivers snaked their trucks into the port unencumbered by congestion.
To all appearances, little may have changed on Jan. 1, the country’s first day outside the European Union’s single market and customs union. It was, after all, a public holiday and not much business was taking place.
But for the first time in over 25 years, goods traveling between Britain and the European Union will no longer move freely and customs checks will be enforced for goods entering the bloc.
A trade deal, signed into law in Britain in the early hours of Thursday, less than 24 hours before it took effect, means the country and the European Union will trade goods without tariffs. Businesses, however, will still face significant changes that they had been urged to prepare for even during the lockdowns, closures and other social restrictions that the government has introduced to contain a surging coronavirus pandemic.
The changes are bound to bring “bumpy moments,” a top cabinet minister predicted this week. The government expects new customs paperwork alone to cost British businesses 7 billion pounds (about $9.6 billion) a year. The European Union is Britain’s largest trading partner, with £670 billion of imports and exports, and Britain imports far more goods from the bloc than it exports. (It has a trade surplus in services, which aren’t covered by the trade deal.)
Britain has at least 150,000 exporters who have never sent their goods beyond the bloc, according to data from the country’s tax agency, and will therefore need to make customs declarations for the first time. Border checks within the European Union were scrapped in 1993.
More on Britain
This is a change that will be immediately felt at Britain’s ports, especially the busy Port of Dover and the Eurotunnel terminus at Folkestone, which connect the country to France. But on Friday, with most business halted for New Year’s Day, trains and ferries were reported to be running smoothly. Eurotunnel reported that 200 trucks had used its shuttle train by 8 a.m., with all the correct documents.
“It does seem pretty calm,” Elizabeth De Jong, the policy director of Logistics U.K., a trade group, told Sky News on Friday morning.
But she added that businesses now faced “a new, different language of customs arrangements” that would need to be understood. She described the next few weeks as a live trial, as companies must ensure they have the correct paperwork for themselves and the goods onboard, and traffic has to be managed into the area.
Away from the Dover-Calais crossing, there were some early hiccups.
Six trucks bound for Ireland, a member of the European Union, were turned away from boarding a ferry at Holyhead, a port in Wales, according to Stena Line, a ferry operator. The drivers did not have the authorization now required for trucks crossing from Britain into Ireland — in this case, a digital “pre-boarding notification,” from Ireland’s tax bureau.
The ferry company, sensing an opportunity in Brexit’s potential headaches, has increased the number of direct sailings it offers between Ireland and France, bypassing Britain and the need for customs checks.
In what the British government has described as a worst-case scenario, 40 to 70 percent of trucks heading to the European Union might not be ready for the new border checks. This could lead to lines of up to 7,000 trucks heading to the border and delays of up to two days, according to a government report.
Britain has only recently cleared a huge backlog of trucks from the border. Late on Dec. 20, the French government suddenly closed its border for 48 hours to stop the spread of a new coronavirus variant from England. Thousands of trucks and their drivers were stranded for days. Once the border reopened, the drivers were then required to show a negative coronavirus test result before being allowed to enter France.
The delays at the normally fast-moving port also raised concerns about Britain’s supply of fresh food, much of which is imported from the rest of Europe in the winter. One fruit supplier urgently arranged to fly goods into the country, and British exporters of fish and shellfish scrambled to send their goods into France before they spoiled.
The spectacle amplified concerns about trade after Dec. 31, the end of the Brexit transition period. Even though goods are already moving more slowly because drivers’ coronavirus tests can take about 40 minutes to deliver results, it is unlikely that trucks will be waiting in their thousands to enter France on Friday thanks to the quieter holiday period.
In fact, some ferry crossings between Dover and Calais were canceled on Friday afternoon because demand was so low.
“We would expect sustained disruption to worsen over the first two weeks as freight demand builds,” the government report says. This could last about three months.
Frictionless trade has been replaced by a myriad of electronic and paper declarations for exporters, importers and logistics companies. Goods entering the European Union from England, Scotland and Wales now require customs checks, including safety certificates, and truck drivers will need a permit to enter Kent, the county containing Dover and Folkestone, to confirm that they have the necessary documents.
Truck drivers coming the other way face fewer requirements for now. Britain has relaxed the rules for goods arriving into the country from the European Union for six months.
In Calais, the first vehicle to depart for Britain via the Eurotunnel shuttle train on Friday morning was from Romania, carrying mail and parcels. The mayor of the French coastal city, Natacha Bouchart, pushed a button allowing the truck to leave.
It was a “historic moment,” she said, that “will have consequences whose range we don’t yet know.”
Antonella Francini contributed reporting from Paris.
British Trade After Brexit
U.K. Parliament Approves Post-Brexit Trade Deal
Dec. 30, 2020
For U.K., an Early Taste of Brexit as Borders Are Sealed
Dec. 21, 2020
Near U.K.’s Busiest Port, Brexit Hopes Are Layered in Asphalt
Aug. 8, 2020
|
By Eshe Nelson
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 4, 2021
LONDON — At the ports and terminals on Britain’s southeastern coast, a new era began on Friday morning without much fuss. Ferries and trains that carry goods to France from Dover and Folkestone were running on time, and drivers snaked their trucks into the port unencumbered by congestion.
To all appearances, little may have changed on Jan. 1, the country’s first day outside the European Union’s single market and customs union. It was, after all, a public
|
holiday and not much business was taking place.
But for the first time in over 25 years, goods traveling between Britain and the European Union will no longer move freely and customs checks will be enforced for goods entering the bloc.
A trade deal, signed into law in Britain in the early hours of Thursday, less than 24 hours before it took effect, means the country and the European Union will trade goods without tariffs. Businesses, however, will still face significant changes that they had been urged to prepare for even during the lockdowns, closures and other social restrictions that the government has introduced to contain a surging coronavirus pandemic.
The changes are bound to bring “bumpy moments,” a top cabinet minister predicted this week. The government expects new customs paperwork alone to cost British businesses 7 billion pounds (about $9.6 billion) a year. The European Union is Britain’s largest trading partner, with £670 billion of imports and exports, and Britain imports far more goods from the bloc than it exports. (It has a trade surplus in services, which aren’t covered by the trade deal.)
Britain has at least 150,000 exporters who have never sent their goods beyond the bloc, according to data from the country’s tax agency, and will therefore need to make customs declarations for the first time. Border checks within the European Union were scrapped in 1993.
More on Britain
This is a change that will be immediately felt at Britain’s ports, especially the busy Port of Dover and the Eurotunnel terminus at Folkestone, which connect the country to France. But on Friday, with most business halted for New Year’s Day, trains and ferries were reported to be running smoothly. Eurotunnel reported that 200 trucks had used its shuttle train by 8 a.m., with all the correct documents.
“It does seem pretty calm,” Elizabeth De Jong, the policy director of Logistics U.K., a trade group, told Sky News on Friday morning.
But she added that businesses now faced “a new, different language of customs arrangements” that would need to be understood. She described the next few weeks as a live trial, as companies must ensure they have the correct paperwork for themselves and the goods onboard, and traffic has to be managed into the area.
Away from the Dover-Calais crossing, there were some early hiccups.
Six trucks bound for Ireland, a member of the European Union, were turned away from boarding a ferry at Holyhead, a port in Wales, according to Stena Line, a ferry operator. The drivers did not have the authorization now required for trucks crossing from Britain into Ireland — in this case, a digital “pre-boarding notification,” from Ireland’s tax bureau.
The ferry company, sensing an opportunity in Brexit’s potential headaches, has increased the number of direct sailings it offers between Ireland and France, bypassing Britain and the need for customs checks.
In what the British government has described as a worst-case scenario, 40 to 70 percent of trucks heading to the European Union might not be ready for the new border checks. This could lead to lines of up to 7,000 trucks heading to the border and delays of up to two days, according to a government report.
Britain has only recently cleared a huge backlog of trucks from the border. Late on Dec. 20, the French government suddenly closed its border for 48 hours to stop the spread of a new coronavirus variant from England. Thousands of trucks and their drivers were stranded for days. Once the border reopened, the drivers were then required to show a negative coronavirus test result before being allowed to enter France.
The delays at the normally fast-moving port also raised concerns about Britain’s supply of fresh food, much of which is imported from the rest of Europe in the winter. One fruit supplier urgently arranged to fly goods into the country, and British exporters of fish and shellfish scrambled to send their goods into France before they spoiled.
The spectacle amplified concerns about trade after Dec. 31, the end of the Brexit transition period. Even though goods are already moving more slowly because drivers’ coronavirus tests can take about 40 minutes to deliver results, it is unlikely that trucks will be waiting in their thousands to enter France on Friday thanks to the quieter holiday period.
In fact, some ferry crossings between Dover and Calais were canceled on Friday afternoon because demand was so low.
“We would expect sustained disruption to worsen over the first two weeks as freight demand builds,” the government report says. This could last about three months.
Frictionless trade has been replaced by a myriad of electronic and paper declarations for exporters, importers and logistics companies. Goods entering the European Union from England, Scotland and Wales now require customs checks, including safety certificates, and truck drivers will need a permit to enter Kent, the county containing Dover and Folkestone, to confirm that they have the necessary documents.
Truck drivers coming the other way face fewer requirements for now. Britain has relaxed the rules for goods arriving into the country from the European Union for six months.
In Calais, the first vehicle to depart for Britain via the Eurotunnel shuttle train on Friday morning was from Romania, carrying mail and parcels. The mayor of the French coastal city, Natacha Bouchart, pushed a button allowing the truck to leave.
It was a “historic moment,” she said, that “will have consequences whose range we don’t yet know.”
Antonella Francini contributed reporting from Paris.
British Trade After Brexit
U.K. Parliament Approves Post-Brexit Trade Deal
Dec. 30, 2020
For U.K., an Early Taste of Brexit as Borders Are Sealed
Dec. 21, 2020
Near U.K.’s Busiest Port, Brexit Hopes Are Layered in Asphalt
Aug. 8, 2020
|
44. An Imprint Neither Could Forget.txt
|
By Vincent M. Mallozzi
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 3, 2021
Long before the name Matthew Specktor was inscribed on Samantha Culp’s heart, it could be found beneath a short, sweet note inscribed on a page of Mr. Specktor’s book, “American Dream Machine,” which she bought at a benefit at the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles in June 2013.
“With warmest wishes,” Mr. Specktor, 54, wrote, “and thanks, hope you enjoy.”
Ms. Culp, 38, a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and producer, recalled suffering from jet lag that day as she had flown home two days earlier from Shanghai, where she spent a decade living and working as a journalist, art curator and consultant. She wrote for The South China Morning Post, and served as a consultant for cultural projects and institutions. “I read his book and thought, ‘Wow, this guy is an amazing writer,’” said Ms. Culp, who graduated from Yale.
“He had such apt observations of the strange beauty of our shared hometown, and also a similarly oblique connection to Hollywood that I do, growing up within it and seeing both its magic and its flaws,” she said. “It was exciting to discover a new writer whose work I really loved.”
Ms. Culp was a producer for the Netflix crime documentary series “Exhibit A” in 2019 and for “The Confession Tapes” in 2017. Now in its second season, “The Confession Tapes,” which tells of wrongful convictions, was nominated for best episodic series by the International Documentary Association. She is also a fellow for the Power of Diversity Master Workshop run by the Producers Guild of America.
At his book signing in Los Angeles, Mr. Specktor, a Hampshire College graduate, entertained a single thought: “I remember thinking that she was a really beautiful, lively and vital person, someone I would love to go out with.” He was divorced when he first crossed paths with Ms. Culp. “We started talking,” he said, “and she tells me she’s going back to Shanghai, and I thought to myself, ‘Well, OK, I’ll never see her again.’”
But he did, nearly six years later in December 2018, via the dating website OkCupid. By then he no longer recognized or remembered her.
“I remembered Matthew from the moment I first glanced at his online dating profile,” Ms. Culp said. “But I decided to play it cool because I didn’t want to jinx anything.”
Nicholas Meyer, a family friend, led a ceremony that incorporated Jewish wedding traditions.
Ms. Culp also said that she was so “intrigued” when they matched that she “researched Matthew via some other Los Angeles Review of Books editor friends who all spoke glowingly of him and encouraged me to go on the date.”
“It’s a funny thing,” she said. “We started dating in December 2018 — very much a pre-pandemic world — and it didn’t take long to see we were very compatible.”
After an otherwise successful first date at a Los Angeles restaurant, Ms. Culp sent Mr. Specktor a text message containing a photo of the nearly seven-year-old inscription he put in her book at the Bel Air hotel.
Mr. Specktor took one look at the photo, dialed Ms. Culp’s phone number and blurted, “Oh my God, it’s you!”
They were soon dating steadily. Ms. Culp was introduced to Mr. Specktor’s daughter, Virginia Specktor, who is now 16 and known as Vivi, and his two-year-old half wheaten terrier, half miniature schnauzer, Pilot.
The couple found they had much in common, including a shared love of literature and film.
“Our habits and ambitions seemed comfortably aligned,” said Mr. Specktor, a former film executive who is now the author of multiple books, and a founding editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books.
“That first year we did nearly everything together, barring a long trip to India that Sam took with her mother while I was home finishing a book,” he said. “I didn’t mind. It gave me a chance to shop for an engagement ring.”
It also gave Ms. Culp an opportunity to evaluate her relationship with Mr. Specktor, and it wasn’t long before she realized that what she had in him was a man who checked all the so-called boxes.
“He is loving and caring and nurturing to his daughter, his friends and family and to his dog,” Ms. Culp said. “In that sense,” she said laughing, “I guess he’s a keeper.”
He guessed much the same, which is why he proposed just after they walked out of a Los Angeles restaurant in December 2019, five months after Ms. Culp had moved in with him.
“I had been married before and dated a lot,” Mr. Specktor said. “But with Sam, there was just so much more clarity, and so much more understanding in just about every interaction we’ve ever had.”
[Sign up for Love Letter and always get the latest in Modern Love, weddings, and relationships in the news by email.]
The bride placed a photo of her father, the actor Robert Culp, inside her grandmother’s gold handbag as a way of keeping him close throughout the day.
“I’d been married once before, and divorced 14 years now,” he added. “I wasn’t opposed to remarrying in the years in between, on the contrary, but I can’t say I felt close to doing so prior to this. Sam has never been married. But I know for both of us there was never an instant of hesitation.”
They were married Dec. 16 in the garden outside the Los Angeles home of the groom’s father, Fred Specktor, and his stepmother, Nancy Heller. Nicholas Meyer, a friend of the family and a Universal Life minister, officiated, leading a ceremony that incorporated Jewish wedding traditions. Mr. Specktor’s daughter, Virginia, presented the couple’s rings.
Among the eight socially distanced guests in attendance was the bride’s mother, Candace Wilson Culp, a writer and retired fashion model. The groom said he wished that his mother, the late Katherine Howe, could have been there.
The bride’s father, the actor Robert Culp, died 10 years ago. He was best known for his role in the hit TV series “I Spy.” He was also appeared in the TV series “Trackdown” and in the comedy film “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.”
The coronavirus had forced the couple to change their original plans for a large wedding celebration in August.
“Trying to plan a wedding, or even just the basic legal marriage ceremony,” the groom said, “has proved to be quite a task in the year of the pandemic. I’m so happy that we got it done.”
On This Day
When Dec. 16, 2020
Where The garden outside the Los Angeles home of the groom’s father and stepmother.
What They Wore The groom donned a vintage Prada suit. The bride had on a gold brocade dress from H&M's Conscious collection of sustainable designs. For the “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” tradition: She carried her grandmother's vintage gold handbag; wore her new dress; borrowed her mother’s pearls; and displayed her blue sapphire engagement ring.
A Tribute to Dad The bride placed a photo of her father, Robert Culp, inside her grandmother’s gold handbag as a way of keeping him close throughout the day.
Continue following our fashion and lifestyle coverage on Facebook (Styles and Modern Love), Twitter (Styles, Fashion and Weddings) and Instagram.
|
By Vincent M. Mallozzi
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 3, 2021
Long before the name Matthew Specktor was inscribed on Samantha Culp’s heart, it could be found beneath a short, sweet note inscribed on a page of Mr. Specktor’s book, “American Dream Machine,” which she bought at a benefit at the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles in June 2013.
“With warmest wishes,” Mr. Specktor, 54, wrote, “and thanks, hope you enjoy.”
Ms. C
|
ulp, 38, a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and producer, recalled suffering from jet lag that day as she had flown home two days earlier from Shanghai, where she spent a decade living and working as a journalist, art curator and consultant. She wrote for The South China Morning Post, and served as a consultant for cultural projects and institutions. “I read his book and thought, ‘Wow, this guy is an amazing writer,’” said Ms. Culp, who graduated from Yale.
“He had such apt observations of the strange beauty of our shared hometown, and also a similarly oblique connection to Hollywood that I do, growing up within it and seeing both its magic and its flaws,” she said. “It was exciting to discover a new writer whose work I really loved.”
Ms. Culp was a producer for the Netflix crime documentary series “Exhibit A” in 2019 and for “The Confession Tapes” in 2017. Now in its second season, “The Confession Tapes,” which tells of wrongful convictions, was nominated for best episodic series by the International Documentary Association. She is also a fellow for the Power of Diversity Master Workshop run by the Producers Guild of America.
At his book signing in Los Angeles, Mr. Specktor, a Hampshire College graduate, entertained a single thought: “I remember thinking that she was a really beautiful, lively and vital person, someone I would love to go out with.” He was divorced when he first crossed paths with Ms. Culp. “We started talking,” he said, “and she tells me she’s going back to Shanghai, and I thought to myself, ‘Well, OK, I’ll never see her again.’”
But he did, nearly six years later in December 2018, via the dating website OkCupid. By then he no longer recognized or remembered her.
“I remembered Matthew from the moment I first glanced at his online dating profile,” Ms. Culp said. “But I decided to play it cool because I didn’t want to jinx anything.”
Nicholas Meyer, a family friend, led a ceremony that incorporated Jewish wedding traditions.
Ms. Culp also said that she was so “intrigued” when they matched that she “researched Matthew via some other Los Angeles Review of Books editor friends who all spoke glowingly of him and encouraged me to go on the date.”
“It’s a funny thing,” she said. “We started dating in December 2018 — very much a pre-pandemic world — and it didn’t take long to see we were very compatible.”
After an otherwise successful first date at a Los Angeles restaurant, Ms. Culp sent Mr. Specktor a text message containing a photo of the nearly seven-year-old inscription he put in her book at the Bel Air hotel.
Mr. Specktor took one look at the photo, dialed Ms. Culp’s phone number and blurted, “Oh my God, it’s you!”
They were soon dating steadily. Ms. Culp was introduced to Mr. Specktor’s daughter, Virginia Specktor, who is now 16 and known as Vivi, and his two-year-old half wheaten terrier, half miniature schnauzer, Pilot.
The couple found they had much in common, including a shared love of literature and film.
“Our habits and ambitions seemed comfortably aligned,” said Mr. Specktor, a former film executive who is now the author of multiple books, and a founding editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books.
“That first year we did nearly everything together, barring a long trip to India that Sam took with her mother while I was home finishing a book,” he said. “I didn’t mind. It gave me a chance to shop for an engagement ring.”
It also gave Ms. Culp an opportunity to evaluate her relationship with Mr. Specktor, and it wasn’t long before she realized that what she had in him was a man who checked all the so-called boxes.
“He is loving and caring and nurturing to his daughter, his friends and family and to his dog,” Ms. Culp said. “In that sense,” she said laughing, “I guess he’s a keeper.”
He guessed much the same, which is why he proposed just after they walked out of a Los Angeles restaurant in December 2019, five months after Ms. Culp had moved in with him.
“I had been married before and dated a lot,” Mr. Specktor said. “But with Sam, there was just so much more clarity, and so much more understanding in just about every interaction we’ve ever had.”
[Sign up for Love Letter and always get the latest in Modern Love, weddings, and relationships in the news by email.]
The bride placed a photo of her father, the actor Robert Culp, inside her grandmother’s gold handbag as a way of keeping him close throughout the day.
“I’d been married once before, and divorced 14 years now,” he added. “I wasn’t opposed to remarrying in the years in between, on the contrary, but I can’t say I felt close to doing so prior to this. Sam has never been married. But I know for both of us there was never an instant of hesitation.”
They were married Dec. 16 in the garden outside the Los Angeles home of the groom’s father, Fred Specktor, and his stepmother, Nancy Heller. Nicholas Meyer, a friend of the family and a Universal Life minister, officiated, leading a ceremony that incorporated Jewish wedding traditions. Mr. Specktor’s daughter, Virginia, presented the couple’s rings.
Among the eight socially distanced guests in attendance was the bride’s mother, Candace Wilson Culp, a writer and retired fashion model. The groom said he wished that his mother, the late Katherine Howe, could have been there.
The bride’s father, the actor Robert Culp, died 10 years ago. He was best known for his role in the hit TV series “I Spy.” He was also appeared in the TV series “Trackdown” and in the comedy film “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.”
The coronavirus had forced the couple to change their original plans for a large wedding celebration in August.
“Trying to plan a wedding, or even just the basic legal marriage ceremony,” the groom said, “has proved to be quite a task in the year of the pandemic. I’m so happy that we got it done.”
On This Day
When Dec. 16, 2020
Where The garden outside the Los Angeles home of the groom’s father and stepmother.
What They Wore The groom donned a vintage Prada suit. The bride had on a gold brocade dress from H&M's Conscious collection of sustainable designs. For the “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” tradition: She carried her grandmother's vintage gold handbag; wore her new dress; borrowed her mother’s pearls; and displayed her blue sapphire engagement ring.
A Tribute to Dad The bride placed a photo of her father, Robert Culp, inside her grandmother’s gold handbag as a way of keeping him close throughout the day.
Continue following our fashion and lifestyle coverage on Facebook (Styles and Modern Love), Twitter (Styles, Fashion and Weddings) and Instagram.
|
82. UPS to Allow Natural Black Hairstyles and Facial Hair.txt
|
By Michael Levenson
Nov. 11, 2020
UPS will allow workers to have facial hair and natural Black hairstyles like Afros and braids as it becomes the latest company to shed policies widely criticized as discriminatory amid nationwide demands for racial justice.
The delivery company, which has more than 525,000 employees worldwide, said it was also eliminating gender-specific rules as part of a broader overhaul of its extensive appearance guidelines, which cover hair, piercings, tattoos and uniform length.
UPS said that Carol Tomé, who in March was named the first female chief executive in the company’s 113-year history, had “listened to feedback from employees and heard that changes in this area would make them more likely to recommend UPS as an employer.”
“These changes reflect our values and desire to have all UPS employees feel comfortable, genuine and authentic while providing service to our customers and interacting with the general public,” the company said in a statement.
The policy change, previously reported by The Wall Street Journal, comes amid a growing national movement to ban racial discrimination against people based on their natural hairstyle. Many companies, responding to months of protests against systemic racism, have also sought to address discrimination by overhauling brand names and marketing images and by diversifying their ranks.
California last year became the first state to ban discrimination based on hairstyle and hair texture by passing the Crown Act — an acronym for Create a Respectful and Open Workplace for Natural Hair. New York and New Jersey soon followed with their own versions of the law, and a federal version passed the U.S. House in September.
In February, the Oscars highlighted the issue when it named “Hair Love,” a film about an African-American father learning to style his daughter’s natural hair in his wife’s absence, best animated short.
The actress Gabrielle Union and the former N.B.A. star Dwyane Wade, the married producers of “Hair Love,” invited to the ceremony a Black high school student in Texas who had been suspended because of the way he wore his dreadlocks.
The student, DeAndre Arnold, was one of a number of Black people who said they had been singled out in the workplace or in school because of their hair.
In 2018, an 11-year-old Black student at a Roman Catholic school near New Orleans was asked to leave class because administrators said her braided hair extensions violated school rules, according to a lawyer for her family.
In 2017, Black students at a charter school in Massachusetts complained that they had been subjected to detentions and suspensions because they wore hair extensions, prompting the state’s attorney general to order the school to stop punishing students for wearing hairstyles that violated the school’s dress code.
In 2018, UPS agreed to pay $4.9 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which said the company had failed to hire or promote Muslims, Sikhs, Rastafarians and others whose religious practices conflicted with its appearance policy.
The commission said the company had for years segregated workers who wore beards or long hair in accordance with their religious beliefs into nonsupervisory, back-of-the-facility positions without customer contact.
The company’s new policy clarifies that beards and mustaches “are definitely acceptable as long as they are worn in a businesslike manner and don’t create a safety concern,” according to UPS documents reviewed by The Journal. The new rules took effect immediately.
The policy also permits natural hairstyles “such as Afros, braids, curls, coils, locs, twists and knots,” according to The Journal. And it eliminates guidelines specific to men and women. “No matter how you identify — dress appropriately for your workday,” the policy states.
The Teamsters, which represents UPS workers, said it was “very pleased” with the changes.
“The union contested the previous guidelines as too strict numerous times over the years through the grievance/arbitration process and contract negotiations,” the union said in a statement. “We have proposed neatly trimmed beards during several previous national negotiations.”
Some legal specialists called UPS’s policy change long overdue.
“Though UPS has defended its grooming policy in past civil rights litigation, it appears that UPS may now better appreciate that its natural hair ban maintains centuries old race-based exclusion of Black workers from employment opportunities simply because they wear their hair as it naturally grows,” said D. Wendy Greene, a professor at Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law and an architect of the Crown Act.
“In doing so, UPS’s grooming policy sent a clear message to Black workers that they were required to either change or extinguish a fundamental part of their racial, cultural, and sometimes religious identity to be a member of the organization,” Professor Greene said.
Angela Onwuachi-Willig, a professor of law and dean of the Boston University School of Law, who has researched hair codes, said the change at UPS “recognizes that allowing people to be their authentic selves is good for business.”
Policies that ban natural Black hairstyles are clearly discriminatory, she said, because they deem Black hair to be “inherently unprofessional.”
Dominique Apollon, vice president for research at Race Forward, a racial justice advocacy organization, said companies that forbid natural Black hair send the message that “white standards of beauty and white comfort are ultimately the default.”
“I’d like to see these sorts of policy changes accompanied by a deeper reckoning with the past, and with a humility that unfortunately doesn’t come often in our litigious society,” he said. “Companies like UPS need to acknowledge that these sorts of policies have had long-term effects, and will continue to have ramifications or racial outcomes unless more is done.”
|
By Michael Levenson
Nov. 11, 2020
UPS will allow workers to have facial hair and natural Black hairstyles like Afros and braids as it becomes the latest company to shed policies widely criticized as discriminatory amid nationwide demands for racial justice.
The delivery company, which has more than 525,000 employees worldwide, said it was also eliminating gender-specific rules as part of a broader overhaul of its extensive appearance guidelines, which cover hair, piercings, tattoos and uniform length.
UPS said that Carol Tomé, who in March was named the
|
first female chief executive in the company’s 113-year history, had “listened to feedback from employees and heard that changes in this area would make them more likely to recommend UPS as an employer.”
“These changes reflect our values and desire to have all UPS employees feel comfortable, genuine and authentic while providing service to our customers and interacting with the general public,” the company said in a statement.
The policy change, previously reported by The Wall Street Journal, comes amid a growing national movement to ban racial discrimination against people based on their natural hairstyle. Many companies, responding to months of protests against systemic racism, have also sought to address discrimination by overhauling brand names and marketing images and by diversifying their ranks.
California last year became the first state to ban discrimination based on hairstyle and hair texture by passing the Crown Act — an acronym for Create a Respectful and Open Workplace for Natural Hair. New York and New Jersey soon followed with their own versions of the law, and a federal version passed the U.S. House in September.
In February, the Oscars highlighted the issue when it named “Hair Love,” a film about an African-American father learning to style his daughter’s natural hair in his wife’s absence, best animated short.
The actress Gabrielle Union and the former N.B.A. star Dwyane Wade, the married producers of “Hair Love,” invited to the ceremony a Black high school student in Texas who had been suspended because of the way he wore his dreadlocks.
The student, DeAndre Arnold, was one of a number of Black people who said they had been singled out in the workplace or in school because of their hair.
In 2018, an 11-year-old Black student at a Roman Catholic school near New Orleans was asked to leave class because administrators said her braided hair extensions violated school rules, according to a lawyer for her family.
In 2017, Black students at a charter school in Massachusetts complained that they had been subjected to detentions and suspensions because they wore hair extensions, prompting the state’s attorney general to order the school to stop punishing students for wearing hairstyles that violated the school’s dress code.
In 2018, UPS agreed to pay $4.9 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which said the company had failed to hire or promote Muslims, Sikhs, Rastafarians and others whose religious practices conflicted with its appearance policy.
The commission said the company had for years segregated workers who wore beards or long hair in accordance with their religious beliefs into nonsupervisory, back-of-the-facility positions without customer contact.
The company’s new policy clarifies that beards and mustaches “are definitely acceptable as long as they are worn in a businesslike manner and don’t create a safety concern,” according to UPS documents reviewed by The Journal. The new rules took effect immediately.
The policy also permits natural hairstyles “such as Afros, braids, curls, coils, locs, twists and knots,” according to The Journal. And it eliminates guidelines specific to men and women. “No matter how you identify — dress appropriately for your workday,” the policy states.
The Teamsters, which represents UPS workers, said it was “very pleased” with the changes.
“The union contested the previous guidelines as too strict numerous times over the years through the grievance/arbitration process and contract negotiations,” the union said in a statement. “We have proposed neatly trimmed beards during several previous national negotiations.”
Some legal specialists called UPS’s policy change long overdue.
“Though UPS has defended its grooming policy in past civil rights litigation, it appears that UPS may now better appreciate that its natural hair ban maintains centuries old race-based exclusion of Black workers from employment opportunities simply because they wear their hair as it naturally grows,” said D. Wendy Greene, a professor at Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law and an architect of the Crown Act.
“In doing so, UPS’s grooming policy sent a clear message to Black workers that they were required to either change or extinguish a fundamental part of their racial, cultural, and sometimes religious identity to be a member of the organization,” Professor Greene said.
Angela Onwuachi-Willig, a professor of law and dean of the Boston University School of Law, who has researched hair codes, said the change at UPS “recognizes that allowing people to be their authentic selves is good for business.”
Policies that ban natural Black hairstyles are clearly discriminatory, she said, because they deem Black hair to be “inherently unprofessional.”
Dominique Apollon, vice president for research at Race Forward, a racial justice advocacy organization, said companies that forbid natural Black hair send the message that “white standards of beauty and white comfort are ultimately the default.”
“I’d like to see these sorts of policy changes accompanied by a deeper reckoning with the past, and with a humility that unfortunately doesn’t come often in our litigious society,” he said. “Companies like UPS need to acknowledge that these sorts of policies have had long-term effects, and will continue to have ramifications or racial outcomes unless more is done.”
|
19. ‘Elizabeth Is Missing’ Review: Glenda Jackson’s Return to TV.txt
|
By Mike Hale
Jan. 1, 2021
The BBC television movie “Elizabeth Is Missing” — a stand-alone episode of “Masterpiece” on PBS this Sunday — contains Glenda Jackson’s first screen performance since 1992. That certainly merits attention — Jackson, now 84, is one of the most technically accomplished and ferociously intelligent actresses of our time. Did it merit the rapturous British reviews on its release in 2019 and perhaps inevitable awards, including a BAFTA and an international Emmy, that she received for it? Not really, but it isn’t Jackson’s fault.
You can see the appeal to Jackson of “Elizabeth Is Missing,” which was adapted by the actress and writer Andrea Gibb from a mystery novel by Emma Healey. The central character, Maud, who is moving from forgetfulness into dementia, is onscreen virtually the entire time, whether in the present or as her teenage self (played by Liv Hill) in a parallel story line set 70 years ago. The progress of the film largely takes place through Jackson’s twofold embodiment of Maud’s decline and of her stubborn, often angry battle to delay and deny it.
The story puts Maud in a situation full of dramatic promise: her best friend, Elizabeth, has suddenly disappeared, and Maud is determined to find her despite the inconvenient fact that she can’t convince anyone that Elizabeth is actually gone. Scrawling notes to herself about Elizabeth’s glasses and some suspiciously broken vases, Maud carries on her investigation in fits and starts, picking it up again whenever she remembers that Elizabeth is missing.
It’s a great setup for a straightforward mystery, but “Elizabeth Is Missing” is more complicated than that, and while you can’t hold that ambition against it, you might wish that you were watching something simpler. Maud’s search for Elizabeth is woven together with the disappearance of Maud’s married older sister in 1950. Events in the present and past continually mix in Maud’s mind, her memories triggered by objects or phrases in ways that are artful and a little too self-conscious.
The mystery-novel structure of the story turns out to be both a feint and a reality, something that becomes predictable fairly early on and is disappointing in the final result. We’re supposed to be getting a deeper satisfaction from the detailed depiction of Maud and her affliction, and the neatly arranged thematic resonance between the two story lines, revolving around what it really means to be missing.
But despite the efforts of the talented director Aisling Walsh (“Maudie”), who gives the film a welcome restraint and clarity, “Elizabeth Is Missing” doesn’t hit the mark — the screenplay is too fussy and tricky, and the resolution to the twin mysteries, with its mixed notes of heroism and resignation, isn’t convincing. (Walsh’s final image, a long shot of Maud crossing a street alone in mourning clothes, has a power lacking in the rest of the film.)
But as you could expect, it contains a mostly faultless performance by Jackson, one that’s certainly worth 87 minutes of your viewing time. (It might also remind you that despite Jackson’s stature, and some high points like “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “The Return of the Soldier,” her screen résumé isn’t all that distinguished.)
She doesn’t play for our sympathy — she leans into the character’s frustration and irascibility, making it clear how difficult she is to deal with. And she communicates Maud’s flickering moods and perceptions precisely and indelibly, in the way she briskly taps a notecard when Maud makes a connection or in a quick, shattering moment when she silently screams with frustration at a restaurant, conscious of not making (too much of) a scene. Maud may not come fully alive in the script, but there’s nothing missing in Jackson’s portrayal.
|
By Mike Hale
Jan. 1, 2021
The BBC television movie “Elizabeth Is Missing” — a stand-alone episode of “Masterpiece” on PBS this Sunday — contains Glenda Jackson’s first screen performance since 1992. That certainly merits attention — Jackson, now 84, is one of the most technically accomplished and ferociously intelligent actresses of our time. Did it merit the rapturous British reviews on its release in 2019 and perhaps inevitable awards, including a BAFTA and an international Emmy, that she received for it? Not really, but it
|
isn’t Jackson’s fault.
You can see the appeal to Jackson of “Elizabeth Is Missing,” which was adapted by the actress and writer Andrea Gibb from a mystery novel by Emma Healey. The central character, Maud, who is moving from forgetfulness into dementia, is onscreen virtually the entire time, whether in the present or as her teenage self (played by Liv Hill) in a parallel story line set 70 years ago. The progress of the film largely takes place through Jackson’s twofold embodiment of Maud’s decline and of her stubborn, often angry battle to delay and deny it.
The story puts Maud in a situation full of dramatic promise: her best friend, Elizabeth, has suddenly disappeared, and Maud is determined to find her despite the inconvenient fact that she can’t convince anyone that Elizabeth is actually gone. Scrawling notes to herself about Elizabeth’s glasses and some suspiciously broken vases, Maud carries on her investigation in fits and starts, picking it up again whenever she remembers that Elizabeth is missing.
It’s a great setup for a straightforward mystery, but “Elizabeth Is Missing” is more complicated than that, and while you can’t hold that ambition against it, you might wish that you were watching something simpler. Maud’s search for Elizabeth is woven together with the disappearance of Maud’s married older sister in 1950. Events in the present and past continually mix in Maud’s mind, her memories triggered by objects or phrases in ways that are artful and a little too self-conscious.
The mystery-novel structure of the story turns out to be both a feint and a reality, something that becomes predictable fairly early on and is disappointing in the final result. We’re supposed to be getting a deeper satisfaction from the detailed depiction of Maud and her affliction, and the neatly arranged thematic resonance between the two story lines, revolving around what it really means to be missing.
But despite the efforts of the talented director Aisling Walsh (“Maudie”), who gives the film a welcome restraint and clarity, “Elizabeth Is Missing” doesn’t hit the mark — the screenplay is too fussy and tricky, and the resolution to the twin mysteries, with its mixed notes of heroism and resignation, isn’t convincing. (Walsh’s final image, a long shot of Maud crossing a street alone in mourning clothes, has a power lacking in the rest of the film.)
But as you could expect, it contains a mostly faultless performance by Jackson, one that’s certainly worth 87 minutes of your viewing time. (It might also remind you that despite Jackson’s stature, and some high points like “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “The Return of the Soldier,” her screen résumé isn’t all that distinguished.)
She doesn’t play for our sympathy — she leans into the character’s frustration and irascibility, making it clear how difficult she is to deal with. And she communicates Maud’s flickering moods and perceptions precisely and indelibly, in the way she briskly taps a notecard when Maud makes a connection or in a quick, shattering moment when she silently screams with frustration at a restaurant, conscious of not making (too much of) a scene. Maud may not come fully alive in the script, but there’s nothing missing in Jackson’s portrayal.
|
76. Newark’s mayor imposes new restrictions as the city reaches a positivity rate of 19%..txt
|
By Kevin Armstrong and Tracey Tully
Nov. 11, 2020
Two weeks ago, as the coronavirus began to spread widely again in Newark, officials imposed New Jersey’s toughest new restrictions since the spring lockdown, mandating an 8 p.m. indoor closing time for all restaurants, bars and nonessential businesses citywide.
But the number of new cases in Newark, the state’s largest city, kept climbing, with 842 new reported infections over the last four days. Of those people tested in Newark over three days last week, 19 percent were found to have the virus, city and county officials said — more than double the statewide rate, and almost eight times the rate in New York State.
The uptick mirrors a spike in Covid-19 hospitalizations across New Jersey to levels not seen since June.
On Tuesday, New Jersey recorded 3,777 new infections, the most since April — a figure the governor called “devastating.” Hospitals also reported 15 coronavirus deaths, adding to the state’s pandemic death toll of more than 16,400.
Newark sits just a few miles west of New York City, where officials are struggling to contain a spike on Staten Island and bracing for a second wave of cases.
Alarmed by the new data, Newark’s mayor, Ras J. Baraka, implemented a sweeping set of rules on Tuesday designed to avoid a repeat of the springtime outbreak. Mr. Baraka ordered a 9 p.m. weekday curfew for residents of three ZIP codes, and canceled all team sports activities citywide, effective immediately. He barred Newark’s nursing homes from accepting visitors for two weeks, and capped gatherings — indoors and outdoors — at 10 people until at least Dec. 1.
Aides said Mr. Baraka would not hesitate to shut down businesses, issue fines and suspend liquor licenses if needed.
The tough talk created tension between Gov. Philip D. Murphy and Mr. Baraka, allies and fellow Democrats. Mr. Murphy this week imposed a 10 p.m. closing time on restaurants and bars, among other restrictions, but he has resisted ordering a statewide lockdown.When asked about Newark’s rules, Mr. Murphy’s top lawyer, Parimal Garg, said that state law superseded municipal actions.
Perry N. Halkitis, a dean of biostatistics and urban-global public health at the School of Public Health at Rutgers University,said that an emphasis on quelling indoor drinking during late-night hours, when inhibitions drop, was appropriate. He also said he was equally concerned about private indoor gatherings that are harder to monitor.
“You really love your family?” said Dr. Halkitis. “For Thanksgiving, you should not be with them.”
|
By Kevin Armstrong and Tracey Tully
Nov. 11, 2020
Two weeks ago, as the coronavirus began to spread widely again in Newark, officials imposed New Jersey’s toughest new restrictions since the spring lockdown, mandating an 8 p.m. indoor closing time for all restaurants, bars and nonessential businesses citywide.
But the number of new cases in Newark, the state’s largest city, kept climbing, with 842 new reported infections over the last four days. Of those people tested in Newark over three days last week, 19 percent were found to have the virus,
|
city and county officials said — more than double the statewide rate, and almost eight times the rate in New York State.
The uptick mirrors a spike in Covid-19 hospitalizations across New Jersey to levels not seen since June.
On Tuesday, New Jersey recorded 3,777 new infections, the most since April — a figure the governor called “devastating.” Hospitals also reported 15 coronavirus deaths, adding to the state’s pandemic death toll of more than 16,400.
Newark sits just a few miles west of New York City, where officials are struggling to contain a spike on Staten Island and bracing for a second wave of cases.
Alarmed by the new data, Newark’s mayor, Ras J. Baraka, implemented a sweeping set of rules on Tuesday designed to avoid a repeat of the springtime outbreak. Mr. Baraka ordered a 9 p.m. weekday curfew for residents of three ZIP codes, and canceled all team sports activities citywide, effective immediately. He barred Newark’s nursing homes from accepting visitors for two weeks, and capped gatherings — indoors and outdoors — at 10 people until at least Dec. 1.
Aides said Mr. Baraka would not hesitate to shut down businesses, issue fines and suspend liquor licenses if needed.
The tough talk created tension between Gov. Philip D. Murphy and Mr. Baraka, allies and fellow Democrats. Mr. Murphy this week imposed a 10 p.m. closing time on restaurants and bars, among other restrictions, but he has resisted ordering a statewide lockdown.When asked about Newark’s rules, Mr. Murphy’s top lawyer, Parimal Garg, said that state law superseded municipal actions.
Perry N. Halkitis, a dean of biostatistics and urban-global public health at the School of Public Health at Rutgers University,said that an emphasis on quelling indoor drinking during late-night hours, when inhibitions drop, was appropriate. He also said he was equally concerned about private indoor gatherings that are harder to monitor.
“You really love your family?” said Dr. Halkitis. “For Thanksgiving, you should not be with them.”
|
28. After Five Centuries, a Native American With Real Power.txt
|
By Timothy Egan
In the American West, a ration of reverence is usually given to the grizzled Anglo rancher who rises at a public hearing and announces that his people have been on the land for five generations.
So what are we to make of Representative Deb Haaland, a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo, who says that her people have been in the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico for 35 generations — dating to the 13th century?
“Native history is American history,” she told me. “Regardless of where you are in this country now, you’re on ancestral Indian land, and that land has a history.”
As Joe Biden’s choice for interior secretary, Ms. Haaland is poised to make a rare positive mark in the history of how a nation of immigrants treated the country’s original inhabitants. She would be the first Native American cabinet secretary — a distinction that has prompted celebration throughout Indian Country.
“I haven’t been the one making policy,” she said. “But I’ve been the one on the receiving end of it.”
Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
There will be plenty of sniping, second-guessing and disappointment among the tribes by people who expect much of Haaland having a seat at the big table. But for now, we should let this moment breathe.
I spoke to her on the anniversary of a day of infamy. On December 29, 1890, the U.S. Army slaughtered men, women and children at Wounded Knee in South Dakota. Government policy was to strip Indians of their language, culture and religion, with children sent off to boarding schools where they were taught that the old ways were wrong. At the end of the 19th century, the popular view was that Indigenous people would soon disappear.
And yet here is Haaland, one of more than five million Native Americans, ready to knock down some of the last barriers of time and terrain in this country.
Her personal story alone makes Haaland an anomaly in the parlors of power. Soon after graduating from college, she became a single mother. She was sometimes dependent on food stamps, and she once ran a small business selling homemade salsa to make a living and support her child. As a freshman representative in 2019, she was still paying off her student loans.
When she ran for office, her slogan was “Congress has never heard a voice like mine.” Now the person with that voice could soon be overseeing one-fifth of the land in the United States.
As interior secretary, her portfolio would include national parks, wildlife refuges, the United States Geological Survey and the vast acreage of the Bureau of Land Management. Interior, for good reason, is known as the Department of Everything Else.
As such, she would also be overseeing millions of acres taken from Indians in treaties broken over the past several centuries, and would be the top government liaison with 574 federally recognized tribes — the nations within a nation.
This is quite the compass — from a deep slot in the earth near the Grand Canyon, wherein dwell the Havasupai, to the rain forest of the Olympic Peninsula, home of the Makah Nation, to urban neighborhoods that house Indians struggling with health care access.
“I wish we could right some wrongs,” she said of the centuries-old saga of sorrow. But going into the new year, she seems content to try to right the many wrongs that Donald Trump’s administration has inflicted on the land.
Trump’s first interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, literally rode into office on a horse named Tonto, and then promptly launched a campaign to make it easier to drill on public land. The current secretary, David L. Bernhardt, was an oil and gas lobbyist whose public service on behalf of his former clients was warmly received by his old friends.
Biden has pledged to end all new oil and gas drilling on these rangelands, forests and plains — an enormous change that will be fought fiercely by those who profit from land owned by all Americans. He has also promised to restore Bears Ears National Monument, a marvel of sandstone, mountains and Native sacred sites in the Southwest that was gutted by Trump, who reduced the size of the protected area by 85 percent.
Haaland is eager for the opportunity to do something lasting. “I’ll be fierce for all of us, for our planet and all of our protected land,” she said in December.
But it’s the weight of Native history that makes the choice of Haaland so extraordinary, as she acknowledged. “This moment is profound when we consider the fact that a former secretary of the interior once proclaimed it his goal to, quote, ‘civilize or exterminate’ us.” She was referring to Alexander H.H. Stuart, the secretary of the interior in the early 1850s in the Fillmore administration.
“Exterminate” was no exaggeration. The census of 1900 counted over 237,000 Native Americans, a population collapse of nearly 90 percent, in the estimate of many ethnohistorians, from the time of first European contact.
Some of the atrocities are well known. But less well known is how the government made it a crime for Natives to practice their religion. It was a violation of the First Amendment to lock people up for enacting the rituals of faith — unless they worshiped Native gods through certain dances and ceremonies deemed criminal by the government.
A consistent plea from Indian Country today is a request that fellow Americans consider Native people as much more than living relics locked in a tragic past. Haaland aims to ensure that. “I’ll never forget where I came from,” she said. But, she added, “I love this opportunity.” Even if she can’t reverse history, she is poised to make some.
|
By Timothy Egan
In the American West, a ration of reverence is usually given to the grizzled Anglo rancher who rises at a public hearing and announces that his people have been on the land for five generations.
So what are we to make of Representative Deb Haaland, a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo, who says that her people have been in the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico for 35 generations — dating to the 13th century?
“Native history is American history,” she told me. “Regardless of where you are in this country now, you’re on ancestral Indian land, and that land
|
has a history.”
As Joe Biden’s choice for interior secretary, Ms. Haaland is poised to make a rare positive mark in the history of how a nation of immigrants treated the country’s original inhabitants. She would be the first Native American cabinet secretary — a distinction that has prompted celebration throughout Indian Country.
“I haven’t been the one making policy,” she said. “But I’ve been the one on the receiving end of it.”
Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
There will be plenty of sniping, second-guessing and disappointment among the tribes by people who expect much of Haaland having a seat at the big table. But for now, we should let this moment breathe.
I spoke to her on the anniversary of a day of infamy. On December 29, 1890, the U.S. Army slaughtered men, women and children at Wounded Knee in South Dakota. Government policy was to strip Indians of their language, culture and religion, with children sent off to boarding schools where they were taught that the old ways were wrong. At the end of the 19th century, the popular view was that Indigenous people would soon disappear.
And yet here is Haaland, one of more than five million Native Americans, ready to knock down some of the last barriers of time and terrain in this country.
Her personal story alone makes Haaland an anomaly in the parlors of power. Soon after graduating from college, she became a single mother. She was sometimes dependent on food stamps, and she once ran a small business selling homemade salsa to make a living and support her child. As a freshman representative in 2019, she was still paying off her student loans.
When she ran for office, her slogan was “Congress has never heard a voice like mine.” Now the person with that voice could soon be overseeing one-fifth of the land in the United States.
As interior secretary, her portfolio would include national parks, wildlife refuges, the United States Geological Survey and the vast acreage of the Bureau of Land Management. Interior, for good reason, is known as the Department of Everything Else.
As such, she would also be overseeing millions of acres taken from Indians in treaties broken over the past several centuries, and would be the top government liaison with 574 federally recognized tribes — the nations within a nation.
This is quite the compass — from a deep slot in the earth near the Grand Canyon, wherein dwell the Havasupai, to the rain forest of the Olympic Peninsula, home of the Makah Nation, to urban neighborhoods that house Indians struggling with health care access.
“I wish we could right some wrongs,” she said of the centuries-old saga of sorrow. But going into the new year, she seems content to try to right the many wrongs that Donald Trump’s administration has inflicted on the land.
Trump’s first interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, literally rode into office on a horse named Tonto, and then promptly launched a campaign to make it easier to drill on public land. The current secretary, David L. Bernhardt, was an oil and gas lobbyist whose public service on behalf of his former clients was warmly received by his old friends.
Biden has pledged to end all new oil and gas drilling on these rangelands, forests and plains — an enormous change that will be fought fiercely by those who profit from land owned by all Americans. He has also promised to restore Bears Ears National Monument, a marvel of sandstone, mountains and Native sacred sites in the Southwest that was gutted by Trump, who reduced the size of the protected area by 85 percent.
Haaland is eager for the opportunity to do something lasting. “I’ll be fierce for all of us, for our planet and all of our protected land,” she said in December.
But it’s the weight of Native history that makes the choice of Haaland so extraordinary, as she acknowledged. “This moment is profound when we consider the fact that a former secretary of the interior once proclaimed it his goal to, quote, ‘civilize or exterminate’ us.” She was referring to Alexander H.H. Stuart, the secretary of the interior in the early 1850s in the Fillmore administration.
“Exterminate” was no exaggeration. The census of 1900 counted over 237,000 Native Americans, a population collapse of nearly 90 percent, in the estimate of many ethnohistorians, from the time of first European contact.
Some of the atrocities are well known. But less well known is how the government made it a crime for Natives to practice their religion. It was a violation of the First Amendment to lock people up for enacting the rituals of faith — unless they worshiped Native gods through certain dances and ceremonies deemed criminal by the government.
A consistent plea from Indian Country today is a request that fellow Americans consider Native people as much more than living relics locked in a tragic past. Haaland aims to ensure that. “I’ll never forget where I came from,” she said. But, she added, “I love this opportunity.” Even if she can’t reverse history, she is poised to make some.
|
14. Britain Opens Door to Mix-and-Match Vaccinations, Worrying Experts.txt
|
By Katherine J. Wu
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 27, 2021
Amid a sputtering vaccine rollout and fears of a new and potentially more transmissible variant of the coronavirus, Britain has quietly updated its vaccination playbook to allow for a mix-and-match vaccine regimen. If a second dose of the vaccine a patient originally received isn’t available, or if the manufacturer of the first shot isn’t known, another vaccine may be substituted, health officials said.
The new guidance contradicts guidelines in the United States, where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has noted that the authorized Covid-19 vaccines “are not interchangeable,” and that “the safety and efficacy of a mixed-product series have not been evaluated. Both doses of the series should be completed with the same product.”
Some scientists say Britain is gambling with its new guidance. “There are no data on this idea whatsoever,” said John Moore, a vaccine expert at Cornell University. Officials in Britain “seem to have abandoned science completely now and are just trying to guess their way out of a mess.”
Health officials in Britain are caught in a deadly race with the virus, which is surging again, and are struggling to get as many people vaccinated as possible. Hospitals continue to strain under a crush of coronavirus patients, and tens of thousands of new infections are reported each day. Schools in London and other regions hit hard by the virus will remain closed for at least the next two weeks, government officials said on Friday.
The country has issued an emergency green light to two vaccines, developed by Pfizer and AstraZeneca. According to Britain’s new guidance, “every effort should be made” to complete a dosing regimen with the same shot first used. But when “the same vaccine is not available, or if the first product received is unknown, it is reasonable to offer one dose of the locally available product” the second time around.
More on Britain
“This option is preferred if the individual is likely to be at immediate high risk or is considered unlikely to attend again,” the recommendation said. Because both vaccines target the spike protein of the coronavirus, “it is likely the second dose will help to boost the response to the first dose.”
An official at Public Health England on Saturday noted the similarities between the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines, and said substitutions would occur only on “a very exceptional basis, when the alternative is to leave someone with an incomplete course.” An official in Wales said that first and second vaccine doses there would be matched.
It is far from certain that the vaccines are interchangeable, several researchers said.
“None of this is being data driven right now,” said Dr. Phyllis Tien, an infectious disease physician at the University of California, San Francisco. “We’re kind of in this Wild West.”
Steven Danehy, a spokesman for Pfizer, pointed to the company’s late-stage clinical trial findings, which relied on a two-dose schedule of its vaccine that was 95 percent effective at preventing Covid-19.
“While decisions on alternative dosing regimens reside with health authorities, Pfizer believes it is critical health authorities conduct surveillance efforts on any alternative schedules implemented and to ensure each recipient is afforded the maximum possible protection, which means immunization with two doses of the vaccine,” Mr. Danehy said.
Both Pfizer’s and AstraZeneca’s vaccines introduce into the body a protein called spike that, while not infectious itself, can teach immune cells to recognize and fight off the actual coronavirus.
But the vaccines impart their immunological lessons through different methods, and do not contain equivalent ingredients. While Pfizer’s vaccine relies on a molecule called messenger RNA, or mRNA, packaged into greasy bubbles, AstraZeneca’s shots are designed around a virus shell that delivers DNA, a cousin of mRNA.
Both vaccines are intended to be doled out in two-shot regimens, delivered three or four weeks apart. While the first shots of each vaccine are thought to be somewhat effective at preventing Covid-19, it’s the second dose — intended as a sort of molecular review session for the immune system — that clinches the protective process.
While it’s possible that swapping out one vaccine for another may still school the body to recognize the coronavirus, it is still a scientific gamble. With different ingredients in each vaccine, it’s possible people will not benefit as much from a second shot. Mixing and matching could also make it more difficult to collect clear data on vaccine safety.
Without evidence to back it, the hybrid vaccination approach seems “premature,” said Saad Omer, a vaccine expert at Yale University. Still, it’s not without precedent: Health authorities like the C.D.C. have previously said that if it’s impossible to give doses of a vaccine from the same manufacturer, “providers should administer the vaccine that they have available” to complete an injection schedule.
In a controversial move, the British government this week also decided to frontload its vaccine rollout, delivering as many first doses to people as possible — a move that could delay second shots up to 12 weeks.
The speedy deployment might afford more people partial protection against the virus in the short term. But some experts, including Dr. Moore, worry that this, too, might be unwise, and could imperil vulnerable populations.
A vaccination gap that stretches on too long may hamstring the second shot’s ability to boost the protective powers of the first — or raise the odds that people will forget, or decide against, returning for another injection.
The whiplash changes in guidance in Britain, many made without public meetings or strong data, may erode trust in vaccination campaigns and public health measures in general, Dr. Tien said.
“We’re making an assumption that the public is just going to listen and come in and get the vaccine,” she said. “I’m worried that’s not going to happen.”
|
By Katherine J. Wu
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 27, 2021
Amid a sputtering vaccine rollout and fears of a new and potentially more transmissible variant of the coronavirus, Britain has quietly updated its vaccination playbook to allow for a mix-and-match vaccine regimen. If a second dose of the vaccine a patient originally received isn’t available, or if the manufacturer of the first shot isn’t known, another vaccine may be substituted, health officials said.
The new guidance contradicts guidelines in the United States, where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has noted
|
that the authorized Covid-19 vaccines “are not interchangeable,” and that “the safety and efficacy of a mixed-product series have not been evaluated. Both doses of the series should be completed with the same product.”
Some scientists say Britain is gambling with its new guidance. “There are no data on this idea whatsoever,” said John Moore, a vaccine expert at Cornell University. Officials in Britain “seem to have abandoned science completely now and are just trying to guess their way out of a mess.”
Health officials in Britain are caught in a deadly race with the virus, which is surging again, and are struggling to get as many people vaccinated as possible. Hospitals continue to strain under a crush of coronavirus patients, and tens of thousands of new infections are reported each day. Schools in London and other regions hit hard by the virus will remain closed for at least the next two weeks, government officials said on Friday.
The country has issued an emergency green light to two vaccines, developed by Pfizer and AstraZeneca. According to Britain’s new guidance, “every effort should be made” to complete a dosing regimen with the same shot first used. But when “the same vaccine is not available, or if the first product received is unknown, it is reasonable to offer one dose of the locally available product” the second time around.
More on Britain
“This option is preferred if the individual is likely to be at immediate high risk or is considered unlikely to attend again,” the recommendation said. Because both vaccines target the spike protein of the coronavirus, “it is likely the second dose will help to boost the response to the first dose.”
An official at Public Health England on Saturday noted the similarities between the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines, and said substitutions would occur only on “a very exceptional basis, when the alternative is to leave someone with an incomplete course.” An official in Wales said that first and second vaccine doses there would be matched.
It is far from certain that the vaccines are interchangeable, several researchers said.
“None of this is being data driven right now,” said Dr. Phyllis Tien, an infectious disease physician at the University of California, San Francisco. “We’re kind of in this Wild West.”
Steven Danehy, a spokesman for Pfizer, pointed to the company’s late-stage clinical trial findings, which relied on a two-dose schedule of its vaccine that was 95 percent effective at preventing Covid-19.
“While decisions on alternative dosing regimens reside with health authorities, Pfizer believes it is critical health authorities conduct surveillance efforts on any alternative schedules implemented and to ensure each recipient is afforded the maximum possible protection, which means immunization with two doses of the vaccine,” Mr. Danehy said.
Both Pfizer’s and AstraZeneca’s vaccines introduce into the body a protein called spike that, while not infectious itself, can teach immune cells to recognize and fight off the actual coronavirus.
But the vaccines impart their immunological lessons through different methods, and do not contain equivalent ingredients. While Pfizer’s vaccine relies on a molecule called messenger RNA, or mRNA, packaged into greasy bubbles, AstraZeneca’s shots are designed around a virus shell that delivers DNA, a cousin of mRNA.
Both vaccines are intended to be doled out in two-shot regimens, delivered three or four weeks apart. While the first shots of each vaccine are thought to be somewhat effective at preventing Covid-19, it’s the second dose — intended as a sort of molecular review session for the immune system — that clinches the protective process.
While it’s possible that swapping out one vaccine for another may still school the body to recognize the coronavirus, it is still a scientific gamble. With different ingredients in each vaccine, it’s possible people will not benefit as much from a second shot. Mixing and matching could also make it more difficult to collect clear data on vaccine safety.
Without evidence to back it, the hybrid vaccination approach seems “premature,” said Saad Omer, a vaccine expert at Yale University. Still, it’s not without precedent: Health authorities like the C.D.C. have previously said that if it’s impossible to give doses of a vaccine from the same manufacturer, “providers should administer the vaccine that they have available” to complete an injection schedule.
In a controversial move, the British government this week also decided to frontload its vaccine rollout, delivering as many first doses to people as possible — a move that could delay second shots up to 12 weeks.
The speedy deployment might afford more people partial protection against the virus in the short term. But some experts, including Dr. Moore, worry that this, too, might be unwise, and could imperil vulnerable populations.
A vaccination gap that stretches on too long may hamstring the second shot’s ability to boost the protective powers of the first — or raise the odds that people will forget, or decide against, returning for another injection.
The whiplash changes in guidance in Britain, many made without public meetings or strong data, may erode trust in vaccination campaigns and public health measures in general, Dr. Tien said.
“We’re making an assumption that the public is just going to listen and come in and get the vaccine,” she said. “I’m worried that’s not going to happen.”
|
62. An Embattled Public Servant in a Fractured France.txt
|
By Roger Cohen
Jan. 1, 2021
Lire en français
PARIS — France is in theory a nondiscriminatory society where the state upholds strict religious neutrality and people are free to believe, or not, in any God they wish. It is a nation, in its self image, that through education dissolves differences of faith and ethnicity in a shared commitment to the rights and responsibilities of French citizenship.
This model, known as laïcité, often inadequately translated as secularism, is embraced by a majority of French people. They or their forebears became French in this way. No politician here would utter the words “In God we trust.” The Roman Catholic Church was removed more than a century ago from French public life. The country’s lay model supplants any deity.
But, in a country with an uneasy relationship to Islam, laïcité is also contested as the shield behind which France discriminates against its large Muslim population and avoids confronting its prejudices. As a result, the job of Nicolas Cadène, a mildly disheveled official with a mop of brown hair and multiple law degrees, has become a focus of controversy.
Mr. Cadène, 39, runs the Laïcité Observatory as its “general rapporteur,” a weighty title for a young man — and one unimaginable outside France.
Attached to the office of Prime Minister Jean Castex, the institution began work in 2013. Ever since, Mr. Cadène and his small staff have led efforts to educate hundreds of thousands of public officials, and young people, in the meaning of secularism, French-style.
So why the vitriol over his painstaking efforts? “We are living a period of extreme tension in France,’’ he said in an interview. “There’s an economic, social, health, ecological and identity crisis, aggravated by recent Islamist attacks. And in this context, you have a terrible fear of Islam that has developed.”
This in turn has led to pressure on Mr. Cadène to use his position to combat any expressions of Muslim identity. “We have to be very careful never to install a thought police,” he told me in his small paper-strewn office.
Born into a Protestant family from the southern town of Nîmes, Mr. Cadène was raised in a milieu deeply wedded to the law of 1905 that established France’s secular model. Protestants had suffered persistent persecution in a mainly Catholic society; a state that got out of religion was the answer. Mr. Cadène, who still lives in Nîmes with his wife and two children, is nevertheless a critic of the system he embodies. France, he says, has failed to achieve the social mingling essential if laïcité is to work.
“As laïcité is a tool to allow us all to live together, whatever our condition, it’s also necessary that we be together,” he said. “That we live in the same places. That we interact. And this happens too rarely.” A lot of schools, neighborhoods and workplaces were very homogeneous, he noted. “This insufficient social mixing spurs fears because when you don’t know the other you are more afraid.”
Explore The New York Times’s Saturday Profiles
They are shaping the world around them. These are their stories.
Among the disadvantaged “are a majority of French Muslims, even if the situation is evolving,” Mr. Cadène said. The result, as he sees it, is discrimination that is religious and social: the inferior schools in ghettoized neighborhoods on the outskirts of big cities mean Muslim children have fewer chances.
It’s this sort of frankness that has enraged some members of the government, notably Marlène Schiappa, the junior minister in charge of citizenship.
At the Interior Ministry, where she works, anger has mounted at what is seen as Mr. Cadène’s “laïcité of appeasement,” one that is more concerned with the “struggle against stigmatization of Muslims” than with upholding the Republic against “militant Islamists,” the weekly magazine Le Point reported.
“There’s a discussion on the future of the Observatory,” Mr. Cadène said. He offered a wry smile. “Some members of the government want to keep it, some want to suppress it, and some want to transform it.”
Transformation would likely mean absorption into the Interior Ministry, headed by Gérald Darmanin, a hard-liner who has declared war on the Islamist “enemy within.” A decision will likely be made in April, when Mr. Cadène’s renewable mandate expires.
“It would be very dangerous to turn laïcité into a political tool,” he said. “It is not an ideology. It is absolutely not anti-religious. It should be a means to bring people together.”
Hakim El Karoui, a Muslim business consultant and senior fellow at the Institut Montaigne, said the problem is that laïcité has many meanings. It can represent the law of 1905, freedom of conscience and the neutrality of the state. Or it can be philosophical, a form of emancipation against religion, a battle for enlightenment against religious obscurantism, something close to atheism. Islam, with its vibrant appeal to young Muslims, then becomes the enemy, especially in the context of terrorist attacks in France.
“Laïcité can be another name for anti-Islamic xenophobia. But it is not true that the Muslims of France see it as a form of war against them,” Mr. El Karoui said. “If you’re a Muslim of Algerian origin you may be very grateful for it as you know well what an authoritarian Islam looks like.”
Mr. Cadène’s views seem broadly aligned with Mr. Macron’s. While condemning the extremist Islamism behind recent terrorist attacks, including the beheading of a schoolteacher, the president has acknowledged failings. In an October speech he said France suffered from “its own form of separatism” in neglecting the marginalization of some Muslims.
Draft legislation this month seeks to combat radical Islamism through measures to curb the funding and teachings of extremist groups. It was a necessary step, Mr. Cadène said, but not enough. “We also need a law of repair, to try to ensure everyone has an equal chance.”
A law, in other words, that would help forge a France of greater mingling through better distributed social housing, more socially mixed schools, a more variegated workplace. The government is preparing a “national consultation on discrimination” in January, evidence of the urgency Mr. Macron accords this question in the run-up to the 2022 presidential election.
In France, saying to someone, “Tell me your laïcité and I’ll tell you who you are,” is not a bad compass.
So, I asked Mr. Cadène about his. “It’s the equality before the state of everyone, whatever their conviction. It’s a public administration and public services that are impartial. And it’s fraternity because that is what allows us to work together in the respect of others’ convictions.”
He continued: “In theory it’s a wonderful model. But if the tool is not oiled it rusts and fails. And the problem today is that equality is not real, freedom is not real, and fraternity even less.”
Strong words from an idealist, a dedicated French public servant, standing up for a subtle idea in an age of warring certainties. A distant relative, Raoul Allier, was instrumental in the 1905 law. Mr. Cadène is not about to soften his views, even if they cost him his job.
Laïcité is no panacea. It has failed several times. French Jews, citizens no more, were deported to their deaths during World War II. The idea was never extended to the Muslims of French Algeria under colonial rule.
Still, for many decades the model made French citizens of millions of immigrants, and it remains for many French people of different backgrounds and beliefs and skin color, a noble idea, without which France would lose some essence of itself.
“I always believed in the general interest. I volunteered as a young man for emergency medical services, I joined Amnesty International, worked for human rights wherever I could,” Mr. Cadène said.
“I believe that our Republic is laïque’’ — secular — “and dedicated to social justice, and that laïcité can only survive on that basis.”
|
By Roger Cohen
Jan. 1, 2021
Lire en français
PARIS — France is in theory a nondiscriminatory society where the state upholds strict religious neutrality and people are free to believe, or not, in any God they wish. It is a nation, in its self image, that through education dissolves differences of faith and ethnicity in a shared commitment to the rights and responsibilities of French citizenship.
This model, known as laïcité, often inadequately translated as secularism, is embraced by a majority of French people. They or their forebears became French in this way.
|
No politician here would utter the words “In God we trust.” The Roman Catholic Church was removed more than a century ago from French public life. The country’s lay model supplants any deity.
But, in a country with an uneasy relationship to Islam, laïcité is also contested as the shield behind which France discriminates against its large Muslim population and avoids confronting its prejudices. As a result, the job of Nicolas Cadène, a mildly disheveled official with a mop of brown hair and multiple law degrees, has become a focus of controversy.
Mr. Cadène, 39, runs the Laïcité Observatory as its “general rapporteur,” a weighty title for a young man — and one unimaginable outside France.
Attached to the office of Prime Minister Jean Castex, the institution began work in 2013. Ever since, Mr. Cadène and his small staff have led efforts to educate hundreds of thousands of public officials, and young people, in the meaning of secularism, French-style.
So why the vitriol over his painstaking efforts? “We are living a period of extreme tension in France,’’ he said in an interview. “There’s an economic, social, health, ecological and identity crisis, aggravated by recent Islamist attacks. And in this context, you have a terrible fear of Islam that has developed.”
This in turn has led to pressure on Mr. Cadène to use his position to combat any expressions of Muslim identity. “We have to be very careful never to install a thought police,” he told me in his small paper-strewn office.
Born into a Protestant family from the southern town of Nîmes, Mr. Cadène was raised in a milieu deeply wedded to the law of 1905 that established France’s secular model. Protestants had suffered persistent persecution in a mainly Catholic society; a state that got out of religion was the answer. Mr. Cadène, who still lives in Nîmes with his wife and two children, is nevertheless a critic of the system he embodies. France, he says, has failed to achieve the social mingling essential if laïcité is to work.
“As laïcité is a tool to allow us all to live together, whatever our condition, it’s also necessary that we be together,” he said. “That we live in the same places. That we interact. And this happens too rarely.” A lot of schools, neighborhoods and workplaces were very homogeneous, he noted. “This insufficient social mixing spurs fears because when you don’t know the other you are more afraid.”
Explore The New York Times’s Saturday Profiles
They are shaping the world around them. These are their stories.
Among the disadvantaged “are a majority of French Muslims, even if the situation is evolving,” Mr. Cadène said. The result, as he sees it, is discrimination that is religious and social: the inferior schools in ghettoized neighborhoods on the outskirts of big cities mean Muslim children have fewer chances.
It’s this sort of frankness that has enraged some members of the government, notably Marlène Schiappa, the junior minister in charge of citizenship.
At the Interior Ministry, where she works, anger has mounted at what is seen as Mr. Cadène’s “laïcité of appeasement,” one that is more concerned with the “struggle against stigmatization of Muslims” than with upholding the Republic against “militant Islamists,” the weekly magazine Le Point reported.
“There’s a discussion on the future of the Observatory,” Mr. Cadène said. He offered a wry smile. “Some members of the government want to keep it, some want to suppress it, and some want to transform it.”
Transformation would likely mean absorption into the Interior Ministry, headed by Gérald Darmanin, a hard-liner who has declared war on the Islamist “enemy within.” A decision will likely be made in April, when Mr. Cadène’s renewable mandate expires.
“It would be very dangerous to turn laïcité into a political tool,” he said. “It is not an ideology. It is absolutely not anti-religious. It should be a means to bring people together.”
Hakim El Karoui, a Muslim business consultant and senior fellow at the Institut Montaigne, said the problem is that laïcité has many meanings. It can represent the law of 1905, freedom of conscience and the neutrality of the state. Or it can be philosophical, a form of emancipation against religion, a battle for enlightenment against religious obscurantism, something close to atheism. Islam, with its vibrant appeal to young Muslims, then becomes the enemy, especially in the context of terrorist attacks in France.
“Laïcité can be another name for anti-Islamic xenophobia. But it is not true that the Muslims of France see it as a form of war against them,” Mr. El Karoui said. “If you’re a Muslim of Algerian origin you may be very grateful for it as you know well what an authoritarian Islam looks like.”
Mr. Cadène’s views seem broadly aligned with Mr. Macron’s. While condemning the extremist Islamism behind recent terrorist attacks, including the beheading of a schoolteacher, the president has acknowledged failings. In an October speech he said France suffered from “its own form of separatism” in neglecting the marginalization of some Muslims.
Draft legislation this month seeks to combat radical Islamism through measures to curb the funding and teachings of extremist groups. It was a necessary step, Mr. Cadène said, but not enough. “We also need a law of repair, to try to ensure everyone has an equal chance.”
A law, in other words, that would help forge a France of greater mingling through better distributed social housing, more socially mixed schools, a more variegated workplace. The government is preparing a “national consultation on discrimination” in January, evidence of the urgency Mr. Macron accords this question in the run-up to the 2022 presidential election.
In France, saying to someone, “Tell me your laïcité and I’ll tell you who you are,” is not a bad compass.
So, I asked Mr. Cadène about his. “It’s the equality before the state of everyone, whatever their conviction. It’s a public administration and public services that are impartial. And it’s fraternity because that is what allows us to work together in the respect of others’ convictions.”
He continued: “In theory it’s a wonderful model. But if the tool is not oiled it rusts and fails. And the problem today is that equality is not real, freedom is not real, and fraternity even less.”
Strong words from an idealist, a dedicated French public servant, standing up for a subtle idea in an age of warring certainties. A distant relative, Raoul Allier, was instrumental in the 1905 law. Mr. Cadène is not about to soften his views, even if they cost him his job.
Laïcité is no panacea. It has failed several times. French Jews, citizens no more, were deported to their deaths during World War II. The idea was never extended to the Muslims of French Algeria under colonial rule.
Still, for many decades the model made French citizens of millions of immigrants, and it remains for many French people of different backgrounds and beliefs and skin color, a noble idea, without which France would lose some essence of itself.
“I always believed in the general interest. I volunteered as a young man for emergency medical services, I joined Amnesty International, worked for human rights wherever I could,” Mr. Cadène said.
“I believe that our Republic is laïque’’ — secular — “and dedicated to social justice, and that laïcité can only survive on that basis.”
|
94. No, Dominion voting machines did not delete Trump votes..txt
|
By Jack Nicas
President Trump on Thursday spread new baseless claims about Dominion Voting Systems, which makes software that local governments around the nation use to help run their elections, fueling a conspiracy theory that Dominion “software glitches” changed vote tallies in Michigan and Georgia last week.
The Dominion software was used in only two of the five counties that had problems in Michigan and Georgia, and in every instance there was a detailed explanation for what had happened. In all of the cases, software did not affect the vote counts.
In the two Michigan counties that had mistakes, the inaccuracies were because of human errors, not software problems, according to the Michigan Department of State, county officials and election-security experts. Only one of the two Michigan counties used Dominion software.
Issues in three Georgia counties had other explanations. In one county, an apparent problem with Dominion software delayed officials’ reporting of the vote tallies, but did not affect the actual vote count. In two other counties, a separate company’s software slowed poll workers’ ability to check-in voters.
“Many of the claims being asserted about Dominion and questionable voting technology is misinformation at best and, in many cases, they’re outright disinformation,” said Edward Perez, an election-technology expert at the OSET Institute, a nonprofit that studies voting infrastructure. “I’m not aware of any evidence of specific things or defects in Dominion software that would lead one to believe that votes had been recorded or counted incorrectly.”
A Guide to the Various Trump Investigations
Confused about the inquiries and legal cases involving former President Donald Trump? We’re here to help.
Right-wing voices across the internet this week have claimed incorrectly that Dominion was responsible for mistakes in vote counts, and Mr. Trump shared a Breitbart article on Twitter that incorrectly tied the Michigan issues to separate problems in Georgia.
Many of those people have said, contrary to evidence, that Dominion software was used to switch votes. Some people even suggested that the company was doing the bidding of the Clintons, a conspiracy theory that was shared on Twitter by Mr. Trump. On Wednesday, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s lawyer, said he was in contact with “whistle-blowers” from Dominion, though he did not provide evidence. And on Thursday, Mr. Trump shared on Twitter new baseless allegations that Dominion “deleted” and “switched” hundreds of thousands of votes for him.
Dominion, originally a Canadian company that now has its effective headquarters in Denver, makes machines for voters to cast ballots and for poll workers to count them, as well as software that helps government officials organize and keep track of election results.
Georgia spent $107 million on 30,000 of the company’s machines last year. In some cases, they proved to be headaches in the state’s primary elections in June, though officials largely attributed the problems to a lack of training for election workers.
Dominion did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In Antrim County, Mich., unofficial results initially showed President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. beating Mr. Trump by roughly 3,000 votes. But that didn’t seem right in the Republican stronghold, so election workers checked again.
It turned out that they had configured the Dominion ballot scanners and reporting software with slightly different versions of the ballot, which meant that the votes were counted correctly but that they were reported incorrectly, state officials said. The correct tallies showed Mr. Trump beat Mr. Biden by roughly 2,500 votes in the county.
In Oakland County, Mich., election officials also spotted an error after they first reported the unofficial counts. They realized they had mistakenly counted votes from the city of Rochester Hills, Mich., twice, according to the Michigan Department of State.
The revised tallies showed that an incumbent Republican county commissioner had kept his seat, not lost it. Oakland County used software from a company called Hart InterCivic, not Dominion, though the software was not at fault.
Both errors, which appeared to go against Republicans, spurred conspiracy theories in Conservative corners of the internet. That drew a response from Tina Barton, the Republican clerk in Rochester Hills, the city that had its votes briefly counted twice.
“As a Republican, I am disturbed that this is intentionally being mischaracterized to undermine the election process,” she said in a video she posted online. “This was an isolated mistake that was quickly rectified.”
Michigan officials added that the errors came in the counties’ unofficial tallies and that they were fixed before another layer of checks meant to catch such mistakes. In that review, two Republican and two Democratic “canvassers” certify the vote counts in each county, checking poll books, ballot summaries and tabulator tapes.
In Georgia’s Gwinnett County, the vote count was delayed because of an apparent problem with the Dominion software, according to a detailed explanation from county officials. The software properly counted the votes, the county said, but it would not send some tallies to the state’s central database. Joe Sorenson, a Gwinnett County spokesman, said that the county has since been able to report the accurate totals to the state but it remains unclear what happened with the software.
Spalding and Morgan counties in Georgia had separate problems with systems that check in voters at the polls. Those so-called Poll Pads were made by a company called KnowInk, not Dominion, said Harri Hursti, an election security expert on the ground in Georgia.
“People are comparing apples to oranges in the name of Dominion,” Mr. Hursti said.
Mr. Perez, the election-technology researcher, said it was fair to ask for more transparency and accountability from the companies that make the technology that underpins elections, but there is no evidence of any fraud or widespread errors in the 2020 race.
“It’s reasonable for citizens and politicians to look at the role of private vendors in the machinery of democracy, and to ask questions,” he said. “Now that doesn’t mean elections are rigged.”
Nicole Perlroth contributed reporting.
|
By Jack Nicas
President Trump on Thursday spread new baseless claims about Dominion Voting Systems, which makes software that local governments around the nation use to help run their elections, fueling a conspiracy theory that Dominion “software glitches” changed vote tallies in Michigan and Georgia last week.
The Dominion software was used in only two of the five counties that had problems in Michigan and Georgia, and in every instance there was a detailed explanation for what had happened. In all of the cases, software did not affect the vote counts.
In the two Michigan counties that had mistakes, the inaccuracies were because of human errors, not software
|
problems, according to the Michigan Department of State, county officials and election-security experts. Only one of the two Michigan counties used Dominion software.
Issues in three Georgia counties had other explanations. In one county, an apparent problem with Dominion software delayed officials’ reporting of the vote tallies, but did not affect the actual vote count. In two other counties, a separate company’s software slowed poll workers’ ability to check-in voters.
“Many of the claims being asserted about Dominion and questionable voting technology is misinformation at best and, in many cases, they’re outright disinformation,” said Edward Perez, an election-technology expert at the OSET Institute, a nonprofit that studies voting infrastructure. “I’m not aware of any evidence of specific things or defects in Dominion software that would lead one to believe that votes had been recorded or counted incorrectly.”
A Guide to the Various Trump Investigations
Confused about the inquiries and legal cases involving former President Donald Trump? We’re here to help.
Right-wing voices across the internet this week have claimed incorrectly that Dominion was responsible for mistakes in vote counts, and Mr. Trump shared a Breitbart article on Twitter that incorrectly tied the Michigan issues to separate problems in Georgia.
Many of those people have said, contrary to evidence, that Dominion software was used to switch votes. Some people even suggested that the company was doing the bidding of the Clintons, a conspiracy theory that was shared on Twitter by Mr. Trump. On Wednesday, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s lawyer, said he was in contact with “whistle-blowers” from Dominion, though he did not provide evidence. And on Thursday, Mr. Trump shared on Twitter new baseless allegations that Dominion “deleted” and “switched” hundreds of thousands of votes for him.
Dominion, originally a Canadian company that now has its effective headquarters in Denver, makes machines for voters to cast ballots and for poll workers to count them, as well as software that helps government officials organize and keep track of election results.
Georgia spent $107 million on 30,000 of the company’s machines last year. In some cases, they proved to be headaches in the state’s primary elections in June, though officials largely attributed the problems to a lack of training for election workers.
Dominion did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In Antrim County, Mich., unofficial results initially showed President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. beating Mr. Trump by roughly 3,000 votes. But that didn’t seem right in the Republican stronghold, so election workers checked again.
It turned out that they had configured the Dominion ballot scanners and reporting software with slightly different versions of the ballot, which meant that the votes were counted correctly but that they were reported incorrectly, state officials said. The correct tallies showed Mr. Trump beat Mr. Biden by roughly 2,500 votes in the county.
In Oakland County, Mich., election officials also spotted an error after they first reported the unofficial counts. They realized they had mistakenly counted votes from the city of Rochester Hills, Mich., twice, according to the Michigan Department of State.
The revised tallies showed that an incumbent Republican county commissioner had kept his seat, not lost it. Oakland County used software from a company called Hart InterCivic, not Dominion, though the software was not at fault.
Both errors, which appeared to go against Republicans, spurred conspiracy theories in Conservative corners of the internet. That drew a response from Tina Barton, the Republican clerk in Rochester Hills, the city that had its votes briefly counted twice.
“As a Republican, I am disturbed that this is intentionally being mischaracterized to undermine the election process,” she said in a video she posted online. “This was an isolated mistake that was quickly rectified.”
Michigan officials added that the errors came in the counties’ unofficial tallies and that they were fixed before another layer of checks meant to catch such mistakes. In that review, two Republican and two Democratic “canvassers” certify the vote counts in each county, checking poll books, ballot summaries and tabulator tapes.
In Georgia’s Gwinnett County, the vote count was delayed because of an apparent problem with the Dominion software, according to a detailed explanation from county officials. The software properly counted the votes, the county said, but it would not send some tallies to the state’s central database. Joe Sorenson, a Gwinnett County spokesman, said that the county has since been able to report the accurate totals to the state but it remains unclear what happened with the software.
Spalding and Morgan counties in Georgia had separate problems with systems that check in voters at the polls. Those so-called Poll Pads were made by a company called KnowInk, not Dominion, said Harri Hursti, an election security expert on the ground in Georgia.
“People are comparing apples to oranges in the name of Dominion,” Mr. Hursti said.
Mr. Perez, the election-technology researcher, said it was fair to ask for more transparency and accountability from the companies that make the technology that underpins elections, but there is no evidence of any fraud or widespread errors in the 2020 race.
“It’s reasonable for citizens and politicians to look at the role of private vendors in the machinery of democracy, and to ask questions,” he said. “Now that doesn’t mean elections are rigged.”
Nicole Perlroth contributed reporting.
|
23. Ontario’s finance minister resigns after a jaunt in the Caribbean..txt
|
By Ian Austen
Jan. 1, 2021
A senior minister in Ontario’s cabinet has resigned after vacationing in the Caribbean as residents of Canada’s most populous province were being urged to stay home.
Rod Phillips, who was named Ontario’s finance minister in 2018, told reporters that his trip was a “dumb, dumb mistake” when he arrived back in Toronto on Thursday, after being summoned home by Doug Ford, Ontario’s premier.
Shortly afterward, Mr. Ford said that he had accepted Mr. Phillips’s resignation. From the start of the pandemic, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a Liberal, has urged Canadians to avoid nonessential travel out of the country — and when announcing a province-wide shutdown that started Dec. 26, Mr. Ford, a Progressive Conservative, told residents to stay home “to the fullest extent possible.”
Mr. Phillips, and his wife, went to the French territory of Saint Barthélemy, which is commonly known as St. Barts, on Dec. 13. He left behind a series of photos and videos that were posted on social media during his absence, and several political opponents said that the posts were intended to create the illusion that Mr. Phillips was celebrating the holidays in Canada. The images appear to have been made at Mr. Phillips’s home in suburban Toronto. He is now under a mandatory 14-day quarantine there.
Mr. Ford initially claimed that he knew nothing about his minister’s travel until it was reported in by the news media. But at a subsequent news conference, he acknowledged that he had been aware of Mr. Phillips’s absence for about two weeks.
|
By Ian Austen
Jan. 1, 2021
A senior minister in Ontario’s cabinet has resigned after vacationing in the Caribbean as residents of Canada’s most populous province were being urged to stay home.
Rod Phillips, who was named Ontario’s finance minister in 2018, told reporters that his trip was a “dumb, dumb mistake” when he arrived back in Toronto on Thursday, after being summoned home by Doug Ford, Ontario’s premier.
Shortly afterward, Mr. Ford said that he had accepted Mr. Phillips’s resignation. From the start of the pandemic, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau,
|
a Liberal, has urged Canadians to avoid nonessential travel out of the country — and when announcing a province-wide shutdown that started Dec. 26, Mr. Ford, a Progressive Conservative, told residents to stay home “to the fullest extent possible.”
Mr. Phillips, and his wife, went to the French territory of Saint Barthélemy, which is commonly known as St. Barts, on Dec. 13. He left behind a series of photos and videos that were posted on social media during his absence, and several political opponents said that the posts were intended to create the illusion that Mr. Phillips was celebrating the holidays in Canada. The images appear to have been made at Mr. Phillips’s home in suburban Toronto. He is now under a mandatory 14-day quarantine there.
Mr. Ford initially claimed that he knew nothing about his minister’s travel until it was reported in by the news media. But at a subsequent news conference, he acknowledged that he had been aware of Mr. Phillips’s absence for about two weeks.
|
50. Teaching My Child to Love a Dying World.txt
|
By Shoshana Meira Friedman
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 4, 2021
This spring, as the world fell apart faster than we’d expected, I fell in love with trees. Not the crush of my girlhood when I admired them and fancied myself the child at the end of Dr. Seuss’s “The Lorax.” In love like I dreamed about them. I saw their bodies when I closed my eyes. Branches and trunks of different species traced my insides — the arch of the redbud’s trunk in joy and pleasure; the tight winter huddle of the spruce in fear.
Until last May, two slender, sickly Eastern hemlocks grew in a corner of our backyard garden, dying as the invasive woolly adelgid sucked their sap, just as the insect is killing the great hemlock forests of the Appalachians. I took my 2-year-old son, Abraham, out under the trees with me one afternoon and showed him the fuzzy white eggs on the undersides of the needles. I explained the trees were sick.
“He wan’ his Mama,” Abraham said, reaching for the branch closest to his chubby hand. “Mama, I wanna hold his hand.” Clasping the twig, he looked up into the tree. “Hemlock tree, you feel better?” I could scarcely breathe, startled by the sudden clarity that I am teaching my child to love a dying and transforming world, that he will learn to love and lose in the same breath, and that I will learn along with him.
“Yes, the tree wants his Mama,” I managed to say. “He wants to go back to Mama Earth. Honey, our hemlock trees are dying. We will have to cut them down soon, and let them become soil.”
As a rabbi and climate activist, I’d already been grieving a long time. For our trees, for the great Appalachian hemlock forests, as well as for the burning Amazon, the oceans choked in plastic, the hungry people. For the whole beautiful and complex system of life, brought to its knees by a species rich in intelligence and poor in wisdom, the most dangerous apex predator ever to walk the Earth.
Abraham sat under the hemlocks on soil packed hard by his play. Last fall he named this spot Frog and Toad’s corner, and he likes to go on toddler “trips” there before triumphantly rushing back into my arms when he “comes home” to the patio. His little body rocked back and forth quietly. I resisted the urge to distract him, or myself, from our own versions of the same giant and holy grief.
Like so many, my husband and I were working from home and without child care this spring and summer. Caring for Abraham every day and sneaking in work emails where I could, I found myself more consistently outdoors in spring than I had been since my own childhood. Every day, Abraham and I walked the few short blocks from our Boston home to the back of Peters Hill in the Arnold Arboretum, a 281-acre collection of plants from around the world, owned by Harvard University and designed by Frederick Law Olmsted.
Every day we saw, smelled and felt the changes in the trees. The collection nearest our house features the Rosacea family, and we spent hours underneath the flowering crab apples and hawthorns, marking the days by who was in bloom, whose petals had begun to drop, who had started to put out leaves, or fruit. Inspired by the botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, I began a practice of using personal pronouns when referring to all plants and animals, teaching us both a new grammar that I hoped would be Abraham’s native tongue.
As we walked, Abraham and I spoke about the trees as people — and indeed, for the first month of quarantine, they were the only people besides us he got to see up close. In the absence of human friends, greeting the trees with a reverent shake of a lower branch became an obvious choice. “Hi, European larch tree,” Abraham would say in his toddler dialect, grabbing the feathery needles of the drooping branches.
Since every tree in the Arnold Arboretum has a metal name card, fastened with a screw and a bit of wire somewhere on the base of the trunk, it was an excellent place for me to check my work as I learned to identify tree families and genera. Abraham too began to search for the name card, crouching down to “read” it, his little REI sun hat making him look exactly the part of a miniature naturalist. We developed special relationships with a few trees, like the “White Lying Down Tree,” Abraham’s name for a wild crab apple from Japan with white blossoms and a trunk that grows improbably in four directions parallel to the ground, creating an irresistible little fort.
In the evenings, when I could spare the time from work, I pored over guidebooks and Donald Culross Peattie’s “A Natural History of North American Trees,” better acquainting myself with the trees we had met that day. Do you have alternate or opposite leaves? Smooth or toothed margins? Is your bark deeply furrowed or smooth? What shape do your branches take? Your seeds? Your flowers? What story do you tell about the land? What geologic changes have you already survived? What is our history together? What are you saying?
I wanted to be able to read the trees, to listen to them, to feel the kind of breathy intimacy with them that I had with my grandmother as she lay dying peacefully over the course of a week in my parents’ sunlit house years ago. Crawling next to her in the hospice bed, I would hold her smooth and papery hand, kiss her cheeks, and receive each word she managed to speak as I might a rare heirloom seed placed in my palm.
In our own backyard, Abraham and I greeted our closest tree-neighbors by name over and over, and I felt a great loneliness lift. Rare butternut hybrid. American elm. Norway maple. Arborvitae. Gray birch. Eastern redbud. Arrowwood viburnum. Let me learn your names, your habits, your wisdom — before you die, before I die. My newest friends and most ancient teachers, watch over my son, child of a dying and transforming world — but a world yet alive with belonging and beauty.
Shoshana Meira Friedman is a rabbi, writer, mother and climate activist in Boston.
|
By Shoshana Meira Friedman
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 4, 2021
This spring, as the world fell apart faster than we’d expected, I fell in love with trees. Not the crush of my girlhood when I admired them and fancied myself the child at the end of Dr. Seuss’s “The Lorax.” In love like I dreamed about them. I saw their bodies when I closed my eyes. Branches and trunks of different species traced my insides — the arch of the redbud’s trunk in joy and pleasure;
|
the tight winter huddle of the spruce in fear.
Until last May, two slender, sickly Eastern hemlocks grew in a corner of our backyard garden, dying as the invasive woolly adelgid sucked their sap, just as the insect is killing the great hemlock forests of the Appalachians. I took my 2-year-old son, Abraham, out under the trees with me one afternoon and showed him the fuzzy white eggs on the undersides of the needles. I explained the trees were sick.
“He wan’ his Mama,” Abraham said, reaching for the branch closest to his chubby hand. “Mama, I wanna hold his hand.” Clasping the twig, he looked up into the tree. “Hemlock tree, you feel better?” I could scarcely breathe, startled by the sudden clarity that I am teaching my child to love a dying and transforming world, that he will learn to love and lose in the same breath, and that I will learn along with him.
“Yes, the tree wants his Mama,” I managed to say. “He wants to go back to Mama Earth. Honey, our hemlock trees are dying. We will have to cut them down soon, and let them become soil.”
As a rabbi and climate activist, I’d already been grieving a long time. For our trees, for the great Appalachian hemlock forests, as well as for the burning Amazon, the oceans choked in plastic, the hungry people. For the whole beautiful and complex system of life, brought to its knees by a species rich in intelligence and poor in wisdom, the most dangerous apex predator ever to walk the Earth.
Abraham sat under the hemlocks on soil packed hard by his play. Last fall he named this spot Frog and Toad’s corner, and he likes to go on toddler “trips” there before triumphantly rushing back into my arms when he “comes home” to the patio. His little body rocked back and forth quietly. I resisted the urge to distract him, or myself, from our own versions of the same giant and holy grief.
Like so many, my husband and I were working from home and without child care this spring and summer. Caring for Abraham every day and sneaking in work emails where I could, I found myself more consistently outdoors in spring than I had been since my own childhood. Every day, Abraham and I walked the few short blocks from our Boston home to the back of Peters Hill in the Arnold Arboretum, a 281-acre collection of plants from around the world, owned by Harvard University and designed by Frederick Law Olmsted.
Every day we saw, smelled and felt the changes in the trees. The collection nearest our house features the Rosacea family, and we spent hours underneath the flowering crab apples and hawthorns, marking the days by who was in bloom, whose petals had begun to drop, who had started to put out leaves, or fruit. Inspired by the botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, I began a practice of using personal pronouns when referring to all plants and animals, teaching us both a new grammar that I hoped would be Abraham’s native tongue.
As we walked, Abraham and I spoke about the trees as people — and indeed, for the first month of quarantine, they were the only people besides us he got to see up close. In the absence of human friends, greeting the trees with a reverent shake of a lower branch became an obvious choice. “Hi, European larch tree,” Abraham would say in his toddler dialect, grabbing the feathery needles of the drooping branches.
Since every tree in the Arnold Arboretum has a metal name card, fastened with a screw and a bit of wire somewhere on the base of the trunk, it was an excellent place for me to check my work as I learned to identify tree families and genera. Abraham too began to search for the name card, crouching down to “read” it, his little REI sun hat making him look exactly the part of a miniature naturalist. We developed special relationships with a few trees, like the “White Lying Down Tree,” Abraham’s name for a wild crab apple from Japan with white blossoms and a trunk that grows improbably in four directions parallel to the ground, creating an irresistible little fort.
In the evenings, when I could spare the time from work, I pored over guidebooks and Donald Culross Peattie’s “A Natural History of North American Trees,” better acquainting myself with the trees we had met that day. Do you have alternate or opposite leaves? Smooth or toothed margins? Is your bark deeply furrowed or smooth? What shape do your branches take? Your seeds? Your flowers? What story do you tell about the land? What geologic changes have you already survived? What is our history together? What are you saying?
I wanted to be able to read the trees, to listen to them, to feel the kind of breathy intimacy with them that I had with my grandmother as she lay dying peacefully over the course of a week in my parents’ sunlit house years ago. Crawling next to her in the hospice bed, I would hold her smooth and papery hand, kiss her cheeks, and receive each word she managed to speak as I might a rare heirloom seed placed in my palm.
In our own backyard, Abraham and I greeted our closest tree-neighbors by name over and over, and I felt a great loneliness lift. Rare butternut hybrid. American elm. Norway maple. Arborvitae. Gray birch. Eastern redbud. Arrowwood viburnum. Let me learn your names, your habits, your wisdom — before you die, before I die. My newest friends and most ancient teachers, watch over my son, child of a dying and transforming world — but a world yet alive with belonging and beauty.
Shoshana Meira Friedman is a rabbi, writer, mother and climate activist in Boston.
|
10. Dr. Fauci advises against the British approach of delaying a second dose of vaccine.txt
|
By Katherine J. Wu
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, told CNN on Friday that the United States would not follow Britain’s lead in front-loading first vaccine injections, potentially delaying the administration of second doses.
Britain announced a plan this week to delay second shots of its two authorized vaccines, developed by Pfizer and AstraZeneca, in an attempt to dole out to more people the partial protection conferred by a single dose.
“I would not be in favor of that,” Dr. Fauci told CNN’s Elizabeth Cohen, regarding altering dosing schedules for the vaccines authorized for use in the United States, made by Pfizer and Moderna. “We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing.”
His opinion was met with approval by some experts, including Dr. Eric Topol, a clinical trials expert at the Scripps Research Translational Institute in California, who tweeted, “That’s good because that it’s following what we know, the trial data with extraordinary 95 percent efficacy, avoiding extrapolation and the unknowns.”
While clinical trials were designed to test the efficacy of second doses delivered three or four weeks after the first, British officials said they would allow a gap of up to 12 weeks. Such delays have not been rigorously tested in trials. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, for instance, was shown to be 95 percent effective at preventing Covid-19 when administered as two doses, three weeks apart.
Straying from this regimen “is like going into the Wild West,” said Dr. Phyllis Tien, an infectious disease physician at the University of California, San Francisco. “It needs to be data driven if they’re going to make a change.”
Widening the gap between vaccine doses could risk blunting the benefits of the second shot, which is intended to boost the body’s defenses against the coronavirus, increasing the strength and durability of the immune response. In the interim, the protective effects of the first shot could also wane faster than anticipated.
With Pfizer’s vaccine, for example, “we don’t really know what happens when you only have one dose after, like, a month,” said Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida. “It’s just not the way it was tested.”
|
By Katherine J. Wu
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, told CNN on Friday that the United States would not follow Britain’s lead in front-loading first vaccine injections, potentially delaying the administration of second doses.
Britain announced a plan this week to delay second shots of its two authorized vaccines, developed by Pfizer and AstraZeneca, in an attempt to dole out to more people the partial protection conferred by a single dose.
“I would not be in favor of that,” Dr. Fauci told CNN’s Elizabeth Cohen, regarding altering dosing schedules for the vaccines authorized for use in the United
|
States, made by Pfizer and Moderna. “We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing.”
His opinion was met with approval by some experts, including Dr. Eric Topol, a clinical trials expert at the Scripps Research Translational Institute in California, who tweeted, “That’s good because that it’s following what we know, the trial data with extraordinary 95 percent efficacy, avoiding extrapolation and the unknowns.”
While clinical trials were designed to test the efficacy of second doses delivered three or four weeks after the first, British officials said they would allow a gap of up to 12 weeks. Such delays have not been rigorously tested in trials. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, for instance, was shown to be 95 percent effective at preventing Covid-19 when administered as two doses, three weeks apart.
Straying from this regimen “is like going into the Wild West,” said Dr. Phyllis Tien, an infectious disease physician at the University of California, San Francisco. “It needs to be data driven if they’re going to make a change.”
Widening the gap between vaccine doses could risk blunting the benefits of the second shot, which is intended to boost the body’s defenses against the coronavirus, increasing the strength and durability of the immune response. In the interim, the protective effects of the first shot could also wane faster than anticipated.
With Pfizer’s vaccine, for example, “we don’t really know what happens when you only have one dose after, like, a month,” said Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida. “It’s just not the way it was tested.”
|
74. The Presidential Transition Must Go On.txt
|
By The Editorial Board
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.
Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States, and his predecessor is not handling his election loss well. In what may be the least surprising development of his term in office, President Trump has spent several days now falsely claiming widespread voter fraud and other nefarious behavior. Yes, counting the votes was vital, but now that the results are clear, it is time to move on.
Perhaps the second least surprising development? Many Republican leaders are indulging Mr. Trump’s tantrum.
There is a sycophancy spectrum. Some Republicans are going all in on the president’s conspiratorial rantings, spreading them like fertilizer on a field. Others are trying to have it both ways: not actively parroting his lies yet passively tolerating his disinformation campaign. As the rationalization seems to go: He’s on his way out. What’s the harm in letting him vent for a few days more?
Where to begin?
Even if this display of defiance is largely, or wholly, performative, it is dangerous. While there is little evidence of coordinated violence so far, urging his supporters to view the race as stolen — and, by extension, Joe Biden’s presidency as illegitimate — could all too easily incite someone to seek retribution, resulting in tragedy. It is also corrosive. Cynically undermining Mr. Biden’s future presidency could do lasting harm to an already divided nation.
There is more targeted, more concrete damage being done as well. Mr. Biden will solidly carry the Electoral College. Barring some dramatic, unforeseen development, he will be sworn into office on Jan. 20. It is in the interest of the entire nation — a nation already struggling with a tangle of crises — for that transfer of power to go as smoothly as possible.
Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
A presidential transition is a monumental undertaking. As the advisory board of the nonpartisan Center for Presidential Transition noted on Sunday, “To build an effective government ready to address the urgent needs of our great country, the new president will have to recruit 4,000 political appointees, including 1,250 who require Senate confirmation; prepare a $4.7 trillion budget; implement a strong policy agenda; and assume leadership of a work force of two million civilian employees and two million active duty and reserve troops.”
“While there will be legal disputes requiring adjudication,” the board observed, “the outcome is sufficiently clear that the transition process must now begin.”
Some of that necessary work is going forward despite Mr. Trump’s foot-dragging. Mr. Biden’s teams are deep into staffing decisions and are firming up plans for his first days in office. Executive orders are being drawn up. A coronavirus advisory team has been assembled. Briefings are being conducted.
When it sees fit, the campaign can begin announcing nominees — a process often done in batches, starting a few weeks after the election — which enables the Senate to start preparing for hearings. “Best practice generally dictates having White House positions filled by Thanksgiving, and the most important Cabinet positions ready to announce between Thanksgiving and Christmas,” according to the transition center’s website.
That said, crucial elements of the transition cannot proceed without official clearance by the General Services Administration, the obscure agency that oversees the basic functioning of federal agencies, including the presidential transition. A green light from the agency frees up the office space and money necessary to kick the transition into high gear. It also triggers certain meetings and procedures and allows incoming officials to access classified information and computer systems.
Typically, such authorization is granted within hours of the presidential race being called. As of this writing, the authorization has yet to occur. As The Times noted on Monday, this is blocking Mr. Biden’s teams “from moving into government offices, including secure facilities where they can discuss classified information. The teams cannot meet with their counterparts in agencies or begin background checks of top cabinet nominees that require top-secret access.”
All of this has serious implications for national security. In the chaotic aftermath of the 2000 election, in which the outcome really was unclear, the transition process was delayed. This “hampered the new administration in identifying, recruiting, clearing, and obtaining Senate confirmation of key appointees,” concluded the 9/11 Commission, which analyzed the circumstances surrounding the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In its report, the commission stressed the need going forward to get incoming officials settled quickly to “minimize as much as possible the disruption of national security policymaking.”
The White House has also yet to follow the commission’s recommendation to swiftly provide the president-elect “with a classified, compartmented list that catalogs specific, operational threats to national security; major military or cover operations; and pending decisions on the possible use of force,” according to The Washington Post.
So not only is Mr. Trump trying to monopolize the nation’s attention and keep the spotlight off Mr. Biden and the reasons he was elected, but the current commander in chief’s acting out is creating a worrisome opportunity for America’s foreign adversaries to exploit.
On Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Biden projected an air of unruffled certainty. “The fact that they’re not willing to acknowledge we won at this point, is not of much consequence in our planning and what we’re able to do between now and Jan. 20,” he said.
It is Mr. Biden’s job to steady the nation. That is what elected leaders are supposed to do. But make no mistake: Mr. Trump is once more putting his own interests above the good of the American people. That so many Republican officials continue to enable him is the fitting coda to his presidency.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
|
By The Editorial Board
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.
Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States, and his predecessor is not handling his election loss well. In what may be the least surprising development of his term in office, President Trump has spent several days now falsely claiming widespread voter fraud and other nefarious behavior. Yes, counting the votes was vital, but now that the results are clear, it is time to move on.
Perhaps the second least surprising development? Many Republican leaders are
|
indulging Mr. Trump’s tantrum.
There is a sycophancy spectrum. Some Republicans are going all in on the president’s conspiratorial rantings, spreading them like fertilizer on a field. Others are trying to have it both ways: not actively parroting his lies yet passively tolerating his disinformation campaign. As the rationalization seems to go: He’s on his way out. What’s the harm in letting him vent for a few days more?
Where to begin?
Even if this display of defiance is largely, or wholly, performative, it is dangerous. While there is little evidence of coordinated violence so far, urging his supporters to view the race as stolen — and, by extension, Joe Biden’s presidency as illegitimate — could all too easily incite someone to seek retribution, resulting in tragedy. It is also corrosive. Cynically undermining Mr. Biden’s future presidency could do lasting harm to an already divided nation.
There is more targeted, more concrete damage being done as well. Mr. Biden will solidly carry the Electoral College. Barring some dramatic, unforeseen development, he will be sworn into office on Jan. 20. It is in the interest of the entire nation — a nation already struggling with a tangle of crises — for that transfer of power to go as smoothly as possible.
Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
A presidential transition is a monumental undertaking. As the advisory board of the nonpartisan Center for Presidential Transition noted on Sunday, “To build an effective government ready to address the urgent needs of our great country, the new president will have to recruit 4,000 political appointees, including 1,250 who require Senate confirmation; prepare a $4.7 trillion budget; implement a strong policy agenda; and assume leadership of a work force of two million civilian employees and two million active duty and reserve troops.”
“While there will be legal disputes requiring adjudication,” the board observed, “the outcome is sufficiently clear that the transition process must now begin.”
Some of that necessary work is going forward despite Mr. Trump’s foot-dragging. Mr. Biden’s teams are deep into staffing decisions and are firming up plans for his first days in office. Executive orders are being drawn up. A coronavirus advisory team has been assembled. Briefings are being conducted.
When it sees fit, the campaign can begin announcing nominees — a process often done in batches, starting a few weeks after the election — which enables the Senate to start preparing for hearings. “Best practice generally dictates having White House positions filled by Thanksgiving, and the most important Cabinet positions ready to announce between Thanksgiving and Christmas,” according to the transition center’s website.
That said, crucial elements of the transition cannot proceed without official clearance by the General Services Administration, the obscure agency that oversees the basic functioning of federal agencies, including the presidential transition. A green light from the agency frees up the office space and money necessary to kick the transition into high gear. It also triggers certain meetings and procedures and allows incoming officials to access classified information and computer systems.
Typically, such authorization is granted within hours of the presidential race being called. As of this writing, the authorization has yet to occur. As The Times noted on Monday, this is blocking Mr. Biden’s teams “from moving into government offices, including secure facilities where they can discuss classified information. The teams cannot meet with their counterparts in agencies or begin background checks of top cabinet nominees that require top-secret access.”
All of this has serious implications for national security. In the chaotic aftermath of the 2000 election, in which the outcome really was unclear, the transition process was delayed. This “hampered the new administration in identifying, recruiting, clearing, and obtaining Senate confirmation of key appointees,” concluded the 9/11 Commission, which analyzed the circumstances surrounding the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In its report, the commission stressed the need going forward to get incoming officials settled quickly to “minimize as much as possible the disruption of national security policymaking.”
The White House has also yet to follow the commission’s recommendation to swiftly provide the president-elect “with a classified, compartmented list that catalogs specific, operational threats to national security; major military or cover operations; and pending decisions on the possible use of force,” according to The Washington Post.
So not only is Mr. Trump trying to monopolize the nation’s attention and keep the spotlight off Mr. Biden and the reasons he was elected, but the current commander in chief’s acting out is creating a worrisome opportunity for America’s foreign adversaries to exploit.
On Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Biden projected an air of unruffled certainty. “The fact that they’re not willing to acknowledge we won at this point, is not of much consequence in our planning and what we’re able to do between now and Jan. 20,” he said.
It is Mr. Biden’s job to steady the nation. That is what elected leaders are supposed to do. But make no mistake: Mr. Trump is once more putting his own interests above the good of the American people. That so many Republican officials continue to enable him is the fitting coda to his presidency.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
|
15. Congress Poised to Apply Banking Regulations to Antiquities Market.txt
|
By Zachary Small
Jan. 1, 2021
The antiquities trade, which regulators have long feared provided fertile ground for money laundering and other illicit activities, will be subject to greater oversight under legislation passed by Congress on Friday when it overrode President Trump’s veto.
The provisions tightening scrutiny of the antiquities market were contained within the sprawling National Defense Authorization Act, which Mr. Trump vetoed last week and which the House and Senate voted to override on Monday and on Friday.
Regulators have long worried that the opacity of the antiquities trade, where buyers and sellers are seldom identified, even to the parties in a transaction, made it an easy way to shroud illicit transfers of money. The new legislation empowers federal regulators to design measures that would remove secrecy from transactions.
“We believe this type of legislation is long overdue,” said John Byrne, a lawyer with 30 years of experience in anti-money-laundering rules. “This is an area where clearly organized crime, terrorists, and oligarchs have used cultural artifacts to move illicit funds.”
Dealers resisted the move. But with the new legislation, Congress moved to broaden the 1970 Bank Secrecy Act, which increased federal scrutiny of financial transactions, to include the trade of ancient artifacts.
Putting a Price Tag on Art
Card 1 of 7
Hot commodities. Paintings and other art pieces are regularly sold at auctions around the world. Here are some of the most expensive works to be sold in recent years:
“Femme à la montre” by Pablo Picasso. The 1932 portrait of Picasso’s mistress and muse, Marie-Thérèse Walter, sold at Sotheby’s in New York for $139.4 million in November 2023. The painting remained on the auction block for four minutes as three collectors over the phones fought to establish control, before an anonymous bidder named the winning price.
“Shot Sage Blue Marilyn” by Andy Warhol. In May 2022, Warhol’s 1964 silk-screen of Marilyn Monroe’s face sold — in under four minutes of bidding — for about $195 million, the highest price achieved for any American work of art at auction.
“Untitled” by Jean-Michel Basquiat. A 1982 Basquiat painting of a horned devil sold for $85 million with fees in May 2022. It was the third-highest price paid for a Basquiat work; the highest price was recorded in 2017, when one of Basquiat’s coveted large-scale skull paintings sold for $110.5 million at Sotheby’s.
“L’empire des lumières” by René Magritte. The painting, one of Magritte’s famed “Empire of Light” canvases, sold in March 2022 for 59.4 million pounds with fees, or about $79.7 million. The artwork, which juxtaposes a nocturnal lamplit street with a serene daylit sky, is one of the most celebrated and enigmatic images in 20th-century art.
“Diego and I” by Frida Kahlo. An oil painting by Frida Kahlo sold for $34.9 million at Sotheby’s in November 2021, setting an auction benchmark for the most expensive artwork by a Latin American artist. The painting is one of Kahlo’s final self-portraits and an example of the unsettling intimacy that has attracted collectors to her paintings.
“Composition No. II” by Piet Mondrian. A classic grid painting by Mondrian sold at Sotheby’s in November 2022 for $51 million, including fees, topping the previous $50.6 million benchmark for his work. The painting epitomizes the primary colors and geometric rigidity of the de Stijl movement that Mondrian helped define.
Exactly how the new law works will be determined over the next year by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a bureau within the Treasury Department, in consultation with the private sector, law enforcement and the public. Legal experts expect that the new antiquities regulations will be similar to others governing the precious metal and jewelry industries, where certain transactions are flagged to the authorities, who then determine whether they are suspicious. The law also seeks to end the use of shell companies to conceal the identities of buyers and sellers.
Sponsors of the new measure described it as a much-needed reform.
“Over the last decade, we’ve been working with all the industries and stakeholders to build a bill that satisfies everyone,” said Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a New York Democrat, who introduced the Corporate Transparency Act in 2019 and later shepherded that bill into the defense package. “We are at a point that we’ve built so much support that it became impossible to oppose the bill.”
The Corporate Transparency Act faced opposition from antiquities dealers, who balked at the requirement to disclose client information and at the added costs of complying with the law. The art industry has fought similar legislation that would have extended the Bank Secrecy Act into the art market.
Federal disclosures show that the auction house Christie’s has paid lobbyists more than $100,000 over the last two years to influence the outcomes of such measures. A spokeswoman for the auction house, Erin McAndrew, said that its compliance department already maintains standards to protect against money laundering that were adopted by the European Union in 2018.
She said that “Christie’s welcomes the opportunity to work with U.S. regulators on appropriate and enforceable” guidelines to combat money laundering in the art market.
Watchdogs have urged Congress to tighten regulations on the antiquities trade for years. The looting of cultural heritage sites in countries like Syria and Iraq has resulted in a growing black market for Middle Eastern antiquities. Law enforcement abroad has seized hundreds of artifacts, which officials believe trace back to earlier excavations carried out by terrorist groups like ISIS.
“The proposed legislation will begin to close a major loophole,” said Tess Davis, the executive director of the Antiquities Coalition, a nonprofit organization that monitors the illicit trade of artifacts.
“A pawnshop’s business model does not differ greatly from that of a Sotheby’s or Christie’s,” she added. Yet pawnbrokers fall under the purview of Bank Secrecy Act, but auction houses do not. “Why should the rules be stricter for a mom-and-pop business hawking stereos in Milwaukee than a billion-dollar auction house in Manhattan?”
But some dealers claim that reports of black-market transactions and money-laundering are overblown. One dealer, Randall A. Hixenbaugh, the president of a nonprofit organization called the American Council for the Preservation of Cultural Property, has called statistics on the illicit trade unfounded and argued against the new regulations.
“Virtually all transactions of high-dollar amounts in the ancient art business are handled through financial institutions and instruments already covered by the Bank Secrecy Act,” Mr. Hixenbaugh said. “Criminals seeking to launder ill-gotten funds could hardly pick a worse commodity than antiquities.”
Legislative staffers who helped craft the new regulations said that they were guided by what they learned in Congressional hearings and from industry experts. Unesco warned in 2020 that the development of online sales platforms and social networks had facilitated the illicit sale of antiquities and that existing regulations had failed to stem the black market.
The new legislation calls for a study on the role of art in money laundering and terror financing. (A recent Senate report has already outlined how at least two Russian oligarchs had exploited the opaqueness of the art world to bypass U.S. sanctions.) If the study finds a link between the art market and illicit activity, it could, upon congressional review, trigger the creation of rules similar to the ones now concerning the antiquities trade. Regulators have also signaled that the Bank Secrecy Act could be further extended into the art market.
“You have to know who is buying and selling,” Mr. Byrne said. “The argument that you have no obligation to report suspicious activity because you are in the private sector doesn’t work. Banks lost that argument 30 years ago.”
|
By Zachary Small
Jan. 1, 2021
The antiquities trade, which regulators have long feared provided fertile ground for money laundering and other illicit activities, will be subject to greater oversight under legislation passed by Congress on Friday when it overrode President Trump’s veto.
The provisions tightening scrutiny of the antiquities market were contained within the sprawling National Defense Authorization Act, which Mr. Trump vetoed last week and which the House and Senate voted to override on Monday and on Friday.
Regulators have long worried that the opacity of the antiquities trade, where buyers and sellers are seldom identified, even to the
|
parties in a transaction, made it an easy way to shroud illicit transfers of money. The new legislation empowers federal regulators to design measures that would remove secrecy from transactions.
“We believe this type of legislation is long overdue,” said John Byrne, a lawyer with 30 years of experience in anti-money-laundering rules. “This is an area where clearly organized crime, terrorists, and oligarchs have used cultural artifacts to move illicit funds.”
Dealers resisted the move. But with the new legislation, Congress moved to broaden the 1970 Bank Secrecy Act, which increased federal scrutiny of financial transactions, to include the trade of ancient artifacts.
Putting a Price Tag on Art
Card 1 of 7
Hot commodities. Paintings and other art pieces are regularly sold at auctions around the world. Here are some of the most expensive works to be sold in recent years:
“Femme à la montre” by Pablo Picasso. The 1932 portrait of Picasso’s mistress and muse, Marie-Thérèse Walter, sold at Sotheby’s in New York for $139.4 million in November 2023. The painting remained on the auction block for four minutes as three collectors over the phones fought to establish control, before an anonymous bidder named the winning price.
“Shot Sage Blue Marilyn” by Andy Warhol. In May 2022, Warhol’s 1964 silk-screen of Marilyn Monroe’s face sold — in under four minutes of bidding — for about $195 million, the highest price achieved for any American work of art at auction.
“Untitled” by Jean-Michel Basquiat. A 1982 Basquiat painting of a horned devil sold for $85 million with fees in May 2022. It was the third-highest price paid for a Basquiat work; the highest price was recorded in 2017, when one of Basquiat’s coveted large-scale skull paintings sold for $110.5 million at Sotheby’s.
“L’empire des lumières” by René Magritte. The painting, one of Magritte’s famed “Empire of Light” canvases, sold in March 2022 for 59.4 million pounds with fees, or about $79.7 million. The artwork, which juxtaposes a nocturnal lamplit street with a serene daylit sky, is one of the most celebrated and enigmatic images in 20th-century art.
“Diego and I” by Frida Kahlo. An oil painting by Frida Kahlo sold for $34.9 million at Sotheby’s in November 2021, setting an auction benchmark for the most expensive artwork by a Latin American artist. The painting is one of Kahlo’s final self-portraits and an example of the unsettling intimacy that has attracted collectors to her paintings.
“Composition No. II” by Piet Mondrian. A classic grid painting by Mondrian sold at Sotheby’s in November 2022 for $51 million, including fees, topping the previous $50.6 million benchmark for his work. The painting epitomizes the primary colors and geometric rigidity of the de Stijl movement that Mondrian helped define.
Exactly how the new law works will be determined over the next year by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a bureau within the Treasury Department, in consultation with the private sector, law enforcement and the public. Legal experts expect that the new antiquities regulations will be similar to others governing the precious metal and jewelry industries, where certain transactions are flagged to the authorities, who then determine whether they are suspicious. The law also seeks to end the use of shell companies to conceal the identities of buyers and sellers.
Sponsors of the new measure described it as a much-needed reform.
“Over the last decade, we’ve been working with all the industries and stakeholders to build a bill that satisfies everyone,” said Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a New York Democrat, who introduced the Corporate Transparency Act in 2019 and later shepherded that bill into the defense package. “We are at a point that we’ve built so much support that it became impossible to oppose the bill.”
The Corporate Transparency Act faced opposition from antiquities dealers, who balked at the requirement to disclose client information and at the added costs of complying with the law. The art industry has fought similar legislation that would have extended the Bank Secrecy Act into the art market.
Federal disclosures show that the auction house Christie’s has paid lobbyists more than $100,000 over the last two years to influence the outcomes of such measures. A spokeswoman for the auction house, Erin McAndrew, said that its compliance department already maintains standards to protect against money laundering that were adopted by the European Union in 2018.
She said that “Christie’s welcomes the opportunity to work with U.S. regulators on appropriate and enforceable” guidelines to combat money laundering in the art market.
Watchdogs have urged Congress to tighten regulations on the antiquities trade for years. The looting of cultural heritage sites in countries like Syria and Iraq has resulted in a growing black market for Middle Eastern antiquities. Law enforcement abroad has seized hundreds of artifacts, which officials believe trace back to earlier excavations carried out by terrorist groups like ISIS.
“The proposed legislation will begin to close a major loophole,” said Tess Davis, the executive director of the Antiquities Coalition, a nonprofit organization that monitors the illicit trade of artifacts.
“A pawnshop’s business model does not differ greatly from that of a Sotheby’s or Christie’s,” she added. Yet pawnbrokers fall under the purview of Bank Secrecy Act, but auction houses do not. “Why should the rules be stricter for a mom-and-pop business hawking stereos in Milwaukee than a billion-dollar auction house in Manhattan?”
But some dealers claim that reports of black-market transactions and money-laundering are overblown. One dealer, Randall A. Hixenbaugh, the president of a nonprofit organization called the American Council for the Preservation of Cultural Property, has called statistics on the illicit trade unfounded and argued against the new regulations.
“Virtually all transactions of high-dollar amounts in the ancient art business are handled through financial institutions and instruments already covered by the Bank Secrecy Act,” Mr. Hixenbaugh said. “Criminals seeking to launder ill-gotten funds could hardly pick a worse commodity than antiquities.”
Legislative staffers who helped craft the new regulations said that they were guided by what they learned in Congressional hearings and from industry experts. Unesco warned in 2020 that the development of online sales platforms and social networks had facilitated the illicit sale of antiquities and that existing regulations had failed to stem the black market.
The new legislation calls for a study on the role of art in money laundering and terror financing. (A recent Senate report has already outlined how at least two Russian oligarchs had exploited the opaqueness of the art world to bypass U.S. sanctions.) If the study finds a link between the art market and illicit activity, it could, upon congressional review, trigger the creation of rules similar to the ones now concerning the antiquities trade. Regulators have also signaled that the Bank Secrecy Act could be further extended into the art market.
“You have to know who is buying and selling,” Mr. Byrne said. “The argument that you have no obligation to report suspicious activity because you are in the private sector doesn’t work. Banks lost that argument 30 years ago.”
|
A Russian tycoon and his travel companion are found dead in India..txt
|
By Anushka Patil and Suhasini Raj
Dec. 27, 2022
A wealthy Russian businessman and lawmaker was found dead after apparently falling from a hotel terrace in India, shortly after another Russian national he was traveling with died at the same hotel, the Indian police said on Wednesday.
The two men — Pavel Antov, the founder of the Russian meat conglomerate Vladimir Standard; and Vladimir Budanov, his traveling companion — were part of a tourist group visiting the Rayagada district in the Indian state of Odisha, an area known for its temples.
Mr. Antov, who the Russian news media said had criticized Russian shelling of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, is the latest Russian magnate to die under mysterious circumstances since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
Mr. Budanov, 61, died of cardiac arrest at the hotel there last week, and Mr. Antov, who had just turned 65, fell from the hotel’s terrace and died over the weekend, said Rasmi Ranjan Pradhan, an inspector with the Odisha police. Hotel workers and the hospital authorities alerted the police to the deaths.
“Whether Mr. Antov’s death is a suicide is a matter of investigation,” Mr. Pradhan said. “The medical report has termed it as accidental.”
Local news outlets, citing the police, reported that Mr. Antov had been found lying in a pool of blood outside the hotel.
Mr. Antov topped the Forbes list of Russia’s richest civil servants in 2019 with a reported fortune of nearly 10 billion rubles, or over $140 million at Tuesday’s exchange rate. He was also a member of Parliament in the Vladimir region, east of Moscow.
The vice speaker of the regional Parliament, Vyacheslav Kartukhin, said that Mr. Antov’s death was the result of tragic circumstances, the Russian state news agency TASS reported. The Parliament’s speaker, Vladimir Kiselyov, described Mr. Antov as a man who had won everyone over.
The Odisha police said on Tuesday that the inquiry into the deaths of two Russians would be handled by the Crime Investigation Department, a specialized branch of the police.
The Russian news media reported in June that Mr. Antov had criticized the shelling of residential areas in Kyiv as terrorism, though he later appeared to recant his statement.
A post under his name on the Russian social media platform VKontakte said that the original message had been shared in error and emphasized that Mr. Antov was a patriot and a supporter of President Vladimir V. Putin.
Other prominent Russian businessmen who have died suddenly in recent months include the chairman of Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil producer, which had called for an end to the war. The state news media said that the executive, Ravil Maganov, had fallen from a sixth-floor hospital window in September.
|
By Anushka Patil and Suhasini Raj
Dec. 27, 2022
A wealthy Russian businessman and lawmaker was found dead after apparently falling from a hotel terrace in India, shortly after another Russian national he was traveling with died at the same hotel, the Indian police said on Wednesday.
The two men — Pavel Antov, the founder of the Russian meat conglomerate Vladimir Standard; and Vladimir Budanov, his traveling companion — were part of a tourist group visiting the Rayagada district in the Indian state of Odisha, an area known for its temples.
Mr. Antov, who
|
the Russian news media said had criticized Russian shelling of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, is the latest Russian magnate to die under mysterious circumstances since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
Mr. Budanov, 61, died of cardiac arrest at the hotel there last week, and Mr. Antov, who had just turned 65, fell from the hotel’s terrace and died over the weekend, said Rasmi Ranjan Pradhan, an inspector with the Odisha police. Hotel workers and the hospital authorities alerted the police to the deaths.
“Whether Mr. Antov’s death is a suicide is a matter of investigation,” Mr. Pradhan said. “The medical report has termed it as accidental.”
Local news outlets, citing the police, reported that Mr. Antov had been found lying in a pool of blood outside the hotel.
Mr. Antov topped the Forbes list of Russia’s richest civil servants in 2019 with a reported fortune of nearly 10 billion rubles, or over $140 million at Tuesday’s exchange rate. He was also a member of Parliament in the Vladimir region, east of Moscow.
The vice speaker of the regional Parliament, Vyacheslav Kartukhin, said that Mr. Antov’s death was the result of tragic circumstances, the Russian state news agency TASS reported. The Parliament’s speaker, Vladimir Kiselyov, described Mr. Antov as a man who had won everyone over.
The Odisha police said on Tuesday that the inquiry into the deaths of two Russians would be handled by the Crime Investigation Department, a specialized branch of the police.
The Russian news media reported in June that Mr. Antov had criticized the shelling of residential areas in Kyiv as terrorism, though he later appeared to recant his statement.
A post under his name on the Russian social media platform VKontakte said that the original message had been shared in error and emphasized that Mr. Antov was a patriot and a supporter of President Vladimir V. Putin.
Other prominent Russian businessmen who have died suddenly in recent months include the chairman of Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil producer, which had called for an end to the war. The state news media said that the executive, Ravil Maganov, had fallen from a sixth-floor hospital window in September.
|
8. Trump Calls Georgia Senate Races ‘Illegal and Invalid’.txt
|
By Richard Fausset
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 5, 2021
ATLANTA — President Trump took to Twitter Friday evening to make the unfounded assertion that Georgia’s two Senate races are “illegal and invalid,” an argument that could complicate his efforts to convince his supporters to turn out for Republican candidates in the two runoff races that will determine which party controls the Senate.
The president is set to hold a rally in Dalton, Ga., on Monday, the day before Election Day, and Georgia Republicans are hoping he will focus his comments on how crucial it is for Republicans to vote in large numbers for Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, the state’s two incumbent Republican senators.
But Mr. Trump has continued to make the false claim that Georgia’s election system was rigged against him in the Nov. 3 general election. Some Republican leaders are afraid that his supporters will take the president’s argument seriously, and decide that voting in a “corrupt” system is not worth their time, a development that could hand the election to the Democrats.
Some strategists and political science experts in the state have said Mr. Trump’s assault on Georgia’s voting system may be at least partly responsible for the relatively light Republican turnout in the conservative strongholds of northwest Georgia, where Dalton is, in the early voting period that ended Thursday.
More than 3 million Georgia voters participated in the early voting period, which began Dec. 14. A strong early-voting turnout in heavily Democratic areas and among African-American voters suggests that Republicans will need a strong election-day performance to retain their Senate seats.
Mr. Trump made his assertion about the Senate races in a Twitter thread in which he also made the baseless claim that “massive corruption” took place in the general election, “which gives us far more votes than is necessary to win all of the Swing States.”
The president made a specific reference to a Georgia consent decree that he said was unconstitutional. The problems with this document, he argued further, render the two Senate races and the results of his own electoral loss invalid.
Mr. Trump was almost certainly referring to a March consent decree hammered out between the Democratic Party and Republican state officials that helped establish standards for judging the validity of signatures on absentee ballots in the state.
Mr. Trump’s allies have unsuccessfully argued in failed lawsuits that the consent decree was illegal because the U.S. Constitution confers the power to regulate congressional elections to state legislatures. But the National Constitution Center, among others, notes that Supreme Court rulings allow legislatures to delegate their authority to other state officials.
Since losing the election to Joseph R. Biden Jr. in November, Mr. Trump has directed a sustained assault on Georgia’s Republican leaders — including Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — saying they have not taken seriously enough his claims of voter fraud. He has called Mr. Kemp “a fool” and called for him to resign. At a rally for Ms. Loeffler and Mr. Perdue last month in Georgia, the president spent considerable time airing his own electoral grievances, while devoting less time to supporting the two Republican candidates.
|
By Richard Fausset
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 5, 2021
ATLANTA — President Trump took to Twitter Friday evening to make the unfounded assertion that Georgia’s two Senate races are “illegal and invalid,” an argument that could complicate his efforts to convince his supporters to turn out for Republican candidates in the two runoff races that will determine which party controls the Senate.
The president is set to hold a rally in Dalton, Ga., on Monday, the day before Election Day, and Georgia Republicans are hoping he will focus his comments on how crucial it is
|
for Republicans to vote in large numbers for Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, the state’s two incumbent Republican senators.
But Mr. Trump has continued to make the false claim that Georgia’s election system was rigged against him in the Nov. 3 general election. Some Republican leaders are afraid that his supporters will take the president’s argument seriously, and decide that voting in a “corrupt” system is not worth their time, a development that could hand the election to the Democrats.
Some strategists and political science experts in the state have said Mr. Trump’s assault on Georgia’s voting system may be at least partly responsible for the relatively light Republican turnout in the conservative strongholds of northwest Georgia, where Dalton is, in the early voting period that ended Thursday.
More than 3 million Georgia voters participated in the early voting period, which began Dec. 14. A strong early-voting turnout in heavily Democratic areas and among African-American voters suggests that Republicans will need a strong election-day performance to retain their Senate seats.
Mr. Trump made his assertion about the Senate races in a Twitter thread in which he also made the baseless claim that “massive corruption” took place in the general election, “which gives us far more votes than is necessary to win all of the Swing States.”
The president made a specific reference to a Georgia consent decree that he said was unconstitutional. The problems with this document, he argued further, render the two Senate races and the results of his own electoral loss invalid.
Mr. Trump was almost certainly referring to a March consent decree hammered out between the Democratic Party and Republican state officials that helped establish standards for judging the validity of signatures on absentee ballots in the state.
Mr. Trump’s allies have unsuccessfully argued in failed lawsuits that the consent decree was illegal because the U.S. Constitution confers the power to regulate congressional elections to state legislatures. But the National Constitution Center, among others, notes that Supreme Court rulings allow legislatures to delegate their authority to other state officials.
Since losing the election to Joseph R. Biden Jr. in November, Mr. Trump has directed a sustained assault on Georgia’s Republican leaders — including Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — saying they have not taken seriously enough his claims of voter fraud. He has called Mr. Kemp “a fool” and called for him to resign. At a rally for Ms. Loeffler and Mr. Perdue last month in Georgia, the president spent considerable time airing his own electoral grievances, while devoting less time to supporting the two Republican candidates.
|
59. The Problem With Problem Sharks.txt
|
By Jason Nark
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Oct. 30, 2022
The war on sharks has been waged with shock and awe at times. When a shark bit or killed a swimmer, people within the past century might take out hundreds of the marine predators to quell the panic, like executing everyone in a police lineup in order to ensure justice was dispensed on the guilty party.
Eric Clua, a professor of marine biology at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, said the rationale behind shark culls in the past was simple: fewer sharks, fewer attacks. That reasoning also drives methods such as shark nets and baited hooks, which are currently in use at a number of Australian and South African beaches that are frequently visited by sharks. Nature, he notes, pays too great a price.
“They are killing sharks that are guilty of nothing,” said Dr. Clua, who studies the ocean predators up close in the South Pacific.
Dr. Clua said he has found a way to make precision strikes on sharks that have attacked people through a form of DNA profiling he calls “biteprinting.” He believes it’s usually just solo “problem sharks” that attack humans repeatedly, analogizing them to terrestrial predators that have been documented behaving the same way. Instead of culling every bear, tiger or lion when only one has serially attacked people, wildlife managers on land usually focus their ire on the culprit. Dr. Clua said that problem sharks could be dispatched the same way.
This summer, Dr. Clua and several colleagues published their latest paper on collecting DNA from the biteprints of large numbers of sharks. Once a database is built, DNA could be collected from the wounds of people who were bitten by sharks, and matched to a known shark. The offending fish would then need to be found and killed.
Critics have taken issue with every facet of this plan.
“That’s not how fishing works,” said Catherine Macdonald, a lecturer in marine conservation biology at the University of Miami. “Even when you have a satellite-tagged shark and you know where it is, if you turned up at the site and put a hook in the water, there’s no reason to think you would definitely catch that shark.”
The theory of the “problem shark” has its origins in a series of attacks in New Jersey in 1916 that killed four people, shocking Americans at the time. Fishermen captured and killed many sharks in the aftermath, and newspaper accounts said that one, a great white, may have had human remains in its stomach.
Still, some experts have theorized that another species, the aggressive bull shark, may have been involved as well, since one of the attacks occurred in a small, brackish creek over a mile from the ocean. Bull sharks are known to enter brackish water. Great whites are not.
What’s more, Christopher Pepin-Neff, a public policy lecturer at the University of Sydney who has studied human perceptions of sharks, said the “rogue shark” theory, popularized by Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws,” has been debunked.
“They are basically saying that the shark from ‘Jaws’ is real,” Dr. Pepin-Neff wrote of Clua and his co-authors.
Other researchers prefaced critiques by saying they respect Dr. Clua, whose academic research on shark ecology and behavior has been cited many times by other shark specialists. But even those who say that his approach would produce useful information on shark behavior, such as Blake Chapman, who studied shark neuroscience at the University of Queensland in Australia and wrote a book on human-shark conflict, said removing these guilty sharks “would be near impossible.”
“I don’t think that the removal of ‘problem individuals’ as a result of this information is a realistic application for the data,” she said, adding that the existence of problem sharks, at best, has never been proven.
David Shiffman, a marine conservation biologist and postdoctoral researcher at Arizona State University, said that Dr. Clua’s proposal would cost billions of dollars to implement on a meaningful scale in Australia, South Africa or the United States, countries with vast coastlines where sharks and people often mix.
“This idea makes no sense on any level that I’ve been able to find,” said Dr. Shiffman, who has debated the proposal with Dr. Clua on Twitter.
Dr. Clua says research he’ll publish soon proves that “problem sharks” exist among species such as bull and tiger sharks. He also describes his work as “disruptive,” and admits that it is on the edge of accepted science in marine biology.
“Most of the shark researchers are thinking, not the wrong way, but in an incomplete way,” he said.
One of Dr. Clua’s co-authors, John Linnell of the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, studies human conflicts with predators on land, and acknowledges that he’s not a “shark person.” Land predators sometimes stalk and attack humans until they are killed, he said.
Recent history is full of such examples, some almost mythic. Two male lions nicknamed “the ghost” and “the darkness” were blamed for killing dozens of people in southwestern Kenya in 1898. Those lions were tracked and shot by hunters. A decade later, a Bengal tigress known as the “Champawat Tiger” supposedly killed 436 people in Nepal and India. A hunter killed her as well.
Craig Packer, founder of the Lion Center at the University of Minnesota, said those stories are true, though certainly embellished by colonial authors for readers back in Britain. Dr. Packer has studied man-eating lions in Tanzania and likened the phenomenon to an “outbreak” that can spread through a pride or be taught by mother to cubs.
“Every now and then, one of them figures out we’re a free lunch,” he said.
Biteprinting won’t be as simple as sending hunters into the field to take out a tiger with a taste for human flesh, Dr. Linnell acknowledges. But he said that “anything is better than the current unselective mass killing response.” If humans reacted to bears the way they have with sharks, Dr. Linnell said it would be akin to “going out into the forest and randomly shooting the first 1,000 animals that you see.”
However people react when shark attacks do occur, Dr. Shiffman offered the reminder that such incidents are rare. According to the International Shark Attack File at the University of Florida, there were 64 unprovoked attacks on humans last year and 41 provoked attacks, meaning that a person “initiates interaction with a shark in some way.”
Five of the attacks were fatal. More people are killed by falling trees in the U.S. every year.
While shark attacks are uncommon, so are shark culls, although a prominent surfer recently called for one on Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean, which is home to bull sharks. Instead, a number of countries deploy shark nets, similar to fences, beyond the surf at popular beaches. Dangerous sharks get tangled in the nets, but so do harmless ones, along with dolphins, sea turtles and other marine life.
In place of these methods, many beach authorities have embraced more humane methods of prevention over extermination. Drones, blimps and tags connect to apps that warn lifeguards and bathers to steer clear of beaches when sharks are around. And after two fatal attacks occurred in New England in recent years, Cape Cod residents received tourniquet training.
Dr. Clua hopes to pitch his DNA database to Réunion Island, where 10 people have been killed by sharks in the last decade. He thinks he could set up his biteprinting operation for less than $1 million and prove it works.
For now, he’ll practice the technique on tiger sharks, known to eat just about anything, when he gets back to his base of research in French Polynesia.
“I’ll let them bite a pig leg,” he said, “or something else with flesh, muscle and bone.”
|
By Jason Nark
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Oct. 30, 2022
The war on sharks has been waged with shock and awe at times. When a shark bit or killed a swimmer, people within the past century might take out hundreds of the marine predators to quell the panic, like executing everyone in a police lineup in order to ensure justice was dispensed on the guilty party.
Eric Clua, a professor of marine biology at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, said the rationale behind shark culls in the past was simple:
|
fewer sharks, fewer attacks. That reasoning also drives methods such as shark nets and baited hooks, which are currently in use at a number of Australian and South African beaches that are frequently visited by sharks. Nature, he notes, pays too great a price.
“They are killing sharks that are guilty of nothing,” said Dr. Clua, who studies the ocean predators up close in the South Pacific.
Dr. Clua said he has found a way to make precision strikes on sharks that have attacked people through a form of DNA profiling he calls “biteprinting.” He believes it’s usually just solo “problem sharks” that attack humans repeatedly, analogizing them to terrestrial predators that have been documented behaving the same way. Instead of culling every bear, tiger or lion when only one has serially attacked people, wildlife managers on land usually focus their ire on the culprit. Dr. Clua said that problem sharks could be dispatched the same way.
This summer, Dr. Clua and several colleagues published their latest paper on collecting DNA from the biteprints of large numbers of sharks. Once a database is built, DNA could be collected from the wounds of people who were bitten by sharks, and matched to a known shark. The offending fish would then need to be found and killed.
Critics have taken issue with every facet of this plan.
“That’s not how fishing works,” said Catherine Macdonald, a lecturer in marine conservation biology at the University of Miami. “Even when you have a satellite-tagged shark and you know where it is, if you turned up at the site and put a hook in the water, there’s no reason to think you would definitely catch that shark.”
The theory of the “problem shark” has its origins in a series of attacks in New Jersey in 1916 that killed four people, shocking Americans at the time. Fishermen captured and killed many sharks in the aftermath, and newspaper accounts said that one, a great white, may have had human remains in its stomach.
Still, some experts have theorized that another species, the aggressive bull shark, may have been involved as well, since one of the attacks occurred in a small, brackish creek over a mile from the ocean. Bull sharks are known to enter brackish water. Great whites are not.
What’s more, Christopher Pepin-Neff, a public policy lecturer at the University of Sydney who has studied human perceptions of sharks, said the “rogue shark” theory, popularized by Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws,” has been debunked.
“They are basically saying that the shark from ‘Jaws’ is real,” Dr. Pepin-Neff wrote of Clua and his co-authors.
Other researchers prefaced critiques by saying they respect Dr. Clua, whose academic research on shark ecology and behavior has been cited many times by other shark specialists. But even those who say that his approach would produce useful information on shark behavior, such as Blake Chapman, who studied shark neuroscience at the University of Queensland in Australia and wrote a book on human-shark conflict, said removing these guilty sharks “would be near impossible.”
“I don’t think that the removal of ‘problem individuals’ as a result of this information is a realistic application for the data,” she said, adding that the existence of problem sharks, at best, has never been proven.
David Shiffman, a marine conservation biologist and postdoctoral researcher at Arizona State University, said that Dr. Clua’s proposal would cost billions of dollars to implement on a meaningful scale in Australia, South Africa or the United States, countries with vast coastlines where sharks and people often mix.
“This idea makes no sense on any level that I’ve been able to find,” said Dr. Shiffman, who has debated the proposal with Dr. Clua on Twitter.
Dr. Clua says research he’ll publish soon proves that “problem sharks” exist among species such as bull and tiger sharks. He also describes his work as “disruptive,” and admits that it is on the edge of accepted science in marine biology.
“Most of the shark researchers are thinking, not the wrong way, but in an incomplete way,” he said.
One of Dr. Clua’s co-authors, John Linnell of the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, studies human conflicts with predators on land, and acknowledges that he’s not a “shark person.” Land predators sometimes stalk and attack humans until they are killed, he said.
Recent history is full of such examples, some almost mythic. Two male lions nicknamed “the ghost” and “the darkness” were blamed for killing dozens of people in southwestern Kenya in 1898. Those lions were tracked and shot by hunters. A decade later, a Bengal tigress known as the “Champawat Tiger” supposedly killed 436 people in Nepal and India. A hunter killed her as well.
Craig Packer, founder of the Lion Center at the University of Minnesota, said those stories are true, though certainly embellished by colonial authors for readers back in Britain. Dr. Packer has studied man-eating lions in Tanzania and likened the phenomenon to an “outbreak” that can spread through a pride or be taught by mother to cubs.
“Every now and then, one of them figures out we’re a free lunch,” he said.
Biteprinting won’t be as simple as sending hunters into the field to take out a tiger with a taste for human flesh, Dr. Linnell acknowledges. But he said that “anything is better than the current unselective mass killing response.” If humans reacted to bears the way they have with sharks, Dr. Linnell said it would be akin to “going out into the forest and randomly shooting the first 1,000 animals that you see.”
However people react when shark attacks do occur, Dr. Shiffman offered the reminder that such incidents are rare. According to the International Shark Attack File at the University of Florida, there were 64 unprovoked attacks on humans last year and 41 provoked attacks, meaning that a person “initiates interaction with a shark in some way.”
Five of the attacks were fatal. More people are killed by falling trees in the U.S. every year.
While shark attacks are uncommon, so are shark culls, although a prominent surfer recently called for one on Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean, which is home to bull sharks. Instead, a number of countries deploy shark nets, similar to fences, beyond the surf at popular beaches. Dangerous sharks get tangled in the nets, but so do harmless ones, along with dolphins, sea turtles and other marine life.
In place of these methods, many beach authorities have embraced more humane methods of prevention over extermination. Drones, blimps and tags connect to apps that warn lifeguards and bathers to steer clear of beaches when sharks are around. And after two fatal attacks occurred in New England in recent years, Cape Cod residents received tourniquet training.
Dr. Clua hopes to pitch his DNA database to Réunion Island, where 10 people have been killed by sharks in the last decade. He thinks he could set up his biteprinting operation for less than $1 million and prove it works.
For now, he’ll practice the technique on tiger sharks, known to eat just about anything, when he gets back to his base of research in French Polynesia.
“I’ll let them bite a pig leg,” he said, “or something else with flesh, muscle and bone.”
|
26. What New Science Techniques Tell Us About Ancient Women Warriors.txt
|
By Annalee Newitz
Though it’s remarkable that the United States finally is about to have a female vice president, let’s stop calling it an unprecedented achievement. As some recent archaeological studies suggest, women have been leaders, warriors and hunters for thousands of years. This new scholarship is challenging long-held beliefs about so-called natural gender roles in ancient history, inviting us to reconsider how we think about women’s work today.
In November a group of anthropologists and other researchers published a paper in the academic journal Science Advances about the remains of a 9,000-year-old big-game hunter buried in the Andes. Like other hunters of the period, this person was buried with a specialized tool kit associated with stalking large game, including projectile points, scrapers for tanning hides and a tool that looked like a knife. There was nothing particularly unusual about the body — though the leg bones seemed a little slim for an adult male hunter. But when scientists analyzed the tooth enamel using a method borrowed from forensics that reveals whether a person carries the male or female version of a protein called amelogenin, the hunter turned out to be female.
With that information in hand, the researchers re-examined evidence from 107 other graves in the Americas from roughly the same period. They were startled to discover that out of 26 graves with hunter tools, 10 belonged to women. Bonnie Pitblado, an archaeologist at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, told Science magazine that the findings indicate that “women have always been able to hunt and have in fact hunted.” The new data calls into question an influential dogma in the field of archaeology. Nicknamed “man the hunter,” this is the notion that men and women in ancient societies had strictly defined roles: Men hunted, and women gathered. Now, this theory may be crumbling.
Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
While the Andean finding was noteworthy, this was not the first female hunter or warrior to be found by re-examining old archaeological evidence using fresh scientific techniques. Nor was this sort of discovery confined to one group, or one part of the world.
Three years ago, scientists re-examined the remains of a 10th-century Viking warrior excavated in Sweden at the end of the 19th century by Hjalmar Stolpe, an archaeologist. The skeleton had been regally buried at the top of a hill, with a sword, two shields, arrows and two horses. For decades, beginning with the original excavation, archaeologists assumed the Viking was a man. When researchers in the 1970s conducted a new anatomical evaluation of the skeleton, they began to suspect that the Viking was in fact a woman. But it wasn’t until 2017, when a group of Swedish archaeologists and geneticists extracted DNA from the remains, that the sex of the warrior indeed proved to be female.
The finding led to controversy over whether the skeleton was really a warrior, with scholars and pundits protesting what they called revisionist history. Although the genetic sex determination thus was indisputable (the bones of the skeleton had two X chromosomes), these criticisms led the Swedish researchers to examine the evidence yet again, and present a second, more contextual analysis in 2019. Their conclusion again was that the person had been a warrior.
The naysayers raised fair points. In archaeology, as the researchers admitted, we can’t always know why a community buried someone with particular objects. And one female warrior does not mean that many women were leaders, just as the reign of Queen Elizabeth I was not part of a larger feminist movement.
Challenges to “man the hunter” have emerged in new examinations of the early cultures of the Americas as well. In the 1960s, an archaeological dig uncovered in the ancient city of Cahokia, in what is now southwestern Illinois, a 1,000-to-1,200-year-old burial site with two central bodies, one on top of the other, surrounded by other skeletons. The burial was full of shell beads, projectile points and other luxury items. At the time, the archaeologists concluded that this was a burial of two high-status males flanked by their servants.
But in 2016 archaeologists conducted a fresh examination of the grave. The two central figures, it turned out, were a male and a female; they were surrounded by other male-female pairs. Thomas Emerson, who conducted the study with colleagues from the Illinois State Archaeological Survey at the University of Illinois, alongside scientists from other institutions, said the Cahokia discovery demonstrated the existence of male and female nobility. “We don’t have a system in which males are these dominant figures and females are playing bit parts,” as he put it.
Armchair history buffs love to obsess about mythical societies dominated by female warriors, like Amazons and Valkyries. Let’s be clear. These findings don’t reveal an ancient matriarchy. But neither do they reaffirm the idea of societies in which men dominate completely. What they indicate is a lot more mundane and relatable: Some women were warriors and leaders; many weren’t. There was inequality, but it wasn’t absolute, and there were a lot of shifts over time. When it comes to female power, and gender roles, the past was as ambiguous as the present.
|
By Annalee Newitz
Though it’s remarkable that the United States finally is about to have a female vice president, let’s stop calling it an unprecedented achievement. As some recent archaeological studies suggest, women have been leaders, warriors and hunters for thousands of years. This new scholarship is challenging long-held beliefs about so-called natural gender roles in ancient history, inviting us to reconsider how we think about women’s work today.
In November a group of anthropologists and other researchers published a paper in the academic journal Science Advances about the remains of a 9,000-year-old big-game hunter buried in the Andes. Like other
|
hunters of the period, this person was buried with a specialized tool kit associated with stalking large game, including projectile points, scrapers for tanning hides and a tool that looked like a knife. There was nothing particularly unusual about the body — though the leg bones seemed a little slim for an adult male hunter. But when scientists analyzed the tooth enamel using a method borrowed from forensics that reveals whether a person carries the male or female version of a protein called amelogenin, the hunter turned out to be female.
With that information in hand, the researchers re-examined evidence from 107 other graves in the Americas from roughly the same period. They were startled to discover that out of 26 graves with hunter tools, 10 belonged to women. Bonnie Pitblado, an archaeologist at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, told Science magazine that the findings indicate that “women have always been able to hunt and have in fact hunted.” The new data calls into question an influential dogma in the field of archaeology. Nicknamed “man the hunter,” this is the notion that men and women in ancient societies had strictly defined roles: Men hunted, and women gathered. Now, this theory may be crumbling.
Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
While the Andean finding was noteworthy, this was not the first female hunter or warrior to be found by re-examining old archaeological evidence using fresh scientific techniques. Nor was this sort of discovery confined to one group, or one part of the world.
Three years ago, scientists re-examined the remains of a 10th-century Viking warrior excavated in Sweden at the end of the 19th century by Hjalmar Stolpe, an archaeologist. The skeleton had been regally buried at the top of a hill, with a sword, two shields, arrows and two horses. For decades, beginning with the original excavation, archaeologists assumed the Viking was a man. When researchers in the 1970s conducted a new anatomical evaluation of the skeleton, they began to suspect that the Viking was in fact a woman. But it wasn’t until 2017, when a group of Swedish archaeologists and geneticists extracted DNA from the remains, that the sex of the warrior indeed proved to be female.
The finding led to controversy over whether the skeleton was really a warrior, with scholars and pundits protesting what they called revisionist history. Although the genetic sex determination thus was indisputable (the bones of the skeleton had two X chromosomes), these criticisms led the Swedish researchers to examine the evidence yet again, and present a second, more contextual analysis in 2019. Their conclusion again was that the person had been a warrior.
The naysayers raised fair points. In archaeology, as the researchers admitted, we can’t always know why a community buried someone with particular objects. And one female warrior does not mean that many women were leaders, just as the reign of Queen Elizabeth I was not part of a larger feminist movement.
Challenges to “man the hunter” have emerged in new examinations of the early cultures of the Americas as well. In the 1960s, an archaeological dig uncovered in the ancient city of Cahokia, in what is now southwestern Illinois, a 1,000-to-1,200-year-old burial site with two central bodies, one on top of the other, surrounded by other skeletons. The burial was full of shell beads, projectile points and other luxury items. At the time, the archaeologists concluded that this was a burial of two high-status males flanked by their servants.
But in 2016 archaeologists conducted a fresh examination of the grave. The two central figures, it turned out, were a male and a female; they were surrounded by other male-female pairs. Thomas Emerson, who conducted the study with colleagues from the Illinois State Archaeological Survey at the University of Illinois, alongside scientists from other institutions, said the Cahokia discovery demonstrated the existence of male and female nobility. “We don’t have a system in which males are these dominant figures and females are playing bit parts,” as he put it.
Armchair history buffs love to obsess about mythical societies dominated by female warriors, like Amazons and Valkyries. Let’s be clear. These findings don’t reveal an ancient matriarchy. But neither do they reaffirm the idea of societies in which men dominate completely. What they indicate is a lot more mundane and relatable: Some women were warriors and leaders; many weren’t. There was inequality, but it wasn’t absolute, and there were a lot of shifts over time. When it comes to female power, and gender roles, the past was as ambiguous as the present.
|
93. These Microbes May Help Future Martians and Moon People Mine Metals.txt
|
By Kenneth Chang
Nov. 11, 2020
Microbes may be the friends of future colonists living off the land on the moon, Mars or elsewhere in the solar system and aiming to establish self-sufficient homes.
Space colonists, like people on Earth, will need what are known as rare earth elements, which are critical to modern technologies. These 17 elements, with daunting names like yttrium, lanthanum, neodymium and gadolinium, are sparsely distributed in the Earth’s crust. Without the rare earths, we wouldn’t have certain lasers, metallic alloys and powerful magnets that are used in cellphones and electric cars.
But mining them on Earth today is an arduous process. It requires crushing tons of ore and then extracting smidgens of these metals using chemicals that leave behind rivers of toxic waste water.
Experiments conducted aboard the International Space Station show that a potentially cleaner, more efficient method could work on other worlds: let bacteria do the messy work of separating rare earth elements from rock.
“The idea is the biology is essentially catalyzing a reaction that would occur very slowly without the biology,” said Charles S. Cockell, a professor of astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh.
On Earth, such biomining techniques are already used to produce 10 to 20 percent of the world’s copper and also at some gold mines; scientists have identified microbes that help leach rare earth elements out of rocks.
Dr. Cockell and his colleagues wanted to know whether these microbes would still live and function as effectively on Mars, where the pull of gravity on the surface is just 38 percent of Earth’s, or even when there is no gravity at all. So they sent some of them to the International Space Station last year.
The results, published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, show that at least one of those bacteria, a species named Sphingomonas desiccabilis, is unfazed by differing forces of gravity.
In the experiment, called BioRock, 36 samples were launched to orbit in match box-size containers with slices of basalt (a common rock made of cooled lava). Half of the samples contained one of three types of bacteria; the others contained just basalt.
At the space station, Luca Parmitano, a European Space Agency astronaut, placed some of them in a centrifuge spun at speeds to simulate Mars or Earth gravity. Other samples experienced the free-floating environment of space. Additional control experiments were conducted on the ground.
After 21 days, the bacteria were killed, and the samples returned to Earth for analysis.
For two of the three types of bacteria, the results were disappointing. But S. desiccabilis increased the amount of rare earth elements extracted from the basalt by roughly a factor of two, even in the zero-gravity environment.
“That surprised us,” Dr. Cockell said, explaining that without gravity, there is no convection that usually carries away waste from the bacteria and replenishes nutrients around the cells.
“One might then hypothesize that microgravity would stop the microbes from doing biomining or it would stress them to the point where they weren’t doing biomining,” he said. “In fact, we saw no effect at all.”
The results were even somewhat better for the lower Mars gravity.
Payam Rasoulnia, a doctoral student at Tampere University in Finland who has studied biomining of rare earth elements, called the BioRock experiment’s results interesting, but noted that the yields were “very low even in the ground experiments.”
Dr. Cockell said BioRock was not designed to optimize extraction. “We’re really looking at the fundamental process that underpins biomining,” he said. “But certainly this isn’t a demonstration of commercial biomining.”
The next SpaceX cargo mission to the space station, currently scheduled for December, will carry a follow-up experiment called BioAsteroid. Instead of basalt, the match box-size containers will contain pieces of meteorites and fungi. They, rather than bacteria, will be the agents they test for breaking down the rock.
“I think eventually, you could scale this up to do it on Mars,” Dr. Cockell said
|
By Kenneth Chang
Nov. 11, 2020
Microbes may be the friends of future colonists living off the land on the moon, Mars or elsewhere in the solar system and aiming to establish self-sufficient homes.
Space colonists, like people on Earth, will need what are known as rare earth elements, which are critical to modern technologies. These 17 elements, with daunting names like yttrium, lanthanum, neodymium and gadolinium, are sparsely distributed in the Earth’s crust. Without the rare earths, we wouldn’t have certain lasers, metallic alloys and
|
powerful magnets that are used in cellphones and electric cars.
But mining them on Earth today is an arduous process. It requires crushing tons of ore and then extracting smidgens of these metals using chemicals that leave behind rivers of toxic waste water.
Experiments conducted aboard the International Space Station show that a potentially cleaner, more efficient method could work on other worlds: let bacteria do the messy work of separating rare earth elements from rock.
“The idea is the biology is essentially catalyzing a reaction that would occur very slowly without the biology,” said Charles S. Cockell, a professor of astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh.
On Earth, such biomining techniques are already used to produce 10 to 20 percent of the world’s copper and also at some gold mines; scientists have identified microbes that help leach rare earth elements out of rocks.
Dr. Cockell and his colleagues wanted to know whether these microbes would still live and function as effectively on Mars, where the pull of gravity on the surface is just 38 percent of Earth’s, or even when there is no gravity at all. So they sent some of them to the International Space Station last year.
The results, published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, show that at least one of those bacteria, a species named Sphingomonas desiccabilis, is unfazed by differing forces of gravity.
In the experiment, called BioRock, 36 samples were launched to orbit in match box-size containers with slices of basalt (a common rock made of cooled lava). Half of the samples contained one of three types of bacteria; the others contained just basalt.
At the space station, Luca Parmitano, a European Space Agency astronaut, placed some of them in a centrifuge spun at speeds to simulate Mars or Earth gravity. Other samples experienced the free-floating environment of space. Additional control experiments were conducted on the ground.
After 21 days, the bacteria were killed, and the samples returned to Earth for analysis.
For two of the three types of bacteria, the results were disappointing. But S. desiccabilis increased the amount of rare earth elements extracted from the basalt by roughly a factor of two, even in the zero-gravity environment.
“That surprised us,” Dr. Cockell said, explaining that without gravity, there is no convection that usually carries away waste from the bacteria and replenishes nutrients around the cells.
“One might then hypothesize that microgravity would stop the microbes from doing biomining or it would stress them to the point where they weren’t doing biomining,” he said. “In fact, we saw no effect at all.”
The results were even somewhat better for the lower Mars gravity.
Payam Rasoulnia, a doctoral student at Tampere University in Finland who has studied biomining of rare earth elements, called the BioRock experiment’s results interesting, but noted that the yields were “very low even in the ground experiments.”
Dr. Cockell said BioRock was not designed to optimize extraction. “We’re really looking at the fundamental process that underpins biomining,” he said. “But certainly this isn’t a demonstration of commercial biomining.”
The next SpaceX cargo mission to the space station, currently scheduled for December, will carry a follow-up experiment called BioAsteroid. Instead of basalt, the match box-size containers will contain pieces of meteorites and fungi. They, rather than bacteria, will be the agents they test for breaking down the rock.
“I think eventually, you could scale this up to do it on Mars,” Dr. Cockell said
|
67. Shane Bieber and Trevor Bauer Win Cy Young Awards.txt
|
By James Wagner
Nov. 11, 2020
Shane Bieber still keeps a screenshot in his cellphone of a text message exchange he had earlier this year with Trevor Bauer, a former teammate in Cleveland whose locker was next to his. Although the Indians traded Bauer to the Cincinnati Reds midway through the 2019 season, the two starting pitchers still stay in frequent touch. And before the 2020 season began, they had similar betting odds to win the Cy Young Awards in their leagues.
“That’s not something I pay too much attention to,” said Bieber, who is more reserved than the brash Bauer. “But he kind of does and he texted it to me, and it goes back to this friendly competition that we have with each other. All I replied back was like, ‘Hey, why not go to 2 for 2?’ And he said, ‘Sounds like a deal.’”
Their wish came true on Wednesday: Bieber was named the unanimous winner of the American League Cy Young Award for the truncated 2020 Major League Baseball season, while Bauer claimed the National League Cy Young Award. They are the first pitchers to earn the awards in the same year after being teammates in the prior season, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
“We talked a little bit throughout the year about how cool it would be to have ex teammates win the award together, and here we are,” Bauer said on a conference call with reporters. Added Bieber: “It means the world.”
For Bieber, the award capped a rapid ascent to the top of his sport after not being considered good enough to earn a scholarship at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2014. He instead earned a spot as a walk-on. His fastball sat in the mid-80s. He had strong command, but didn’t strike out many hitters.
Six years later, Bieber was by far the best pitcher in baseball during the 60-game regular season. He either led or tied for the major league lead in many statistical categories, such as earned run average (1.63), wins (eight), strikeouts (122) and wins above replacement (3.3).
Not far behind on many of those lists was Bauer. Now documenting his free agency on social media, Bauer went 5-4 with a 1.73 E.R.A. and 100 strikeouts and earned 27 of the 30 possible first-place votes from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. He is the first Reds pitcher to win the award.
“For a franchise has been around for as long as the Reds have, with all the amazing talent that has gone through and all the great teams in Reds history, to not have a Cy Young Award winner in the past, it was high time that changed,” Bauer said.
The three other first-place votes in the N.L. went to Yu Darvish of the Chicago Cubs, who finished second. Jacob deGrom, the Mets’ ace who won the award in 2018 and 2019, finished third. Bieber, the A.L.’s first unanimous winner since Justin Verlander in 2011, bested Minnesota’s Kenta Maeda and Toronto’s Hyun-jin Ryu, two former Los Angeles Dodgers in their first year with new teams.
The victories by Bauer and Bieber, both right-handers and first-time winners, underscored the work of the smaller-market Indians’ envied pitching development factory.
During the 2018 and 2019 seasons, Cleveland counted Bauer, Bieber and the two-time A.L. Cy Young Award winner Corey Kluber — plus standouts like Mike Clevinger and Carlos Carrasco — among its starters. The Indians traded away Bauer, Clevinger and Kluber in a span of 13 months, and still reached the playoffs this year.
Bieber, who eventually earned a scholarship and starred for his college team, was selected by Cleveland in the fourth round of the 2016 draft. Unlike Bauer, 29, who has thrown hard since high school, Bieber, 25, added velocity over time.
In the Indians’ farm system, Bieber tweaked his repertoire and blossomed. In 2020, he threw his mid-90s fastball only 38 percent of the time, one of the lowest rates in the major leagues among starting pitchers, because he expertly mixed it with sliders, cutters, curveballs and changeups.
“His journey has been quite spectacular,” Bauer said.
Bieber’s biggest blemish of the year: He allowed seven runs in his lone playoff start, a loss to the Yankees in the first round of this year’s expanded postseason. The vote for the Cy Young Award, though, is taken before the playoffs. (The New York Times does not permit its reporters to vote for awards.)
Following a trend across baseball over recent years, Bieber set a major league record last season by striking out 14.2 batters per nine innings. He did that, however, over only 77⅓ innings. The previous record-holder was Gerrit Cole, now with the Yankees, whose strikeout rate of 13.8 per nine innings was accomplished over 212⅓ innings in 2019 with the Houston Astros.
Continuing a steady upward trend, Bauer finished third in strikeout rate (a career-high 12.3 per nine innings) in 2020 behind Bieber and deGrom. Bauer said he used to tease Bieber a lot for being the only member 2018 Indians’ rotation who failed to notch 200 strikeouts.
“Of course, he was only up for half a season,” Bauer said. “And he’s proceeded to beat me in strikeouts the last two years and he doesn’t let me forget about it.”
Cleveland traded for Bauer — an Arizona Diamondbacks first-round pick out of U.C.L.A. — before the 2013 season. Known for his brash personality and his mad scientist approach to pitching, Bauer went from an average starter to an excellent one in Cleveland. He used high-speed cameras, weighted-ball training, long toss and precision pitch design before they became ubiquitous in modern pitching training.
“I’m very proud of what I’ve been able to accomplish, coming from a kid who was never really the best kid on any team I was on,” Bauer said.
Bauer posted his best all-around season this year, albeit in a pandemic-shortened campaign in which he tossed 73 innings. He led the N.L. in E.R.A., walks and hits per inning pitched (0.795) and shutouts (two). His slider was one of the best pitches in baseball: Opponents hit .075 against it.
Bauer was also dominant in his only postseason start: He struck out 12 over seven and two-thirds scoreless innings in a loss to the Atlanta Braves in the Reds’ first-round exit.
While Bieber said Wednesday would have been special even if he had not won the award because he got to spend the day surrounded by his loved ones after an unusual season, Bauer said winning the Cy Young Award had “always” been on the front of his mind even though “a lot of people won’t talk about it like that.”
|
By James Wagner
Nov. 11, 2020
Shane Bieber still keeps a screenshot in his cellphone of a text message exchange he had earlier this year with Trevor Bauer, a former teammate in Cleveland whose locker was next to his. Although the Indians traded Bauer to the Cincinnati Reds midway through the 2019 season, the two starting pitchers still stay in frequent touch. And before the 2020 season began, they had similar betting odds to win the Cy Young Awards in their leagues.
“That’s not something I pay too much attention to,” said Bieber, who is more reserved
|
than the brash Bauer. “But he kind of does and he texted it to me, and it goes back to this friendly competition that we have with each other. All I replied back was like, ‘Hey, why not go to 2 for 2?’ And he said, ‘Sounds like a deal.’”
Their wish came true on Wednesday: Bieber was named the unanimous winner of the American League Cy Young Award for the truncated 2020 Major League Baseball season, while Bauer claimed the National League Cy Young Award. They are the first pitchers to earn the awards in the same year after being teammates in the prior season, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
“We talked a little bit throughout the year about how cool it would be to have ex teammates win the award together, and here we are,” Bauer said on a conference call with reporters. Added Bieber: “It means the world.”
For Bieber, the award capped a rapid ascent to the top of his sport after not being considered good enough to earn a scholarship at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2014. He instead earned a spot as a walk-on. His fastball sat in the mid-80s. He had strong command, but didn’t strike out many hitters.
Six years later, Bieber was by far the best pitcher in baseball during the 60-game regular season. He either led or tied for the major league lead in many statistical categories, such as earned run average (1.63), wins (eight), strikeouts (122) and wins above replacement (3.3).
Not far behind on many of those lists was Bauer. Now documenting his free agency on social media, Bauer went 5-4 with a 1.73 E.R.A. and 100 strikeouts and earned 27 of the 30 possible first-place votes from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. He is the first Reds pitcher to win the award.
“For a franchise has been around for as long as the Reds have, with all the amazing talent that has gone through and all the great teams in Reds history, to not have a Cy Young Award winner in the past, it was high time that changed,” Bauer said.
The three other first-place votes in the N.L. went to Yu Darvish of the Chicago Cubs, who finished second. Jacob deGrom, the Mets’ ace who won the award in 2018 and 2019, finished third. Bieber, the A.L.’s first unanimous winner since Justin Verlander in 2011, bested Minnesota’s Kenta Maeda and Toronto’s Hyun-jin Ryu, two former Los Angeles Dodgers in their first year with new teams.
The victories by Bauer and Bieber, both right-handers and first-time winners, underscored the work of the smaller-market Indians’ envied pitching development factory.
During the 2018 and 2019 seasons, Cleveland counted Bauer, Bieber and the two-time A.L. Cy Young Award winner Corey Kluber — plus standouts like Mike Clevinger and Carlos Carrasco — among its starters. The Indians traded away Bauer, Clevinger and Kluber in a span of 13 months, and still reached the playoffs this year.
Bieber, who eventually earned a scholarship and starred for his college team, was selected by Cleveland in the fourth round of the 2016 draft. Unlike Bauer, 29, who has thrown hard since high school, Bieber, 25, added velocity over time.
In the Indians’ farm system, Bieber tweaked his repertoire and blossomed. In 2020, he threw his mid-90s fastball only 38 percent of the time, one of the lowest rates in the major leagues among starting pitchers, because he expertly mixed it with sliders, cutters, curveballs and changeups.
“His journey has been quite spectacular,” Bauer said.
Bieber’s biggest blemish of the year: He allowed seven runs in his lone playoff start, a loss to the Yankees in the first round of this year’s expanded postseason. The vote for the Cy Young Award, though, is taken before the playoffs. (The New York Times does not permit its reporters to vote for awards.)
Following a trend across baseball over recent years, Bieber set a major league record last season by striking out 14.2 batters per nine innings. He did that, however, over only 77⅓ innings. The previous record-holder was Gerrit Cole, now with the Yankees, whose strikeout rate of 13.8 per nine innings was accomplished over 212⅓ innings in 2019 with the Houston Astros.
Continuing a steady upward trend, Bauer finished third in strikeout rate (a career-high 12.3 per nine innings) in 2020 behind Bieber and deGrom. Bauer said he used to tease Bieber a lot for being the only member 2018 Indians’ rotation who failed to notch 200 strikeouts.
“Of course, he was only up for half a season,” Bauer said. “And he’s proceeded to beat me in strikeouts the last two years and he doesn’t let me forget about it.”
Cleveland traded for Bauer — an Arizona Diamondbacks first-round pick out of U.C.L.A. — before the 2013 season. Known for his brash personality and his mad scientist approach to pitching, Bauer went from an average starter to an excellent one in Cleveland. He used high-speed cameras, weighted-ball training, long toss and precision pitch design before they became ubiquitous in modern pitching training.
“I’m very proud of what I’ve been able to accomplish, coming from a kid who was never really the best kid on any team I was on,” Bauer said.
Bauer posted his best all-around season this year, albeit in a pandemic-shortened campaign in which he tossed 73 innings. He led the N.L. in E.R.A., walks and hits per inning pitched (0.795) and shutouts (two). His slider was one of the best pitches in baseball: Opponents hit .075 against it.
Bauer was also dominant in his only postseason start: He struck out 12 over seven and two-thirds scoreless innings in a loss to the Atlanta Braves in the Reds’ first-round exit.
While Bieber said Wednesday would have been special even if he had not won the award because he got to spend the day surrounded by his loved ones after an unusual season, Bauer said winning the Cy Young Award had “always” been on the front of his mind even though “a lot of people won’t talk about it like that.”
|
3. Washington Has Been Lucrative for Some on Biden’s Team.txt
|
By Kenneth P. Vogel and Eric Lipton
Jan. 1, 2021
WASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s choice for Treasury secretary, Janet L. Yellen, collected more than $7 million in speaking fees over the past two years from major corporations and Wall Street banks that have a keen interest in the financial policies she will oversee after her expected confirmation to lead the Treasury Department.
Ms. Yellen’s paid speaking appearances — which included $992,000 from the investment bank Citi for nine appearances — were among the lucrative payments from a range of Wall Street, Big Tech and corporate interests to three prominent prospective members of the incoming Biden administration.
The payments, revealed in disclosure statements covering the previous two years and released on New Year’s Eve, have caused consternation among progressive activists concerned about the influence of special interests around Mr. Biden, who they see as part of a Democratic establishment that has not sufficiently embraced liberal priorities.
Mr. Biden’s choice for secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, was paid nearly $1.2 million by a consulting firm he helped found, WestExec Advisors, where he advised a range of corporations including Facebook, Boeing, the private equity giant Blackstone and the asset management company Lazard.
Mr. Biden’s choice for director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, was paid $180,000 to consult for the data-mining company Palantir, which has raised liberal hackles for providing data and surveillance services to law enforcement, including the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Along with their disclosure statements, Ms. Yellen, Mr. Blinken and Ms. Haines each filed ethics agreements pledging to avoid involvement in specific matters that could affect any holding they still own, or with which they had worked in the past year, unless they receive a written waiver from ethics officials.
The three may have to extend the conflict-of-interest window beyond a year if Mr. Biden enacts an expected ethics policy barring officials in his administration from participating for two years in policies that could affect their former business interests.
Sign up for the On Politics newsletter. Your guide to the 2024 elections. Get it sent to your inbox.
Ms. Yellen and Mr. Blinken also indicated they would divest their interests in companies, including stock owned by Ms. Yellen in major corporations such as AT&T, ConocoPhillips, Dow, Pfizer and Raytheon. Mr. Blinken said he would sell his stake in WestExec Advisors as well as a venture capital firm linked to it.
Mr. Blinken indicated in his disclosure filing that those stakes are worth a total of $1.5 million to $6 million.
David Segal, the executive director of the progressive group Demand Progress, said that he still had concerns even though the officials had pledged to abide by conflict-of-interest rules.
“There are almost too many corporate clients to count who have relationships to the respective ambits these designees would steward if confirmed,” he said, adding that “this is an unfortunate circumstance,” particularly as Mr. Biden strives to strike a difference between his administration and President Trump’s.
In the Trump administration, representatives from corporate America and Wall Street held prominent posts, and conflicts of interest abounded.
The filings by Mr. Biden’s team offer another glimpse of Washington’s longtime revolving door. Officials whose parties have lost power monetize their insider expertise and connections in the private sector, then head back into government when their party retakes the White House.
Ms. Yellen, a former Federal Reserve chair, started giving paid speeches in February 2018, which was within a year of the conclusion of her term at the Fed. She was also a consultant to Magellan Financial Group Ltd., an Australia-based investment-fund manager, which paid her $125,000.
Ms. Haines left her position as deputy national security adviser to President Barack Obama at the end of his term in 2017, and within about six months she was working as a consultant for Palantir. When Ms. Haines joined Mr. Biden’s transition team over the summer, a spokesman sought to distance her from Palantir’s data collection and surveillance, saying that the vast majority of her work for the company was related to diversity and inclusion.
The biggest share of Ms. Haines’s income came from Columbia University, which paid her more than $440,000 to help run an international research project and to lecture at the university’s law school. She also was paid $150,000 to consult for the applied physics lab at Johns Hopkins University, and nearly $55,000 to consult and make introductions for WestExec Advisors, the firm Mr. Blinken helped found.
Mr. Blinken, who served as deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration, formed WestExec Advisors about eight months after he left office with three other Obama administration officials.
The firm, which takes its name from the small street that runs between the West Wing of the White House and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, was hired by clients looking for advice in navigating the federal government. The firm also paired with venture capital funds that helped companies it advised expand to take on federal contracts or other new work.
Mr. Blinken’s disclosure forms show that he worked with 17 WestExec clients, including Microsoft, Uber, AT&T, FedEx, LinkedIn, the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences and McKinsey & Company, the global consulting firm.
WestExec said in a statement after Mr. Blinken emerged as the likely secretary of state pick that he helped business leaders “make the best decisions in a complex and volatile international landscape.”
Mr. Blinken also publicly defended tech companies, while Facebook was a client of WestExec. When tech companies came under fire for failing to adequately fight disinformation during the 2016 election — including Facebook posts that were part of a Russian effort to boost Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign — Mr. Blinken said the blame should be directed primarily at Russia.
Tech platforms “have to do better to defend against malicious actors, but let’s not lose sight of the forest for the trees: The problem is Russia and other actors who use our openness against us, not the platforms,” Mr. Blinken said in an interview with Fast Company published in October 2017. “The biggest mistake we can make is to get into a circular firing squad with government and the tech companies,” Mr. Blinken told the publication, which identified him as an adviser to both Facebook and Alphabet, the parent company of Google.
José Castañeda, a Google spokesman, said that the company hired WestExec for one month in 2018 to provide advice on tech policy, but added that the advice was “provided by others in the firm, not by Mr. Blinken.”
In 2009, Mr. Obama prohibited all of his appointees from participating for two years in “any particular matter” as a government official that “directly and substantially” related to a former employer or former client, including a federal regulation that might affect the former client.
Mr. Biden has not yet released details on what type of restrictions he will impose on his political appointees.
|
By Kenneth P. Vogel and Eric Lipton
Jan. 1, 2021
WASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s choice for Treasury secretary, Janet L. Yellen, collected more than $7 million in speaking fees over the past two years from major corporations and Wall Street banks that have a keen interest in the financial policies she will oversee after her expected confirmation to lead the Treasury Department.
Ms. Yellen’s paid speaking appearances — which included $992,000 from the investment bank Citi for nine appearances — were among the lucrative payments from a range of
|
Wall Street, Big Tech and corporate interests to three prominent prospective members of the incoming Biden administration.
The payments, revealed in disclosure statements covering the previous two years and released on New Year’s Eve, have caused consternation among progressive activists concerned about the influence of special interests around Mr. Biden, who they see as part of a Democratic establishment that has not sufficiently embraced liberal priorities.
Mr. Biden’s choice for secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, was paid nearly $1.2 million by a consulting firm he helped found, WestExec Advisors, where he advised a range of corporations including Facebook, Boeing, the private equity giant Blackstone and the asset management company Lazard.
Mr. Biden’s choice for director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, was paid $180,000 to consult for the data-mining company Palantir, which has raised liberal hackles for providing data and surveillance services to law enforcement, including the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Along with their disclosure statements, Ms. Yellen, Mr. Blinken and Ms. Haines each filed ethics agreements pledging to avoid involvement in specific matters that could affect any holding they still own, or with which they had worked in the past year, unless they receive a written waiver from ethics officials.
The three may have to extend the conflict-of-interest window beyond a year if Mr. Biden enacts an expected ethics policy barring officials in his administration from participating for two years in policies that could affect their former business interests.
Sign up for the On Politics newsletter. Your guide to the 2024 elections. Get it sent to your inbox.
Ms. Yellen and Mr. Blinken also indicated they would divest their interests in companies, including stock owned by Ms. Yellen in major corporations such as AT&T, ConocoPhillips, Dow, Pfizer and Raytheon. Mr. Blinken said he would sell his stake in WestExec Advisors as well as a venture capital firm linked to it.
Mr. Blinken indicated in his disclosure filing that those stakes are worth a total of $1.5 million to $6 million.
David Segal, the executive director of the progressive group Demand Progress, said that he still had concerns even though the officials had pledged to abide by conflict-of-interest rules.
“There are almost too many corporate clients to count who have relationships to the respective ambits these designees would steward if confirmed,” he said, adding that “this is an unfortunate circumstance,” particularly as Mr. Biden strives to strike a difference between his administration and President Trump’s.
In the Trump administration, representatives from corporate America and Wall Street held prominent posts, and conflicts of interest abounded.
The filings by Mr. Biden’s team offer another glimpse of Washington’s longtime revolving door. Officials whose parties have lost power monetize their insider expertise and connections in the private sector, then head back into government when their party retakes the White House.
Ms. Yellen, a former Federal Reserve chair, started giving paid speeches in February 2018, which was within a year of the conclusion of her term at the Fed. She was also a consultant to Magellan Financial Group Ltd., an Australia-based investment-fund manager, which paid her $125,000.
Ms. Haines left her position as deputy national security adviser to President Barack Obama at the end of his term in 2017, and within about six months she was working as a consultant for Palantir. When Ms. Haines joined Mr. Biden’s transition team over the summer, a spokesman sought to distance her from Palantir’s data collection and surveillance, saying that the vast majority of her work for the company was related to diversity and inclusion.
The biggest share of Ms. Haines’s income came from Columbia University, which paid her more than $440,000 to help run an international research project and to lecture at the university’s law school. She also was paid $150,000 to consult for the applied physics lab at Johns Hopkins University, and nearly $55,000 to consult and make introductions for WestExec Advisors, the firm Mr. Blinken helped found.
Mr. Blinken, who served as deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration, formed WestExec Advisors about eight months after he left office with three other Obama administration officials.
The firm, which takes its name from the small street that runs between the West Wing of the White House and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, was hired by clients looking for advice in navigating the federal government. The firm also paired with venture capital funds that helped companies it advised expand to take on federal contracts or other new work.
Mr. Blinken’s disclosure forms show that he worked with 17 WestExec clients, including Microsoft, Uber, AT&T, FedEx, LinkedIn, the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences and McKinsey & Company, the global consulting firm.
WestExec said in a statement after Mr. Blinken emerged as the likely secretary of state pick that he helped business leaders “make the best decisions in a complex and volatile international landscape.”
Mr. Blinken also publicly defended tech companies, while Facebook was a client of WestExec. When tech companies came under fire for failing to adequately fight disinformation during the 2016 election — including Facebook posts that were part of a Russian effort to boost Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign — Mr. Blinken said the blame should be directed primarily at Russia.
Tech platforms “have to do better to defend against malicious actors, but let’s not lose sight of the forest for the trees: The problem is Russia and other actors who use our openness against us, not the platforms,” Mr. Blinken said in an interview with Fast Company published in October 2017. “The biggest mistake we can make is to get into a circular firing squad with government and the tech companies,” Mr. Blinken told the publication, which identified him as an adviser to both Facebook and Alphabet, the parent company of Google.
José Castañeda, a Google spokesman, said that the company hired WestExec for one month in 2018 to provide advice on tech policy, but added that the advice was “provided by others in the firm, not by Mr. Blinken.”
In 2009, Mr. Obama prohibited all of his appointees from participating for two years in “any particular matter” as a government official that “directly and substantially” related to a former employer or former client, including a federal regulation that might affect the former client.
Mr. Biden has not yet released details on what type of restrictions he will impose on his political appointees.
|
42. A Ceremony Led by Richard Branson.txt
|
By Abby Ellin
Jan. 1, 2021
For the last five Decembers, Sayé Yabandeh has participated in the St. Regis World Snow Polo Championship, a charity event in Aspen, Colo. It’s a magical affair held in a magical location, and exactly the sort of place you want to share with someone.
Except on this wintry night in 2018, Ms. Yabandeh, an Iranian-born actress, filmmaker and philanthropist, was alone. So was Dr. Jeffrey Neal, an otolaryngologist from Abingdon, Va. Dr. Neal, 45, was sitting by the fire with a group of strangers, recovering from a day on the slopes, when Ms. Yabandeh joined them.
Six words sprang into his mind: “She’s going to be my wife.”
“It was a vibe,” said Dr. Neal, who goes by “Dr. J” and runs the same medical practice his father started in 1975, “an energy I’d never felt that before.”
Ms. Yabandeh, 39, liked him, too. Earlier in the year she decided it was time to meet her mate. She wrote out a list of traits she wanted, and read it aloud to herself every day. (Yes, she read it aloud every day.) Among the attributes, she wanted “someone who appreciates and is involved with humanitarian work,” she said. Tall and good looking would also be nice.
Dr. Neal fit that bill: He has been volunteering with Operation Smile since college, and now performs cleft lip and plate operations in Kenya. Ms. Yabandeh, founded her own charitable organization, Saye.org, and is also an ambassador for the Global Citizen Foundation.
Both were intrigued by space travel, closely following Virgin Galactic, the company co-founded by Richard Branson. Neither Ms. Yabandeh nor Dr. Neal had married, choosing instead to focusing on their careers and philanthropic work. The following day they watched the polo final together. Toward the end of the night, they began an impromptu slow dance. “I thought, ‘Here’s my guy. He’s right here,’” she said. “Something about touching, the energy exchange at that level, there was no doubt.”
At dinner three days later, he said, “I’m not ready for you to leave.”
“I’m not ready to go,” she replied.
So they extended their vacations another two days, before he returned to Virginia and she to California. She was supposed to fly to New Zealand, but he invited her to spend New Year’s Eve with him at his place. She accepted. By February, she had picked up and moved into his home.
It was an adjustment. Ms. Yabandeh favors designer brands; she sports Christian Louboutins the way others wear Crocs.
“He said, ‘don’t worry about bringing a lot of clothes, people don’t really care about getting dressed up here,’” she said. “I was like, what does that mean? I arrived at the airport and asked a woman who worked there where’s the lounge? She said, ‘What lounge? There are only two gates here.’ That’s when it started to sink in that it was going to be a big change.”
“I knew it would be a challenge, but I was in love, so everything was easy,” she continued.
He proposed almost one year to the day they met, en route to Aspen. They planned to marry in June 2020 on a yacht in the French Riviera, but Covid-19 ended that idea. Instead, they decided to elope in the British Virgin Islands, just the two of them.
But the bride had something up her sleeve. And that’s where Richard Branson comes back into play. Dr. Neal had long admired Mr. Branson, especially his “entrepreneurial prowess and adventurous spirit.”
So Ms. Yabandeh decided to see if Mr. Branson would be available to unofficially officiate. He can’t legally marry couples, but he has been known to perform ceremonies, most notably for Larry Page, a Google founder, and the actor Kate Winslet, who married Mr. Branson’s nephew, Edward Abel Smith.
On Dec. 8, they flew to Necker Island, Mr. Branson’s private Island in the Caribbean. Dr. Neal had no idea why a man who looked vaguely like Richard Branson was waiting for them.
“I was floored,” Dr. Neal said when he finally realized it really was Richard Branson. “I couldn’t believe it. But at the same time I could, because Sayé is a woman that makes the impossible completely possible.”
After spending a few nights on Necker, the couple flew to Tortola on Dec. 14 and were legally wed there by Patricia Nadim, who signed their marriage certificate at the Registrar General Office. They will both use the surname Neal-Yabandeh.
|
By Abby Ellin
Jan. 1, 2021
For the last five Decembers, Sayé Yabandeh has participated in the St. Regis World Snow Polo Championship, a charity event in Aspen, Colo. It’s a magical affair held in a magical location, and exactly the sort of place you want to share with someone.
Except on this wintry night in 2018, Ms. Yabandeh, an Iranian-born actress, filmmaker and philanthropist, was alone. So was Dr. Jeffrey Neal, an otolaryngologist from Abingdon, Va. Dr
|
. Neal, 45, was sitting by the fire with a group of strangers, recovering from a day on the slopes, when Ms. Yabandeh joined them.
Six words sprang into his mind: “She’s going to be my wife.”
“It was a vibe,” said Dr. Neal, who goes by “Dr. J” and runs the same medical practice his father started in 1975, “an energy I’d never felt that before.”
Ms. Yabandeh, 39, liked him, too. Earlier in the year she decided it was time to meet her mate. She wrote out a list of traits she wanted, and read it aloud to herself every day. (Yes, she read it aloud every day.) Among the attributes, she wanted “someone who appreciates and is involved with humanitarian work,” she said. Tall and good looking would also be nice.
Dr. Neal fit that bill: He has been volunteering with Operation Smile since college, and now performs cleft lip and plate operations in Kenya. Ms. Yabandeh, founded her own charitable organization, Saye.org, and is also an ambassador for the Global Citizen Foundation.
Both were intrigued by space travel, closely following Virgin Galactic, the company co-founded by Richard Branson. Neither Ms. Yabandeh nor Dr. Neal had married, choosing instead to focusing on their careers and philanthropic work. The following day they watched the polo final together. Toward the end of the night, they began an impromptu slow dance. “I thought, ‘Here’s my guy. He’s right here,’” she said. “Something about touching, the energy exchange at that level, there was no doubt.”
At dinner three days later, he said, “I’m not ready for you to leave.”
“I’m not ready to go,” she replied.
So they extended their vacations another two days, before he returned to Virginia and she to California. She was supposed to fly to New Zealand, but he invited her to spend New Year’s Eve with him at his place. She accepted. By February, she had picked up and moved into his home.
It was an adjustment. Ms. Yabandeh favors designer brands; she sports Christian Louboutins the way others wear Crocs.
“He said, ‘don’t worry about bringing a lot of clothes, people don’t really care about getting dressed up here,’” she said. “I was like, what does that mean? I arrived at the airport and asked a woman who worked there where’s the lounge? She said, ‘What lounge? There are only two gates here.’ That’s when it started to sink in that it was going to be a big change.”
“I knew it would be a challenge, but I was in love, so everything was easy,” she continued.
He proposed almost one year to the day they met, en route to Aspen. They planned to marry in June 2020 on a yacht in the French Riviera, but Covid-19 ended that idea. Instead, they decided to elope in the British Virgin Islands, just the two of them.
But the bride had something up her sleeve. And that’s where Richard Branson comes back into play. Dr. Neal had long admired Mr. Branson, especially his “entrepreneurial prowess and adventurous spirit.”
So Ms. Yabandeh decided to see if Mr. Branson would be available to unofficially officiate. He can’t legally marry couples, but he has been known to perform ceremonies, most notably for Larry Page, a Google founder, and the actor Kate Winslet, who married Mr. Branson’s nephew, Edward Abel Smith.
On Dec. 8, they flew to Necker Island, Mr. Branson’s private Island in the Caribbean. Dr. Neal had no idea why a man who looked vaguely like Richard Branson was waiting for them.
“I was floored,” Dr. Neal said when he finally realized it really was Richard Branson. “I couldn’t believe it. But at the same time I could, because Sayé is a woman that makes the impossible completely possible.”
After spending a few nights on Necker, the couple flew to Tortola on Dec. 14 and were legally wed there by Patricia Nadim, who signed their marriage certificate at the Registrar General Office. They will both use the surname Neal-Yabandeh.
|
80. Keep Schools Open, New York.txt
|
By The Editorial Board
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.
New York residents and officials, it’s time to face some cold, hard facts. The city is on the cusp of its second wave of the coronavirus. As such, restrictions need to be brought back, as economically and socially painful as they might be.
Indoor dining at city restaurants should end. Gyms and some other nonessential businesses ought to be closed again. Religious leaders should tell their congregants to stay home, for safety’s sake, until the current surge is brought to heel. Holiday plans must be limited. Companies should again tell their staffs to work from home whenever possible. All New Yorkers need to recommit to wearing masks, social distancing and avoiding unnecessary exposure risks whenever possible. Taking these steps will help keep children in the city’s classrooms, which should be a priority.
Coronavirus infections are rising at a rate not seen since spring. As of Wednesday, the seven-day average for New York City residents testing positive for the virus was 2.52 percent, compared with 1.2 percent just over a month ago, according to city and state data. That means more than 1,000 people each day are testing positive for the coronavirus in New York City. The state is also seeing troubling increases elsewhere.
New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo should act together, now, to reimpose the restrictions that have proved to slow the spread.
We saw Mr. Cuomo take a step in the right direction on Wednesday when he banned private indoor and outdoor gatherings of more than 10 people statewide and said gyms, bars and restaurants with licenses from the State Liquor Authority would need to close by 10 p.m. The rules go into effect on Friday.
Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
But that is not nearly enough.
New York City has already blown past the 2 percent threshold for seven-day positivity rates that Mr. de Blasio earlier said would prompt an immediate reassessment of indoor dining. It is now approaching 3 percent, the level meant to close the city’s public schools. Ending in-person instruction right now would be a mistake, given the evidence of how little the virus has spread there so far and the devastating consequences that would follow for academic progress as well as for working parents like subway operators and nurses.
In recent months, the spike in infections in New York was largely limited to discrete neighborhoods and communities. In the early fall, Hasidic and other ultra-Orthodox communities in Brooklyn and elsewhere saw clusters. Now, Staten Island has emerged as a hot spot. But citywide, the test positivity rate is increasing, and the number of cases is rising. The case for broader restrictions is clear. And places elsewhere in New York State that are seeing troubling upticks in test positivity rates should consider similar measures.
There are no easy decisions here — there is no doubt that the lives of already weary New Yorkers will be further upended by the moves proposed here. In the short term, the city’s economy, already reeling, will take an even harder hit. It’s important that the city and state do everything they can to help make outdoor dining safe and successful throughout the colder months. And federal lawmakers need to offer workers relief in the form of additional stimulus.
Dr. Jay Varma, a senior adviser for public health in New York City, said on Tuesday that in about half of cases, officials don’t know how people who have tested positive became infected. But there is consistent data from cities across the country that indoor dining can seed outbreaks, which can grow into waves. New York cannot afford to ignore that data. San Francisco, which is also facing a surge in transmission, is closing its indoor dining beginning on Friday.
Mr. Cuomo has said New York was “ambushed” by the virus earlier this year. That’s true, but many months later, there is no such excuse.
Many thousands of New Yorkers have already lost their lives. Thousands more have fallen gravely ill, or have lost friends or loved ones. Imposing restrictions will cause pain. But the cost of not taking strong enough action quickly is more than the city can bear.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
|
By The Editorial Board
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.
New York residents and officials, it’s time to face some cold, hard facts. The city is on the cusp of its second wave of the coronavirus. As such, restrictions need to be brought back, as economically and socially painful as they might be.
Indoor dining at city restaurants should end. Gyms and some other nonessential businesses ought to be closed again. Religious leaders should tell their congregants to stay home, for safety’s sake
|
, until the current surge is brought to heel. Holiday plans must be limited. Companies should again tell their staffs to work from home whenever possible. All New Yorkers need to recommit to wearing masks, social distancing and avoiding unnecessary exposure risks whenever possible. Taking these steps will help keep children in the city’s classrooms, which should be a priority.
Coronavirus infections are rising at a rate not seen since spring. As of Wednesday, the seven-day average for New York City residents testing positive for the virus was 2.52 percent, compared with 1.2 percent just over a month ago, according to city and state data. That means more than 1,000 people each day are testing positive for the coronavirus in New York City. The state is also seeing troubling increases elsewhere.
New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo should act together, now, to reimpose the restrictions that have proved to slow the spread.
We saw Mr. Cuomo take a step in the right direction on Wednesday when he banned private indoor and outdoor gatherings of more than 10 people statewide and said gyms, bars and restaurants with licenses from the State Liquor Authority would need to close by 10 p.m. The rules go into effect on Friday.
Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
But that is not nearly enough.
New York City has already blown past the 2 percent threshold for seven-day positivity rates that Mr. de Blasio earlier said would prompt an immediate reassessment of indoor dining. It is now approaching 3 percent, the level meant to close the city’s public schools. Ending in-person instruction right now would be a mistake, given the evidence of how little the virus has spread there so far and the devastating consequences that would follow for academic progress as well as for working parents like subway operators and nurses.
In recent months, the spike in infections in New York was largely limited to discrete neighborhoods and communities. In the early fall, Hasidic and other ultra-Orthodox communities in Brooklyn and elsewhere saw clusters. Now, Staten Island has emerged as a hot spot. But citywide, the test positivity rate is increasing, and the number of cases is rising. The case for broader restrictions is clear. And places elsewhere in New York State that are seeing troubling upticks in test positivity rates should consider similar measures.
There are no easy decisions here — there is no doubt that the lives of already weary New Yorkers will be further upended by the moves proposed here. In the short term, the city’s economy, already reeling, will take an even harder hit. It’s important that the city and state do everything they can to help make outdoor dining safe and successful throughout the colder months. And federal lawmakers need to offer workers relief in the form of additional stimulus.
Dr. Jay Varma, a senior adviser for public health in New York City, said on Tuesday that in about half of cases, officials don’t know how people who have tested positive became infected. But there is consistent data from cities across the country that indoor dining can seed outbreaks, which can grow into waves. New York cannot afford to ignore that data. San Francisco, which is also facing a surge in transmission, is closing its indoor dining beginning on Friday.
Mr. Cuomo has said New York was “ambushed” by the virus earlier this year. That’s true, but many months later, there is no such excuse.
Many thousands of New Yorkers have already lost their lives. Thousands more have fallen gravely ill, or have lost friends or loved ones. Imposing restrictions will cause pain. But the cost of not taking strong enough action quickly is more than the city can bear.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
|
54. In a Widening News Desert on the Border, a Tabloid Start-Up Defies the Odds.txt
|
By James Dobbins
Jan. 1, 2021
DEL RIO, Texas — At the Chihuahuan Desert’s eastern limits, in a parking lot above Lake Amistad, Brian Argabright photographed anglers and their catch at the Border Bass Battle for The Del Rio News-Herald, a chronicler of the wind-swept border town since 1884.
Three days later, he would learn the tournament story would be his last for The News-Herald.
On Nov. 18, the nationwide newspaper crisis touched Val Verde County when The News-Herald printed its final edition. The end was swift for the staff and a shock to residents, who had somehow expected their newspaper to last forever.
Leonard Woolsey, president of Southern Newspapers Inc., the corporation that owns The News-Herald, came to Del Rio to fire 10 employees. For him, it was the right thing to do it in person. Revenue could not cover payroll, even after the company secured a multimillion-dollar federal Covid-19 relief loan.
The closure left Val Verde County without a trusted newspaper, another victim in a trend researchers at the University of North Carolina deemed “The Expanding News Desert.” An estimated 300 newspapers have closed and 6,000 journalists have lost their jobs over the past two years, according to their research, as circulation fell by five million readers.
In Texas, 134 counties — a little more than half the state — have just one newspaper, and 21 have no newspaper at all. Del Rio, the Vale Verde County seat, teetered on becoming the 22nd.
Enter Joel Langton, a 56-year-old military public-affairs veteran who decided to turn an online events website he had started into a 16-page, ad-supported weekly tabloid, Del Rio’s 830 Times.
“The News-Herald had a great staff and a bad business plan,” he said. “Publishers came in from the outside every 18 months. Del Rio is a complicated culture. I’ve been here for 15 years and still don’t know everything going on.”
After The News-Herald closed, Mr. Langton stepped forward to turn his 5-month-old 830Times.com, named after the local telephone area code, into a newspaper. He had a web designer and knew someone who could make layouts. But he needed reporters to cover Del Rio.
He brought on Mr. Argabright and another former News-Herald writer, Karen Gleason, to fill his pages as freelancers.
“The fact they said yes makes me tear up because I have so much respect for both of them,” Mr. Langton wrote in the newspaper’s first issue. “We all share the same passion — Del Rio. We love this town and want to keep people informed.”
The 830 Times is a solution to Del Rio’s biggest problem, as Mr. Langton sees it — how to keep residents from moving away.
“People say there is nothing to do here, but that’s not true,” he said. “The 830 Times was originally set up to let people know about the fun things going on.”
Mr. Langton is right. There are entertainments to be had in Del Rio, though most of them are of the outdoor variety.
On the same day the Border Bass Battle was being fought out at Lake Amistad, the Malto family hosted a cabalgata — a traditional Mexican horse ride — celebrating Diego Malto’s 15th birthday. All were welcome to join.
More than 200 men, women and children on horseback and ATVs and in pickup trucks snarled traffic along seven miles in Cienegas Terrace, a colonia between the Del Rio airport and the Rio Grande. A ranch cookout followed, with beer kegs, homemade tamales, a roping exhibition, and a norteño band playing behind a curtain of cigarette smoke.
Diego’s uncle, Beto Torez, who grew up in Del Rio, was at the party with his young family. He lives 260 miles east, in Austin, where he works as a church music director. Del Rio is lovely to visit for the day, he said, but to raise his children here? No way. Austin has a better music scene.
The cabalgata made the news on Noticias Del Rio TV, a local bilingual Facebook page with nearly 85,000 followers. The 830 Times so far has 3,000 followers on its Facebook page. The disparate numbers hint at the obstacles Mr. Langton faces in his push to make The 830 Times succeed in a world dominated by Google and Facebook advertising and competitors with Spanish-language appeal.
“For now, I’m footing the bill,” he said. “Am I gambling on the print product? Yes. I could lose it all.”
At age 24, Mr. Langton was married, broke and desperate for work in Minnesota. The Air Force was hiring, so he enlisted.
The military moved him every three years or so, an itinerant life that mirrored his upbringing as a preacher’s son. He worked as a public-affairs specialist in Indiana, Maryland, Arkansas, Nebraska, Turkey and then Cocoa Beach, Fla., which he called “the perfect place to bounce back from a divorce.”
Mr. Langton remarried and moved with his wife to his final post in Del Rio at Laughlin Air Force Base, the largest pilot training facility in the United States.
Later, he transitioned from the military to a civilian public relations job at Laughlin.
Del Rio, population 35,700, is tiny compared with its sister city, Ciudad Acuña, on the Mexico side of Rio Grande, which has more than 200,000 residents. Acuña is a manufacturing town focusing on auto parts and appliances. Thanks to the Air Force base, the federal government is the largest employer in Del Rio.
Despite the razor wire-topped fences and border guards dividing the two cities, most residents see Del Rio and Acuña as one place.
Into that international mix has recently stepped a third player — a Chinese company proposing a major and hotly debated new enterprise outside Del Rio that has become one of The 830 Times’s biggest news stories.
GH America Energy quietly bought 140,000 acres in Val Verde County over the last five years to build a massive wind farm not far from the pilot training base. A Chinese billionaire and former army officer, Sun Guangxin, controls the company, a Guanghui Energy Company subsidiary, through an investment group.
In 2018, concern that giant wind turbines could disrupt flight training routes that are crucial to the county’s biggest employer began prompting apprehension all over Val Verde County and from Texas’ representatives in Washington. Del Rio’s mayor, Bruno Lozano, and the county’s senior administrator, Judge Lewis Owens, sent a letter to Trump administration officials early in 2020, warning that the energy project “will result in unacceptable risk to national security of the United States.”
It is in Del Rio’s interest to keep the military happy. According to the Texas comptroller, Laughlin contributes $2 billion to the Texas economy and more than 3,000 jobs each year.
“It’s the most underreported story here,” Mr. Langton said. “The Communist Chinese are one of the largest landowners. But because of my position at the base, I need to keep walls up between me and that story. I’ll hire a writer to cover it.”
Mr. Langton operates his news empire from a sideboard he uses as a desk in his dining room, dealing with his reporters and the company that prints the paper, 153 miles away, by cellphone.
On a Wednesday morning last month, it was 5:30 a.m., The 830 Times’s inaugural edition was late, and Mr. Langton was dialing the phone.
“I hate calling people this early, but I have to get my stuff out,” he said, bemoaning the troubles of his new venture. It was inspection week at the Air Force base, and he could not be late.
Moments later, a delivery driver arrived in the cold, pre-dawn darkness and unloaded 2,000 copies.
“The banner color is off,” Mr. Langton said. “It should be blue. This looks purple.”
A full-color photo on the front page captured the annual “Nutcracker” performance at a downtown theater. Inside, a note “From the Publisher Dude” teased an article penned by Norris Burkes, a retired Air Force chaplain, recalling his “wacky marriage proposal.”
With the newspapers stacked in his S.U.V., Mr. Langton tuned his radio to the Outlaw Country station and drove down Veterans Boulevard, an area where Del Rio began to expand northward on open savanna after the Plaza Del Sol Mall opened in 1979.
Big-box stores and strip malls followed as the historic downtown declined, killing the Guarantee department store, the first permanent commercial structure on Main Street when it was a cow trail in 1905.
Mr. Langton dropped his newspaper off at Roberts Jewelers, River City Donuts, a Rudy’s Bar-B-Q, a Ramada hotel, an IHOP, the Bank & Trust, gas stations and laundromats, all places where readers could pick it up for free.
Plenty of people are counting on Mr. Langton to make a go of it. Steven T. Webb, a former Del Rio police officer who won a runoff in December for the City Council, said the fact that only 12 percent of voters turned out in the general election was partly attributable to the News-Herald shutdown. “Social media, friends, that’s the only way we get the news now,” he said. “It hurt us, the newspaper closing.”
For now, Mr. Langton is focusing on advertising and editing, leaving the story ideas and writing to Mr. Argabright and Ms. Gleason. Del Rio’s 830 Times is crawling, he said, but he hopes soon the newspaper learns how to walk and run. Mostly, Mr. Langton wants the residents to love his publication as their own.
“The 830 Times is a leap of faith,” Ms. Gleason said. She had known Mr. Langton all of two days before the first issue was finished. “I just want this paper to be a voice for the community, interesting and truthful stories about people in Del Rio.”
Mr. Langston concedes that his efforts to provide Del Rio with a newspaper it can hold in its hands are probably temporary. He believes the printed word is going extinct.
“I hate to tell you this, buddy,” he said. “But in five or 10 years, newspapers won’t exist anymore.”
He figures he has five years to prove himself wrong.
|
By James Dobbins
Jan. 1, 2021
DEL RIO, Texas — At the Chihuahuan Desert’s eastern limits, in a parking lot above Lake Amistad, Brian Argabright photographed anglers and their catch at the Border Bass Battle for The Del Rio News-Herald, a chronicler of the wind-swept border town since 1884.
Three days later, he would learn the tournament story would be his last for The News-Herald.
On Nov. 18, the nationwide newspaper crisis touched Val Verde County when The News-Herald
|
printed its final edition. The end was swift for the staff and a shock to residents, who had somehow expected their newspaper to last forever.
Leonard Woolsey, president of Southern Newspapers Inc., the corporation that owns The News-Herald, came to Del Rio to fire 10 employees. For him, it was the right thing to do it in person. Revenue could not cover payroll, even after the company secured a multimillion-dollar federal Covid-19 relief loan.
The closure left Val Verde County without a trusted newspaper, another victim in a trend researchers at the University of North Carolina deemed “The Expanding News Desert.” An estimated 300 newspapers have closed and 6,000 journalists have lost their jobs over the past two years, according to their research, as circulation fell by five million readers.
In Texas, 134 counties — a little more than half the state — have just one newspaper, and 21 have no newspaper at all. Del Rio, the Vale Verde County seat, teetered on becoming the 22nd.
Enter Joel Langton, a 56-year-old military public-affairs veteran who decided to turn an online events website he had started into a 16-page, ad-supported weekly tabloid, Del Rio’s 830 Times.
“The News-Herald had a great staff and a bad business plan,” he said. “Publishers came in from the outside every 18 months. Del Rio is a complicated culture. I’ve been here for 15 years and still don’t know everything going on.”
After The News-Herald closed, Mr. Langton stepped forward to turn his 5-month-old 830Times.com, named after the local telephone area code, into a newspaper. He had a web designer and knew someone who could make layouts. But he needed reporters to cover Del Rio.
He brought on Mr. Argabright and another former News-Herald writer, Karen Gleason, to fill his pages as freelancers.
“The fact they said yes makes me tear up because I have so much respect for both of them,” Mr. Langton wrote in the newspaper’s first issue. “We all share the same passion — Del Rio. We love this town and want to keep people informed.”
The 830 Times is a solution to Del Rio’s biggest problem, as Mr. Langton sees it — how to keep residents from moving away.
“People say there is nothing to do here, but that’s not true,” he said. “The 830 Times was originally set up to let people know about the fun things going on.”
Mr. Langton is right. There are entertainments to be had in Del Rio, though most of them are of the outdoor variety.
On the same day the Border Bass Battle was being fought out at Lake Amistad, the Malto family hosted a cabalgata — a traditional Mexican horse ride — celebrating Diego Malto’s 15th birthday. All were welcome to join.
More than 200 men, women and children on horseback and ATVs and in pickup trucks snarled traffic along seven miles in Cienegas Terrace, a colonia between the Del Rio airport and the Rio Grande. A ranch cookout followed, with beer kegs, homemade tamales, a roping exhibition, and a norteño band playing behind a curtain of cigarette smoke.
Diego’s uncle, Beto Torez, who grew up in Del Rio, was at the party with his young family. He lives 260 miles east, in Austin, where he works as a church music director. Del Rio is lovely to visit for the day, he said, but to raise his children here? No way. Austin has a better music scene.
The cabalgata made the news on Noticias Del Rio TV, a local bilingual Facebook page with nearly 85,000 followers. The 830 Times so far has 3,000 followers on its Facebook page. The disparate numbers hint at the obstacles Mr. Langton faces in his push to make The 830 Times succeed in a world dominated by Google and Facebook advertising and competitors with Spanish-language appeal.
“For now, I’m footing the bill,” he said. “Am I gambling on the print product? Yes. I could lose it all.”
At age 24, Mr. Langton was married, broke and desperate for work in Minnesota. The Air Force was hiring, so he enlisted.
The military moved him every three years or so, an itinerant life that mirrored his upbringing as a preacher’s son. He worked as a public-affairs specialist in Indiana, Maryland, Arkansas, Nebraska, Turkey and then Cocoa Beach, Fla., which he called “the perfect place to bounce back from a divorce.”
Mr. Langton remarried and moved with his wife to his final post in Del Rio at Laughlin Air Force Base, the largest pilot training facility in the United States.
Later, he transitioned from the military to a civilian public relations job at Laughlin.
Del Rio, population 35,700, is tiny compared with its sister city, Ciudad Acuña, on the Mexico side of Rio Grande, which has more than 200,000 residents. Acuña is a manufacturing town focusing on auto parts and appliances. Thanks to the Air Force base, the federal government is the largest employer in Del Rio.
Despite the razor wire-topped fences and border guards dividing the two cities, most residents see Del Rio and Acuña as one place.
Into that international mix has recently stepped a third player — a Chinese company proposing a major and hotly debated new enterprise outside Del Rio that has become one of The 830 Times’s biggest news stories.
GH America Energy quietly bought 140,000 acres in Val Verde County over the last five years to build a massive wind farm not far from the pilot training base. A Chinese billionaire and former army officer, Sun Guangxin, controls the company, a Guanghui Energy Company subsidiary, through an investment group.
In 2018, concern that giant wind turbines could disrupt flight training routes that are crucial to the county’s biggest employer began prompting apprehension all over Val Verde County and from Texas’ representatives in Washington. Del Rio’s mayor, Bruno Lozano, and the county’s senior administrator, Judge Lewis Owens, sent a letter to Trump administration officials early in 2020, warning that the energy project “will result in unacceptable risk to national security of the United States.”
It is in Del Rio’s interest to keep the military happy. According to the Texas comptroller, Laughlin contributes $2 billion to the Texas economy and more than 3,000 jobs each year.
“It’s the most underreported story here,” Mr. Langton said. “The Communist Chinese are one of the largest landowners. But because of my position at the base, I need to keep walls up between me and that story. I’ll hire a writer to cover it.”
Mr. Langton operates his news empire from a sideboard he uses as a desk in his dining room, dealing with his reporters and the company that prints the paper, 153 miles away, by cellphone.
On a Wednesday morning last month, it was 5:30 a.m., The 830 Times’s inaugural edition was late, and Mr. Langton was dialing the phone.
“I hate calling people this early, but I have to get my stuff out,” he said, bemoaning the troubles of his new venture. It was inspection week at the Air Force base, and he could not be late.
Moments later, a delivery driver arrived in the cold, pre-dawn darkness and unloaded 2,000 copies.
“The banner color is off,” Mr. Langton said. “It should be blue. This looks purple.”
A full-color photo on the front page captured the annual “Nutcracker” performance at a downtown theater. Inside, a note “From the Publisher Dude” teased an article penned by Norris Burkes, a retired Air Force chaplain, recalling his “wacky marriage proposal.”
With the newspapers stacked in his S.U.V., Mr. Langton tuned his radio to the Outlaw Country station and drove down Veterans Boulevard, an area where Del Rio began to expand northward on open savanna after the Plaza Del Sol Mall opened in 1979.
Big-box stores and strip malls followed as the historic downtown declined, killing the Guarantee department store, the first permanent commercial structure on Main Street when it was a cow trail in 1905.
Mr. Langton dropped his newspaper off at Roberts Jewelers, River City Donuts, a Rudy’s Bar-B-Q, a Ramada hotel, an IHOP, the Bank & Trust, gas stations and laundromats, all places where readers could pick it up for free.
Plenty of people are counting on Mr. Langton to make a go of it. Steven T. Webb, a former Del Rio police officer who won a runoff in December for the City Council, said the fact that only 12 percent of voters turned out in the general election was partly attributable to the News-Herald shutdown. “Social media, friends, that’s the only way we get the news now,” he said. “It hurt us, the newspaper closing.”
For now, Mr. Langton is focusing on advertising and editing, leaving the story ideas and writing to Mr. Argabright and Ms. Gleason. Del Rio’s 830 Times is crawling, he said, but he hopes soon the newspaper learns how to walk and run. Mostly, Mr. Langton wants the residents to love his publication as their own.
“The 830 Times is a leap of faith,” Ms. Gleason said. She had known Mr. Langton all of two days before the first issue was finished. “I just want this paper to be a voice for the community, interesting and truthful stories about people in Del Rio.”
Mr. Langston concedes that his efforts to provide Del Rio with a newspaper it can hold in its hands are probably temporary. He believes the printed word is going extinct.
“I hate to tell you this, buddy,” he said. “But in five or 10 years, newspapers won’t exist anymore.”
He figures he has five years to prove himself wrong.
|
22. Before Embracing America-First Agenda, David Perdue Was an Outsourcing Expert.txt
|
By Stephanie Saul, Richard Fausset and Michael LaForgia
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 6, 2021
The biographical video from Senator David Perdue’s first campaign, in 2014, celebrated a narrative arc that many fellow Georgians either related to or have aspired to: the story of a humble boy from rural America whose hard work catapulted him into a global business career, navigating free markets and faraway lands, all the while gathering stores of wisdom and wealth.
The embrace of global commerce has been a hallmark of modern Georgia, showcased in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, dissected by the novelist Tom Wolfe and promoted by, among others, Mr. Perdue’s Nafta-loving cousin, Sonny Perdue, governor from 2003 to 2011. Three years later, in his maiden run for office, David Perdue would boast of his international experience as a consultant and chief executive while speaking to a gathering of Republicans in Bibb County, close to his middle Georgia hometown.
“There’s only one candidate in this race that’s ever lived outside the United States,” Mr. Perdue said. “How can you bring value to a debate about the economy unless you have any understanding about the free-enterprise system and what it takes to compete in the global economy?”
Now, facing one of a pair of Jan. 5 runoff elections in Georgia that will determine control of the Senate, Mr. Perdue has continued to make his global business experience the essence of his brand. But that has highlighted the contradictions that emerge — in his career and in his character, but also in his party and his region — as he embraces the populist, America-first strains of Trumpism.
The man who has lately voiced support for some of President Trump’s signature tariffs built his career as an unapologetic, free-trading practitioner of the outsourcing arts. As a top executive at companies including Reebok, Sara Lee and Dollar General, he was often deeply involved in the shift of manufacturing, and jobs, to low-wage factories in China and other Asian countries.
A review of that business record shows a man who achieved significant successes, making millions, managing complex periods of corporate growth and change and creating domestic jobs, particularly at Dollar General. But there were also disappointments, like the failed trucking business he ran with Sonny Perdue and his fruitless effort to rescue a company called Pillowtex that brought heartbreak to a North Carolina mill town. And while the senator often speaks of having led “the Reebok turnaround” as president of the company’s flagship brand in the early 2000s, he moved on from the company after a rival, who today questions Mr. Perdue’s contribution to the turnaround, was installed above him.
The man who spent much of his life broadening his horizons took to the stage at a Trump rally in Macon before Election Day and mocked Senator Kamala Harris’s first name, mispronouncing it with an exaggerated stumble that to critics amounted to crude racism. His campaign has called it an innocent mispronunciation.
The man who dons a faded denim jacket to reinforce his connection to everyday Georgians has a record of aloofness, with an aversion to holding town hall meetings and a thin skin for tough questions. Now he has chosen a further withdrawal, declining to participate in additional debates after one in which his Democratic opponent, Jon Ossoff, called him a “crook” for his prolific stock-trading while in the Senate.
Mr. Perdue did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this article. In response to written questions, his campaign issued a statement that said, in part, “Throughout his four decades working in the real world before being elected to the Senate, David Perdue led American companies that saved and created tens of thousands of American jobs.”
As when he first ran for office six years ago, Mr. Perdue, who is 71, regularly invokes those decades in business to style himself the ultimate Washington “outsider,” though it was his cousin the former governor who gave him his entree to politics and helped nurture his ascent.
Taking aim at his 33-year-old opponent, who runs a London-based documentary film company and has never held public office, Mr. Perdue’s campaign has fixed on a $1,000 payment from a Hong Kong media company to charge that Mr. Ossoff had a two-year working relationship with the Chinese Communist Party.
In its statement to The New York Times, most of which dwelled on Mr. Ossoff, the Perdue campaign called it “ridiculous” to compare the senator’s “leadership in American companies with Jon Ossoff’s foreign-owned company with shady ties to the Chinese government.” (Mr. Ossoff’s spokeswoman dismissed that claim as “one of the most laughable smear campaigns in Georgia history.”)
Mr. Perdue’s campaign’s biographical video, meanwhile, has been refreshed for 2020. Edited out is a section that showed the senator posing with his wife on China’s Great Wall.
From a Watermelon Patch to the World
Mr. Perdue grew up in Warner Robins, a small city about 100 miles south of Atlanta, home to Robins Air Force Base. Airmen coming and going from foreign deployments connected the city to the wider world.
But life could still move to rural rhythms. Mr. Perdue traces his roots back to nearby Bonaire, a farming community where Perdues settled in the early 1800s. Mr. Perdue recalls picking watermelons on a family-owned farm alongside Sonny, who would become Mr. Trump’s agriculture secretary in 2017.
While farming was a family pursuit, Mr. Perdue’s parents followed a different path — education. David Perdue Sr. eventually became county schools superintendent.
Mr. Perdue would later go on to extol his father’s leadership in desegregating the county’s schools, but the historical record provides a different picture, revealing the school system employed delay tactics until the N.A.A.C.P. sued and a court ordered it to comply.
The future senator graduated from high school in 1968, two years before the schools were fully integrated. Standout student, varsity athlete and class president, he was awarded a coveted appointment to the Air Force Academy.
“David has those personal traits that cause him to be recognized as a person of worth,” his high school principal, Milton Sutherlin, wrote in a recommendation letter. “His character is that always of a gentleman, and he holds high those Christian ideals that speak well of his home training, his school and his community.”
But while the Air Force would prove a good fit for his cousin Sonny, who served three years and was promoted to the rank of captain, it was not so for David. He received Bs and Cs in a brief stint at the academy, and by early 1969 let it be known that he wanted out.
Politics Across the United States
“I have realized that I have made a mistake and I do not want this type of career,” he wrote in January 1969 to Jack Brinkley, the congressman who had sponsored him. His plan was to attend the Georgia Institute of Technology “and try to play basketball.”
His basketball career never materialized, but Mr. Perdue would earn undergraduate and masters degrees at Georgia Tech. And over the next three decades, he would position himself on the winning side of a seismic economic shift sweeping the South.
A Global Man of the New South
Increasingly and inexorably, the region’s apparel and textile industry was turning to foreign contractors to manufacture its products. The disruption, which meant thousands of layoffs for low-skilled workers in Southern mill towns, was Mr. Perdue’s ticket to the world. He became an expert in outsourcing.
“I spent most of my career doing that,” he would later say in a deposition.
His apprenticeship in outsourcing began while he was still in school. In 1972, he joined Kurt Salmon Associates, a consulting company that had earned its reputation sending bright young engineers into Southern clothing factories to solve technical problems and boost efficiency. The company had a large Atlanta office, and by the 1970s was aspiring to a more-global footprint.
The city was, too. Born as a regional railroad hub, Atlanta had begun adding international flights to its growing airport, creating yet more opportunities for a metropolis that had already rocketed past its Southern rivals, fueled by relentless civic boosterism and a reputation for racial moderation.
William Sand, an engineer who worked in the Atlanta office with Mr. Perdue, recalled that in the 1970s, as Southern factories were beginning to close, new ones were opening in Mexico and Asia. Kurt Salmon, he said, “became experts at helping companies source product from overseas.”
Mr. Perdue left in 1984 and worked at a few other places before ending up at Sara Lee, which was best known for its baked goods but was also an apparel manufacturer. He was hired in 1992 to open a headquarters in Hong Kong, where he lived for two years, establishing operations throughout Asia “from the ground up,” he would later say.
The ripple effects reached home. In 1994, the company eliminated thousands of jobs, including 230 at its Spring City Knitting plant in Cartersville, Ga. Most of the workers were women who earned $4.25 an hour sewing garments.
By that time, Mr. Perdue was globe-trotting with yet another company, Haggar Clothing, which had chosen him to lead its international operation with one aim — increasing foreign sourcing. Within three years, he had done just that, boosting international production from 60 percent to 75 percent. As company plants were closed in the United States, workers in Mexico performed the job for $1.50 an hour.
By 1998, Mr. Perdue was headed to Reebok, which ultimately promoted him to lead its main division as it forged licensing deals with the National Football League and the National Basketball Association. Major league teams, with their star power and marquee players, burnished Reebok’s cachet, leading to its acquisition by Adidas in 2005. The manufacturing of most of the company’s products was outsourced, primarily to China and elsewhere in Asia.
The 2014 video produced by Mr. Perdue’s Senate campaign — in which he discusses licensing agreements — portrays him as the architect of Reebok’s turnaround. Even in the wake of improvements in the company’s business, though, Reebok’s chairman, Paul Fireman, passed over Mr. Perdue for promotion to the company’s No. 2 job.
In December 2001, the company announced that Mr. Perdue, who as head of the Reebok brand had reported directly to Mr. Fireman, would instead report to Jay Margolis, who had formerly headed other brands for the company but was suddenly named chief operating officer.
“Paul Fireman decided he wanted one guy to run it all from a C.O.O. point of view,” said Kenneth Watchmaker, Reebok’s chief financial officer until 2006. “That’s where the two of them competed, and Jay got the nod and David left after a period of time.”
Mr. Margolis says that he and Mr. Fireman actually pushed out Mr. Perdue, who has characterized his departure from Reebok as voluntary. “I look back on David. He couldn’t make decisions. He was so indecisive, he couldn’t move the product forward,” Mr. Margolis said.
As for the licensing deals, Mr. Margolis said those were the brainchild of Mr. Fireman.
Mr. Fireman, reached by phone, said, “I don’t remember firing him.” He added: “I’m not challenging Jay’s recollection; I just don’t remember myself.”
Mr. Fireman did not address a question about the extent to which Mr. Perdue was involved in turning around the brands. A long time has passed since then, he said. “David was a good, solid employee for the four or five years he was with me at a high level,” Mr. Fireman said. “And I knew him as a good person.”
Within months of Mr. Margolis’s promotion, Mr. Perdue was in discussions with a headhunter seeking an executive with the know-how and experience to turn around Pillowtex, a troubled sheet and towel manufacturer with well-known brands in its portfolio, including Cannon, Fieldcrest and Royal Velvet.
Leaving behind what he would later describe as $5 million worth of “in-the-money unvested” Reebok stock options, Mr. Perdue agreed in spring 2002 to take the job as chief executive of Pillowtex.
The company was just emerging from bankruptcy, and thousands of workers at its home base in Kannapolis, N.C., viewed Mr. Perdue as a potential savior, according to Scott Shimizu, a former executive vice president. Looking back, though, Mr. Shimizu said he believed Mr. Perdue’s inaction led to the company’s demise.
The company needed to sell off assets quickly and outsource production to survive — with the possibility of retaining part of its United States work force — but Mr. Shimizu says Mr. Perdue took few steps to do either.
“He didn’t really help us,” said Mr. Shimizu. “We were waiting for him to bring the Ten Commandments to us. They never came.”
Mr. Perdue would later say he had been misled about the depth of the company’s financial problems, including a badly underfunded pension plan. He became embroiled in a dispute with Pillowtex over its failure to live up to the compensation agreement he had negotiated.
The company imploded, and about 7,650 people lost their jobs, most of them in North Carolina. The Charlotte Observer called it the largest mass layoff in state history. The hard feelings toward Mr. Perdue were rife in Kannapolis, and in 2014, his Democratic Senate opponent, Michelle Nunn, would release an ad set there highlighting the bitterness.
Mr. Perdue, who had been at Pillowtex less than a year, soon found a new opportunity that would also touch large numbers of working-class people: at Dollar General. The company boasts that 25 percent of its products retail for less than $1.
As chief executive, Mr. Perdue oversaw the opening of a Hong Kong office in 2004, increasing the “global sourcing” that “helps to provide the low everyday price our customers count on,” according to a company announcement. Among the global sources were manufacturers in China, records show.
Low wages were another way the company controlled costs. Store managers sued the company, complaining that they were not paid overtime, even though they took on nonmanagerial duties, unloading trucks and stocking shelves after hours. Some of their claims, as well as legal complaints from female workers who said they were inequitably compensated, resulted in payouts.
Dollar General flourished under Mr. Perdue’s leadership, adding more than 2,000 stores and expanding the use of coolers to stock more grocery items. Former colleagues who visited Mr. Perdue at the company’s Tennessee headquarters said it was apparent he was preparing Dollar General for acquisition. In 2007, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company announced it would purchase Dollar General for about $7 billion. It was later reported that Mr. Perdue walked away with a $42 million payout.
The Perdue family had lived in Nashville’s tony Belle Meade section, but it was time to head back to Georgia, where Mr. Perdue would ultimately settle on Sea Island, a wealthy sanctuary on the southern coast.
‘The Outsider’
In 2010, as Sonny Perdue was finishing his second term as governor, he named his cousin David to the board of the Georgia Ports Authority.
About a year later, records show, the cousins formed a company called Perdue Partners, which in December 2012 acquired Benton Express, an Atlanta-based trucking company that had operated as a regional family business for nearly 80 years. They renamed it Benton Global and pledged to reinvigorate the business by drawing on overseas connections, and especially David Perdue’s ties to Asia, according to press reports and interviews with former employees.
The Perdues installed two loyalists of the former governor in top management positions and oversaw the purchase of new tractor-trailers. But the promised new international business never materialized, and the company, already suffering from flagging revenues, struggled to pay its bills. It closed abruptly in 2015, leaving more than 500 truck drivers, clerks and terminal workers unemployed.
As a member of the ports authority board, Mr. Perdue voted repeatedly on infrastructure improvements that might have benefited his trucking business, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. A spokesman for Mr. Perdue said at the time that none of the votes posed a conflict of interest or aided Mr. Perdue financially.
In 2013, Georgia’s senior senator, Saxby Chambliss, announced that he would not stand for re-election the next year. In David Perdue’s telling, he drove to see his cousin and tried to convince him to run. “Well, he told me he didn’t feel led to do so, but then he said I should consider running,” Mr. Perdue later recalled in an interview.
When Mr. Perdue decided to run, he recruited top aides from his cousin’s campaign staff. “David’s team was Sonny’s team,” said Jack Kingston, a longtime Republican congressman who also sought the vacant seat. Sonny Perdue, he said, was “very instrumental” in his cousin’s campaign.
For all that, David Perdue branded himself “the outsider”— the man with the real-world business savvy needed to effect change. The Republican primary was crowded with well-known and seasoned politicians, and Mr. Perdue attacked them for their seasoning, portraying them in ads as ineffectual, mewling babies.
"We were hoping that we could find an Achilles heel — he’s lazy, he’s going to say something stupid,” Mr. Kingston said of the campaign. “We found him to be pretty disciplined and hard-working. I have to give him good marks.”
After defeating Mr. Kingston in a primary runoff, Mr. Perdue went on to face Ms. Nunn, an executive at a nonprofit whose father, Sam Nunn, was a former Democratic senator from Georgia. Though both candidates benefited from famous family names, Ms. Nunn thought she might gain the upper hand by focusing on the negative effects of Mr. Perdue’s embrace of globalism.
A month before the election, a transcript surfaced of a nine-year-old deposition in which Mr. Perdue said he had spent “most of my career” outsourcing. Questioned by reporters, Mr. Perdue replied that he was “proud” of that record. “This is a part of American business, part of any business,” he said, adding, “People do that all day.”
Ms. Nunn pressed the point in her ads and on the debate stage. But she was the underdog, and 2014 proved to be a bad year for Democrats, burdened by a lack of enthusiasm for President Barack Obama and his signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act. Mr. Perdue blasted Mr. Obama’s handling of the Ebola virus crisis, and vowed to repeal Obamacare. He practically waltzed to victory.
The outsider arrived on Capitol Hill pushing a term-limit plan and railing against “career politicians,” to the annoyance of his fellow Georgia Republican, Senator Johnny Isakson, according to two people familiar with the views of Mr. Isakson, who had spent many years in politics and was gearing up for a third Senate run.
The record Mr. Perdue built was reliably conservative. He submitted a far-fetched — and, critics said, regressive — proposal to replace income taxes with sales taxes on goods and services. He proposed limits on the ability of immigrants to sponsor family members, instead giving priority to college-educated young people with high-paying jobs.
In the beginning, he also spoke and voted as one would expect a free trader to do. In 2015, he voted to give Mr. Obama enhanced powers to negotiate big trade agreements, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the most substantial trade accord since the North American Free Trade Agreement of the 1990s.
But Mr. Perdue was also early to see the potential in Mr. Trump, who offered a kind of mirror reflection of Mr. Perdue’s own political persona as chief executive change agent. The two men reportedly met at Trump Tower during Mr. Perdue’s 2014 run. And after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the senator could be unrestrained in his praise, at one point comparing the new president to Winston Churchill. “This guy, I think, is a historic person of destiny at a time and place in America when we’ve got to make a right-hand turn here,” Mr. Perdue said.
Mr. Perdue and his fellow Republicans quickly had to grapple with the president’s determination to break the party’s mold on global trade. Three days into his tenure, Mr. Trump tore up the Trans-Pacific Partnership, calling it “a rape of our country.”
Although Mr. Perdue’s campaign has said that he consistently supported the president’s America-first trade policies, the senator spoke out in 2017 against a Trump-backed plan to impose a “border adjustment tax” that would have raised taxes on companies that import goods into the United States. A year later, he criticized the president’s plan to impose steep tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum, calling for a “more targeted” strategy.
But by late 2019, as Mr. Perdue’s re-election bid on a ticket with Mr. Trump loomed, he seemed more amenable to the president’s approach.
“The tariffs are creating the opportunity for people to come to the table,” he said, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “For the first time in five decades, we are standing up to the Chinese and other trading partners around the world, and all we want is equal access and a level playing field.”
The crosscurrents on trade could be tricky, and suddenly Mr. Perdue’s globalist background made him susceptible to attacks from fellow conservatives. In September 2019, Lou Dobbs, the powerful pro-Trump TV personality, reported that Mr. Perdue and another senator were visiting Beijing, where, Mr. Dobbs warned, they “may well be undercutting U.S. and China trade negotiations” and progress made by the president. Mr. Dobbs noted Mr. Perdue’s outsourcing record.
A day later, Mr. Dobbs issued a correction, noting that Mr. Trump had approved the trip.
The China Problem
In 2016, Mr. Perdue had preached Republican unity as the divisive Mr. Trump began gaining ground in the G.O.P. primary. But the senator helped spark a civil war among Georgia Republicans in 2020 when he and his Georgia runoff-mate, Senator Kelly Loeffler, demanded the resignation of the state’s top elections official, a Republican, calling the election he oversaw an “embarrassment.”
More recently, the senators supported a failed Texas lawsuit that would have blocked the election result in Georgia, where President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. beat Mr. Trump by about 12,000 votes, and in three other states Mr. Trump lost.
The battle over Mr. Perdue’s Senate seat has been no less fierce. Mr. Ossoff’s “crook” attack, in a televised debate in October, was based on disclosures that Mr. Perdue, the Senate’s most prolific stock trader, made a number of well-timed trades, including in companies that could be affected by his committee’s votes. An investigation of some of Mr. Perdue’s stock dealings by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission ended without prosecution, and Mr. Perdue has used those facts to argue that he has done nothing wrong.
Mr. Ossoff has revived criticism of Mr. Perdue’s outsourcing record. And the senator has also had to fend off charges of bigotry, for both his mockery of Ms. Harris’s name and an online campaign ad that showed a photo of Mr. Ossoff, who is Jewish, with a lengthened nose. Mr. Perdue’s campaign has called the image in the ad an accident caused by a “filter” applied by an outside vendor handling the graphic design.
For his part, Mr. Perdue’s closing attack is in keeping with Republicans’ emerging argument that Democrats like Mr. Ossoff are too weak, and in some cases too compromised, to stand up to the threat of Chinese global dominance.
Mr. Ossoff, Mr. Perdue contends, is a radical left-winger with a grave “China problem.” He cites as proof a $1,000 agreement that allowed a large media company in Hong Kong, PCCW, to rebroadcast a documentary Mr. Ossoff’s company produced about the Islamic State.
Previous reports have characterized one of PCCW’s investors, China Unicom, as a state-owned Chinese company, a point Mr. Perdue has used in an effort to tie Mr. Ossoff to the Chinese Communist Party.
“For two years, he worked with the C.C.P.,” the senator said in a Fox News interview.
Mr. Perdue has said little about his own China ties.
In 1991, the year before he headed to Hong Kong to build Sara Lee’s Asian outsourcing operation “from the ground up,” the company proudly announced a new foothold in Asia — a deal in Fuzhou, China.
The joint venture, Fujian Sara Lee Consumer Products, manufactured toothpaste, shampoo and other personal care products. It was partially owned by the Chinese government, according to a report in The Chicago Tribune announcing the venture.
As the Fujian arrangement continued, Mr. Perdue busied himself with building Sara Lee’s first centralized sourcing operation in Asia, including in mainland China, he said in a deposition in 2005. That involved lining up suppliers and overseeing quality control and human rights practices for the company, which manufactured Hanes clothing, among other things.
No American firm could have established such an operation in China at that time without dealing extensively with the government or the Communist Party, industry experts said.
“You don’t just wander into China without central government and local party officials wanting to know what you’re doing,” said Michael Posner, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and a top human rights official during the Obama administration. “It’s a very controlled environment. And anybody there who is dealing with factories would have had to deal with that.” (While some of its products remain on the market, Sara Lee has since disbanded.)
This week, The Times asked Mr. Perdue’s campaign if he had any other business involving the Chinese government.
The campaign declined to answer.
Kate Kelly and Jannat Batra contributed reporting. Susan Beachy, Kitty Bennett and Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
|
By Stephanie Saul, Richard Fausset and Michael LaForgia
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 6, 2021
The biographical video from Senator David Perdue’s first campaign, in 2014, celebrated a narrative arc that many fellow Georgians either related to or have aspired to: the story of a humble boy from rural America whose hard work catapulted him into a global business career, navigating free markets and faraway lands, all the while gathering stores of wisdom and wealth.
The embrace of global commerce has been a hallmark of modern
|
Georgia, showcased in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, dissected by the novelist Tom Wolfe and promoted by, among others, Mr. Perdue’s Nafta-loving cousin, Sonny Perdue, governor from 2003 to 2011. Three years later, in his maiden run for office, David Perdue would boast of his international experience as a consultant and chief executive while speaking to a gathering of Republicans in Bibb County, close to his middle Georgia hometown.
“There’s only one candidate in this race that’s ever lived outside the United States,” Mr. Perdue said. “How can you bring value to a debate about the economy unless you have any understanding about the free-enterprise system and what it takes to compete in the global economy?”
Now, facing one of a pair of Jan. 5 runoff elections in Georgia that will determine control of the Senate, Mr. Perdue has continued to make his global business experience the essence of his brand. But that has highlighted the contradictions that emerge — in his career and in his character, but also in his party and his region — as he embraces the populist, America-first strains of Trumpism.
The man who has lately voiced support for some of President Trump’s signature tariffs built his career as an unapologetic, free-trading practitioner of the outsourcing arts. As a top executive at companies including Reebok, Sara Lee and Dollar General, he was often deeply involved in the shift of manufacturing, and jobs, to low-wage factories in China and other Asian countries.
A review of that business record shows a man who achieved significant successes, making millions, managing complex periods of corporate growth and change and creating domestic jobs, particularly at Dollar General. But there were also disappointments, like the failed trucking business he ran with Sonny Perdue and his fruitless effort to rescue a company called Pillowtex that brought heartbreak to a North Carolina mill town. And while the senator often speaks of having led “the Reebok turnaround” as president of the company’s flagship brand in the early 2000s, he moved on from the company after a rival, who today questions Mr. Perdue’s contribution to the turnaround, was installed above him.
The man who spent much of his life broadening his horizons took to the stage at a Trump rally in Macon before Election Day and mocked Senator Kamala Harris’s first name, mispronouncing it with an exaggerated stumble that to critics amounted to crude racism. His campaign has called it an innocent mispronunciation.
The man who dons a faded denim jacket to reinforce his connection to everyday Georgians has a record of aloofness, with an aversion to holding town hall meetings and a thin skin for tough questions. Now he has chosen a further withdrawal, declining to participate in additional debates after one in which his Democratic opponent, Jon Ossoff, called him a “crook” for his prolific stock-trading while in the Senate.
Mr. Perdue did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this article. In response to written questions, his campaign issued a statement that said, in part, “Throughout his four decades working in the real world before being elected to the Senate, David Perdue led American companies that saved and created tens of thousands of American jobs.”
As when he first ran for office six years ago, Mr. Perdue, who is 71, regularly invokes those decades in business to style himself the ultimate Washington “outsider,” though it was his cousin the former governor who gave him his entree to politics and helped nurture his ascent.
Taking aim at his 33-year-old opponent, who runs a London-based documentary film company and has never held public office, Mr. Perdue’s campaign has fixed on a $1,000 payment from a Hong Kong media company to charge that Mr. Ossoff had a two-year working relationship with the Chinese Communist Party.
In its statement to The New York Times, most of which dwelled on Mr. Ossoff, the Perdue campaign called it “ridiculous” to compare the senator’s “leadership in American companies with Jon Ossoff’s foreign-owned company with shady ties to the Chinese government.” (Mr. Ossoff’s spokeswoman dismissed that claim as “one of the most laughable smear campaigns in Georgia history.”)
Mr. Perdue’s campaign’s biographical video, meanwhile, has been refreshed for 2020. Edited out is a section that showed the senator posing with his wife on China’s Great Wall.
From a Watermelon Patch to the World
Mr. Perdue grew up in Warner Robins, a small city about 100 miles south of Atlanta, home to Robins Air Force Base. Airmen coming and going from foreign deployments connected the city to the wider world.
But life could still move to rural rhythms. Mr. Perdue traces his roots back to nearby Bonaire, a farming community where Perdues settled in the early 1800s. Mr. Perdue recalls picking watermelons on a family-owned farm alongside Sonny, who would become Mr. Trump’s agriculture secretary in 2017.
While farming was a family pursuit, Mr. Perdue’s parents followed a different path — education. David Perdue Sr. eventually became county schools superintendent.
Mr. Perdue would later go on to extol his father’s leadership in desegregating the county’s schools, but the historical record provides a different picture, revealing the school system employed delay tactics until the N.A.A.C.P. sued and a court ordered it to comply.
The future senator graduated from high school in 1968, two years before the schools were fully integrated. Standout student, varsity athlete and class president, he was awarded a coveted appointment to the Air Force Academy.
“David has those personal traits that cause him to be recognized as a person of worth,” his high school principal, Milton Sutherlin, wrote in a recommendation letter. “His character is that always of a gentleman, and he holds high those Christian ideals that speak well of his home training, his school and his community.”
But while the Air Force would prove a good fit for his cousin Sonny, who served three years and was promoted to the rank of captain, it was not so for David. He received Bs and Cs in a brief stint at the academy, and by early 1969 let it be known that he wanted out.
Politics Across the United States
“I have realized that I have made a mistake and I do not want this type of career,” he wrote in January 1969 to Jack Brinkley, the congressman who had sponsored him. His plan was to attend the Georgia Institute of Technology “and try to play basketball.”
His basketball career never materialized, but Mr. Perdue would earn undergraduate and masters degrees at Georgia Tech. And over the next three decades, he would position himself on the winning side of a seismic economic shift sweeping the South.
A Global Man of the New South
Increasingly and inexorably, the region’s apparel and textile industry was turning to foreign contractors to manufacture its products. The disruption, which meant thousands of layoffs for low-skilled workers in Southern mill towns, was Mr. Perdue’s ticket to the world. He became an expert in outsourcing.
“I spent most of my career doing that,” he would later say in a deposition.
His apprenticeship in outsourcing began while he was still in school. In 1972, he joined Kurt Salmon Associates, a consulting company that had earned its reputation sending bright young engineers into Southern clothing factories to solve technical problems and boost efficiency. The company had a large Atlanta office, and by the 1970s was aspiring to a more-global footprint.
The city was, too. Born as a regional railroad hub, Atlanta had begun adding international flights to its growing airport, creating yet more opportunities for a metropolis that had already rocketed past its Southern rivals, fueled by relentless civic boosterism and a reputation for racial moderation.
William Sand, an engineer who worked in the Atlanta office with Mr. Perdue, recalled that in the 1970s, as Southern factories were beginning to close, new ones were opening in Mexico and Asia. Kurt Salmon, he said, “became experts at helping companies source product from overseas.”
Mr. Perdue left in 1984 and worked at a few other places before ending up at Sara Lee, which was best known for its baked goods but was also an apparel manufacturer. He was hired in 1992 to open a headquarters in Hong Kong, where he lived for two years, establishing operations throughout Asia “from the ground up,” he would later say.
The ripple effects reached home. In 1994, the company eliminated thousands of jobs, including 230 at its Spring City Knitting plant in Cartersville, Ga. Most of the workers were women who earned $4.25 an hour sewing garments.
By that time, Mr. Perdue was globe-trotting with yet another company, Haggar Clothing, which had chosen him to lead its international operation with one aim — increasing foreign sourcing. Within three years, he had done just that, boosting international production from 60 percent to 75 percent. As company plants were closed in the United States, workers in Mexico performed the job for $1.50 an hour.
By 1998, Mr. Perdue was headed to Reebok, which ultimately promoted him to lead its main division as it forged licensing deals with the National Football League and the National Basketball Association. Major league teams, with their star power and marquee players, burnished Reebok’s cachet, leading to its acquisition by Adidas in 2005. The manufacturing of most of the company’s products was outsourced, primarily to China and elsewhere in Asia.
The 2014 video produced by Mr. Perdue’s Senate campaign — in which he discusses licensing agreements — portrays him as the architect of Reebok’s turnaround. Even in the wake of improvements in the company’s business, though, Reebok’s chairman, Paul Fireman, passed over Mr. Perdue for promotion to the company’s No. 2 job.
In December 2001, the company announced that Mr. Perdue, who as head of the Reebok brand had reported directly to Mr. Fireman, would instead report to Jay Margolis, who had formerly headed other brands for the company but was suddenly named chief operating officer.
“Paul Fireman decided he wanted one guy to run it all from a C.O.O. point of view,” said Kenneth Watchmaker, Reebok’s chief financial officer until 2006. “That’s where the two of them competed, and Jay got the nod and David left after a period of time.”
Mr. Margolis says that he and Mr. Fireman actually pushed out Mr. Perdue, who has characterized his departure from Reebok as voluntary. “I look back on David. He couldn’t make decisions. He was so indecisive, he couldn’t move the product forward,” Mr. Margolis said.
As for the licensing deals, Mr. Margolis said those were the brainchild of Mr. Fireman.
Mr. Fireman, reached by phone, said, “I don’t remember firing him.” He added: “I’m not challenging Jay’s recollection; I just don’t remember myself.”
Mr. Fireman did not address a question about the extent to which Mr. Perdue was involved in turning around the brands. A long time has passed since then, he said. “David was a good, solid employee for the four or five years he was with me at a high level,” Mr. Fireman said. “And I knew him as a good person.”
Within months of Mr. Margolis’s promotion, Mr. Perdue was in discussions with a headhunter seeking an executive with the know-how and experience to turn around Pillowtex, a troubled sheet and towel manufacturer with well-known brands in its portfolio, including Cannon, Fieldcrest and Royal Velvet.
Leaving behind what he would later describe as $5 million worth of “in-the-money unvested” Reebok stock options, Mr. Perdue agreed in spring 2002 to take the job as chief executive of Pillowtex.
The company was just emerging from bankruptcy, and thousands of workers at its home base in Kannapolis, N.C., viewed Mr. Perdue as a potential savior, according to Scott Shimizu, a former executive vice president. Looking back, though, Mr. Shimizu said he believed Mr. Perdue’s inaction led to the company’s demise.
The company needed to sell off assets quickly and outsource production to survive — with the possibility of retaining part of its United States work force — but Mr. Shimizu says Mr. Perdue took few steps to do either.
“He didn’t really help us,” said Mr. Shimizu. “We were waiting for him to bring the Ten Commandments to us. They never came.”
Mr. Perdue would later say he had been misled about the depth of the company’s financial problems, including a badly underfunded pension plan. He became embroiled in a dispute with Pillowtex over its failure to live up to the compensation agreement he had negotiated.
The company imploded, and about 7,650 people lost their jobs, most of them in North Carolina. The Charlotte Observer called it the largest mass layoff in state history. The hard feelings toward Mr. Perdue were rife in Kannapolis, and in 2014, his Democratic Senate opponent, Michelle Nunn, would release an ad set there highlighting the bitterness.
Mr. Perdue, who had been at Pillowtex less than a year, soon found a new opportunity that would also touch large numbers of working-class people: at Dollar General. The company boasts that 25 percent of its products retail for less than $1.
As chief executive, Mr. Perdue oversaw the opening of a Hong Kong office in 2004, increasing the “global sourcing” that “helps to provide the low everyday price our customers count on,” according to a company announcement. Among the global sources were manufacturers in China, records show.
Low wages were another way the company controlled costs. Store managers sued the company, complaining that they were not paid overtime, even though they took on nonmanagerial duties, unloading trucks and stocking shelves after hours. Some of their claims, as well as legal complaints from female workers who said they were inequitably compensated, resulted in payouts.
Dollar General flourished under Mr. Perdue’s leadership, adding more than 2,000 stores and expanding the use of coolers to stock more grocery items. Former colleagues who visited Mr. Perdue at the company’s Tennessee headquarters said it was apparent he was preparing Dollar General for acquisition. In 2007, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company announced it would purchase Dollar General for about $7 billion. It was later reported that Mr. Perdue walked away with a $42 million payout.
The Perdue family had lived in Nashville’s tony Belle Meade section, but it was time to head back to Georgia, where Mr. Perdue would ultimately settle on Sea Island, a wealthy sanctuary on the southern coast.
‘The Outsider’
In 2010, as Sonny Perdue was finishing his second term as governor, he named his cousin David to the board of the Georgia Ports Authority.
About a year later, records show, the cousins formed a company called Perdue Partners, which in December 2012 acquired Benton Express, an Atlanta-based trucking company that had operated as a regional family business for nearly 80 years. They renamed it Benton Global and pledged to reinvigorate the business by drawing on overseas connections, and especially David Perdue’s ties to Asia, according to press reports and interviews with former employees.
The Perdues installed two loyalists of the former governor in top management positions and oversaw the purchase of new tractor-trailers. But the promised new international business never materialized, and the company, already suffering from flagging revenues, struggled to pay its bills. It closed abruptly in 2015, leaving more than 500 truck drivers, clerks and terminal workers unemployed.
As a member of the ports authority board, Mr. Perdue voted repeatedly on infrastructure improvements that might have benefited his trucking business, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. A spokesman for Mr. Perdue said at the time that none of the votes posed a conflict of interest or aided Mr. Perdue financially.
In 2013, Georgia’s senior senator, Saxby Chambliss, announced that he would not stand for re-election the next year. In David Perdue’s telling, he drove to see his cousin and tried to convince him to run. “Well, he told me he didn’t feel led to do so, but then he said I should consider running,” Mr. Perdue later recalled in an interview.
When Mr. Perdue decided to run, he recruited top aides from his cousin’s campaign staff. “David’s team was Sonny’s team,” said Jack Kingston, a longtime Republican congressman who also sought the vacant seat. Sonny Perdue, he said, was “very instrumental” in his cousin’s campaign.
For all that, David Perdue branded himself “the outsider”— the man with the real-world business savvy needed to effect change. The Republican primary was crowded with well-known and seasoned politicians, and Mr. Perdue attacked them for their seasoning, portraying them in ads as ineffectual, mewling babies.
"We were hoping that we could find an Achilles heel — he’s lazy, he’s going to say something stupid,” Mr. Kingston said of the campaign. “We found him to be pretty disciplined and hard-working. I have to give him good marks.”
After defeating Mr. Kingston in a primary runoff, Mr. Perdue went on to face Ms. Nunn, an executive at a nonprofit whose father, Sam Nunn, was a former Democratic senator from Georgia. Though both candidates benefited from famous family names, Ms. Nunn thought she might gain the upper hand by focusing on the negative effects of Mr. Perdue’s embrace of globalism.
A month before the election, a transcript surfaced of a nine-year-old deposition in which Mr. Perdue said he had spent “most of my career” outsourcing. Questioned by reporters, Mr. Perdue replied that he was “proud” of that record. “This is a part of American business, part of any business,” he said, adding, “People do that all day.”
Ms. Nunn pressed the point in her ads and on the debate stage. But she was the underdog, and 20
|
4. Without Trump, or Masks, Mar-a-Lago Partied On.txt
|
By Michael Crowley
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Feb. 9, 2021
President Trump’s private social club in Palm Beach, Fla., hosted a New Year’s Eve gala at which revelers without masks dined indoors and danced to performances by Vanilla Ice and members of the Beach Boys.
Mr. Trump himself did not attend the black-tie party at the club, Mar-a-Lago, as he usually does, instead cutting short his holiday vacation and returning to Washington on Thursday without explanation.
But members of the president’s family and extended political circle partied on anyway at an event that flouted warnings against indoor gatherings during the holidays as the coronavirus surges to its deadliest levels yet. The gala also appeared to violate specific guidelines posted on the Palm Beach County website mandating facial coverings in “all businesses and establishments.”
Attendees included Mr. Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and his girlfriend, the former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle. Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer and a former New York mayor, was shown in online footage ballroom-dancing with a female partner to a rendition of “New York, New York.” More than 500 guests were expected, according to The Palm Beach Post.
“Ok this is amazing. Vanilla Ice is playing the Mar-a-Lago New Years Eve party,” the younger Mr. Trump wrote in a Facebook post that included a clip of the 53-year-old rapper, best known for his smash hit “Ice Ice Baby,” performing before hundreds of closely packed revelers dancing awkwardly in formal wear and without masks. “As a child of the 90s you can’t fathom how awesome that is. Beyond that I got the birthday shoutout so that’s pretty amazing.”
Sign up for the On Politics newsletter. Your guide to the 2024 elections. Get it sent to your inbox.
Other guests included Mr. Trump’s second son, Eric, and his wife, Lara; the president’s daughter Tiffany Trump; Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida; and Mike Lindell, the Palm Beach-based chief executive of MyPillow and a prominent supporter of the president.
Social media posts from the event also showed live performances by Teri Nunn, the lead singer of the 1970s and ’80s new-wave band Berlin, famous for the song “Take My Breath Away,” and two members of the Beach Boys, who now perform without the founding members Al Jardine and Brian Wilson. (Mr. Jardine and Mr. Wilson have disavowed performances that the touring version of the group, fronted by another founding member, Mike Love, has played in support of Mr. Trump.)
A menu posted on Instagram by one attendee showed a first course of “Mr. Trump’s Wedge Salad,” followed by cheese tortellini and a Wagyu beef entree.
Tickets to the event reportedly cost $1,000. Many were most likely sold days before the first news reports emerged on Wednesday that Mr. Trump would not attend.
One photo posted online by Eric Trump featured at least 15 party guests and one server in the background. Only the server wore a mask.
Mr. Trump and the first lady, Melania Trump, unexpectedly returned to the White House hours before the party, which he had originally planned to attend. It was unclear why Mr. Trump flew back to Washington, where he has not appeared in public since his return.
As the new year approached on Thursday night, Mr. Trump’s mind was on his election defeat as he continued to spread false claims of voter fraud. Less than 15 minutes before midnight, as millions of Americans were preparing to toast the arrival of 2021, Mr. Trump tweeted two clips from the right-wing One America News Network promoting conspiracy theories about the election.
On Friday, Mr. Trump continued to send election-related tweets, including several promoting a protest rally in Washington on Jan. 6, when Congress will convene to formally certify the election of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Mr. Trump also tweeted a complaint after Congress voted for the first time to override one of his vetoes, upholding the passage of a sweeping military spending bill. The president complained that the measure did not repeal a law shielding technology companies like Facebook and Twitter from liability for their users’ posts, and that Congress had not approved the larger economic stimulus checks he had demanded.
“Now they want to give people ravaged by the China Virus $600, rather than the $2000 which they so desperately need,” he wrote. “Not fair, or smart!”
|
By Michael Crowley
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Feb. 9, 2021
President Trump’s private social club in Palm Beach, Fla., hosted a New Year’s Eve gala at which revelers without masks dined indoors and danced to performances by Vanilla Ice and members of the Beach Boys.
Mr. Trump himself did not attend the black-tie party at the club, Mar-a-Lago, as he usually does, instead cutting short his holiday vacation and returning to Washington on Thursday without explanation.
But members of the president’s family and extended political circle partied on anyway
|
at an event that flouted warnings against indoor gatherings during the holidays as the coronavirus surges to its deadliest levels yet. The gala also appeared to violate specific guidelines posted on the Palm Beach County website mandating facial coverings in “all businesses and establishments.”
Attendees included Mr. Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and his girlfriend, the former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle. Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer and a former New York mayor, was shown in online footage ballroom-dancing with a female partner to a rendition of “New York, New York.” More than 500 guests were expected, according to The Palm Beach Post.
“Ok this is amazing. Vanilla Ice is playing the Mar-a-Lago New Years Eve party,” the younger Mr. Trump wrote in a Facebook post that included a clip of the 53-year-old rapper, best known for his smash hit “Ice Ice Baby,” performing before hundreds of closely packed revelers dancing awkwardly in formal wear and without masks. “As a child of the 90s you can’t fathom how awesome that is. Beyond that I got the birthday shoutout so that’s pretty amazing.”
Sign up for the On Politics newsletter. Your guide to the 2024 elections. Get it sent to your inbox.
Other guests included Mr. Trump’s second son, Eric, and his wife, Lara; the president’s daughter Tiffany Trump; Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida; and Mike Lindell, the Palm Beach-based chief executive of MyPillow and a prominent supporter of the president.
Social media posts from the event also showed live performances by Teri Nunn, the lead singer of the 1970s and ’80s new-wave band Berlin, famous for the song “Take My Breath Away,” and two members of the Beach Boys, who now perform without the founding members Al Jardine and Brian Wilson. (Mr. Jardine and Mr. Wilson have disavowed performances that the touring version of the group, fronted by another founding member, Mike Love, has played in support of Mr. Trump.)
A menu posted on Instagram by one attendee showed a first course of “Mr. Trump’s Wedge Salad,” followed by cheese tortellini and a Wagyu beef entree.
Tickets to the event reportedly cost $1,000. Many were most likely sold days before the first news reports emerged on Wednesday that Mr. Trump would not attend.
One photo posted online by Eric Trump featured at least 15 party guests and one server in the background. Only the server wore a mask.
Mr. Trump and the first lady, Melania Trump, unexpectedly returned to the White House hours before the party, which he had originally planned to attend. It was unclear why Mr. Trump flew back to Washington, where he has not appeared in public since his return.
As the new year approached on Thursday night, Mr. Trump’s mind was on his election defeat as he continued to spread false claims of voter fraud. Less than 15 minutes before midnight, as millions of Americans were preparing to toast the arrival of 2021, Mr. Trump tweeted two clips from the right-wing One America News Network promoting conspiracy theories about the election.
On Friday, Mr. Trump continued to send election-related tweets, including several promoting a protest rally in Washington on Jan. 6, when Congress will convene to formally certify the election of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Mr. Trump also tweeted a complaint after Congress voted for the first time to override one of his vetoes, upholding the passage of a sweeping military spending bill. The president complained that the measure did not repeal a law shielding technology companies like Facebook and Twitter from liability for their users’ posts, and that Congress had not approved the larger economic stimulus checks he had demanded.
“Now they want to give people ravaged by the China Virus $600, rather than the $2000 which they so desperately need,” he wrote. “Not fair, or smart!”
|
33. Chief Justice John Roberts commends the courts’ responses to the pandemic..txt
|
By Adam Liptak
Jan. 1, 2021
The nation’s courts have reacted nimbly to the coronavirus pandemic, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in his year-end report on the state of the federal judiciary.
“For the past 10 months,” he wrote, “it has been all hands on deck for the courts, as our branch of government confronted the Covid-19 pandemic.”
“The last nationwide crisis came with the virulent outbreak of the Spanish flu in 1918, which led to cancellation of Supreme Court sessions,” he wrote. “But for more than a century, the courts have not had to respond to such a widespread public health emergency.”
It was an eventful year for Chief Justice Roberts, one that included presiding over the impeachment trial of President Trump, the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the arrival of Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The reconfigured court is a work in progress, but the addition of Justice Barrett will almost certainly diminish the chief justice’s power, as his vote is now no longer crucial when the justices are divided along ideological lines.
In reaction to the pandemic, the Supreme Court postponed arguments that had been scheduled for March and April, and in May it embarked on a bold experiment, hearing arguments by telephone and letting the public listen in, both firsts. The court has now heard some 40 arguments in the new format. Notwithstanding the occasional glitch, the proceedings were orderly and dignified if at times stilted and inert.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the new format allowed the court to function. “Although we look forward to returning to normal sittings in our courtroom,” the chief justice wrote, “we have been able to stay current in our work.”
By some measures, though, the court’s workload is dropping. An appendix to the chief justice’s report said the court issued only 53 signed opinions in argued cases in the term that ended in July. That is the smallest number since the 1860s. The current term seems poised to yield a similarly small number of opinions.
During the Spanish flu epidemic, in the term that started in 1918, the court decided 163 cases, or more than three times as many as the current court.
The Judiciary’s Approach to Covid-19
Read more about Chief Justice John Roberts’ year-end report and how Covid-19 impacted the judiciary.
|
By Adam Liptak
Jan. 1, 2021
The nation’s courts have reacted nimbly to the coronavirus pandemic, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in his year-end report on the state of the federal judiciary.
“For the past 10 months,” he wrote, “it has been all hands on deck for the courts, as our branch of government confronted the Covid-19 pandemic.”
“The last nationwide crisis came with the virulent outbreak of the Spanish flu in 1918, which led to cancellation of Supreme Court sessions,” he wrote. “But for more
|
than a century, the courts have not had to respond to such a widespread public health emergency.”
It was an eventful year for Chief Justice Roberts, one that included presiding over the impeachment trial of President Trump, the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the arrival of Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The reconfigured court is a work in progress, but the addition of Justice Barrett will almost certainly diminish the chief justice’s power, as his vote is now no longer crucial when the justices are divided along ideological lines.
In reaction to the pandemic, the Supreme Court postponed arguments that had been scheduled for March and April, and in May it embarked on a bold experiment, hearing arguments by telephone and letting the public listen in, both firsts. The court has now heard some 40 arguments in the new format. Notwithstanding the occasional glitch, the proceedings were orderly and dignified if at times stilted and inert.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the new format allowed the court to function. “Although we look forward to returning to normal sittings in our courtroom,” the chief justice wrote, “we have been able to stay current in our work.”
By some measures, though, the court’s workload is dropping. An appendix to the chief justice’s report said the court issued only 53 signed opinions in argued cases in the term that ended in July. That is the smallest number since the 1860s. The current term seems poised to yield a similarly small number of opinions.
During the Spanish flu epidemic, in the term that started in 1918, the court decided 163 cases, or more than three times as many as the current court.
The Judiciary’s Approach to Covid-19
Read more about Chief Justice John Roberts’ year-end report and how Covid-19 impacted the judiciary.
|
2. Live Updates: Ohio State Routs Clemson, Will Meet Alabama for National Title.txt
|
Skip to content
Skip to site index
Live Updates: Ohio State Routs Clemson, Will Meet Alabama for National Title
Jan. 1, 2021
Image
Justin Fields threw six touchdowns for Ohio State.Credit...Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
Ohio State will meet Alabama in the national championship game on Jan. 11 after both teams won their College Football Playoff semifinals on Friday night.
Top-ranked Alabama, the Southeastern Conference champion, was the first to reach the title game with a 31-14 rout of No. 4 Notre Dame in the Rose Bowl.
No. 3 seed Ohio State followed with a 49-28 upset of No. 2 Clemson in the Sugar Bowl, behind a masterful performance from quarterback Justin Fields.
Here’s what to know:
Ohio State crushed Clemson and will play Alabama for the national title.
Justin Fields has thrown more touchdowns than incompletions.
Clemson keeps trying to close the gap, but Ohio State is piling on.
Alan Blinder
Jan. 2, 2021, 12:03 a.m. ETJan. 2, 2021
Jan. 2, 2021, 12:03 a.m. ET
Alan Blinder
Ohio State crushed Clemson and will play Alabama for the national title.
Image
Justin Fields took a big hit, then quickly threw a big touchdown to allow Ohio State to extend its lead to 28-14.Credit...Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
Third-ranked Ohio State — dented this season by the coronavirus pandemic and maligned for a shortened schedule and a shaky pass defense — ousted No. 2 Clemson from the College Football Playoff on Friday night, routing the Tigers, 49-28, in the Sugar Bowl and vaulting into the national championship game.
The Buckeyes (7-0) will meet No. 1 Alabama, the winner of Friday’s Rose Bowl against Notre Dame, on Jan. 11. The Tigers, who reached and lost last season’s title game, will be left to consider how, for the second time in a year, their ambitions collapsed under the lights of the Superdome in New Orleans.
Clemson’s night began with promise as quarterback Trevor Lawrence led an eight-play, 82-yard drive for a touchdown. Ohio State’s night started with a three-and-out.
The Buckeyes, though, scored touchdowns on each of their ensuing five possessions, a dazzling, dizzying display of passing and rushing might. By the time the clock mercifully expired, after Clemson’s drives stalled and their comeback efforts fizzled, the Big Ten champion Buckeyes had 639 yards of offense, including 254 on the ground.
Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields, seemingly setting aside an injury from a hit that led the officials to disqualify a star Clemson defender, threw for 385 yards, including six touchdowns. He completed all but six of his 28 passes.
But Clemson, its offensive coordinator absent because he had tested positive for the coronavirus, had strikingly severe struggles on both sides of the ball. Lawrence, who is widely anticipated to become the No. 1 selection in the 2021 N.F.L. draft, lost for only the second time in his career as a starter. He threw for 400 yards with two touchdowns and an interception.
Travis Etienne, who holds the Atlantic Coast Conference’s record for career rushing yards, added 32 to his tally on Friday but fell short in his effort to reach 5,000 rushing yards during his four seasons at Clemson.
Indeed, the numbers that Clemson’s stars logged were nowhere near enough against an Ohio State offense whose potency went mostly unchecked.
The win propelled Ohio State into the title game for the first time since the 2014 season, when the playoff era debuted and the Buckeyes won the championship.
They had been left out ever since, with every national title game featuring Alabama, Clemson or both.
For its part, Alabama (12-0) had little difficulty dispatching No. 4 Notre Dame in the Rose Bowl, which was played in Texas because of public health restrictions connected to the pandemic. Alabama prevailed, 31-14, with its quarterback, Mac Jones, completing 83 percent of his passes.
DeVonta Smith, the Crimson Tide’s top receiver and, along with Jones, a finalist for the Heisman Trophy, had 130 receiving yards and caught three touchdowns. And Najee Harris, a running back, logged 125 rushing yards.
Alan Blinder
Jan. 1, 2021, 11:17 p.m. ETJan. 1, 2021
Jan. 1, 2021, 11:17 p.m. ET
Alan Blinder
Justin Fields has thrown more touchdowns than incompletions.
It’s ugly for Clemson and stunning for Justin Fields.
Despite an injury earlier in the Sugar Bowl, Fields just fired off a 45-yard pass to Jameson Williams for his sixth touchdown throw of Friday night. He’s passed for 385 yards and, having completed 22 of 26 throws, has more touchdowns than incompletions.
The score is 49-21, Ohio State, as the Sugar Bowl starting quarterback who didn’t make this season’s Heisman finalist cut seizes his moment in New Orleans.
Gillian R. Brassil
Jan. 1, 2021, 11:10 p.m. ETJan. 1, 2021
Jan. 1, 2021, 11:10 p.m. ET
Gillian R. Brassil
Clemson keeps trying to close the gap, but Ohio State is piling on.
An interception at the beginning of the third quarter allowed Clemson to be the first to put points up in a nine-play, 80-yard drive, culminating in a touchdown catch by Cornell Powell.
But that strong start was overshadowed by a 56-yard touchdown throw by Justin Fields, caught by wide receiver Chris Olave.
Then a fumble by Trevor Lawrence — which slipped through his fingers and took a little while to sort out on the field — followed by a sack on Fields, which had him limping for a second, both metaphorically summed up the game so far.
Ohio State is up 42-21 going into the final quarter.
Alan Blinder
Jan. 1, 2021, 10:51 p.m. ETJan. 1, 2021
Jan. 1, 2021, 10:51 p.m. ET
Alan Blinder
Ohio State strikes again, pushing its lead back to 21 points.
Image
Ohio State receiver Chris Olave caught a long touchdown from Justin Fields — 56 yards — to push the Buckeyes lead to 21 points.Credit...Butch Dill/Associated Press
On second thought, maybe Clemson should find the panic button (or push it again).
Not long after Clemson dodged a calamity on an Ohio State possession, Buckeyes quarterback Justin Fields threw a 56-yard pass to hit Chris Olave in the end zone. The throw propelled Ohio State’s total yardage for Friday night past 500 yards, with 329 of them through the air.
Clemson has 281 yards on the night.
The score is 42-21, Ohio State, with less than five minutes left in the third quarter.
Alan Blinder
Jan. 1, 2021, 10:37 p.m. ETJan. 1, 2021
Jan. 1, 2021, 10:37 p.m. ET
Alan Blinder
Clemson stepped just a bit back from the brink.
Image
Clemson wideout Cornell Powell, left, celebrates his touchdown with Trevor Lawrence, who threw it.Credit...Gerald Herbert/Associated Press
Clemson was about to press the panic button. Or maybe the Tigers did, and it quickly worked.
With Ohio State on the verge of scoring early in the third quarter, Mike Jones Jr. intercepted Justin Fields’s tipped pass in the end zone, extinguishing a drive that had moments earlier appeared poised to give the Buckeyes a 28-point lead.
But with Clemson still down by 21, Trevor Lawrence, one of the modern game’s finer quarterbacks, stood behind his offensive line, seemingly as unfazed as ever, and got to work.
He started with a 13-yard slant pass to E.J. Williams, a freshman wide receiver. Then a pass to Amari Rodgers for a nine-yard gain. Brannon Spector reached midfield when he caught an eight-yard pass. And so on.
Ultimately, on the ninth play of the drive, Cornell Powell rumbled into the end zone, his left hand gripping the ball and extending it over the goal line.
35-21, Ohio State. Clemson, though, has a bit of life with less than eight minutes to play in the third quarter.
Gillian R. Brassil
Jan. 1, 2021, 10:18 p.m. ETJan. 1, 2021
Jan. 1, 2021, 10:18 p.m. ET
Gillian R. Brassil
Two quarterbacks with friendly ties to Georgia joust for a win.
Image
Quarterback Trevor Lawrence rushed in the first touchdown for Clemson.Credit...Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
Justin Fields threw four touchdown passes; Trevor Lawrence rushed for one. While Lawrence has not had as much time with the ball, Fields seems lucky to still be playing.
Despite differences on the field tonight, the story of these two quarterbacks is actually quite similar.
Fields went to Harrison High School in Kennesaw, Ga., about a half-hour drive away from where Lawrence played in Cartersville. While Lawrence set himself apart at an early age — 3,042 yards and 26 touchdowns as a starting quarterback in his freshman year — Fields was slower to bloom.
“We have kind of been matched up for years going back to high school,” Lawrence said this week. “I haven’t really seen it as that. We’re just out here. We’re friends and we have a good relationship.”
Going into the second half of the Sugar Bowl, Ohio State is up, 35-14.
Lawrence and Fields trained with the same private coach in high school. In 2017, Lawrence broke Georgia’s record for passing yards and passing touchdowns, set by Deshaun Watson, who also went to Clemson. In two years as a starter for Harrison, Fields had 4,187 passing yards, 41 passing touchdowns, 2,096 rushing yards and 28 rushing touchdowns.
Both of them were five-star recruits going into college, with Lawrence signing to Clemson and Fields committing to Georgia. Lawrence found his footing fast while Fields transferred to Ohio State in 2019. The two quarterbacks faced off once more in the Fiesta Bowl, which Clemson won over Ohio State, 29-23.
“It is pretty self-explanatory that that game hurt us a lot last year,” Fields said this week. “So, that has kind of been our whole motivation this offseason.”
Lawrence has lost one game in his Clemson career — the national championship game against Louisiana State last season (he was out with the coronavirus when Clemson lost to Notre Dame earlier this season). Fields, during his tenure at Ohio State, has only lost to Clemson.
Last year, Fields was up for the Heisman Trophy but lost to Joe Burrow. This year, Lawrence has a shot though is up against some stiff competition, especially from two Alabama players.
Both Fields and Lawrence are considered likely to go in the top five of the 2021 N.F.L. draft — with Lawrence perhaps at No. 1 to the Jacksonville Jaguars and Fields to follow.
Alan Blinder
Jan. 1, 2021, 10:03 p.m. ETJan. 1, 2021
Jan. 1, 2021, 10:03 p.m. ET
Alan Blinder
Ohio State is in control — for now — in the Sugar Bowl.
Image
Clemson linebacker James Skalski was ejected in the first half for hitting Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields with the crown of his helmet.Credit...Butch Dill/Associated Press
Clemson, ordinarily sharp in virtually every way on the football field, is in trouble in New Orleans.
Yes, it’s only halftime. Yes, Trevor Lawrence is a quarterback whose offense can work rapid wonders. But the scoreboard says Ohio State is in front, 35-14, and a 21-point deficit to the third-ranked Buckeyes is hardly the scenario that the Tigers wanted.
And they’ve lost a crucial defender, James Skalski, to targeting. So with Ohio State leading at the intermission, here are a few quick takeaways.
All eyes on Justin Fields: The Ohio State quarterback struggled off the field in the wake of the hit that led to Skalski’s disqualification and retreated to a medical tent. He returned to the game, but his availability and condition in the second half could prove important if Clemson resurrects its offense and poses a significant threat.
At halftime, Fields was 16-for-18 with his passes and had thrown for 223 yards.
The Buckeyes also have a highlight-reel worthy running game: Ohio State ran for 171 yards in the first half. In the whole of the Big Ten championship, they put together 399 rushing yards, 305 of them in the second half. Trey Sermon is doing most of the running work so far in the Sugar Bowl, having rushed for 121 yards and a touchdown. He’s averaging about seven yards a carry.
Clemson doesn’t (at least tonight): The Tigers recorded only 44 rushing yards in the first half. They’ve averaged 164 a game this season.
Ugly drives for Clemson: Three possessions ended in three-and-outs. Clemson’s total yardage tonight: 201 yards.
Ohio State has already rolled up 394 and is set to get the ball to start the second half. One note of consolation for Clemson: The Tigers were down to Ohio State in the 2019 Fiesta Bowl before pulling off a victory that vaulted them into the national championship game.
Alan Blinder
Jan. 1, 2021, 9:39 p.m. ETJan. 1, 2021
Jan. 1, 2021, 9:39 p.m. ET
Alan Blinder
Justin Fields took a hard hit before Ohio State widened its lead.
Image
Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields was examined by team medical officials before and after throwing his third touchdown.Credit...Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
The biggest crisis of the night for Ohio State began and ended quickly — maybe.
Justin Fields, Ohio State’s quarterback, went down about midway through the second quarter after being hit hard at the end of an 11-yard run.
Fields left the field under his own power after medical officials evaluated him on the turf. Soon after, the officials issued a targeting call against James Skalski, a 240-pound linebacker from Sharpsburg, Ga.
Skalski was disqualified from the game and C.J. Stroud, a true freshman, took a snap for Ohio State. Then Fields returned and threw a nine-yard pass for a touchdown.
28-14, Ohio State.
But Fields struggled back to the sideline after the touchdown and was examined again by team medical officials.
Alan Blinder
Jan. 1, 2021, 9:18 p.m. ETJan. 1, 2021
Jan. 1, 2021, 9:18 p.m. ET
Alan Blinder
Ohio State takes the lead in New Orleans.
Image
Ohio State’s Jeremy Ruckert scoring on a 17-yard pass to give the Buckeyes a 21-14 lead.Credit...Chuck Cook/USA Today Sports, via Reuters
Ohio State has its first lead of the night. All it took was a 17-yard pass from Justin Fields to Jeremy Ruckert, a junior tight end.
Early in the second quarter, it’s clear that the Buckeyes are settling in at the Superdome: Since their opening possession, when they went three-and-out, they have finished the rest of their drives with touchdowns.
Fields did plenty of the work on the most recent drive for Ohio State, passing for 45 yards but also rushing for 17.
It took just over four minutes for Ohio State to go 84 yards.
Alan Blinder
Jan. 1, 2021, 9:04 p.m. ETJan. 1, 2021
Jan. 1, 2021, 9:04 p.m. ET
Alan Blinder
The offensive outcomes so far in the Sugar Bowl: touchdown or three-and-out.
Early verdict: The Sugar Bowl will not be a rerun of Friday’s Rose Bowl.
Clemson and Ohio State have been playing for less than 14 minutes in New Orleans. They’re tied at 14 apiece.
For College Football Playoff context, Alabama and Notre Dame combined for 45 points across 60 minutes in Texas, where the Rose Bowl was played because of public health restrictions in California.
It was always a safe bet that we’d see plenty of scoring in the Sugar Bowl — what else would you expect with Justin Fields and Trevor Lawrence starting at quarterback? — but these drives are efficient. (When Ohio State and Clemson met last season, Clemson prevailed 29-23.)
In the first quarter of Friday’s game, Clemson’s scoring drives took fewer than three minutes each. Ohio State proved even speedier with one touchdown, taking 72 seconds to score. By the standards of this game, the Buckeyes languished their way to a second touchdown, taking nearly three and a half minutes.
And it’s been feast or famine so far for both teams: They’ve either scored touchdowns or gone three-and-out.
Site Index
Site Information Navigation
© 2024 The New York Times Company
NYTCoContact UsAccessibilityWork with usAdvertiseT Brand StudioYour Ad ChoicesPrivacy PolicyTerms of ServiceTerms of SaleSite MapHelpSubscriptions
|
Skip to content
Skip to site index
Live Updates: Ohio State Routs Clemson, Will Meet Alabama for National Title
Jan. 1, 2021
Image
Justin Fields threw six touchdowns for Ohio State.Credit...Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
Ohio State will meet Alabama in the national championship game on Jan. 11 after both teams won their College Football Playoff semifinals on Friday night.
Top-ranked Alabama, the Southeastern Conference champion, was the first to reach the title game with a 31-14 rout of No. 4 Notre Dame in the Rose Bowl.
|
No. 3 seed Ohio State followed with a 49-28 upset of No. 2 Clemson in the Sugar Bowl, behind a masterful performance from quarterback Justin Fields.
Here’s what to know:
Ohio State crushed Clemson and will play Alabama for the national title.
Justin Fields has thrown more touchdowns than incompletions.
Clemson keeps trying to close the gap, but Ohio State is piling on.
Alan Blinder
Jan. 2, 2021, 12:03 a.m. ETJan. 2, 2021
Jan. 2, 2021, 12:03 a.m. ET
Alan Blinder
Ohio State crushed Clemson and will play Alabama for the national title.
Image
Justin Fields took a big hit, then quickly threw a big touchdown to allow Ohio State to extend its lead to 28-14.Credit...Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
Third-ranked Ohio State — dented this season by the coronavirus pandemic and maligned for a shortened schedule and a shaky pass defense — ousted No. 2 Clemson from the College Football Playoff on Friday night, routing the Tigers, 49-28, in the Sugar Bowl and vaulting into the national championship game.
The Buckeyes (7-0) will meet No. 1 Alabama, the winner of Friday’s Rose Bowl against Notre Dame, on Jan. 11. The Tigers, who reached and lost last season’s title game, will be left to consider how, for the second time in a year, their ambitions collapsed under the lights of the Superdome in New Orleans.
Clemson’s night began with promise as quarterback Trevor Lawrence led an eight-play, 82-yard drive for a touchdown. Ohio State’s night started with a three-and-out.
The Buckeyes, though, scored touchdowns on each of their ensuing five possessions, a dazzling, dizzying display of passing and rushing might. By the time the clock mercifully expired, after Clemson’s drives stalled and their comeback efforts fizzled, the Big Ten champion Buckeyes had 639 yards of offense, including 254 on the ground.
Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields, seemingly setting aside an injury from a hit that led the officials to disqualify a star Clemson defender, threw for 385 yards, including six touchdowns. He completed all but six of his 28 passes.
But Clemson, its offensive coordinator absent because he had tested positive for the coronavirus, had strikingly severe struggles on both sides of the ball. Lawrence, who is widely anticipated to become the No. 1 selection in the 2021 N.F.L. draft, lost for only the second time in his career as a starter. He threw for 400 yards with two touchdowns and an interception.
Travis Etienne, who holds the Atlantic Coast Conference’s record for career rushing yards, added 32 to his tally on Friday but fell short in his effort to reach 5,000 rushing yards during his four seasons at Clemson.
Indeed, the numbers that Clemson’s stars logged were nowhere near enough against an Ohio State offense whose potency went mostly unchecked.
The win propelled Ohio State into the title game for the first time since the 2014 season, when the playoff era debuted and the Buckeyes won the championship.
They had been left out ever since, with every national title game featuring Alabama, Clemson or both.
For its part, Alabama (12-0) had little difficulty dispatching No. 4 Notre Dame in the Rose Bowl, which was played in Texas because of public health restrictions connected to the pandemic. Alabama prevailed, 31-14, with its quarterback, Mac Jones, completing 83 percent of his passes.
DeVonta Smith, the Crimson Tide’s top receiver and, along with Jones, a finalist for the Heisman Trophy, had 130 receiving yards and caught three touchdowns. And Najee Harris, a running back, logged 125 rushing yards.
Alan Blinder
Jan. 1, 2021, 11:17 p.m. ETJan. 1, 2021
Jan. 1, 2021, 11:17 p.m. ET
Alan Blinder
Justin Fields has thrown more touchdowns than incompletions.
It’s ugly for Clemson and stunning for Justin Fields.
Despite an injury earlier in the Sugar Bowl, Fields just fired off a 45-yard pass to Jameson Williams for his sixth touchdown throw of Friday night. He’s passed for 385 yards and, having completed 22 of 26 throws, has more touchdowns than incompletions.
The score is 49-21, Ohio State, as the Sugar Bowl starting quarterback who didn’t make this season’s Heisman finalist cut seizes his moment in New Orleans.
Gillian R. Brassil
Jan. 1, 2021, 11:10 p.m. ETJan. 1, 2021
Jan. 1, 2021, 11:10 p.m. ET
Gillian R. Brassil
Clemson keeps trying to close the gap, but Ohio State is piling on.
An interception at the beginning of the third quarter allowed Clemson to be the first to put points up in a nine-play, 80-yard drive, culminating in a touchdown catch by Cornell Powell.
But that strong start was overshadowed by a 56-yard touchdown throw by Justin Fields, caught by wide receiver Chris Olave.
Then a fumble by Trevor Lawrence — which slipped through his fingers and took a little while to sort out on the field — followed by a sack on Fields, which had him limping for a second, both metaphorically summed up the game so far.
Ohio State is up 42-21 going into the final quarter.
Alan Blinder
Jan. 1, 2021, 10:51 p.m. ETJan. 1, 2021
Jan. 1, 2021, 10:51 p.m. ET
Alan Blinder
Ohio State strikes again, pushing its lead back to 21 points.
Image
Ohio State receiver Chris Olave caught a long touchdown from Justin Fields — 56 yards — to push the Buckeyes lead to 21 points.Credit...Butch Dill/Associated Press
On second thought, maybe Clemson should find the panic button (or push it again).
Not long after Clemson dodged a calamity on an Ohio State possession, Buckeyes quarterback Justin Fields threw a 56-yard pass to hit Chris Olave in the end zone. The throw propelled Ohio State’s total yardage for Friday night past 500 yards, with 329 of them through the air.
Clemson has 281 yards on the night.
The score is 42-21, Ohio State, with less than five minutes left in the third quarter.
Alan Blinder
Jan. 1, 2021, 10:37 p.m. ETJan. 1, 2021
Jan. 1, 2021, 10:37 p.m. ET
Alan Blinder
Clemson stepped just a bit back from the brink.
Image
Clemson wideout Cornell Powell, left, celebrates his touchdown with Trevor Lawrence, who threw it.Credit...Gerald Herbert/Associated Press
Clemson was about to press the panic button. Or maybe the Tigers did, and it quickly worked.
With Ohio State on the verge of scoring early in the third quarter, Mike Jones Jr. intercepted Justin Fields’s tipped pass in the end zone, extinguishing a drive that had moments earlier appeared poised to give the Buckeyes a 28-point lead.
But with Clemson still down by 21, Trevor Lawrence, one of the modern game’s finer quarterbacks, stood behind his offensive line, seemingly as unfazed as ever, and got to work.
He started with a 13-yard slant pass to E.J. Williams, a freshman wide receiver. Then a pass to Amari Rodgers for a nine-yard gain. Brannon Spector reached midfield when he caught an eight-yard pass. And so on.
Ultimately, on the ninth play of the drive, Cornell Powell rumbled into the end zone, his left hand gripping the ball and extending it over the goal line.
35-21, Ohio State. Clemson, though, has a bit of life with less than eight minutes to play in the third quarter.
Gillian R. Brassil
Jan. 1, 2021, 10:18 p.m. ETJan. 1, 2021
Jan. 1, 2021, 10:18 p.m. ET
Gillian R. Brassil
Two quarterbacks with friendly ties to Georgia joust for a win.
Image
Quarterback Trevor Lawrence rushed in the first touchdown for Clemson.Credit...Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
Justin Fields threw four touchdown passes; Trevor Lawrence rushed for one. While Lawrence has not had as much time with the ball, Fields seems lucky to still be playing.
Despite differences on the field tonight, the story of these two quarterbacks is actually quite similar.
Fields went to Harrison High School in Kennesaw, Ga., about a half-hour drive away from where Lawrence played in Cartersville. While Lawrence set himself apart at an early age — 3,042 yards and 26 touchdowns as a starting quarterback in his freshman year — Fields was slower to bloom.
“We have kind of been matched up for years going back to high school,” Lawrence said this week. “I haven’t really seen it as that. We’re just out here. We’re friends and we have a good relationship.”
Going into the second half of the Sugar Bowl, Ohio State is up, 35-14.
Lawrence and Fields trained with the same private coach in high school. In 2017, Lawrence broke Georgia’s record for passing yards and passing touchdowns, set by Deshaun Watson, who also went to Clemson. In two years as a starter for Harrison, Fields had 4,187 passing yards, 41 passing touchdowns, 2,096 rushing yards and 28 rushing touchdowns.
Both of them were five-star recruits going into college, with Lawrence signing to Clemson and Fields committing to Georgia. Lawrence found his footing fast while Fields transferred to Ohio State in 2019. The two quarterbacks faced off once more in the Fiesta Bowl, which Clemson won over Ohio State, 29-23.
“It is pretty self-explanatory that that game hurt us a lot last year,” Fields said this week. “So, that has kind of been our whole motivation this offseason.”
Lawrence has lost one game in his Clemson career — the national championship game against Louisiana State last season (he was out with the coronavirus when Clemson lost to Notre Dame earlier this season). Fields, during his tenure at Ohio State, has only lost to Clemson.
Last year, Fields was up for the Heisman Trophy but lost to Joe Burrow. This year, Lawrence has a shot though is up against some stiff competition, especially from two Alabama players.
Both Fields and Lawrence are considered likely to go in the top five of the 2021 N.F.L. draft — with Lawrence perhaps at No. 1 to the Jacksonville Jaguars and Fields to follow.
Alan Blinder
Jan. 1, 2021, 10:03 p.m. ETJan. 1, 2021
Jan. 1, 2021, 10:03 p.m. ET
Alan Blinder
Ohio State is in control — for now — in the Sugar Bowl.
Image
Clemson linebacker James Skalski was ejected in the first half for hitting Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields with the crown of his helmet.Credit...Butch Dill/Associated Press
Clemson, ordinarily sharp in virtually every way on the football field, is in trouble in New Orleans.
Yes, it’s only halftime. Yes, Trevor Lawrence is a quarterback whose offense can work rapid wonders. But the scoreboard says Ohio State is in front, 35-14, and a 21-point deficit to the third-ranked Buckeyes is hardly the scenario that the Tigers wanted.
And they’ve lost a crucial defender, James Skalski, to targeting. So with Ohio State leading at the intermission, here are a few quick takeaways.
All eyes on Justin Fields: The Ohio State quarterback struggled off the field in the wake of the hit that led to Skalski’s disqualification and retreated to a medical tent. He returned to the game, but his availability and condition in the second half could prove important if Clemson resurrects its offense and poses a significant threat.
At halftime, Fields was 16-for-18 with his passes and had thrown for 223 yards.
The Buckeyes also have a highlight-reel worthy running game: Ohio State ran for 171 yards in the first half. In the whole of the Big Ten championship, they put together 399 rushing yards, 305 of them in the second half. Trey Sermon is doing most of the running work so far in the Sugar Bowl, having rushed for 121 yards and a touchdown. He’s averaging about seven yards a carry.
Clemson doesn’t (at least tonight): The Tigers recorded only 44 rushing yards in the first half. They’ve averaged 164 a game this season.
Ugly drives for Clemson: Three possessions ended in three-and-outs. Clemson’s total yardage tonight: 201 yards.
Ohio State has already rolled up 394 and is set to get the ball to start the second half. One note of consolation for Clemson: The Tigers were down to Ohio State in the 2019 Fiesta Bowl before pulling off a victory that vaulted them into the national championship game.
Alan Blinder
Jan. 1, 2021, 9:39 p.m. ETJan. 1, 2021
Jan. 1, 2021, 9:39 p.m. ET
Alan Blinder
Justin Fields took a hard hit before Ohio State widened its lead.
Image
Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields was examined by team medical officials before and after throwing his third touchdown.Credit...Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
The biggest crisis of the night for Ohio State began and ended quickly — maybe.
Justin Fields, Ohio State’s quarterback, went down about midway through the second quarter after being hit hard at the end of an 11-yard run.
Fields left the field under his own power after medical officials evaluated him on the turf. Soon after, the officials issued a targeting call against James Skalski, a 240-pound linebacker from Sharpsburg, Ga.
Skalski was disqualified from the game and C.J. Stroud, a true freshman, took a snap for Ohio State. Then Fields returned and threw a nine-yard pass for a touchdown.
28-14, Ohio State.
But Fields struggled back to the sideline after the touchdown and was examined again by team medical officials.
Alan Blinder
Jan. 1, 2021, 9:18 p.m. ETJan. 1, 2021
Jan. 1, 2021, 9:18 p.m. ET
Alan Blinder
Ohio State takes the lead in New Orleans.
Image
Ohio State’s Jeremy Ruckert scoring on a 17-yard pass to give the Buckeyes a 21-14 lead.Credit...Chuck Cook/USA Today Sports, via Reuters
Ohio State has its first lead of the night. All it took was a 17-yard pass from Justin Fields to Jeremy Ruckert, a junior tight end.
Early in the second quarter, it’s clear that the Buckeyes are settling in at the Superdome: Since their opening possession, when they went three-and-out, they have finished the rest of their drives with touchdowns.
Fields did plenty of the work on the most recent drive for Ohio State, passing for 45 yards but also rushing for 17.
It took just over four minutes for Ohio State to go 84 yards.
Alan Blinder
Jan. 1, 2021, 9:04 p.m. ETJan. 1, 2021
Jan. 1, 2021, 9:04 p.m. ET
Alan Blinder
The offensive outcomes so far in the Sugar Bowl: touchdown or three-and-out.
Early verdict: The Sugar Bowl will not be a rerun of Friday’s Rose Bowl.
Clemson and Ohio State have been playing for less than 14 minutes in New Orleans. They’re tied at 14 apiece.
For College Football Playoff context, Alabama and Notre Dame combined for 45 points across 60 minutes in Texas, where the Rose Bowl was played because of public health restrictions in California.
It was always a safe bet that we’d see plenty of scoring in the Sugar Bowl — what else would you expect with Justin Fields and Trevor Lawrence starting at quarterback? — but these drives are efficient. (When Ohio State and Clemson met last season, Clemson prevailed 29-23.)
In the first quarter of Friday’s game, Clemson’s scoring drives took fewer than three minutes each. Ohio State proved even speedier with one touchdown, taking 72 seconds to score. By the standards of this game, the Buckeyes languished their way to a second touchdown, taking nearly three and a half minutes.
And it’s been feast or famine so far for both teams: They’ve either scored touchdowns or gone three-and-out.
Site Index
Site Information Navigation
© 2024 The New York Times Company
NYTCoContact UsAccessibilityWork with usAdvertiseT Brand StudioYour Ad ChoicesPrivacy PolicyTerms of ServiceTerms of SaleSite MapHelpSubscriptions
|
13. How Israel Became a World Leader in Vaccinating Against Covid-19.txt
|
By Isabel Kershner
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Oct. 3, 2021
JERUSALEM — More than 10 percent of Israel’s population has received a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, a rate that has far outstripped the rest of the world and buoyed the battered domestic image of the country’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, at a critical juncture.
Israel’s campaign, which began Dec. 20, has distributed the vaccine to three times as much of its population as the second-fastest nation, the tiny Persian Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, according to figures compiled mostly from local government sources by Our World in Data.
By contrast, less than 1 percent of the population of the United States and only small fractions of the population in many European countries received a vaccine dose by the end of 2020, according to Our World in Data, though China, the United States and Britain have each distributed more doses overall.
“It’s quite an astonishing story,” said Prof. Ran Balicer, the chairman of the national advisory team of experts that is counseling the Israeli government on its Covid-19 response.
Israel’s heavily digitized, community-based health system — all citizens, by law, must register with one of the country’s four H.M.O.s — and its centralized government have proved adept at orchestrating a national inoculation campaign, according to Israeli health experts.
With a population of nine million, Israel’s relatively small size has played a role as well, said Professor Balicer, who is also the chief innovation officer for Clalit, the largest of the country’s four H.M.O.s.
An aggressive procurement effort helped set the stage.
The health minister, Yuli Edelstein, said in an interview on Friday that Israel had entered into negotiations with drugmakers as an “early bird,” and that the companies were interested in supplying Israel because of its H.M.O.s’ reputation for efficiency and gathering reliable data.
“We are leading the world race thanks to our early preparations,” he said.
Internal political conflicts, confusing instructions and a lack of public trust in the government left Israel seemingly fractured in October as the country struggled to cope with a surge in coronavirus cases and deaths that, relative to the size of the population, were among the worst in the world.
While restrictions imposed in the fall reduced the number of new coronavirus cases, in recent weeks, Israel has seen them rise to more than 5,000 a day, sending the country back into a third, if partial, lockdown. More than 420,000 Israelis have been infected and 3,325 have died.
More on Covid-19
Israeli officials have not publicized the exact number of vaccine doses that it has received so far, or how much it paid for them, saying the agreements are confidential. But if it turns out that Israel overpaid compared to other countries, Mr. Edelstein said, the cost would still be worth it even to reopen the Israeli economy one week earlier than it otherwise could have done.
Prof. Jonathan Halevy, the president of Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, said getting in early had been a “correct strategy.”
With Israel having prioritized health workers and citizens 60 and older, Mr. Edelstein said that a majority of its high-risk population should receive the second of two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine by late January. About 150,000 Israelis are being vaccinated per day.
Mr. Netanyahu — who is on trial on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust — has made the vaccination campaign something of a personal mission, taking credit for signing agreements and securing millions of doses from Pfizer, along with Moderna and other companies.
With Israel heading toward another election in March, the country’s fourth in two years, Mr. Netanyahu has made the prospect of a speedy emergence from the health and economic crisis wrought by the pandemic a keystone of his fight for political survival. He has held out the prospect of Israel becoming the first country in the world to be fully vaccinated.
Political motives aside, the prime minister has won praise for his efforts even from some longtime critics, after being widely blamed for mishandling the crisis last year.
“We can’t blame Netanyahu for all of Israel’s ills — correctly, most of the time — and then ignore his contribution when something works,” wrote Gideon Levy, a columnist for the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper this week.
Mr. Netanyahu became the first Israeli to be inoculated against Covid-19 on Dec. 19, saying he wanted to set an example. On Tuesday, he dropped into a Jerusalem facility to congratulate the 500,000th Israeli to receive a vaccine.
On Thursday, he visited a vaccination center in the town of Tira, in central Israel, to encourage a higher turnout among the country’s Arab minority. Arab citizens, who make up a fifth of the population, have been more hesitant than others to get the vaccine.
“We brought millions of vaccines here, more than any other country in the world relative to its population,” Mr. Netanyahu said, adding, “We brought them to everyone: Jews and Arabs, religious and secular.”
“Come and be vaccinated,” he urged in Arabic.
Arab representatives say they have been battling a flood of disinformation about the vaccine in the Arabic news and social media. Dr. Samir Subhi, the mayor of Umm al-Fahm, where Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Edelstein visited Friday, told Israeli television that he had sent a voice message to 25,000 phones in the area urging people to get vaccinated and describing the fight against the virus as “holy for everyone.”
Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, which has been hit particularly hard by the pandemic, was also seen as a population that might resist vaccinations. But those initial fears appear to have dissipated.
Rabbi Yitzchok Zilberstein, a leading ultra-Orthodox authority in Jewish law, issued a public ruling after consulting with Professor Balicer saying that any dangers posed by the vaccine were negligible compared with the dangers of the virus. Several important figures in the community were photographed getting the vaccine.
So far, the government’s inoculation campaign has not extended to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, who have not had access to any vaccinations yet, and the Palestinian Authority does not appear to have publicly requested them. Legal experts and human rights activists said Israel was obliged to provide the Palestinians with vaccines.
The United Nations humanitarian affairs agency for the occupied territories said this week that the Palestinian Authority had applied for financial support from the global vaccine-sharing system Covax, and was working with international organizations on the logistics.
Mr. Edelstein said the government’s first obligation was to its own citizens, but it was in Israel’s interest to help suppress the infection among the Palestinians. “If, God willing, there will be a situation where we can say we are in a position to help others,” he said, “no doubt it will be done.”
At the headquarters of one of the H.M.O.s in Jerusalem this week, the atmosphere was calm and orderly. A constant stream of people were seated in small booths and injected within a minute or two of their arrival — much less time than it had taken them to get through on the phone to make the appointment.
In Tel Aviv, City Hall and the Sourasky Medical Center said that to meet demand, they were opening a huge vaccination center in the city’s iconic Rabin Square in the first week of January.
Facilities have been accommodating toward younger Israelis who have shown up with older relatives and have sometimes called on the general public to come rather than throw away leftover trays of thawed vaccine that cannot be stored until the next day.
“We make use of every drop,” Sharon Alroy-Preis, a senior Health Ministry official, said on television on Thursday.
|
By Isabel Kershner
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Oct. 3, 2021
JERUSALEM — More than 10 percent of Israel’s population has received a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, a rate that has far outstripped the rest of the world and buoyed the battered domestic image of the country’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, at a critical juncture.
Israel’s campaign, which began Dec. 20, has distributed the vaccine to three times as much of its population as the second-fastest nation, the
|
tiny Persian Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, according to figures compiled mostly from local government sources by Our World in Data.
By contrast, less than 1 percent of the population of the United States and only small fractions of the population in many European countries received a vaccine dose by the end of 2020, according to Our World in Data, though China, the United States and Britain have each distributed more doses overall.
“It’s quite an astonishing story,” said Prof. Ran Balicer, the chairman of the national advisory team of experts that is counseling the Israeli government on its Covid-19 response.
Israel’s heavily digitized, community-based health system — all citizens, by law, must register with one of the country’s four H.M.O.s — and its centralized government have proved adept at orchestrating a national inoculation campaign, according to Israeli health experts.
With a population of nine million, Israel’s relatively small size has played a role as well, said Professor Balicer, who is also the chief innovation officer for Clalit, the largest of the country’s four H.M.O.s.
An aggressive procurement effort helped set the stage.
The health minister, Yuli Edelstein, said in an interview on Friday that Israel had entered into negotiations with drugmakers as an “early bird,” and that the companies were interested in supplying Israel because of its H.M.O.s’ reputation for efficiency and gathering reliable data.
“We are leading the world race thanks to our early preparations,” he said.
Internal political conflicts, confusing instructions and a lack of public trust in the government left Israel seemingly fractured in October as the country struggled to cope with a surge in coronavirus cases and deaths that, relative to the size of the population, were among the worst in the world.
While restrictions imposed in the fall reduced the number of new coronavirus cases, in recent weeks, Israel has seen them rise to more than 5,000 a day, sending the country back into a third, if partial, lockdown. More than 420,000 Israelis have been infected and 3,325 have died.
More on Covid-19
Israeli officials have not publicized the exact number of vaccine doses that it has received so far, or how much it paid for them, saying the agreements are confidential. But if it turns out that Israel overpaid compared to other countries, Mr. Edelstein said, the cost would still be worth it even to reopen the Israeli economy one week earlier than it otherwise could have done.
Prof. Jonathan Halevy, the president of Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, said getting in early had been a “correct strategy.”
With Israel having prioritized health workers and citizens 60 and older, Mr. Edelstein said that a majority of its high-risk population should receive the second of two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine by late January. About 150,000 Israelis are being vaccinated per day.
Mr. Netanyahu — who is on trial on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust — has made the vaccination campaign something of a personal mission, taking credit for signing agreements and securing millions of doses from Pfizer, along with Moderna and other companies.
With Israel heading toward another election in March, the country’s fourth in two years, Mr. Netanyahu has made the prospect of a speedy emergence from the health and economic crisis wrought by the pandemic a keystone of his fight for political survival. He has held out the prospect of Israel becoming the first country in the world to be fully vaccinated.
Political motives aside, the prime minister has won praise for his efforts even from some longtime critics, after being widely blamed for mishandling the crisis last year.
“We can’t blame Netanyahu for all of Israel’s ills — correctly, most of the time — and then ignore his contribution when something works,” wrote Gideon Levy, a columnist for the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper this week.
Mr. Netanyahu became the first Israeli to be inoculated against Covid-19 on Dec. 19, saying he wanted to set an example. On Tuesday, he dropped into a Jerusalem facility to congratulate the 500,000th Israeli to receive a vaccine.
On Thursday, he visited a vaccination center in the town of Tira, in central Israel, to encourage a higher turnout among the country’s Arab minority. Arab citizens, who make up a fifth of the population, have been more hesitant than others to get the vaccine.
“We brought millions of vaccines here, more than any other country in the world relative to its population,” Mr. Netanyahu said, adding, “We brought them to everyone: Jews and Arabs, religious and secular.”
“Come and be vaccinated,” he urged in Arabic.
Arab representatives say they have been battling a flood of disinformation about the vaccine in the Arabic news and social media. Dr. Samir Subhi, the mayor of Umm al-Fahm, where Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Edelstein visited Friday, told Israeli television that he had sent a voice message to 25,000 phones in the area urging people to get vaccinated and describing the fight against the virus as “holy for everyone.”
Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, which has been hit particularly hard by the pandemic, was also seen as a population that might resist vaccinations. But those initial fears appear to have dissipated.
Rabbi Yitzchok Zilberstein, a leading ultra-Orthodox authority in Jewish law, issued a public ruling after consulting with Professor Balicer saying that any dangers posed by the vaccine were negligible compared with the dangers of the virus. Several important figures in the community were photographed getting the vaccine.
So far, the government’s inoculation campaign has not extended to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, who have not had access to any vaccinations yet, and the Palestinian Authority does not appear to have publicly requested them. Legal experts and human rights activists said Israel was obliged to provide the Palestinians with vaccines.
The United Nations humanitarian affairs agency for the occupied territories said this week that the Palestinian Authority had applied for financial support from the global vaccine-sharing system Covax, and was working with international organizations on the logistics.
Mr. Edelstein said the government’s first obligation was to its own citizens, but it was in Israel’s interest to help suppress the infection among the Palestinians. “If, God willing, there will be a situation where we can say we are in a position to help others,” he said, “no doubt it will be done.”
At the headquarters of one of the H.M.O.s in Jerusalem this week, the atmosphere was calm and orderly. A constant stream of people were seated in small booths and injected within a minute or two of their arrival — much less time than it had taken them to get through on the phone to make the appointment.
In Tel Aviv, City Hall and the Sourasky Medical Center said that to meet demand, they were opening a huge vaccination center in the city’s iconic Rabin Square in the first week of January.
Facilities have been accommodating toward younger Israelis who have shown up with older relatives and have sometimes called on the general public to come rather than throw away leftover trays of thawed vaccine that cannot be stored until the next day.
“We make use of every drop,” Sharon Alroy-Preis, a senior Health Ministry official, said on television on Thursday.
|
66. Trump’s election tactics put him in unsavory company..txt
|
By Andrew Higgins
Nov. 11, 2020
MOSCOW — When the strongman ruler of Belarus declared an implausible landslide victory in an election in August and had himself sworn in for a sixth term as president, the United States and other Western nations denounced what they said was brazen defiance of the voters’ will.
President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko’s victory, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last month, was “fraud.” Mr. Pompeo added: “We’ve opposed the fact that he’s now inaugurated himself. We know what the people of Belarus want. They want something different.”
Just a month later, Mr. Pompeo’s boss, President Trump, is now borrowing from Mr. Lukashenko’s playbook, joining a club of truculent leaders who, regardless of what voters decide, declare themselves the winners of elections.
That club counts as its members far more dictators, tyrants and potentates than leaders of what used to be known as the “free world” — countries that, led by Washington, have for decades lectured others on the need to hold elections and respect the result.
The parallel is not exact. Mr. Trump participated in a free and fair democratic election. Most autocrats defy voters before they even vote, excluding real rivals from the ballot and swamping the airwaves with one-sided coverage.
But when they do hold genuinely competitive votes and the result goes against them, they often ignore the result, denouncing it as the work of traitors, criminals and foreign saboteurs, and therefore invalid. By refusing to accept the results of last week’s election and working to delegitimize the vote, Mr. Trump is following a similar strategy.
The United States has never before had to force an incumbent to concede a fair defeat at the polls. And merely by raising the possibility that he would have to be forced out of office, Mr. Trump has shattered the bedrock democratic tradition of a seamless transition.
|
By Andrew Higgins
Nov. 11, 2020
MOSCOW — When the strongman ruler of Belarus declared an implausible landslide victory in an election in August and had himself sworn in for a sixth term as president, the United States and other Western nations denounced what they said was brazen defiance of the voters’ will.
President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko’s victory, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last month, was “fraud.” Mr. Pompeo added: “We’ve opposed the fact that he’s now inaugurated himself. We know what the people of Belarus want.
|
They want something different.”
Just a month later, Mr. Pompeo’s boss, President Trump, is now borrowing from Mr. Lukashenko’s playbook, joining a club of truculent leaders who, regardless of what voters decide, declare themselves the winners of elections.
That club counts as its members far more dictators, tyrants and potentates than leaders of what used to be known as the “free world” — countries that, led by Washington, have for decades lectured others on the need to hold elections and respect the result.
The parallel is not exact. Mr. Trump participated in a free and fair democratic election. Most autocrats defy voters before they even vote, excluding real rivals from the ballot and swamping the airwaves with one-sided coverage.
But when they do hold genuinely competitive votes and the result goes against them, they often ignore the result, denouncing it as the work of traitors, criminals and foreign saboteurs, and therefore invalid. By refusing to accept the results of last week’s election and working to delegitimize the vote, Mr. Trump is following a similar strategy.
The United States has never before had to force an incumbent to concede a fair defeat at the polls. And merely by raising the possibility that he would have to be forced out of office, Mr. Trump has shattered the bedrock democratic tradition of a seamless transition.
|
71. Biden Names Ron Klain as White House Chief of Staff.txt
|
By Michael D. Shear, Katie Glueck, Maggie Haberman and Thomas Kaplan
Published Nov. 11, 2020Updated Nov. 14, 2020
WILMINGTON, Del. — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. named Ron Klain, a veteran Democratic operative and a decades-long confidant, to be his White House chief of staff Wednesday evening, the first step toward putting in place his administration’s senior leadership.
Mr. Klain, a lawyer with deep experience on Capitol Hill, with advising President Barack Obama and in corporate board rooms, served as Mr. Biden’s chief of staff when he was vice president and has been seen for months as the likeliest choice to manage his team in the White House. Known for steady nerves, he also has a fierce wit, which he has frequently unleashed on President Trump on Twitter.
He was particularly critical of Mr. Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, having served as the “Ebola czar” under Mr. Obama during an outbreak of the deadly disease in his second term. A video of Mr. Klain lecturing Mr. Trump about the pandemic was widely seen during the campaign.
In a statement, Mr. Biden called Mr. Klain an “invaluable” adviser, noting in particular the work they did together during the economic crisis in 2009 and the Ebola outbreak in 2014.
“His deep, varied experience and capacity to work with people all across the political spectrum is precisely what I need in a White House chief of staff as we confront this moment of crisis and bring our country together again,” Mr. Biden said.
The choice of Mr. Klain, 59, who first went to work for Mr. Biden in the late 1980s when Mr. Biden was a senator from Delaware and Mr. Klain was a recent graduate of Harvard Law School, signals that Mr. Biden intends to rely on a tight circle of Washington insiders who have been by his side for years.
Advisers have said that the president-elect will announce other top White House staff in the coming days, even as Mr. Trump refuses to accept the results of the election, tweeting “WE WILL WIN!” on Wednesday evening.
Mr. Biden is not likely to reveal his cabinet picks until around Thanksgiving, several people close to the transition said.
As a political tactician, Mr. Klain is well versed in the levers of power in both the executive and legislative branches of government. But he will quickly come under pressure to assemble a White House staff that extends beyond the moderate members of the Democratic establishment with whom Mr. Biden has surrounded himself over four decades in politics.
Even before Mr. Biden’s announcement, liberals in the party had already begun demanding that progressives be given a significant voice in the West Wing. And the president-elect will also be pressed to fulfill his campaign pledge to make his administration “look like the country” by tapping people of color, L.G.B.T.Q. Americans and other minorities to be part of the White House staff.
Sign up for the On Politics newsletter. Your guide to the 2024 elections. Get it sent to your inbox.
In a statement, Mr. Klain said he looked forward to assembling “a talented and diverse team to work in the White House as we tackle their ambitious agenda for change and seek to heal the divides in our country.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, one of Mr. Biden’s liberal rivals for the presidential nomination, praised Mr. Klain on Twitter, calling him “a superb choice” and saying that he “understands the magnitude of the health and economic crisis and he has the experience to lead this next administration through it.”
Mr. Biden made his choice of Mr. Klain even as Mr. Trump remained defiant in the face of political reality, refusing to concede defeat and insisting that the presidential election was stolen from him four days after news organizations projected that Mr. Biden had secured the electoral votes necessary to win.
Mr. Trump and his allies — including most Republicans on Capitol Hill — have falsely claimed that the election was tainted by fraudulently cast ballots and a conspiracy by Democrats, poll workers and the news media. The president’s lawyers have filed lawsuits in several states and his operatives are scouring for examples of fraud even as Democratic and Republican election officials in nearly all 50 states say the election was fair.
In the meantime, Mr. Biden is moving quickly to demonstrate that the president’s unprecedented behavior will not interfere with the transfer of power that will take place on Jan. 20.
Mr. Klain clerked for Justice Byron R. White at the Supreme Court in the late 1980s and has been a fixture by Mr. Biden’s side for much of the past 30 years, serving at one point as the chief counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Mr. Biden led.
Mr. Klain was Mr. Biden’s top legal adviser on the committee during the racially charged and sexually explicit collision with the Bush administration over the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. Many of Mr. Biden’s allies saw his handling of the confirmation — managed in large part by Mr. Klain and his team of committee lawyers — as one of the stains on his record in the Senate.
Mr. Klain took a detour to serve as Al Gore’s chief of staff while he was vice president and later oversaw Mr. Gore’s unsuccessful recount effort in Florida (for which he was portrayed by Kevin Spacey in the HBO film “Recount”).
But Mr. Klain has always remained close to Mr. Biden. In 2009, he became the vice president’s chief of staff, reprising the role he had played a decade earlier for Mr. Gore.
Mr. Klain’s experience confronting the Ebola outbreak during the Obama administration was newly relevant this year as the coronavirus pandemic upended American life and became Mr. Biden’s central message during the presidential race.
The Biden campaign leaned on Mr. Klain’s expertise as it drew a contrast between the way Mr. Biden would approach the pandemic and the way Mr. Trump did. In March, the campaign released a video of Mr. Klain speaking in front of a white board comparing the two approaches that has been viewed more than four million times on Twitter. A sequel, again featuring Mr. Klain in front of a white board, was posted in July.
In the last few weeks of the campaign, Mr. Trump sought to use Mr. Klain’s own words against him with a video in which Mr. Klain appears to admit that the Obama administration “did every possible thing wrong” during an outbreak of the H1N1 swine flu virus. Fact checkers concluded that Mr. Klain was speaking only about the reliance on a single vaccine, and was taken out of context.
Mr. Klain has gone in and out of government over the past several decades, at times practicing as a lawyer and later working with Steve Case, the founder of AOL, in a venture capital investment firm called Revolution. His initial agreement with Mr. Case in 2005 included the right to take unpaid leave in September and October every four years to participate in presidential politics.
“He can process a lot of information, focus on the things that matter and balance a lot of balls,” Mr. Case said of Mr. Klain, calling him “unflappable” and pragmatic when it comes to confronting a challenge: “‘Here’s the problem or the opportunity. Let’s narrow in on what matters and get the right team in place.’”
Mr. Case dismissed concerns from some people that Mr. Klain was too much of a Washington insider for this moment in history, noting that as an Indiana native, Mr. Klain often goes home for the Indianapolis 500.
“He’s been in Washington a long time,” Mr. Case said. But he added, “He’s an Indiana guy.”
Over his years mingling among the nation’s top Democratic politicians, Mr. Klain has become a specialist in helping presidents win confirmation battles in the Senate. During Mr. Obama’s first term, he played a central role in helping win confirmation of Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court.
He also developed a reputation as the Democratic Party’s expert on debate preparation, coaching virtually all of the party’s presidential and vice-presidential nominees during the last two decades. He made little secret of his frustration with sitting presidents — including Mr. Obama — complaining that they too often refused to prepare.
A memo for his clients that Mr. Klain prepared years ago has become memorialized as the party’s best advice for its candidates. Among the 21 rules that he outlined: No. 10, “Punches are good, counterpunches are better”; No. 13, which says that a candidate can lose a debate at any time but that “you can only win it in the first 30 minutes”; and No. 20, which warns not to say something that does not feel right.
“At that moment remember the advice that some elementary schoolteacher once gave you: ‘If in doubt, don’t,’” Mr. Klain wrote.
Throughout the 2020 campaign, Mr. Klain was a top adviser to Mr. Biden and was deeply trusted by a candidate known for maintaining a tight-knit inner circle. He was not especially involved in logistical, day-to-day decisions, but along with Anita Dunn, a senior Biden adviser, he played a central role in guiding Mr. Biden’s debate preparations and message.
A number of Biden allies have noted Mr. Klain’s experience dealing with economic and health crises during the Obama administration, when the country was reeling from the Great Recession. In the 2016 campaign, Mr. Klain helped Hillary Clinton prepare for debates, a task he began working on before Mr. Biden announced he would not mount his own presidential bid.
“It’s been a little hard for me to play such a role in the Biden demise — and I am definitely dead to them — but I’m glad to be on Team HRC,” Mr. Klain wrote to John D. Podesta, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, in an October 2015 email that was later disclosed by WikiLeaks. A week after Mr. Klain sent the email, Mr. Biden announced he would not run for president in 2016.
Mr. Klain was also the inaugural guest on a short-lived podcast that Mr. Biden hosted this year, speaking about the pandemic. “I’m going to call on you a lot more,” Mr. Biden told him at the end of the episode. “You know, I call on you almost every day for non-pod advice.”
At a Biden virtual fund-raiser in June for Indiana donors, former Senator Joe Donnelly made note of Mr. Klain’s work on the Ebola outbreak for the Obama White House.
At the virtual event, Mr. Klain, it turned out, was not far out of mind for the former vice president. “As a matter of fact, coincidentally, literally five minutes before I walked into this makeshift studio, I was on the phone with Ron Klain,” Mr. Biden said.
Michael D. Shear reported from Wilmington, Katie Glueck and Maggie Haberman from New York, and Thomas Kaplan from Washington.
|
By Michael D. Shear, Katie Glueck, Maggie Haberman and Thomas Kaplan
Published Nov. 11, 2020Updated Nov. 14, 2020
WILMINGTON, Del. — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. named Ron Klain, a veteran Democratic operative and a decades-long confidant, to be his White House chief of staff Wednesday evening, the first step toward putting in place his administration’s senior leadership.
Mr. Klain, a lawyer with deep experience on Capitol Hill, with advising President Barack Obama and in corporate board rooms, served
|
as Mr. Biden’s chief of staff when he was vice president and has been seen for months as the likeliest choice to manage his team in the White House. Known for steady nerves, he also has a fierce wit, which he has frequently unleashed on President Trump on Twitter.
He was particularly critical of Mr. Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, having served as the “Ebola czar” under Mr. Obama during an outbreak of the deadly disease in his second term. A video of Mr. Klain lecturing Mr. Trump about the pandemic was widely seen during the campaign.
In a statement, Mr. Biden called Mr. Klain an “invaluable” adviser, noting in particular the work they did together during the economic crisis in 2009 and the Ebola outbreak in 2014.
“His deep, varied experience and capacity to work with people all across the political spectrum is precisely what I need in a White House chief of staff as we confront this moment of crisis and bring our country together again,” Mr. Biden said.
The choice of Mr. Klain, 59, who first went to work for Mr. Biden in the late 1980s when Mr. Biden was a senator from Delaware and Mr. Klain was a recent graduate of Harvard Law School, signals that Mr. Biden intends to rely on a tight circle of Washington insiders who have been by his side for years.
Advisers have said that the president-elect will announce other top White House staff in the coming days, even as Mr. Trump refuses to accept the results of the election, tweeting “WE WILL WIN!” on Wednesday evening.
Mr. Biden is not likely to reveal his cabinet picks until around Thanksgiving, several people close to the transition said.
As a political tactician, Mr. Klain is well versed in the levers of power in both the executive and legislative branches of government. But he will quickly come under pressure to assemble a White House staff that extends beyond the moderate members of the Democratic establishment with whom Mr. Biden has surrounded himself over four decades in politics.
Even before Mr. Biden’s announcement, liberals in the party had already begun demanding that progressives be given a significant voice in the West Wing. And the president-elect will also be pressed to fulfill his campaign pledge to make his administration “look like the country” by tapping people of color, L.G.B.T.Q. Americans and other minorities to be part of the White House staff.
Sign up for the On Politics newsletter. Your guide to the 2024 elections. Get it sent to your inbox.
In a statement, Mr. Klain said he looked forward to assembling “a talented and diverse team to work in the White House as we tackle their ambitious agenda for change and seek to heal the divides in our country.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, one of Mr. Biden’s liberal rivals for the presidential nomination, praised Mr. Klain on Twitter, calling him “a superb choice” and saying that he “understands the magnitude of the health and economic crisis and he has the experience to lead this next administration through it.”
Mr. Biden made his choice of Mr. Klain even as Mr. Trump remained defiant in the face of political reality, refusing to concede defeat and insisting that the presidential election was stolen from him four days after news organizations projected that Mr. Biden had secured the electoral votes necessary to win.
Mr. Trump and his allies — including most Republicans on Capitol Hill — have falsely claimed that the election was tainted by fraudulently cast ballots and a conspiracy by Democrats, poll workers and the news media. The president’s lawyers have filed lawsuits in several states and his operatives are scouring for examples of fraud even as Democratic and Republican election officials in nearly all 50 states say the election was fair.
In the meantime, Mr. Biden is moving quickly to demonstrate that the president’s unprecedented behavior will not interfere with the transfer of power that will take place on Jan. 20.
Mr. Klain clerked for Justice Byron R. White at the Supreme Court in the late 1980s and has been a fixture by Mr. Biden’s side for much of the past 30 years, serving at one point as the chief counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Mr. Biden led.
Mr. Klain was Mr. Biden’s top legal adviser on the committee during the racially charged and sexually explicit collision with the Bush administration over the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. Many of Mr. Biden’s allies saw his handling of the confirmation — managed in large part by Mr. Klain and his team of committee lawyers — as one of the stains on his record in the Senate.
Mr. Klain took a detour to serve as Al Gore’s chief of staff while he was vice president and later oversaw Mr. Gore’s unsuccessful recount effort in Florida (for which he was portrayed by Kevin Spacey in the HBO film “Recount”).
But Mr. Klain has always remained close to Mr. Biden. In 2009, he became the vice president’s chief of staff, reprising the role he had played a decade earlier for Mr. Gore.
Mr. Klain’s experience confronting the Ebola outbreak during the Obama administration was newly relevant this year as the coronavirus pandemic upended American life and became Mr. Biden’s central message during the presidential race.
The Biden campaign leaned on Mr. Klain’s expertise as it drew a contrast between the way Mr. Biden would approach the pandemic and the way Mr. Trump did. In March, the campaign released a video of Mr. Klain speaking in front of a white board comparing the two approaches that has been viewed more than four million times on Twitter. A sequel, again featuring Mr. Klain in front of a white board, was posted in July.
In the last few weeks of the campaign, Mr. Trump sought to use Mr. Klain’s own words against him with a video in which Mr. Klain appears to admit that the Obama administration “did every possible thing wrong” during an outbreak of the H1N1 swine flu virus. Fact checkers concluded that Mr. Klain was speaking only about the reliance on a single vaccine, and was taken out of context.
Mr. Klain has gone in and out of government over the past several decades, at times practicing as a lawyer and later working with Steve Case, the founder of AOL, in a venture capital investment firm called Revolution. His initial agreement with Mr. Case in 2005 included the right to take unpaid leave in September and October every four years to participate in presidential politics.
“He can process a lot of information, focus on the things that matter and balance a lot of balls,” Mr. Case said of Mr. Klain, calling him “unflappable” and pragmatic when it comes to confronting a challenge: “‘Here’s the problem or the opportunity. Let’s narrow in on what matters and get the right team in place.’”
Mr. Case dismissed concerns from some people that Mr. Klain was too much of a Washington insider for this moment in history, noting that as an Indiana native, Mr. Klain often goes home for the Indianapolis 500.
“He’s been in Washington a long time,” Mr. Case said. But he added, “He’s an Indiana guy.”
Over his years mingling among the nation’s top Democratic politicians, Mr. Klain has become a specialist in helping presidents win confirmation battles in the Senate. During Mr. Obama’s first term, he played a central role in helping win confirmation of Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court.
He also developed a reputation as the Democratic Party’s expert on debate preparation, coaching virtually all of the party’s presidential and vice-presidential nominees during the last two decades. He made little secret of his frustration with sitting presidents — including Mr. Obama — complaining that they too often refused to prepare.
A memo for his clients that Mr. Klain prepared years ago has become memorialized as the party’s best advice for its candidates. Among the 21 rules that he outlined: No. 10, “Punches are good, counterpunches are better”; No. 13, which says that a candidate can lose a debate at any time but that “you can only win it in the first 30 minutes”; and No. 20, which warns not to say something that does not feel right.
“At that moment remember the advice that some elementary schoolteacher once gave you: ‘If in doubt, don’t,’” Mr. Klain wrote.
Throughout the 2020 campaign, Mr. Klain was a top adviser to Mr. Biden and was deeply trusted by a candidate known for maintaining a tight-knit inner circle. He was not especially involved in logistical, day-to-day decisions, but along with Anita Dunn, a senior Biden adviser, he played a central role in guiding Mr. Biden’s debate preparations and message.
A number of Biden allies have noted Mr. Klain’s experience dealing with economic and health crises during the Obama administration, when the country was reeling from the Great Recession. In the 2016 campaign, Mr. Klain helped Hillary Clinton prepare for debates, a task he began working on before Mr. Biden announced he would not mount his own presidential bid.
“It’s been a little hard for me to play such a role in the Biden demise — and I am definitely dead to them — but I’m glad to be on Team HRC,” Mr. Klain wrote to John D. Podesta, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, in an October 2015 email that was later disclosed by WikiLeaks. A week after Mr. Klain sent the email, Mr. Biden announced he would not run for president in 2016.
Mr. Klain was also the inaugural guest on a short-lived podcast that Mr. Biden hosted this year, speaking about the pandemic. “I’m going to call on you a lot more,” Mr. Biden told him at the end of the episode. “You know, I call on you almost every day for non-pod advice.”
At a Biden virtual fund-raiser in June for Indiana donors, former Senator Joe Donnelly made note of Mr. Klain’s work on the Ebola outbreak for the Obama White House.
At the virtual event, Mr. Klain, it turned out, was not far out of mind for the former vice president. “As a matter of fact, coincidentally, literally five minutes before I walked into this makeshift studio, I was on the phone with Ron Klain,” Mr. Biden said.
Michael D. Shear reported from Wilmington, Katie Glueck and Maggie Haberman from New York, and Thomas Kaplan from Washington.
|
20. New York Halted Evictions. But What Happens When the Ban Ends?.txt
|
By Dana Rubinstein and Jazmine Hughes
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Sept. 1, 2021
When New York State lawmakers approved emergency legislation this week to ban evictions for at least two months, they were seeking to prevent hundreds of thousands of people from being forced from their homes during the winter, with the pandemic still raging. But they also feared something more perilous: a broad ripping at the fabric of society.
Families becoming homeless after being evicted, overwhelming shelters. Children haphazardly transferring schools and falling far behind. Lines at food pantries growing. People ending up in overcrowded housing, increasing their chances of developing chronic disease. During the outbreak, evictions have been associated with the spread of Covid-19.
And so the threat of eviction and subsequent hardships looms across the region. A school aide in Brooklyn who spent months in a homeless shelter is worried that she will lose her apartment and have to return to a shelter far from the doctors who treat her son’s heart condition.
A 65-year-old immigrant in East Harlem lost his wife in April and faces eviction after using his rent money to send her body back to Senegal. Since losing his job stocking groceries, he has bought food with his unemployment benefits.
North of New York City, an unemployed freight dispatcher moved into a mobile-home park, hopeful that her son would get a good education there. But now she is facing eviction, and she worries what that means for his schooling.
For their part, landlords, especially those with only a few properties, are weathering their own crisis, with rental payments drying up but mortgages and utilities still to be paid.
The eviction moratorium will push some of those problems into the spring, when the pandemic is expected to recede as the pace of vaccinations increases. Many eviction proceedings will start up again on May 1, just weeks before the mayoral primary, one of the most consequential elections for New York City in memory.
As a result, the next mayor will have to grapple with the repercussions in a city already beset by widening income inequality and a local economy severely damaged by the pandemic. In New York State overall, as many as 1.2 million households are at risk of eviction, according to Stout, a financial services consulting firm.
David R. Jones, president of the Community Service Society of New York, said that even before the pandemic, many New Yorkers were living paycheck to paycheck in unstable housing, spending half of their income on rent. Evictions will severely exacerbate the financial strain, he said.
The crisis, with its convergence of homelessness and joblessness, has the potential to replicate some of the worst elements of the Great Depression, he said.
“And that ripples down immediately,” he said.
Worse, Mr. Jones said, “those kinds of issues for New York could be long term.”
If tenants who are evicted can’t find alternate housing, they often double up in the homes of friends or family, or become homeless. More generally, evictions are associated with a spike in physical and mental health ailments and physical and sexual assault.
“For children, it’s particularly devastating,” said Emily A. Benfer, a visiting law professor at Wake Forest University. “It’s now in multiple studies associated with lead poisoning, it’s linked with severe academic decline at a time when children are falling so far behind, it increases food insecurity and it also derails their adulthood by increasing chronic disease.”
Halima Abdul-Wahhab, 47, has two children, 19 and 3, and feared they would again be homeless when her landlord began eviction proceedings against her. She said her teenage son had a heart condition that makes him more vulnerable to coronavirus, and she wanted to remain close to the doctors who treat him near their Brooklyn apartment.
In December, her family’s eviction — and all-but-certain return to a homeless shelter — was narrowly avoided thanks to the unusual exertions of a nonprofit attorney and the office of her state senator, Zellnor Myrie. But the reprieve may be only temporary.
Ms. Abdul-Wahhab, who works as a school aide, said she is not sure how she would afford a new apartment.
“I’m at a job where I don’t make that much, but I just try to maintain as much as I can,” she said. “Rent is not the only thing that has to be paid every month.”
Since the pandemic hit, food pantries across the country have experienced record demand.
From January through November, the Food Bank for New York City distributed 70 percent more food, compared with the same period last year, said Matt Honeycutt, its chief development officer.
“Because that’s ultimately what folks are doing, all year long, without a pandemic,” he said. “They choose every month: Do I pay rent, do I buy medicine, do I keep the heat on, or do I buy food? Food is the first to get cut.” He added, “Those are impossible choices people have to make all the time — add a pandemic on that, and I don’t know how they do it.”
Nationally, as many as 14 million renter households are considered at risk of eviction. Were those evictions to proceed, the cost to social services would be more than $128.5 billion, according to a recent study by the University of Arizona and the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
States have responded with a patchwork of eviction moratoriums and Covid-19-related hardship exemptions, but no state has fully tackled the issue of rent arrears, according to Professor Benfer. Nor is it clear that any state would be able to, given the fiscal distress that states and local government are experiencing.
New York City has an unusually sturdy social safety net, in part because City Hall has reached court settlements with advocacy groups. That includes a so-called right to shelter.
“The city has an obligation to shelter anyone who is homeless, and it’s expensive: over $3,000 per family, and $2,000 for a single person,” said Judith Goldiner, a Legal Aid Society attorney, citing the monthly expense. “Just that cost alone is huge for the city.”
The same is not necessarily true outside the city, where evictions could upend communities that have fewer rental protections and less assistance, tenant lawyers said.
In Sullivan County, north of New York City, Tiffany Caggiano, 25, lives with her partner and their 5-year-old son in a manufactured home. The owner of the land where the house sits is trying to evict her, and the holder of the mortgage on her home is trying to foreclose on her.
Both she and her partner lost their jobs just before the pandemic and have been unable to find steady work since. They survive on unemployment insurance and food pantries.
Ms. Caggiano said she moved there to get her son into a good school. He will enter kindergarten in the fall.
The boy dreams about a home with an upstairs, but if they were evicted, the county might put them in a hotel or transitional housing, according to their lawyers, because the county does not itself operate a homeless shelter. In the end, they could very well be left out in the cold.
“We would be in our car,” Ms. Caggiano said.
Legislators said this week that they had to do something. Brian Kavanagh, a Democratic state senator who represents Lower Manhattan and part of Brooklyn, was the lead sponsor of the bill that bars landlords from evicting most tenants for 60 days in almost all cases.
“A policy that tells people they can’t go to work and therefore they can’t pay their rent, and then allows them to get evicted, and then pays for their shelter is just economically nonsensical, even if you don’t have a heart,” Mr. Kavanagh said.
The recent federal relief bill directed $25 billion in rent relief nationally, including $1.3 billion to New York State, but many experts doubt that will be enough to cover all the back rent that is owed. Both renters and landlords are calling for significantly more.
Many of those facing eviction, including East Harlem resident Diba Gaye, lost jobs during the pandemic. Mr. Gaye’s wife died of heart disease on April 11.
He remains in his apartment with his 21-year-old daughter and 18-year-old son, who both work part-time pharmacy jobs. But money remains tight. Mr. Gaye lost his job as a grocery store stocker and has been living on unemployment benefits that help him pay for food.
“I don’t want to lose my house too,” Mr. Gaye said.
Many landlords don’t want to evict tenants either, said Michael A. Steiner, the lawyer for the landlord who began eviction proceedings against Mr. Gaye.
But with storefront and apartment tenants not paying rent, landlords are getting squeezed from both sides.
Both tenants and landlords are “going to need something from the government, whether it’s the federal government, state government or city government, something that enables the landlords to get paid and the tenants to pay money directly to the landlords,” he said.
John Bianco is the lawyer for the landlord that started eviction proceedings against Ms. Abdul-Wahhab, the school aide in Brooklyn. He said unpaid rent puts landlords in an unenviable spot, but that the goal of most eviction proceedings is not actually eviction.
“We’re debt collectors,” he said.
Still, some tenants said many landlords did not deserve sympathy, and have fought back with rent strikes.
Tiffany King, an unemployed hotel housekeeper, said she wants landlords to feel the trickle-down effect that comes with eviction.
She hasn’t paid rent in months, part of a rent strike that she and her neighbors are waging to protest lack of hot water, and what she describes as rampant mold.
“What tenants went through, now the landlords are going to have to go through,” Ms. King said. “They’re going to have to stand on line for help, or go into their savings. They don’t think about our health or how we want to live.”
|
By Dana Rubinstein and Jazmine Hughes
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Sept. 1, 2021
When New York State lawmakers approved emergency legislation this week to ban evictions for at least two months, they were seeking to prevent hundreds of thousands of people from being forced from their homes during the winter, with the pandemic still raging. But they also feared something more perilous: a broad ripping at the fabric of society.
Families becoming homeless after being evicted, overwhelming shelters. Children haphazardly transferring schools and falling far behind. Lines at food
|
pantries growing. People ending up in overcrowded housing, increasing their chances of developing chronic disease. During the outbreak, evictions have been associated with the spread of Covid-19.
And so the threat of eviction and subsequent hardships looms across the region. A school aide in Brooklyn who spent months in a homeless shelter is worried that she will lose her apartment and have to return to a shelter far from the doctors who treat her son’s heart condition.
A 65-year-old immigrant in East Harlem lost his wife in April and faces eviction after using his rent money to send her body back to Senegal. Since losing his job stocking groceries, he has bought food with his unemployment benefits.
North of New York City, an unemployed freight dispatcher moved into a mobile-home park, hopeful that her son would get a good education there. But now she is facing eviction, and she worries what that means for his schooling.
For their part, landlords, especially those with only a few properties, are weathering their own crisis, with rental payments drying up but mortgages and utilities still to be paid.
The eviction moratorium will push some of those problems into the spring, when the pandemic is expected to recede as the pace of vaccinations increases. Many eviction proceedings will start up again on May 1, just weeks before the mayoral primary, one of the most consequential elections for New York City in memory.
As a result, the next mayor will have to grapple with the repercussions in a city already beset by widening income inequality and a local economy severely damaged by the pandemic. In New York State overall, as many as 1.2 million households are at risk of eviction, according to Stout, a financial services consulting firm.
David R. Jones, president of the Community Service Society of New York, said that even before the pandemic, many New Yorkers were living paycheck to paycheck in unstable housing, spending half of their income on rent. Evictions will severely exacerbate the financial strain, he said.
The crisis, with its convergence of homelessness and joblessness, has the potential to replicate some of the worst elements of the Great Depression, he said.
“And that ripples down immediately,” he said.
Worse, Mr. Jones said, “those kinds of issues for New York could be long term.”
If tenants who are evicted can’t find alternate housing, they often double up in the homes of friends or family, or become homeless. More generally, evictions are associated with a spike in physical and mental health ailments and physical and sexual assault.
“For children, it’s particularly devastating,” said Emily A. Benfer, a visiting law professor at Wake Forest University. “It’s now in multiple studies associated with lead poisoning, it’s linked with severe academic decline at a time when children are falling so far behind, it increases food insecurity and it also derails their adulthood by increasing chronic disease.”
Halima Abdul-Wahhab, 47, has two children, 19 and 3, and feared they would again be homeless when her landlord began eviction proceedings against her. She said her teenage son had a heart condition that makes him more vulnerable to coronavirus, and she wanted to remain close to the doctors who treat him near their Brooklyn apartment.
In December, her family’s eviction — and all-but-certain return to a homeless shelter — was narrowly avoided thanks to the unusual exertions of a nonprofit attorney and the office of her state senator, Zellnor Myrie. But the reprieve may be only temporary.
Ms. Abdul-Wahhab, who works as a school aide, said she is not sure how she would afford a new apartment.
“I’m at a job where I don’t make that much, but I just try to maintain as much as I can,” she said. “Rent is not the only thing that has to be paid every month.”
Since the pandemic hit, food pantries across the country have experienced record demand.
From January through November, the Food Bank for New York City distributed 70 percent more food, compared with the same period last year, said Matt Honeycutt, its chief development officer.
“Because that’s ultimately what folks are doing, all year long, without a pandemic,” he said. “They choose every month: Do I pay rent, do I buy medicine, do I keep the heat on, or do I buy food? Food is the first to get cut.” He added, “Those are impossible choices people have to make all the time — add a pandemic on that, and I don’t know how they do it.”
Nationally, as many as 14 million renter households are considered at risk of eviction. Were those evictions to proceed, the cost to social services would be more than $128.5 billion, according to a recent study by the University of Arizona and the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
States have responded with a patchwork of eviction moratoriums and Covid-19-related hardship exemptions, but no state has fully tackled the issue of rent arrears, according to Professor Benfer. Nor is it clear that any state would be able to, given the fiscal distress that states and local government are experiencing.
New York City has an unusually sturdy social safety net, in part because City Hall has reached court settlements with advocacy groups. That includes a so-called right to shelter.
“The city has an obligation to shelter anyone who is homeless, and it’s expensive: over $3,000 per family, and $2,000 for a single person,” said Judith Goldiner, a Legal Aid Society attorney, citing the monthly expense. “Just that cost alone is huge for the city.”
The same is not necessarily true outside the city, where evictions could upend communities that have fewer rental protections and less assistance, tenant lawyers said.
In Sullivan County, north of New York City, Tiffany Caggiano, 25, lives with her partner and their 5-year-old son in a manufactured home. The owner of the land where the house sits is trying to evict her, and the holder of the mortgage on her home is trying to foreclose on her.
Both she and her partner lost their jobs just before the pandemic and have been unable to find steady work since. They survive on unemployment insurance and food pantries.
Ms. Caggiano said she moved there to get her son into a good school. He will enter kindergarten in the fall.
The boy dreams about a home with an upstairs, but if they were evicted, the county might put them in a hotel or transitional housing, according to their lawyers, because the county does not itself operate a homeless shelter. In the end, they could very well be left out in the cold.
“We would be in our car,” Ms. Caggiano said.
Legislators said this week that they had to do something. Brian Kavanagh, a Democratic state senator who represents Lower Manhattan and part of Brooklyn, was the lead sponsor of the bill that bars landlords from evicting most tenants for 60 days in almost all cases.
“A policy that tells people they can’t go to work and therefore they can’t pay their rent, and then allows them to get evicted, and then pays for their shelter is just economically nonsensical, even if you don’t have a heart,” Mr. Kavanagh said.
The recent federal relief bill directed $25 billion in rent relief nationally, including $1.3 billion to New York State, but many experts doubt that will be enough to cover all the back rent that is owed. Both renters and landlords are calling for significantly more.
Many of those facing eviction, including East Harlem resident Diba Gaye, lost jobs during the pandemic. Mr. Gaye’s wife died of heart disease on April 11.
He remains in his apartment with his 21-year-old daughter and 18-year-old son, who both work part-time pharmacy jobs. But money remains tight. Mr. Gaye lost his job as a grocery store stocker and has been living on unemployment benefits that help him pay for food.
“I don’t want to lose my house too,” Mr. Gaye said.
Many landlords don’t want to evict tenants either, said Michael A. Steiner, the lawyer for the landlord who began eviction proceedings against Mr. Gaye.
But with storefront and apartment tenants not paying rent, landlords are getting squeezed from both sides.
Both tenants and landlords are “going to need something from the government, whether it’s the federal government, state government or city government, something that enables the landlords to get paid and the tenants to pay money directly to the landlords,” he said.
John Bianco is the lawyer for the landlord that started eviction proceedings against Ms. Abdul-Wahhab, the school aide in Brooklyn. He said unpaid rent puts landlords in an unenviable spot, but that the goal of most eviction proceedings is not actually eviction.
“We’re debt collectors,” he said.
Still, some tenants said many landlords did not deserve sympathy, and have fought back with rent strikes.
Tiffany King, an unemployed hotel housekeeper, said she wants landlords to feel the trickle-down effect that comes with eviction.
She hasn’t paid rent in months, part of a rent strike that she and her neighbors are waging to protest lack of hot water, and what she describes as rampant mold.
“What tenants went through, now the landlords are going to have to go through,” Ms. King said. “They’re going to have to stand on line for help, or go into their savings. They don’t think about our health or how we want to live.”
|
35. What to Know About the Afghan Peace Talks.txt
|
By David Zucchino and Thomas Gibbons-Neff
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Feb. 15, 2021
KABUL, Afghanistan — After four decades of grinding combat in Afghanistan, peace negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban have raised at least a possibility that the long cycle of violence might someday end.
But that milestone is a long way off. The most recent round of discussions, which began in September, were riddled with bureaucratic hangups and monthslong debates over minor issues.
And though those talks resulted in an agreement on the principles and procedures that will guide the next round of peace negotiations, they came with a price. While the two sides met in Doha, Qatar, bloodletting on battlefields and in Afghan cities surged.
The talks resumed in early January, after a brief recess, but they have been stalled by a diplomatic stalemate amid escalating violence. Both sides are waiting for President Biden to decide whether to keep the remaining 2,500 U.S. forces in Afghanistan beyond the May 1 withdrawal deadline outlined in the February 2020 U.S.-Taliban agreement.
The Biden administration, which is reviewing that deal, says the Taliban has not honored its pledges to reduce violence and to publicly cut ties with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan.
“Without them meeting their commitments to renounce terrorism and to stop the violent attacks against the Afghan National Security Forces, it’s very hard to see a specific way forward for the negotiated settlement,” John F. Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said at a news briefing in January. “But we’re still committed to that.”
Indeed, the Taliban have been ramping up for the group’s annual spring and summer fighting season, forcing beleaguered government forces to abandon some outposts while pummeling government bases outside several major cities.
In a lengthy statement released Feb. 13, the Taliban said they had honored all commitments under the agreement, but did not directly address the pledge to sever ties with terrorist groups. The statement accused the Afghan government of violating the agreement and engaging in “warmongering and provocative rhetoric.”
But the agreement also envisions Afghan negotiations resulting in a lasting cease-fire and a government representing all Afghans.
While both the Afghan government and the Taliban have said they will not publicly release their lists of priorities for this round of negotiations, here’s what security analysts, researchers, and government and Taliban officials expect is on the docket — and what hurdles these talks must overcome.
More on U.S. Armed Forces
What are the end goals of these talks?
The ultimate goal of the negotiations is the creation of a political road map for a future government. The head of the government negotiation team, Masoom Stanikzai, said in late December that a cease-fire would be the delegation’s top priority. The Taliban, who have used attacks against security forces and civilians as leverage, seek instead to negotiate a form of governance based on strict Islamic law before discussing any cease-fire.
But getting to these larger fundamental issues will not be easy, as the two sides remain stuck on the meaning of basic terms like “cease-fire” and “Islamic.” There are many forms of cease-fire, from permanent and nationwide to partial and conditional, yet the public portion of the agreement between the United States and the Taliban calling for the complete withdrawal of American troops mentions, but doesn’t specifically mandate or fully define, what it should look like.
The Taliban also refuse to specify what they mean by “Islamic,” and the government’s own insistence on an “Islamic” republic has been a subject of intense debate.
“The Taliban say they want an Islamic system but they don’t specify what kind,” said Abdul Haifiz Mansoor, a member of Afghanistan’s negotiating team, pointing out that there are nearly as many systems as there are Islamic countries.
Also complicating the negotiations is a Taliban demand that the government release up to 7,000 more Taliban prisoners. The government’s release of more than 5,000 prisoners removed the last obstacle to negotiations in September, but President Ashraf Ghani has thus far refused to release any others.
Mr. Ghani has also resisted calls for an interim government, which would almost certainly remove him as president. He has served less than a year of his second five-year term.
Where does the fighting stand?
Both sides exploited violence on the ground in Afghanistan for leverage during negotiations in Doha, but the Taliban have been more aggressive in their assaults than the government, whose troops tend to stay on bases and at checkpoints, responding to persistent attacks.
The killing of security force members and civilians surged while talks were underway this fall, according to a New York Times tally, before dropping once Afghan government and Taliban negotiators announced in early December that they had reached an agreement on the procedures for future talks, though cold weather likely also contributed to the decline. At least 429 pro-government forces were killed in September and at least 212 civilians were in October — the worst tolls in each category in more than a year.
“Killing and bloodshed have reached new peaks,” said Atiqullah Amarkhel, a military analyst in Kabul. “What kind of will for peace is this?”
Ibraheem Bahiss, an independent Afghan research analyst, said the Taliban are pursuing two tracks simultaneously: violence and negotiation.
“Their aim is to get into power and have a particular type of government system,” Mr. Bahiss said. “Whether they achieve it through talks or through fighting, both entail costs they are willing to bear.”
What role is the U.S. playing right now?
Though the Taliban have greatly reduced direct attacks on U.S. forces since February 2020, the insurgent group has inexorably expanded the territory it controls by besieging local security forces.
In response, the Americans have launched airstrikes in instances where Afghan troops were under extreme duress during Taliban onslaughts. A Taliban official framed the group’s levels of violence as a direct response to airstrikes by the United States, or to military and ill-received diplomatic moves by the Afghan government.
U.S. airstrikes salvaged the crumpling defenses of Afghan units in Kandahar and Helmand provinces this fall, exposing, once more, deficiencies in Afghan ground and air forces that are under constant attack. The forces’ slumping morale has drawn increasing concern from Gen. Austin S. Miller, the commander of the U.S.-led mission in the country, according to U.S. officials.
At the same time, American troop numbers have dropped from about 12,000 in February 2020 to 2,500, with a complete withdrawal planned by May if the agreement holds. That has left Afghan officials unsure of how their forces can hold ground without American support.
But recent overtures from the Biden administration have sent a more reassuring message to Mr. Ghani and other government officials, raising their hopes that the Americans will not leave any time soon.
If the Biden administration slows the withdrawal of troops in Afghanistan, thus abandoning the May 1 exit deadline, as a congressionally appointed panel recommended in early February, the Taliban will likely view the entire agreement with the United States as void, analysts have said.
What other obstacles could stall the negotiations?
Given the recriminations and suspicions in Doha, some Afghan analysts fear the talks could remain deadlocked for months.
“Mistrust between the two sides has led to an increase in violence, but nothing has been done to eliminate that mistrust,” said Syed Akbar Agha, a former leader of the Taliban’s Jaish-ul-Muslimeen group.
That could indefinitely delay serious attempts to address core government concerns like human rights, a free press, rights for women and religious minorities, and democratic elections, among others.
Taliban negotiators have said they support women’s rights, for example, but only under strict Islamic law. Many analysts interpret that to mean the same harsh oppression of women practiced by the Taliban when they governed Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.
Another complication is division within the Taliban, from hard-line commanders in Afghanistan to political negotiators in Doha’s hotels. Some Taliban factions believe they should fight and defeat the Americans and the Afghan government, not negotiate with them.
Mr. Agha, the former Taliban leader, said little progress was likely unless an impartial mediator emerged who could break down the lack of trust in Doha.
“If not,” he said, “I don’t think the next round of talks will end with a positive result.”
Some analysts fear an even more ominous outcome. Torek Farhadi, a former Afghan government adviser, said, “One thing is clear — without a settlement, we are headed for a civil war.”
Najim Rahim, Fahim Abed and Fatima Faizi contributed reporting from Kabul.
|
By David Zucchino and Thomas Gibbons-Neff
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Feb. 15, 2021
KABUL, Afghanistan — After four decades of grinding combat in Afghanistan, peace negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban have raised at least a possibility that the long cycle of violence might someday end.
But that milestone is a long way off. The most recent round of discussions, which began in September, were riddled with bureaucratic hangups and monthslong debates over minor issues.
And though those talks resulted in an agreement on the principles and procedures that
|
will guide the next round of peace negotiations, they came with a price. While the two sides met in Doha, Qatar, bloodletting on battlefields and in Afghan cities surged.
The talks resumed in early January, after a brief recess, but they have been stalled by a diplomatic stalemate amid escalating violence. Both sides are waiting for President Biden to decide whether to keep the remaining 2,500 U.S. forces in Afghanistan beyond the May 1 withdrawal deadline outlined in the February 2020 U.S.-Taliban agreement.
The Biden administration, which is reviewing that deal, says the Taliban has not honored its pledges to reduce violence and to publicly cut ties with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan.
“Without them meeting their commitments to renounce terrorism and to stop the violent attacks against the Afghan National Security Forces, it’s very hard to see a specific way forward for the negotiated settlement,” John F. Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said at a news briefing in January. “But we’re still committed to that.”
Indeed, the Taliban have been ramping up for the group’s annual spring and summer fighting season, forcing beleaguered government forces to abandon some outposts while pummeling government bases outside several major cities.
In a lengthy statement released Feb. 13, the Taliban said they had honored all commitments under the agreement, but did not directly address the pledge to sever ties with terrorist groups. The statement accused the Afghan government of violating the agreement and engaging in “warmongering and provocative rhetoric.”
But the agreement also envisions Afghan negotiations resulting in a lasting cease-fire and a government representing all Afghans.
While both the Afghan government and the Taliban have said they will not publicly release their lists of priorities for this round of negotiations, here’s what security analysts, researchers, and government and Taliban officials expect is on the docket — and what hurdles these talks must overcome.
More on U.S. Armed Forces
What are the end goals of these talks?
The ultimate goal of the negotiations is the creation of a political road map for a future government. The head of the government negotiation team, Masoom Stanikzai, said in late December that a cease-fire would be the delegation’s top priority. The Taliban, who have used attacks against security forces and civilians as leverage, seek instead to negotiate a form of governance based on strict Islamic law before discussing any cease-fire.
But getting to these larger fundamental issues will not be easy, as the two sides remain stuck on the meaning of basic terms like “cease-fire” and “Islamic.” There are many forms of cease-fire, from permanent and nationwide to partial and conditional, yet the public portion of the agreement between the United States and the Taliban calling for the complete withdrawal of American troops mentions, but doesn’t specifically mandate or fully define, what it should look like.
The Taliban also refuse to specify what they mean by “Islamic,” and the government’s own insistence on an “Islamic” republic has been a subject of intense debate.
“The Taliban say they want an Islamic system but they don’t specify what kind,” said Abdul Haifiz Mansoor, a member of Afghanistan’s negotiating team, pointing out that there are nearly as many systems as there are Islamic countries.
Also complicating the negotiations is a Taliban demand that the government release up to 7,000 more Taliban prisoners. The government’s release of more than 5,000 prisoners removed the last obstacle to negotiations in September, but President Ashraf Ghani has thus far refused to release any others.
Mr. Ghani has also resisted calls for an interim government, which would almost certainly remove him as president. He has served less than a year of his second five-year term.
Where does the fighting stand?
Both sides exploited violence on the ground in Afghanistan for leverage during negotiations in Doha, but the Taliban have been more aggressive in their assaults than the government, whose troops tend to stay on bases and at checkpoints, responding to persistent attacks.
The killing of security force members and civilians surged while talks were underway this fall, according to a New York Times tally, before dropping once Afghan government and Taliban negotiators announced in early December that they had reached an agreement on the procedures for future talks, though cold weather likely also contributed to the decline. At least 429 pro-government forces were killed in September and at least 212 civilians were in October — the worst tolls in each category in more than a year.
“Killing and bloodshed have reached new peaks,” said Atiqullah Amarkhel, a military analyst in Kabul. “What kind of will for peace is this?”
Ibraheem Bahiss, an independent Afghan research analyst, said the Taliban are pursuing two tracks simultaneously: violence and negotiation.
“Their aim is to get into power and have a particular type of government system,” Mr. Bahiss said. “Whether they achieve it through talks or through fighting, both entail costs they are willing to bear.”
What role is the U.S. playing right now?
Though the Taliban have greatly reduced direct attacks on U.S. forces since February 2020, the insurgent group has inexorably expanded the territory it controls by besieging local security forces.
In response, the Americans have launched airstrikes in instances where Afghan troops were under extreme duress during Taliban onslaughts. A Taliban official framed the group’s levels of violence as a direct response to airstrikes by the United States, or to military and ill-received diplomatic moves by the Afghan government.
U.S. airstrikes salvaged the crumpling defenses of Afghan units in Kandahar and Helmand provinces this fall, exposing, once more, deficiencies in Afghan ground and air forces that are under constant attack. The forces’ slumping morale has drawn increasing concern from Gen. Austin S. Miller, the commander of the U.S.-led mission in the country, according to U.S. officials.
At the same time, American troop numbers have dropped from about 12,000 in February 2020 to 2,500, with a complete withdrawal planned by May if the agreement holds. That has left Afghan officials unsure of how their forces can hold ground without American support.
But recent overtures from the Biden administration have sent a more reassuring message to Mr. Ghani and other government officials, raising their hopes that the Americans will not leave any time soon.
If the Biden administration slows the withdrawal of troops in Afghanistan, thus abandoning the May 1 exit deadline, as a congressionally appointed panel recommended in early February, the Taliban will likely view the entire agreement with the United States as void, analysts have said.
What other obstacles could stall the negotiations?
Given the recriminations and suspicions in Doha, some Afghan analysts fear the talks could remain deadlocked for months.
“Mistrust between the two sides has led to an increase in violence, but nothing has been done to eliminate that mistrust,” said Syed Akbar Agha, a former leader of the Taliban’s Jaish-ul-Muslimeen group.
That could indefinitely delay serious attempts to address core government concerns like human rights, a free press, rights for women and religious minorities, and democratic elections, among others.
Taliban negotiators have said they support women’s rights, for example, but only under strict Islamic law. Many analysts interpret that to mean the same harsh oppression of women practiced by the Taliban when they governed Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.
Another complication is division within the Taliban, from hard-line commanders in Afghanistan to political negotiators in Doha’s hotels. Some Taliban factions believe they should fight and defeat the Americans and the Afghan government, not negotiate with them.
Mr. Agha, the former Taliban leader, said little progress was likely unless an impartial mediator emerged who could break down the lack of trust in Doha.
“If not,” he said, “I don’t think the next round of talks will end with a positive result.”
Some analysts fear an even more ominous outcome. Torek Farhadi, a former Afghan government adviser, said, “One thing is clear — without a settlement, we are headed for a civil war.”
Najim Rahim, Fahim Abed and Fatima Faizi contributed reporting from Kabul.
|
37. Pandemic Driving Is Still Down, but Will Insurers Grant More Relief?.txt
|
By Ann Carrns
Jan. 1, 2021
When Americans abruptly cut back on driving early in the pandemic, many auto insurance companies gave customers credits or refunds on their premiums, reflecting the lower risk of accidents with fewer cars on the road.
Now consumer advocates say insurers should give drivers another break, since driving habits haven’t returned to normal and insurers have continued to reap the benefits of fewer accident claims.
“People have been driving significantly less,” said Teresa Murray, director of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group’s Consumer Watchdog office.
An analysis from the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics found that even though driving rebounded after steep drops in the spring, the overall number of miles driven has generally stayed below normal.
A separate report on accident data from four states, published last week by the Consumer Federation of America and the Center for Economic Justice, found that car crashes remained “well below” 2019 levels.
The groups examined state accident data from Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts and Texas, comparing March through October with the same period in 2019. The study found about 181,000 fewer accidents, including 83,000 fewer after May, when most insurers stopped providing refunds. (California, the report noted, ordered insurers to provide premium relief through the summer.)
“That’s extraordinary,” Doug Heller, an insurance expert with the consumer federation, said of the drop in accidents.
More on Covid-19
The two groups sent letters to state insurance commissioners, urging them to require another round of refunds. The groups didn’t specify an amount, but their report suggests refunds should be proportionate to a company’s reduction in claims, with an adjustment for expenses.
The letter notes that some insurers have been reporting significant increases in profits from their auto insurance business, at least in part because of fewer auto crash claims during the pandemic. Progressive, for instance, noted in its third-quarter regulatory filing that its underwriting profit — income from premiums after claims and expenses are paid — rose 66 percent for the quarter and 44 percent for the first nine months of 2020 “primarily” because of “lower auto accident frequency” than in 2019.
In the spring, Progressive said it had given customers premium credits of 20 percent for April and May, a payout totaling about $1 billion. Asked about a possible second refund, a company spokesman, Ronald F. Davis, said in an email that Progressive had lowered auto rates in more than 40 states from April through December and would “continue to monitor our driving and claims data to determine where additional actions are warranted.”
Insurers over all have returned about $14 billion to auto customers because people are driving less, said James Lynch, chief actuary and senior vice president of research and education at the Insurance Information Institute, an industry group. The industry has been flexible about working with strapped customers on payments during the pandemic, he said, and has contributed $280 million to charitable endeavors related to the coronavirus.
The insurance industry has had a challenging year in other ways, Mr. Lynch said, with significant claims related to hurricanes and wildfires. Yet, he said, “the industry has done as much to help people out as anyone.”
Robert Passmore, a claims expert at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, said in an email that insurers had been responding to the change in driving patterns. An industry auto premium index was down 7 percent in October and 6 percent in November, reflecting “decreases in response to the falloff in claim frequency,” he said.
That means that “in general, personal auto rates are lower than they were a year ago,” Mr. Passmore added.
Insurance relief offered in the spring typically “shaved” 15 to 25 percent off customers’ premium payments for one or more months, according to a report in October from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, a group of state regulators.
But a report published by U.S. PIRG’s Education Fund affiliate, examining relief given by the 10 top insurers in each state, found that most hadn’t given customers more than half of one month’s premium. “Over all, they were pretty stingy,” Ms. Murray said.
Relief varied by state and insurer, but in many states, State Farm, GEICO and USAA provided “better” relief than their competitors, the report found.
State Farm, for instance, gave policy credits averaging 25 percent for about two and a half months — close to the 30 percent suggested by the Consumer Federation at the time — and reduced rates an average of 11 percent. GEICO gave 15 percent off entire policies renewed or purchased from April 8 to Oct. 7. USAA gave a 20 percent credit for March through May and 10 percent in June and July.
The pandemic was an unprecedented situation, Mr. Heller said, and the spring payments from insurers were welcome. But he said companies should provide further relief to consumers, who are struggling economically in the pandemic.
It’s unclear whether insurers, or regulators, will act. While insurers have reported a decrease in the frequency of accidents over all, they have noted an increase in more severe, costlier accidents, possibly related to significant increases in speeding, the commissioners’ association noted.
“N.A.I.C. members expect companies to respond to changes in data, but not to overreact when the scope and duration of current impacts are not yet fully known,” the commissioners’ report said.
The Insurance Information Institute noted that many factors besides miles driven and accidents affected company claims and costs, including natural disasters like wildfires and floods.
State Farm announced on Dec. 11 that it would adjust rates upon policy renewal, beginning in January, because “our data indicates more people are driving, resulting in more auto claims.”
Even so, “auto rates remain below pre-Covid 19 levels,” the company said. “Our approach is to make incremental adjustments based on driving behaviors to help minimize the impact to customers.”
Here are some questions and answers about auto insurance rates:
What if I am not sure that I received a credit in the spring?
Drivers who didn’t get a check should look at their billing statements to see if they received the relief their insurer promised, consumer advocates say. If it’s unclear, or if you can’t find your bill, contact your insurance agent or the company directly.
Can I ask for a review of my premium if I’m driving less because of the pandemic?
Yes. Several insurers said they encouraged drivers to contact them for a policy review if their driving habits had changed drastically. It’s helpful to have specific details about the change, such as the distance you would be driving to work if you were still working at the office rather than at home.
The average cost of car insurance is $1,548 a year, or $129 a month, according to the Zebra, an auto rate website. Rates vary, however, because of factors like your age and driving history and where you live.
How else can I reduce my auto insurance premium?
One option is to raise your deductible, the amount that you pay toward a claim paid by your insurer. (If you need $1,000 in repairs and your deductible is $500, your insurer will write you a check for $500.) A higher deductible will save you money on monthly premiums, but it means you’ll pay more out of pocket for repairs if you have an accident.
Some insurers are also offering “usage based” insurance, also known as telematics, in which you agree to have a device in your car to track your driving habits. This may be a less expensive option — but some people are skeptical because of privacy concerns.
You can also shop around to see if a competing insurer will offer you a better rate. Just be sure not to cancel your current policy before activating a new one, so you won’t have a gap in coverage, Mr. Heller advised.
|
By Ann Carrns
Jan. 1, 2021
When Americans abruptly cut back on driving early in the pandemic, many auto insurance companies gave customers credits or refunds on their premiums, reflecting the lower risk of accidents with fewer cars on the road.
Now consumer advocates say insurers should give drivers another break, since driving habits haven’t returned to normal and insurers have continued to reap the benefits of fewer accident claims.
“People have been driving significantly less,” said Teresa Murray, director of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group’s Consumer Watchdog office.
An analysis from the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics found
|
that even though driving rebounded after steep drops in the spring, the overall number of miles driven has generally stayed below normal.
A separate report on accident data from four states, published last week by the Consumer Federation of America and the Center for Economic Justice, found that car crashes remained “well below” 2019 levels.
The groups examined state accident data from Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts and Texas, comparing March through October with the same period in 2019. The study found about 181,000 fewer accidents, including 83,000 fewer after May, when most insurers stopped providing refunds. (California, the report noted, ordered insurers to provide premium relief through the summer.)
“That’s extraordinary,” Doug Heller, an insurance expert with the consumer federation, said of the drop in accidents.
More on Covid-19
The two groups sent letters to state insurance commissioners, urging them to require another round of refunds. The groups didn’t specify an amount, but their report suggests refunds should be proportionate to a company’s reduction in claims, with an adjustment for expenses.
The letter notes that some insurers have been reporting significant increases in profits from their auto insurance business, at least in part because of fewer auto crash claims during the pandemic. Progressive, for instance, noted in its third-quarter regulatory filing that its underwriting profit — income from premiums after claims and expenses are paid — rose 66 percent for the quarter and 44 percent for the first nine months of 2020 “primarily” because of “lower auto accident frequency” than in 2019.
In the spring, Progressive said it had given customers premium credits of 20 percent for April and May, a payout totaling about $1 billion. Asked about a possible second refund, a company spokesman, Ronald F. Davis, said in an email that Progressive had lowered auto rates in more than 40 states from April through December and would “continue to monitor our driving and claims data to determine where additional actions are warranted.”
Insurers over all have returned about $14 billion to auto customers because people are driving less, said James Lynch, chief actuary and senior vice president of research and education at the Insurance Information Institute, an industry group. The industry has been flexible about working with strapped customers on payments during the pandemic, he said, and has contributed $280 million to charitable endeavors related to the coronavirus.
The insurance industry has had a challenging year in other ways, Mr. Lynch said, with significant claims related to hurricanes and wildfires. Yet, he said, “the industry has done as much to help people out as anyone.”
Robert Passmore, a claims expert at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, said in an email that insurers had been responding to the change in driving patterns. An industry auto premium index was down 7 percent in October and 6 percent in November, reflecting “decreases in response to the falloff in claim frequency,” he said.
That means that “in general, personal auto rates are lower than they were a year ago,” Mr. Passmore added.
Insurance relief offered in the spring typically “shaved” 15 to 25 percent off customers’ premium payments for one or more months, according to a report in October from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, a group of state regulators.
But a report published by U.S. PIRG’s Education Fund affiliate, examining relief given by the 10 top insurers in each state, found that most hadn’t given customers more than half of one month’s premium. “Over all, they were pretty stingy,” Ms. Murray said.
Relief varied by state and insurer, but in many states, State Farm, GEICO and USAA provided “better” relief than their competitors, the report found.
State Farm, for instance, gave policy credits averaging 25 percent for about two and a half months — close to the 30 percent suggested by the Consumer Federation at the time — and reduced rates an average of 11 percent. GEICO gave 15 percent off entire policies renewed or purchased from April 8 to Oct. 7. USAA gave a 20 percent credit for March through May and 10 percent in June and July.
The pandemic was an unprecedented situation, Mr. Heller said, and the spring payments from insurers were welcome. But he said companies should provide further relief to consumers, who are struggling economically in the pandemic.
It’s unclear whether insurers, or regulators, will act. While insurers have reported a decrease in the frequency of accidents over all, they have noted an increase in more severe, costlier accidents, possibly related to significant increases in speeding, the commissioners’ association noted.
“N.A.I.C. members expect companies to respond to changes in data, but not to overreact when the scope and duration of current impacts are not yet fully known,” the commissioners’ report said.
The Insurance Information Institute noted that many factors besides miles driven and accidents affected company claims and costs, including natural disasters like wildfires and floods.
State Farm announced on Dec. 11 that it would adjust rates upon policy renewal, beginning in January, because “our data indicates more people are driving, resulting in more auto claims.”
Even so, “auto rates remain below pre-Covid 19 levels,” the company said. “Our approach is to make incremental adjustments based on driving behaviors to help minimize the impact to customers.”
Here are some questions and answers about auto insurance rates:
What if I am not sure that I received a credit in the spring?
Drivers who didn’t get a check should look at their billing statements to see if they received the relief their insurer promised, consumer advocates say. If it’s unclear, or if you can’t find your bill, contact your insurance agent or the company directly.
Can I ask for a review of my premium if I’m driving less because of the pandemic?
Yes. Several insurers said they encouraged drivers to contact them for a policy review if their driving habits had changed drastically. It’s helpful to have specific details about the change, such as the distance you would be driving to work if you were still working at the office rather than at home.
The average cost of car insurance is $1,548 a year, or $129 a month, according to the Zebra, an auto rate website. Rates vary, however, because of factors like your age and driving history and where you live.
How else can I reduce my auto insurance premium?
One option is to raise your deductible, the amount that you pay toward a claim paid by your insurer. (If you need $1,000 in repairs and your deductible is $500, your insurer will write you a check for $500.) A higher deductible will save you money on monthly premiums, but it means you’ll pay more out of pocket for repairs if you have an accident.
Some insurers are also offering “usage based” insurance, also known as telematics, in which you agree to have a device in your car to track your driving habits. This may be a less expensive option — but some people are skeptical because of privacy concerns.
You can also shop around to see if a competing insurer will offer you a better rate. Just be sure not to cancel your current policy before activating a new one, so you won’t have a gap in coverage, Mr. Heller advised.
|
55. A Monster Wind Turbine Is Upending an Industry.txt
|
By Stanley Reed
Twirling above a strip of land at the mouth of Rotterdam’s harbor is a wind turbine so large it is difficult to photograph. The turning diameter of its rotor is longer than two American football fields end to end. Later models will be taller than any building on the mainland of Western Europe.
Packed with sensors gathering data on wind speeds, electricity output and stresses on its components, the giant whirling machine in the Netherlands is a test model for a new series of giant offshore wind turbines planned by General Electric. When assembled in arrays, the wind machines have the potential to power cities, supplanting the emissions-spewing coal- or natural gas-fired plants that form the backbones of many electric systems today.
G.E. has yet to install one of these machines in ocean water. As a relative newcomer to the offshore wind business, the company faces questions about how quickly and efficiently it can scale up production to build and install hundreds of the turbines.
But already the giant turbines have turned heads in the industry. A top executive at the world’s leading wind farm developer called it a “bit of a leapfrog over the latest technology.” And an analyst said the machine’s size and advance sales had “shaken the industry.”
A New Generation of Wind Turbines
General Electric’s prototype for a new offshore wind turbine, the Haliade-X, is the largest ever built.
HEIGHT:
1,050 feet
At 86th floor
observatory
HEIGHT:
853 feet
DIAMETER:
722 feet
HEIGHT:
443 feet
DIAMETER:
394 feet
London Eye
Ferris wheel
Empire State
Building
GE Haliade-X 13MW
wind turbine
Source: General Electric
The prototype is the first of a generation of new machines that are about a third more powerful than the largest already in commercial service. As such, it is changing the business calculations of wind equipment makers, developers and investors.
The G.E. machines will have a generating capacity that would have been almost unimaginable a decade ago. A single one will be able to turn out 13 megawatts of power, enough to light up a town of roughly 12,000 homes.
The turbine, which is capable of producing as much thrust as the four engines of a Boeing 747 jet, according to G.E., will be deployed at sea, where developers have learned that they can plant larger and more numerous turbines than on land to capture breezes that are stronger and more reliable.
The race to build bigger turbines has moved faster than many industry figures foresaw. G.E.’s Haliade-X generates almost 30 times more electricity than the first offshore machines installed off Denmark in 1991.
In coming years, customers are likely to demand even bigger machines, industry executives say. On the other hand, they predict that, just as commercial airliners peaked with the Airbus A380, turbines will reach a point where greater size no longer makes economic sense.
“We will also reach a plateau; we just don’t know where it is yet,” said Morten Pilgaard Rasmussen, chief technology officer of the offshore wind unit of Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, the leading maker of offshore turbines.
Although offshore turbines now account for only about 5 percent of the generating capacity of the overall wind industry, this part of the business has taken on an identity of its own and is expected to grow faster in the coming years than land-based wind.
Offshore technology took hold in Northern Europe in the last three decades, and is now spreading to the East Coast of the United States as well as Asia, including Taiwan, China and South Korea. The big-ticket projects costing billions of dollars that are possible at sea are attracting large investors, including oil companies like BP and Royal Dutch Shell, that want to quickly enhance their green energy offerings. Capital investment in offshore wind has more than tripled over the last decade to $26 billion, according the International Energy Agency, the Paris-based forecasting group.
G.E. began making inroads in wind power in 2002 when it bought Enron’s land-based turbine business — a successful unit in a company brought down in a spectacular accounting scandal — at a bankruptcy auction. It was a marginal force in the offshore industry when its executives decided to try to crack it about four years ago. They saw a growing market with only a couple of serious Western competitors.
Still, G.E.’s bosses figured that to become a leader in the more challenging marine environment, they needed to be audacious. They proceeded to more than double the size of their existing offshore machine, which came to G.E. through its acquisition of the power business of France’s Alstom in 2015. The idea was to gain a lead on key competitors like Siemens Gamesa and Vestas Wind Systems, the Danish-based turbine maker.
A larger turbine produces more electricity and, thus, more revenue than a smaller machine. Size also helps reduce the costs of building and maintaining a wind farm because fewer turbines are required to produce a given amount of power.
These qualities create a powerful incentive for developers to go for the largest machine available to aid their efforts to win the auctions for offshore power supply deals that many countries have adopted. These auctions vary in format, but developers compete to provide power over a number of years for the lowest price.
“What they are looking for is a turbine that allows them to win these auctions,” said Vincent Schellings, who has headed design and production of the G.E. turbine. “That is where turbine size plays a very important role.”
Among the early customers is Orsted, a Danish company that is the world’s largest developer of offshore wind farms. It has a preliminary agreement to buy about 90 of the Haliade-X machines for a project called Ocean Wind off Atlantic City, N.J.
“I think they surprised everybody when they came out with that machine,” said David Hardy, chief executive of Orsted’s offshore business in North America.
As a huge buyer of turbines, Orsted wants to help “establish this new platform and create some volume for G.E.” so as to promote competition and innovation, Mr. Hardy said.
The G.E. turbine is selling better than its competitors may have expected, analysts say.
On Dec. 1, G.E. reached another preliminary agreement to provide turbines for Vineyard Wind, a large wind farm off Massachusetts, and it has deals to supply 276 turbines to what is likely to be the world’s largest wind farm at Dogger Bank off Britain.
These deals, with accompanying maintenance contracts, could add up to $13 billion, estimates Shashi Barla, principal wind analyst at Wood Mackenzie, a market research firm.
The waves made by the G.E. machine have pushed Siemens Gamesa to announce a series of competing turbines. Vestas, which until recently had the industry’s biggest machine in its stable, is also expected to unveil a new entry soon.
“We didn’t move as the first one, and that of course we have to address today,” said Henrik Andersen, the chief executive of Vestas.
To pull off its gambit, G.E. had to start “pretty much from scratch,” Mr. Schellings said. The business unit called G.E. Renewable Energy is spending about $400 million on design, hiring engineers and retooling factories at St. Nazaire and Cherbourg in France.
To make a blade of such extraordinary length that doesn’t buckle from its own weight, G.E. called on designers at LM Wind Power, a blade maker in Denmark that the company bought in 2016 for $1.7 billion. Among their innovations: a material combining carbon fiber and glass fiber that is lightweight yet strong and flexible.
G.E. still must work out how to manufacture large numbers of the machines efficiently, initially at the plants in France and, possibly later, in Britain and the United States. With a skimpy offshore track record, G.E. also needs to show that it can reliably install and maintain the big machines at sea, using specialized ships and dealing with rough weather.
“G.E. has to prove a lot to asset owners for them to procure G.E. turbines,” Mr. Barla said.
Bringing out bigger machines has been easier and cheaper for Siemens Gamesa, G.E.’s key rival, which is already building a prototype for a new and more powerful machine at its offshore complex at Brande on Denmark’s Jutland peninsula. The secret: The company’s ever larger new models have not strayed far from a decade-old template.
“The fundamentals of the machine and how it works remain the same,” said Mr. Rasmussen, the unit’s chief technology officer, leading to a “starting point that was a little better” than G.E.’s.
There seems to be plenty of room for competition. John Lavelle, the chief executive of G.E.’s offshore business, said the outlook for the market “gets bigger each year.”
|
By Stanley Reed
Twirling above a strip of land at the mouth of Rotterdam’s harbor is a wind turbine so large it is difficult to photograph. The turning diameter of its rotor is longer than two American football fields end to end. Later models will be taller than any building on the mainland of Western Europe.
Packed with sensors gathering data on wind speeds, electricity output and stresses on its components, the giant whirling machine in the Netherlands is a test model for a new series of giant offshore wind turbines planned by General Electric. When assembled in arrays, the wind machines have the potential to power cities, supplanting the emissions-spe
|
wing coal- or natural gas-fired plants that form the backbones of many electric systems today.
G.E. has yet to install one of these machines in ocean water. As a relative newcomer to the offshore wind business, the company faces questions about how quickly and efficiently it can scale up production to build and install hundreds of the turbines.
But already the giant turbines have turned heads in the industry. A top executive at the world’s leading wind farm developer called it a “bit of a leapfrog over the latest technology.” And an analyst said the machine’s size and advance sales had “shaken the industry.”
A New Generation of Wind Turbines
General Electric’s prototype for a new offshore wind turbine, the Haliade-X, is the largest ever built.
HEIGHT:
1,050 feet
At 86th floor
observatory
HEIGHT:
853 feet
DIAMETER:
722 feet
HEIGHT:
443 feet
DIAMETER:
394 feet
London Eye
Ferris wheel
Empire State
Building
GE Haliade-X 13MW
wind turbine
Source: General Electric
The prototype is the first of a generation of new machines that are about a third more powerful than the largest already in commercial service. As such, it is changing the business calculations of wind equipment makers, developers and investors.
The G.E. machines will have a generating capacity that would have been almost unimaginable a decade ago. A single one will be able to turn out 13 megawatts of power, enough to light up a town of roughly 12,000 homes.
The turbine, which is capable of producing as much thrust as the four engines of a Boeing 747 jet, according to G.E., will be deployed at sea, where developers have learned that they can plant larger and more numerous turbines than on land to capture breezes that are stronger and more reliable.
The race to build bigger turbines has moved faster than many industry figures foresaw. G.E.’s Haliade-X generates almost 30 times more electricity than the first offshore machines installed off Denmark in 1991.
In coming years, customers are likely to demand even bigger machines, industry executives say. On the other hand, they predict that, just as commercial airliners peaked with the Airbus A380, turbines will reach a point where greater size no longer makes economic sense.
“We will also reach a plateau; we just don’t know where it is yet,” said Morten Pilgaard Rasmussen, chief technology officer of the offshore wind unit of Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, the leading maker of offshore turbines.
Although offshore turbines now account for only about 5 percent of the generating capacity of the overall wind industry, this part of the business has taken on an identity of its own and is expected to grow faster in the coming years than land-based wind.
Offshore technology took hold in Northern Europe in the last three decades, and is now spreading to the East Coast of the United States as well as Asia, including Taiwan, China and South Korea. The big-ticket projects costing billions of dollars that are possible at sea are attracting large investors, including oil companies like BP and Royal Dutch Shell, that want to quickly enhance their green energy offerings. Capital investment in offshore wind has more than tripled over the last decade to $26 billion, according the International Energy Agency, the Paris-based forecasting group.
G.E. began making inroads in wind power in 2002 when it bought Enron’s land-based turbine business — a successful unit in a company brought down in a spectacular accounting scandal — at a bankruptcy auction. It was a marginal force in the offshore industry when its executives decided to try to crack it about four years ago. They saw a growing market with only a couple of serious Western competitors.
Still, G.E.’s bosses figured that to become a leader in the more challenging marine environment, they needed to be audacious. They proceeded to more than double the size of their existing offshore machine, which came to G.E. through its acquisition of the power business of France’s Alstom in 2015. The idea was to gain a lead on key competitors like Siemens Gamesa and Vestas Wind Systems, the Danish-based turbine maker.
A larger turbine produces more electricity and, thus, more revenue than a smaller machine. Size also helps reduce the costs of building and maintaining a wind farm because fewer turbines are required to produce a given amount of power.
These qualities create a powerful incentive for developers to go for the largest machine available to aid their efforts to win the auctions for offshore power supply deals that many countries have adopted. These auctions vary in format, but developers compete to provide power over a number of years for the lowest price.
“What they are looking for is a turbine that allows them to win these auctions,” said Vincent Schellings, who has headed design and production of the G.E. turbine. “That is where turbine size plays a very important role.”
Among the early customers is Orsted, a Danish company that is the world’s largest developer of offshore wind farms. It has a preliminary agreement to buy about 90 of the Haliade-X machines for a project called Ocean Wind off Atlantic City, N.J.
“I think they surprised everybody when they came out with that machine,” said David Hardy, chief executive of Orsted’s offshore business in North America.
As a huge buyer of turbines, Orsted wants to help “establish this new platform and create some volume for G.E.” so as to promote competition and innovation, Mr. Hardy said.
The G.E. turbine is selling better than its competitors may have expected, analysts say.
On Dec. 1, G.E. reached another preliminary agreement to provide turbines for Vineyard Wind, a large wind farm off Massachusetts, and it has deals to supply 276 turbines to what is likely to be the world’s largest wind farm at Dogger Bank off Britain.
These deals, with accompanying maintenance contracts, could add up to $13 billion, estimates Shashi Barla, principal wind analyst at Wood Mackenzie, a market research firm.
The waves made by the G.E. machine have pushed Siemens Gamesa to announce a series of competing turbines. Vestas, which until recently had the industry’s biggest machine in its stable, is also expected to unveil a new entry soon.
“We didn’t move as the first one, and that of course we have to address today,” said Henrik Andersen, the chief executive of Vestas.
To pull off its gambit, G.E. had to start “pretty much from scratch,” Mr. Schellings said. The business unit called G.E. Renewable Energy is spending about $400 million on design, hiring engineers and retooling factories at St. Nazaire and Cherbourg in France.
To make a blade of such extraordinary length that doesn’t buckle from its own weight, G.E. called on designers at LM Wind Power, a blade maker in Denmark that the company bought in 2016 for $1.7 billion. Among their innovations: a material combining carbon fiber and glass fiber that is lightweight yet strong and flexible.
G.E. still must work out how to manufacture large numbers of the machines efficiently, initially at the plants in France and, possibly later, in Britain and the United States. With a skimpy offshore track record, G.E. also needs to show that it can reliably install and maintain the big machines at sea, using specialized ships and dealing with rough weather.
“G.E. has to prove a lot to asset owners for them to procure G.E. turbines,” Mr. Barla said.
Bringing out bigger machines has been easier and cheaper for Siemens Gamesa, G.E.’s key rival, which is already building a prototype for a new and more powerful machine at its offshore complex at Brande on Denmark’s Jutland peninsula. The secret: The company’s ever larger new models have not strayed far from a decade-old template.
“The fundamentals of the machine and how it works remain the same,” said Mr. Rasmussen, the unit’s chief technology officer, leading to a “starting point that was a little better” than G.E.’s.
There seems to be plenty of room for competition. John Lavelle, the chief executive of G.E.’s offshore business, said the outlook for the market “gets bigger each year.”
|
77. For Pence, the Future Is Tied to Trump as Much as the Present Is.txt
|
By Annie Karni and Michael S. Schmidt
Nov. 11, 2020
WASHINGTON — For four years, Vice President Mike Pence has walked the Trump tight rope more successfully than anyone else in the president’s orbit, staying on his good side without having to echo his most incendiary rhetoric.
But in the final weeks of Mr. Pence’s term, his relationship with President Trump is facing what may be the vice president’s toughest challenge yet.
Mr. Pence must now balance his loyalty to an enraged president making baseless claims of voter fraud against his own political future and reputation. He also has to deal with how Mr. Trump’s talk of running for president again in 2024 could leave him with no lane to run in. It also makes it difficult for Mr. Pence to even start raising money if the president is floating his own name.
So far, Mr. Pence appears to be handling the pressure much as he has over the past four years: appearing to be unflinchingly loyal while also steering clear of engaging in Mr. Trump’s pressure campaigns.
In the last few months of Mr. Pence’s time as vice president, his advisers want him focused on leading the coronavirus task force and helping the two Georgia Republicans facing runoffs that will determine whether the party maintains its Senate majority.
Those advisers said they would prefer that the vice president steer clear of the Trump campaign’s legal fights contesting the election results, and so far, Mr. Pence has been careful not to repeat Mr. Trump’s most baseless attacks on the electoral system while simultaneously remaining the good soldier.
Sign up for the On Politics newsletter. Your guide to the 2024 elections. Get it sent to your inbox.
In his brief remarks early Wednesday morning after election night — he kept them to 53 seconds — Mr. Pence tried to make what amounted to a non-endorsement of the president’s claim that the election was a “major fraud on our nation” into something that sounded like unquestioning support.
“As the votes continue to be counted, we’re going to remain vigilant, as the president said,” Mr. Pence told the crowd. “We’re going to protect the integrity of the vote.”
For almost a week afterward Mr. Pence was not seen or heard in public, though it was reported that he spent time with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office on Friday.
Then on Tuesday, he spoke to Republican senators at their weekly lunch, continuing his somewhat restrained tone while giving an update on where the campaign’s lawsuits stood and thanking senators for supporting Mr. Trump without making any demand that they fall in line, according to two people who attended the meeting.
Mr. Pence told the lawmakers he planned to travel to Georgia on Nov. 20 to campaign for Republican senators in the two runoff elections. He joked that he considered himself an honorary Iowan because of all the time he had spent campaigning for Senator Joni Ernst, a seeming wink to his own presidential ambitions, which would most likely run through Iowa.
But in the same kind of nod to Mr. Trump’s claim for a second term that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the same day, he also told the senators that he wanted to keep serving with them, as the president of the Senate, and that he thought he would.
In reality, Mr. Pence’s allies expect him to return to Indiana and make a living giving paid speeches and potentially writing a book. It will be the first time in a long time that Mr. Pence will live as a private citizen — he moved from the governor’s mansion in Indiana to temporary housing in Washington during the presidential transition four years ago to the Naval Observatory. He currently does not own a house.
But before he starts to think about what kind of house he will live in, and how to fill the years before the 2024 election cycle, he still has a role to play in the end of the 2020 election.
Mr. Pence has already faced an array of tests publicly and privately since Election Day, as he has had to calculate how far to go in supporting the president’s attempts to overturn the election.
In one of the most glaring examples, Corey Lewandowski, a Trump ally, pushed for Mr. Pence to travel to the Pennsylvania Convention Center last week to observe votes being counted, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The image of the vice president — who has strong support with the social-conservative wing of the Republican Party — descending on a counting center in a state where Mr. Trump’s campaign was making baseless claims of widespread fraud would have aided the president’s narrative that the election was being stolen. Mr. Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, vetoed the request, the person said.
The furthest he has gone, rhetorically, is lending his name to campaign fund-raising emails that warn of “DEFENDING the Election from voter fraud.”
A campaign spokeswoman described his efforts on behalf of the president more effusively.
“Vice President Pence has been in constant contact with our team and extremely involved in the campaign’s legal efforts, doing everything we and the president have asked of him as well as leading efforts to raise money for the legal fund,” the spokeswoman, Ali Pardo, said in a statement.
But in his role as president of the Senate, Mr. Pence has a constitutionally designated role that could be a coda to Mr. Trump’s insistence that he won re-election — and awkward for the loyal vice president.
The Constitution calls on the vice president to oversee a joint session of Congress, to be held this time on Jan. 6, in which the votes from the Electoral College are officially counted. Typically, vice presidents simply read from a script and take no actions to interfere with the results.
In 2000, Vice President Al Gore had to certify the disputed election results after the Supreme Court effectively handed the presidential election to his opponent, George W. Bush.
“It was awkward and difficult for Vice President Al Gore in 2000, but that was his job,” recalled Michael Feldman, Mr. Gore’s former chief of staff. “The vice president has very few jobs as prescribed by the Constitution. Presiding over that process as president of the Senate is one of them.”
For Mr. Pence, the day he will have to announce Mr. Trump’s defeat is two months away. In the meantime, he has resumed more traditional duties of the job, appearing with the president on Wednesday at a Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. And he postponed a family vacation to Florida, opting instead for a speaking engagement on Friday.
|
By Annie Karni and Michael S. Schmidt
Nov. 11, 2020
WASHINGTON — For four years, Vice President Mike Pence has walked the Trump tight rope more successfully than anyone else in the president’s orbit, staying on his good side without having to echo his most incendiary rhetoric.
But in the final weeks of Mr. Pence’s term, his relationship with President Trump is facing what may be the vice president’s toughest challenge yet.
Mr. Pence must now balance his loyalty to an enraged president making baseless claims of voter fraud against his own political future and reputation
|
. He also has to deal with how Mr. Trump’s talk of running for president again in 2024 could leave him with no lane to run in. It also makes it difficult for Mr. Pence to even start raising money if the president is floating his own name.
So far, Mr. Pence appears to be handling the pressure much as he has over the past four years: appearing to be unflinchingly loyal while also steering clear of engaging in Mr. Trump’s pressure campaigns.
In the last few months of Mr. Pence’s time as vice president, his advisers want him focused on leading the coronavirus task force and helping the two Georgia Republicans facing runoffs that will determine whether the party maintains its Senate majority.
Those advisers said they would prefer that the vice president steer clear of the Trump campaign’s legal fights contesting the election results, and so far, Mr. Pence has been careful not to repeat Mr. Trump’s most baseless attacks on the electoral system while simultaneously remaining the good soldier.
Sign up for the On Politics newsletter. Your guide to the 2024 elections. Get it sent to your inbox.
In his brief remarks early Wednesday morning after election night — he kept them to 53 seconds — Mr. Pence tried to make what amounted to a non-endorsement of the president’s claim that the election was a “major fraud on our nation” into something that sounded like unquestioning support.
“As the votes continue to be counted, we’re going to remain vigilant, as the president said,” Mr. Pence told the crowd. “We’re going to protect the integrity of the vote.”
For almost a week afterward Mr. Pence was not seen or heard in public, though it was reported that he spent time with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office on Friday.
Then on Tuesday, he spoke to Republican senators at their weekly lunch, continuing his somewhat restrained tone while giving an update on where the campaign’s lawsuits stood and thanking senators for supporting Mr. Trump without making any demand that they fall in line, according to two people who attended the meeting.
Mr. Pence told the lawmakers he planned to travel to Georgia on Nov. 20 to campaign for Republican senators in the two runoff elections. He joked that he considered himself an honorary Iowan because of all the time he had spent campaigning for Senator Joni Ernst, a seeming wink to his own presidential ambitions, which would most likely run through Iowa.
But in the same kind of nod to Mr. Trump’s claim for a second term that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the same day, he also told the senators that he wanted to keep serving with them, as the president of the Senate, and that he thought he would.
In reality, Mr. Pence’s allies expect him to return to Indiana and make a living giving paid speeches and potentially writing a book. It will be the first time in a long time that Mr. Pence will live as a private citizen — he moved from the governor’s mansion in Indiana to temporary housing in Washington during the presidential transition four years ago to the Naval Observatory. He currently does not own a house.
But before he starts to think about what kind of house he will live in, and how to fill the years before the 2024 election cycle, he still has a role to play in the end of the 2020 election.
Mr. Pence has already faced an array of tests publicly and privately since Election Day, as he has had to calculate how far to go in supporting the president’s attempts to overturn the election.
In one of the most glaring examples, Corey Lewandowski, a Trump ally, pushed for Mr. Pence to travel to the Pennsylvania Convention Center last week to observe votes being counted, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The image of the vice president — who has strong support with the social-conservative wing of the Republican Party — descending on a counting center in a state where Mr. Trump’s campaign was making baseless claims of widespread fraud would have aided the president’s narrative that the election was being stolen. Mr. Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, vetoed the request, the person said.
The furthest he has gone, rhetorically, is lending his name to campaign fund-raising emails that warn of “DEFENDING the Election from voter fraud.”
A campaign spokeswoman described his efforts on behalf of the president more effusively.
“Vice President Pence has been in constant contact with our team and extremely involved in the campaign’s legal efforts, doing everything we and the president have asked of him as well as leading efforts to raise money for the legal fund,” the spokeswoman, Ali Pardo, said in a statement.
But in his role as president of the Senate, Mr. Pence has a constitutionally designated role that could be a coda to Mr. Trump’s insistence that he won re-election — and awkward for the loyal vice president.
The Constitution calls on the vice president to oversee a joint session of Congress, to be held this time on Jan. 6, in which the votes from the Electoral College are officially counted. Typically, vice presidents simply read from a script and take no actions to interfere with the results.
In 2000, Vice President Al Gore had to certify the disputed election results after the Supreme Court effectively handed the presidential election to his opponent, George W. Bush.
“It was awkward and difficult for Vice President Al Gore in 2000, but that was his job,” recalled Michael Feldman, Mr. Gore’s former chief of staff. “The vice president has very few jobs as prescribed by the Constitution. Presiding over that process as president of the Senate is one of them.”
For Mr. Pence, the day he will have to announce Mr. Trump’s defeat is two months away. In the meantime, he has resumed more traditional duties of the job, appearing with the president on Wednesday at a Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. And he postponed a family vacation to Florida, opting instead for a speaking engagement on Friday.
|
25. Can You Poison Your Way to Good Health?.txt
|
By Alex Williams
“It’s like you’re having a fever or a major allergic reaction,” said Julia Allison, 39, now a media strategist for tech companies in San Francisco, recalling her first time taking kambo, a poisonous substance from an Amazonian frog that is trending as an alt-wellness wonder drug. “Then your face starts to blow up.”
“They call it ‘frog face,’” Ms. Allison said. “It kind of looks like a celebrity plastic surgeon went to town on your face, like Kim Kardashian in a fun-house mirror. And then, suddenly, you are unbelievably nauseous. You’re basically going from zero to the worst flu of your life within 60 seconds.”
Kambo, long used by some Indigenous tribes in South America as a sort of rainforest vaccine, is not a recreational drug. You don’t trip, in the tangerine-trees-and-marmalade-skies sense.
Instead, you vomit.
In taking kambo, the goal is to purge not only so-called “toxins” trapped in your body but also, devotees say, psychological trauma and bad juju in general.
The idea is to make yourself feel horrible so that you may, after, feel wonderful. Its proponents describe it as, essentially, a thermonuclear-scale raw celery cleanse for the body and the soul.
Kambo is catching on among the same crowd of coastal New Age elites — Burning Man psychonauts, Silicon Valley disrupters, plant-medicine proselytes — that rallied around ayahuasca, the hallucinogenic rainforest tea, a decade ago.
And users should be forewarned: transcendence comes with a price.
“It was the worst experience of my life,” Ms. Allison said. “And I can’t wait to do it again.”
A Rainforest Vaccine?
Technically speaking, kambo is a glue-like toxic secretion released on the skin of a giant monkey frog, known by herpetologists as Phyllomedusa bicolor, when the amphibian feels threatened.
The Kachinaua, Kurina and Kanamari have used kambo to treat various illnesses, build stamina and ward off bad luck.
To harvest the substance, they scour the forest, listening for the particular song of the frog. When they capture one, they often bind the frog cross-limbed, place it near a fire to induce stress, then dab its skin with small sticks, which function like hypodermic needles for administering the drug, according to a 2018 report by Jan M. Keppel Hesselink, a professor of molecular pharmacology at the University of Witten/Herdecke in Germany.
Whether in the Amazon rainforest or a California bungalow, the application of kambo is similar: practitioners use a glowing ember to create tiny burns on the shoulder, ankle or other parts of the body. After wiping away the blisters, they apply a kambo-treated stick to the raw areas.
On the West Coast, kambo ceremonies often come with neo-shamanic overtones. At the ceremony Ms. Allison went to in Berkeley, Calif., in February, attendees, after paying approximately $150 apiece and following a strict three-day cleanse of sugar, alcohol, pharmaceuticals, meat, gluten and dairy, lounged on pillows on the floor, wearing loose fitting clothing, next to an altar covered with Eastern prayer cards, crystals and sage, while meditative music filled the room.
A soft-spoken medicine woman from Los Angeles named Aluna Lua began the ceremony by blowing a powdered tobacco snuff from the Amazon known as rapé up the nostrils of participants. Ms. Allison compared it to feeling “like you’ve been pleasantly electrocuted.”
Next came a drop of sananga, an Amazon plant extract, into the eyes. (“It basically feels like you’re burning your cornea,” Ms. Allison said. “I’m telling you, this is all just bohemian masochism.”)
Then it was time for the kambo. The flood of adverse effects — increased pulse and heart rate, a flushed and swelling face, nausea, diarrhea — usually come within a few minutes.
“The theory is that kambo basically puts the body into a state that is similar to a fever, that febrile state when we’re sick that helps us to fight off infection,” said Dr. David Rabin, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist in Monterey, Calif.
Or as Maria Teresa Chavez, a holistic health coach and kambo practitioner in Malibu, put it, “It really creates what feels like a wringing-out of your organs.”
Even seasoned enthusiasts find the experience grueling.
At its peak (or is it nadir?), subjects can find themselves projectile vomiting into plastic buckets for 15 to 40 minutes, or running to the bathroom with gastric distress. After the worst passes, they often peer into their buckets and analyze the color of the discharge to gauge the treatment’s effectiveness.
“In my last session I released some sticky yellow bile, as opposed to bile in a clear liquid, and it was really rough on my stomach,” said Jena la Flamme, 42, a sexual empowerment coach in Mill Valley, Calif., who has used kambo numerous times. “I’ve seen people turn sheet-white in their face during the ceremony.”
Emily Collins, 33, an operations manager at a robotics company in San Francisco, recalls feeling “an overwhelming sense of ‘I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to do this,’” during her first kambo treatment two years ago.
“It was 15 minutes that felt like four hours,” Ms. Collins, added.
But afterward?
“I feel like it’s a warrior medicine,” said Ms. la Flamme, who credits kambo with helping purge internalized anger from her divorce. “I feel like kambo is one of those things that give you superpower immunity. You kind of feel invincible from it.”
Ms. Collins recalls being skeptical when she first heard about kambo. “At first, my science brain thought this was hippie nonsense,” she said. But unable to overcome crippling migraines with conventional treatments, she went to a kambo practitioner named Steve Dumain in San Pablo, Calif. two years ago. Her kambo treatments with Mr. Dumain, a former fashion executive in New York, helped, she said: “I was up to about three migraines a month by the time I took kambo. After kambo, they went down to less than one.”
Another of Mr. Dumain’s clients, Andrew Styer, 42, a product developer for a Silicon Valley tech giant, used kambo to treat psychological pain.
Following a traumatic event a decade ago, he found himself unable to shed a lingering sense of grief, despite talk therapy. “There always felt like there was something physically stuck, a somatic feeling’” Mr. Styer said. “Every time I went back to this memory, I’d feel the physical sensations — the tight chest, the anxiety, the overwhelmed feelings.”
But after his first kambo treatment, he said, the grief was gone. “The memory is still there, but the emotional weight and attachment that had formed to that memory was no longer overwhelming,” he said. “I even felt a physical looseness. I was feeling lighter.”
Read the Warning Label
There has been some academic research on kambo. In the 1980s, Vittorio Erspamer, the Italian chemist and pharmacologist known for his research on serotonin, was one of the scientists who identified “a complex cocktail of biologically active peptides with antimicrobial, hormonal, and neuro activities” in frogs of the genus Phyllomedusa, according to an academic survey of the medicinal potential of those amphibians by Brazilian professors in 2010.
Health experts advised extreme caution, and said more rigorous studies were needed.
“Many medicines have come from natural products, particularly from places like the Amazon,” said Adam Perlman, the director of integrative medicine and health at Mayo Clinic Florida. “But at the moment, I don’t think the research into the pharmacology, not to mention the safety as well as the potential efficacy, is anywhere near where it needs to be before one would advocate using kambo in people.”
Even Dr. Rabin, a champion of psychedelic therapies including MDMA and ketamine, urges caution.
“I’ve heard very positive experiences, but these are all anecdotal,” Dr. Rabin said. “I think that there are enough hints out there that people could get significant benefits from this, which certainly makes it interesting, but it would never be something that I’d recommend as a first-line treatment, mostly because we don’t know enough about it yet, and it’s hard to find reliable providers who are trained to use kambo.”
“As a doctor, we always focus on ‘do no harm,’” he added, which is why he would opt for ketamine, which he said carries few health risks, “over something like kambo, which could hurt or kill you if not used very carefully.”
Dr. Hesselink’s review of the medical literature uncovered several cases where kambo cleanses led to hospitalizations and even deaths, although some instances may have involved the wrong frog species, an overconsumption of water or pre-existing heart conditions.
Such warnings, however, have not stopped Tulum-trotting coastal influencers from bowing to the powers of the frog.
“Last year, none of my patients had ever heard of kambo,” Dr. Rabin said. “Now, I would say 20 to 30 percent of my new patients already know about it. I have a lot of patients who are like, ‘Oh, I’m going to do kambo this weekend.’”
Kambo is now included on the menu at ayahuasca retreats in Costa Rica and Mexico, as a sort of cleansing appetizer. The International Association of Kambo Practitioners, a nonprofit in the Netherlands, has certified more than 400 practitioners since its founding in 2014, according to its website.
And increasingly, practitioners said, those curious about kambo are coming from slightly more mainstream places. “I get executives from Apple and Google, and then I get people who have been in the Rainbow Gathering,” Mr. Dumain said, referring to an annual peace-and-patchouli festival held in wilderness areas.
The idea of a body-shaking cleanse through projectile vomiting seems like an oddly appropriate response to a toxic year.
Ms. la Flamme, the sex coach, said she has done kambo nine times this year, and now feels a “lightness and peace, a quietness in my soul.”
“And that,” she added, “is pretty un-2020.”
|
By Alex Williams
“It’s like you’re having a fever or a major allergic reaction,” said Julia Allison, 39, now a media strategist for tech companies in San Francisco, recalling her first time taking kambo, a poisonous substance from an Amazonian frog that is trending as an alt-wellness wonder drug. “Then your face starts to blow up.”
“They call it ‘frog face,’” Ms. Allison said. “It kind of looks like a celebrity plastic surgeon went to town on your face, like Kim Kardashian in a fun-house mirror. And then, suddenly, you are
|
unbelievably nauseous. You’re basically going from zero to the worst flu of your life within 60 seconds.”
Kambo, long used by some Indigenous tribes in South America as a sort of rainforest vaccine, is not a recreational drug. You don’t trip, in the tangerine-trees-and-marmalade-skies sense.
Instead, you vomit.
In taking kambo, the goal is to purge not only so-called “toxins” trapped in your body but also, devotees say, psychological trauma and bad juju in general.
The idea is to make yourself feel horrible so that you may, after, feel wonderful. Its proponents describe it as, essentially, a thermonuclear-scale raw celery cleanse for the body and the soul.
Kambo is catching on among the same crowd of coastal New Age elites — Burning Man psychonauts, Silicon Valley disrupters, plant-medicine proselytes — that rallied around ayahuasca, the hallucinogenic rainforest tea, a decade ago.
And users should be forewarned: transcendence comes with a price.
“It was the worst experience of my life,” Ms. Allison said. “And I can’t wait to do it again.”
A Rainforest Vaccine?
Technically speaking, kambo is a glue-like toxic secretion released on the skin of a giant monkey frog, known by herpetologists as Phyllomedusa bicolor, when the amphibian feels threatened.
The Kachinaua, Kurina and Kanamari have used kambo to treat various illnesses, build stamina and ward off bad luck.
To harvest the substance, they scour the forest, listening for the particular song of the frog. When they capture one, they often bind the frog cross-limbed, place it near a fire to induce stress, then dab its skin with small sticks, which function like hypodermic needles for administering the drug, according to a 2018 report by Jan M. Keppel Hesselink, a professor of molecular pharmacology at the University of Witten/Herdecke in Germany.
Whether in the Amazon rainforest or a California bungalow, the application of kambo is similar: practitioners use a glowing ember to create tiny burns on the shoulder, ankle or other parts of the body. After wiping away the blisters, they apply a kambo-treated stick to the raw areas.
On the West Coast, kambo ceremonies often come with neo-shamanic overtones. At the ceremony Ms. Allison went to in Berkeley, Calif., in February, attendees, after paying approximately $150 apiece and following a strict three-day cleanse of sugar, alcohol, pharmaceuticals, meat, gluten and dairy, lounged on pillows on the floor, wearing loose fitting clothing, next to an altar covered with Eastern prayer cards, crystals and sage, while meditative music filled the room.
A soft-spoken medicine woman from Los Angeles named Aluna Lua began the ceremony by blowing a powdered tobacco snuff from the Amazon known as rapé up the nostrils of participants. Ms. Allison compared it to feeling “like you’ve been pleasantly electrocuted.”
Next came a drop of sananga, an Amazon plant extract, into the eyes. (“It basically feels like you’re burning your cornea,” Ms. Allison said. “I’m telling you, this is all just bohemian masochism.”)
Then it was time for the kambo. The flood of adverse effects — increased pulse and heart rate, a flushed and swelling face, nausea, diarrhea — usually come within a few minutes.
“The theory is that kambo basically puts the body into a state that is similar to a fever, that febrile state when we’re sick that helps us to fight off infection,” said Dr. David Rabin, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist in Monterey, Calif.
Or as Maria Teresa Chavez, a holistic health coach and kambo practitioner in Malibu, put it, “It really creates what feels like a wringing-out of your organs.”
Even seasoned enthusiasts find the experience grueling.
At its peak (or is it nadir?), subjects can find themselves projectile vomiting into plastic buckets for 15 to 40 minutes, or running to the bathroom with gastric distress. After the worst passes, they often peer into their buckets and analyze the color of the discharge to gauge the treatment’s effectiveness.
“In my last session I released some sticky yellow bile, as opposed to bile in a clear liquid, and it was really rough on my stomach,” said Jena la Flamme, 42, a sexual empowerment coach in Mill Valley, Calif., who has used kambo numerous times. “I’ve seen people turn sheet-white in their face during the ceremony.”
Emily Collins, 33, an operations manager at a robotics company in San Francisco, recalls feeling “an overwhelming sense of ‘I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to do this,’” during her first kambo treatment two years ago.
“It was 15 minutes that felt like four hours,” Ms. Collins, added.
But afterward?
“I feel like it’s a warrior medicine,” said Ms. la Flamme, who credits kambo with helping purge internalized anger from her divorce. “I feel like kambo is one of those things that give you superpower immunity. You kind of feel invincible from it.”
Ms. Collins recalls being skeptical when she first heard about kambo. “At first, my science brain thought this was hippie nonsense,” she said. But unable to overcome crippling migraines with conventional treatments, she went to a kambo practitioner named Steve Dumain in San Pablo, Calif. two years ago. Her kambo treatments with Mr. Dumain, a former fashion executive in New York, helped, she said: “I was up to about three migraines a month by the time I took kambo. After kambo, they went down to less than one.”
Another of Mr. Dumain’s clients, Andrew Styer, 42, a product developer for a Silicon Valley tech giant, used kambo to treat psychological pain.
Following a traumatic event a decade ago, he found himself unable to shed a lingering sense of grief, despite talk therapy. “There always felt like there was something physically stuck, a somatic feeling’” Mr. Styer said. “Every time I went back to this memory, I’d feel the physical sensations — the tight chest, the anxiety, the overwhelmed feelings.”
But after his first kambo treatment, he said, the grief was gone. “The memory is still there, but the emotional weight and attachment that had formed to that memory was no longer overwhelming,” he said. “I even felt a physical looseness. I was feeling lighter.”
Read the Warning Label
There has been some academic research on kambo. In the 1980s, Vittorio Erspamer, the Italian chemist and pharmacologist known for his research on serotonin, was one of the scientists who identified “a complex cocktail of biologically active peptides with antimicrobial, hormonal, and neuro activities” in frogs of the genus Phyllomedusa, according to an academic survey of the medicinal potential of those amphibians by Brazilian professors in 2010.
Health experts advised extreme caution, and said more rigorous studies were needed.
“Many medicines have come from natural products, particularly from places like the Amazon,” said Adam Perlman, the director of integrative medicine and health at Mayo Clinic Florida. “But at the moment, I don’t think the research into the pharmacology, not to mention the safety as well as the potential efficacy, is anywhere near where it needs to be before one would advocate using kambo in people.”
Even Dr. Rabin, a champion of psychedelic therapies including MDMA and ketamine, urges caution.
“I’ve heard very positive experiences, but these are all anecdotal,” Dr. Rabin said. “I think that there are enough hints out there that people could get significant benefits from this, which certainly makes it interesting, but it would never be something that I’d recommend as a first-line treatment, mostly because we don’t know enough about it yet, and it’s hard to find reliable providers who are trained to use kambo.”
“As a doctor, we always focus on ‘do no harm,’” he added, which is why he would opt for ketamine, which he said carries few health risks, “over something like kambo, which could hurt or kill you if not used very carefully.”
Dr. Hesselink’s review of the medical literature uncovered several cases where kambo cleanses led to hospitalizations and even deaths, although some instances may have involved the wrong frog species, an overconsumption of water or pre-existing heart conditions.
Such warnings, however, have not stopped Tulum-trotting coastal influencers from bowing to the powers of the frog.
“Last year, none of my patients had ever heard of kambo,” Dr. Rabin said. “Now, I would say 20 to 30 percent of my new patients already know about it. I have a lot of patients who are like, ‘Oh, I’m going to do kambo this weekend.’”
Kambo is now included on the menu at ayahuasca retreats in Costa Rica and Mexico, as a sort of cleansing appetizer. The International Association of Kambo Practitioners, a nonprofit in the Netherlands, has certified more than 400 practitioners since its founding in 2014, according to its website.
And increasingly, practitioners said, those curious about kambo are coming from slightly more mainstream places. “I get executives from Apple and Google, and then I get people who have been in the Rainbow Gathering,” Mr. Dumain said, referring to an annual peace-and-patchouli festival held in wilderness areas.
The idea of a body-shaking cleanse through projectile vomiting seems like an oddly appropriate response to a toxic year.
Ms. la Flamme, the sex coach, said she has done kambo nine times this year, and now feels a “lightness and peace, a quietness in my soul.”
“And that,” she added, “is pretty un-2020.”
|
85. Biden’s Policy Agenda Rests Heavily on Senate Outcome.txt
|
By Jim Tankersley
Nov. 11, 2020
WASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s transition team is preparing multiple sets of policy proposals for the economy, health care, climate change and other domestic issues, including the ambitious agenda Mr. Biden laid out in his winning campaign, while acknowledging it may have to be pared back in recognition of divided government.
Where the incoming administration lands depends heavily on two Senate runoffs in Georgia in early January.
If Democrats win both races, close aides to Mr. Biden and economists who helped advise his campaign say the president-elect will try to push through a large stimulus plan for the flagging economic recovery — most likely along the lines of the $2.2 trillion that House Democrats approved this fall. His stimulus plan under such a scenario would include hundreds of billions of dollars for state and local governments that have lost tax revenue amid the pandemic recession, extended unemployment benefits for people who lost jobs during the crisis and a new round of aid for small businesses.
His team is also developing a government employment program — called the Public Health Jobs Corps — that would put 100,000 Americans to work on virus testing and contact tracing.
A narrow majority in the Senate would also give Mr. Biden the chance to push through his proposed tax increases on corporations and the rich — tax hikes that would be used to fund the president-elect’s more ambitious plans like rebuilding roads and bridges, speeding the transition to a carbon-free energy sector and helping Americans afford health care.
But if Republicans win even one of the Georgia seats, Mr. Biden will most likely need to settle for a wave of executive actions that would bring more incremental progress toward his policy goals, while trying to cut compromise deals with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader.
Tax increases, even for the ultrarich, would almost certainly be off the table, as would be expanding the Affordable Care Act to give Americans the ability to buy into a government insurance program like Medicare. Mr. Biden would continue to push for infrastructure and health care bills, economists around him say, but he would be unlikely to win support for his full agenda in those areas.
Inflation F.A.Q.
Card 1 of 5
What is inflation? Inflation is a general increase in prices, which will cause a loss of purchasing power over time, meaning your dollar will not go as far tomorrow as it did today. It is typically expressed as the annual change in prices for everyday goods and services such as food, furniture, apparel, transportation and toys.
What causes inflation? It can be the result of rising consumer demand. But inflation can also rise and fall based on developments that have little to do with economic conditions, such as limited oil production and supply chain problems.
Is inflation bad? It depends on the circumstances. Fast price increases spell trouble, but moderate price gains can lead to higher wages and job growth.
How does inflation affect the poor? Inflation can be especially hard to shoulder for poor households because they spend a bigger chunk of their budgets on necessities like food, housing and gas.
Can inflation affect the stock market? Rapid inflation typically spells trouble for stocks. Financial assets in general have historically fared badly during inflation booms, while tangible assets like houses have held their value better.
In order to extend as much economic aid to people, businesses and state and local governments as his team believes is necessary to sustain the recovery, Mr. Biden could be forced into a creative reshuffling of unspent money from the previously approved stimulus package — the sort of move that Democrats criticized when President Trump acted this year to repurpose federal disaster funding for a supplemental unemployment benefit.
Mr. Biden’s aides say his transition team is working on a variety of contingency plans depending on economic conditions, including whether the recent surge of virus cases chills consumer spending, and on party control of the Senate. The team is also moving ahead with finalists for appointments to key cabinet positions and other posts, many of which will be announced before the Georgia runoff.
“President-elect Biden’s transition team is filled with experts who are, at this very moment, engaged in the work of fleshing out the Biden-Harris campaign policy proposals into actionable executive actions and legislative proposals,” said Stef Feldman, Mr. Biden’s campaign policy director. “The Biden-Harris administration will be prepared to act on Day 1 in all scenarios, including the different possible outcomes of the Georgia runoffs.”
Georgia is headed to a runoff because none of the candidates running for the two Senate seats won 50 percent of the vote, a legal threshold set by the state. On Jan. 5, the state will hold another election, with Senator David Perdue, a Republican, up against Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, and Kelly Loeffler, a Republican, up against the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, a Democrat.
The races will be competitive and expensive, reflecting Georgia’s newfound status as a battleground state and the high stakes of the outcome. The presidential race there is still undecided, with Mr. Biden currently leading Mr. Trump by just over 14,000 votes in the state, which has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1992. On Wednesday, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state authorized a hand recount of the election — a move championed by Mr. Trump but one officials have said is unlikely to erase Mr. Biden’s narrow lead.
“A Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate would be the biggest difference maker to help President-elect Biden deliver for working families across the country,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader.
Such a majority would give Democrats the ability to pass certain legislation without running the risk of a Republican filibuster by employing the same parliamentary maneuver that Mr. Trump and his party used to pass sweeping tax cuts in 2017 without a single Democratic vote. It would almost certainly be the vehicle for Mr. Biden to achieve most of his ambitions in areas like infrastructure, education and climate change. And it would allow him to raise taxes on companies and the rich, which Republicans would otherwise almost certainly block.
“It seems like it’s everything,” said Heidi Shierholz, a former Labor Department economist under President Barack Obama who is the policy director at the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “If it’s 50-50 in the Senate after the Georgia races, then the Democrats will be able to push something substantial through that will be a really key thing for boosting the economy. If not, it just doesn’t seem possible.”
While Mr. Biden’s campaign platform was less expensive and expansive than his Democratic primary race rivals’, it featured more new government spending and targeted tax increases — in dollar terms — than any Democratic nominee before him.
Much of his campaign’s domestic policy agenda would require acts of Congress, including many of the economic policies that Mr. Biden’s transition team has highlighted in recent days.
That list starts with a stimulus proposal that hews closely to the multitrillion-dollar package that House Democrats approved this fall, though they could not reach an agreement with Trump administration officials and Mr. McConnell in order to pass the bill into law.
Mr. Biden’s bigger-picture agenda also calls for new legislation. He wants to pass an infrastructure bill that includes expanding broadband internet to rural areas and increasing federal spending on clean energy research. He would fund universal prekindergarten, enhanced Social Security benefits and expanded tax credits for health insurance coverage. He would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour from $7.25 and make it easier for workers to form a labor union.
To offset that new spending, Mr. Biden would seek congressional approval to raise taxes on businesses, particularly multinational corporations, and individuals earning more than $400,000 a year.
Slivers of that agenda would remain possible for Mr. Biden without Senate control. Business groups remain hopeful that he and Mr. McConnell could reach agreement on a slimmed-down stimulus bill and a compromise infrastructure package, perhaps in the form of a new highway bill.
Mr. Biden could also push executive actions to reshape trade, financial regulation and energy policy, among others. His Treasury Department could use its regulatory authority to nibble at the edges of tax policy, including shifting enforcement efforts to focus more on high earners and companies that dodge tax liability, said Kimberly Clausing, an economist at Reed College in Oregon who provided tax policy advice to Mr. Biden’s campaign.
Mr. Biden’s campaign platform included a wide range of potential executive actions, such as placing new requirements on firms bidding for federal contracts to promote higher pay and racial equality. It also included a plan to direct $400 billion of federal procurement to products made in the United States and to impose strict new fuel economy standards to combat climate change. Transition advisers are also exploring how Mr. Biden might repurpose previously allocated, but unspent, stimulus funds to help people and businesses.
Liberal economists and many progressive activists fear that scenario would expose the economy to the risk of a sluggish recovery early in Mr. Biden’s term.
“Just being totally realistic and honest, it’s huge” for the fate of Mr. Biden’s agenda, said Michael Linden, the executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, which promotes progressive policies. “That doesn’t mean that if Democrats win the Senate, they get all their wildest dreams. It does mean that instead of having to give everything they need to Mitch McConnell to get him to think about doing something, you could actually get some things passed to improve people’s lives.”
But business groups and many consultants in Washington are welcoming the possibility of a divided government with little threat of corporate tax increases.
“We have to lower the ceiling of expectations in that scenario” for Mr. Biden’s agenda, said John Gimigliano, a former Republican tax policy staff member in the House who is now at KPMG in Washington. “We’re looking at more modest, more bipartisan stuff. And to be honest, maybe that’s not the worst thing.”
|
By Jim Tankersley
Nov. 11, 2020
WASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s transition team is preparing multiple sets of policy proposals for the economy, health care, climate change and other domestic issues, including the ambitious agenda Mr. Biden laid out in his winning campaign, while acknowledging it may have to be pared back in recognition of divided government.
Where the incoming administration lands depends heavily on two Senate runoffs in Georgia in early January.
If Democrats win both races, close aides to Mr. Biden and economists who helped advise his campaign say the president-elect will try
|
to push through a large stimulus plan for the flagging economic recovery — most likely along the lines of the $2.2 trillion that House Democrats approved this fall. His stimulus plan under such a scenario would include hundreds of billions of dollars for state and local governments that have lost tax revenue amid the pandemic recession, extended unemployment benefits for people who lost jobs during the crisis and a new round of aid for small businesses.
His team is also developing a government employment program — called the Public Health Jobs Corps — that would put 100,000 Americans to work on virus testing and contact tracing.
A narrow majority in the Senate would also give Mr. Biden the chance to push through his proposed tax increases on corporations and the rich — tax hikes that would be used to fund the president-elect’s more ambitious plans like rebuilding roads and bridges, speeding the transition to a carbon-free energy sector and helping Americans afford health care.
But if Republicans win even one of the Georgia seats, Mr. Biden will most likely need to settle for a wave of executive actions that would bring more incremental progress toward his policy goals, while trying to cut compromise deals with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader.
Tax increases, even for the ultrarich, would almost certainly be off the table, as would be expanding the Affordable Care Act to give Americans the ability to buy into a government insurance program like Medicare. Mr. Biden would continue to push for infrastructure and health care bills, economists around him say, but he would be unlikely to win support for his full agenda in those areas.
Inflation F.A.Q.
Card 1 of 5
What is inflation? Inflation is a general increase in prices, which will cause a loss of purchasing power over time, meaning your dollar will not go as far tomorrow as it did today. It is typically expressed as the annual change in prices for everyday goods and services such as food, furniture, apparel, transportation and toys.
What causes inflation? It can be the result of rising consumer demand. But inflation can also rise and fall based on developments that have little to do with economic conditions, such as limited oil production and supply chain problems.
Is inflation bad? It depends on the circumstances. Fast price increases spell trouble, but moderate price gains can lead to higher wages and job growth.
How does inflation affect the poor? Inflation can be especially hard to shoulder for poor households because they spend a bigger chunk of their budgets on necessities like food, housing and gas.
Can inflation affect the stock market? Rapid inflation typically spells trouble for stocks. Financial assets in general have historically fared badly during inflation booms, while tangible assets like houses have held their value better.
In order to extend as much economic aid to people, businesses and state and local governments as his team believes is necessary to sustain the recovery, Mr. Biden could be forced into a creative reshuffling of unspent money from the previously approved stimulus package — the sort of move that Democrats criticized when President Trump acted this year to repurpose federal disaster funding for a supplemental unemployment benefit.
Mr. Biden’s aides say his transition team is working on a variety of contingency plans depending on economic conditions, including whether the recent surge of virus cases chills consumer spending, and on party control of the Senate. The team is also moving ahead with finalists for appointments to key cabinet positions and other posts, many of which will be announced before the Georgia runoff.
“President-elect Biden’s transition team is filled with experts who are, at this very moment, engaged in the work of fleshing out the Biden-Harris campaign policy proposals into actionable executive actions and legislative proposals,” said Stef Feldman, Mr. Biden’s campaign policy director. “The Biden-Harris administration will be prepared to act on Day 1 in all scenarios, including the different possible outcomes of the Georgia runoffs.”
Georgia is headed to a runoff because none of the candidates running for the two Senate seats won 50 percent of the vote, a legal threshold set by the state. On Jan. 5, the state will hold another election, with Senator David Perdue, a Republican, up against Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, and Kelly Loeffler, a Republican, up against the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, a Democrat.
The races will be competitive and expensive, reflecting Georgia’s newfound status as a battleground state and the high stakes of the outcome. The presidential race there is still undecided, with Mr. Biden currently leading Mr. Trump by just over 14,000 votes in the state, which has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1992. On Wednesday, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state authorized a hand recount of the election — a move championed by Mr. Trump but one officials have said is unlikely to erase Mr. Biden’s narrow lead.
“A Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate would be the biggest difference maker to help President-elect Biden deliver for working families across the country,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader.
Such a majority would give Democrats the ability to pass certain legislation without running the risk of a Republican filibuster by employing the same parliamentary maneuver that Mr. Trump and his party used to pass sweeping tax cuts in 2017 without a single Democratic vote. It would almost certainly be the vehicle for Mr. Biden to achieve most of his ambitions in areas like infrastructure, education and climate change. And it would allow him to raise taxes on companies and the rich, which Republicans would otherwise almost certainly block.
“It seems like it’s everything,” said Heidi Shierholz, a former Labor Department economist under President Barack Obama who is the policy director at the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “If it’s 50-50 in the Senate after the Georgia races, then the Democrats will be able to push something substantial through that will be a really key thing for boosting the economy. If not, it just doesn’t seem possible.”
While Mr. Biden’s campaign platform was less expensive and expansive than his Democratic primary race rivals’, it featured more new government spending and targeted tax increases — in dollar terms — than any Democratic nominee before him.
Much of his campaign’s domestic policy agenda would require acts of Congress, including many of the economic policies that Mr. Biden’s transition team has highlighted in recent days.
That list starts with a stimulus proposal that hews closely to the multitrillion-dollar package that House Democrats approved this fall, though they could not reach an agreement with Trump administration officials and Mr. McConnell in order to pass the bill into law.
Mr. Biden’s bigger-picture agenda also calls for new legislation. He wants to pass an infrastructure bill that includes expanding broadband internet to rural areas and increasing federal spending on clean energy research. He would fund universal prekindergarten, enhanced Social Security benefits and expanded tax credits for health insurance coverage. He would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour from $7.25 and make it easier for workers to form a labor union.
To offset that new spending, Mr. Biden would seek congressional approval to raise taxes on businesses, particularly multinational corporations, and individuals earning more than $400,000 a year.
Slivers of that agenda would remain possible for Mr. Biden without Senate control. Business groups remain hopeful that he and Mr. McConnell could reach agreement on a slimmed-down stimulus bill and a compromise infrastructure package, perhaps in the form of a new highway bill.
Mr. Biden could also push executive actions to reshape trade, financial regulation and energy policy, among others. His Treasury Department could use its regulatory authority to nibble at the edges of tax policy, including shifting enforcement efforts to focus more on high earners and companies that dodge tax liability, said Kimberly Clausing, an economist at Reed College in Oregon who provided tax policy advice to Mr. Biden’s campaign.
Mr. Biden’s campaign platform included a wide range of potential executive actions, such as placing new requirements on firms bidding for federal contracts to promote higher pay and racial equality. It also included a plan to direct $400 billion of federal procurement to products made in the United States and to impose strict new fuel economy standards to combat climate change. Transition advisers are also exploring how Mr. Biden might repurpose previously allocated, but unspent, stimulus funds to help people and businesses.
Liberal economists and many progressive activists fear that scenario would expose the economy to the risk of a sluggish recovery early in Mr. Biden’s term.
“Just being totally realistic and honest, it’s huge” for the fate of Mr. Biden’s agenda, said Michael Linden, the executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, which promotes progressive policies. “That doesn’t mean that if Democrats win the Senate, they get all their wildest dreams. It does mean that instead of having to give everything they need to Mitch McConnell to get him to think about doing something, you could actually get some things passed to improve people’s lives.”
But business groups and many consultants in Washington are welcoming the possibility of a divided government with little threat of corporate tax increases.
“We have to lower the ceiling of expectations in that scenario” for Mr. Biden’s agenda, said John Gimigliano, a former Republican tax policy staff member in the House who is now at KPMG in Washington. “We’re looking at more modest, more bipartisan stuff. And to be honest, maybe that’s not the worst thing.”
|
21. Armando Manzanero, Influential Mexican Balladeer, Is Dead.txt
|
By Oscar Lopez
Jan. 1, 2021
Armando Manzanero, one of Mexico’s greatest romantic composers, whose ballads were performed by the likes of Elvis Presley and Christina Aguilera, died on Monday in Mexico City.
Mr. Manzanero’s family gave his age as 86, though some sources have said that he was 85.
His death was announced on national television by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and by the Society of Authors and Composers of Mexico, of which Mr. Manzanero was president.
“A great composer, among the best of the country,” and “a socially sensitive man,” Mr. López Obrador said.
Mr. Manzanero had been hospitalized with Covid-19 and placed on a ventilator a week before his death, but his son, Diego Manzanero, said the cause was cardiac arrest following complications of kidney problems.
In a seven-decade career, Mr. Manzanero wrote more than 400 songs, including hits like “It’s Impossible” and “Adoro” (“I Adore You”). He received a Grammy lifetime achievement award in 2014. He was also a lauded singer and producer.
After touring with several well-known Mexican musical artists early in his career, he recorded his first songs in 1959 and released his first solo album, “A Mi Amor … Con Mi Amor” (“To My Love … With My Love”), in 1967. He went on to release dozens of albums, some of them consisting of duets.
In 1971, Mr. Manzanero received a Grammy nomination for song of the year for “It’s Impossible,” a translation of his 1968 song “Somos Novios,” sung by Perry Como. The song, with a lush melody and syrupy lyrics, has remained popular. Elvis Presley recorded, as did Andrea Bocelli, in a duet with Ms. Aguilera.
Luis Miguel sang several of Mr. Manzanero’s songs for his album “Romances,” released in 1997. A worldwide success, the album was credited with giving new popularity to Latin romance music, which had lost favor to some degree with the rise of Latin pop in the 1980s and ’90s.
Often deceptively simple but imbued with tenderness and passion, Mr. Manzanero’s love songs have resonated for decades across cultures and languages.
“A song has to be written with sincerity,” he told Billboard magazine in 2003. “It can’t be written with the desire to have instant success or passing success.” Rather, he said, it should be written to last.
“It’s like when you do a painting,” he added. “You have to do it right so that the painting remains on the wall forever. That’s been my secret.”
Armando Manzanero Canché, who was of Mayan heritage, was born on Dec. 7, 1934, in Merida, in southeastern Mexico, though his birth date was not officially registered until a year later, as Dec. 7, 1935, he said in interviews. (Some records suggest that he was born on Feb. 7, 1935.)
“A year more, a year less, it doesn’t make a difference,” he said in a 2019 interview on Mexico’s Imagen Televisión.
The eldest of three siblings, he also had two half brothers.
His parents introduced him to music at a young age. His mother, Juana Canché, was a performer of folkloric Yucatán dances; his father, Santiago Manzanero, was a musician — “a magnificent guitarist,” Mr. Manzanero had said.
He studied at the National Conservatory of Music in Mexico City. In 1957, he married María Elena Arjona Torres, the first of five wives.
“People who are lucky in life get married just once,” Mr. Manzanero said.
His fourth wife, Olga Aradillas Lara, accused him of domestic abuse, a claim he publicly denied in a news conference in 2005. “I never mistreated her,” he was quoted as saying in the newspaper La Jornada. “I never hit her.”
Despite the accusation and his multiple marriages, in Mexico he was regarded as a hopeless romantic. The actress and singer Susana Zabaleta, who recorded two albums with Mr. Manzanero, said it was his love of love itself that she would remember most.
“The maestro always had a great fascination with being in love,” she said in a phone interview. “He was always in love, he was always a man who believed in love.” She added, “He was a great lover of falling in love again.”
He was also a workhorse. He had recently finished a new album and was halfway through recording another at his death. He and Ms. Zabaleta were planning to go on tour in Mexico and in the United States this year.
“He worked as if he wasn’t famous,” his son, Diego, said in a phone interview. “The 86 years he lived were marvelous, and we enjoyed him — he had so many people that loved him.”
In addition to his son, Mr. Manzanero’s survivors include his wife, Laura Elena Villa; six other children, Armando, Maria Elena, Martha, Mainca, Rodrigo and Juan Pablo; 16 grandchildren; one great-granddaughter; and two sisters.
Ms. Zabaleta said she was still planning to go on tour next year. Mr. Manzanero, she said, would live on “as long as we keep singing his songs.”
|
By Oscar Lopez
Jan. 1, 2021
Armando Manzanero, one of Mexico’s greatest romantic composers, whose ballads were performed by the likes of Elvis Presley and Christina Aguilera, died on Monday in Mexico City.
Mr. Manzanero’s family gave his age as 86, though some sources have said that he was 85.
His death was announced on national television by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and by the Society of Authors and Composers of Mexico, of which Mr. Manzanero was president.
“A great composer, among the best of the country,” and “
|
a socially sensitive man,” Mr. López Obrador said.
Mr. Manzanero had been hospitalized with Covid-19 and placed on a ventilator a week before his death, but his son, Diego Manzanero, said the cause was cardiac arrest following complications of kidney problems.
In a seven-decade career, Mr. Manzanero wrote more than 400 songs, including hits like “It’s Impossible” and “Adoro” (“I Adore You”). He received a Grammy lifetime achievement award in 2014. He was also a lauded singer and producer.
After touring with several well-known Mexican musical artists early in his career, he recorded his first songs in 1959 and released his first solo album, “A Mi Amor … Con Mi Amor” (“To My Love … With My Love”), in 1967. He went on to release dozens of albums, some of them consisting of duets.
In 1971, Mr. Manzanero received a Grammy nomination for song of the year for “It’s Impossible,” a translation of his 1968 song “Somos Novios,” sung by Perry Como. The song, with a lush melody and syrupy lyrics, has remained popular. Elvis Presley recorded, as did Andrea Bocelli, in a duet with Ms. Aguilera.
Luis Miguel sang several of Mr. Manzanero’s songs for his album “Romances,” released in 1997. A worldwide success, the album was credited with giving new popularity to Latin romance music, which had lost favor to some degree with the rise of Latin pop in the 1980s and ’90s.
Often deceptively simple but imbued with tenderness and passion, Mr. Manzanero’s love songs have resonated for decades across cultures and languages.
“A song has to be written with sincerity,” he told Billboard magazine in 2003. “It can’t be written with the desire to have instant success or passing success.” Rather, he said, it should be written to last.
“It’s like when you do a painting,” he added. “You have to do it right so that the painting remains on the wall forever. That’s been my secret.”
Armando Manzanero Canché, who was of Mayan heritage, was born on Dec. 7, 1934, in Merida, in southeastern Mexico, though his birth date was not officially registered until a year later, as Dec. 7, 1935, he said in interviews. (Some records suggest that he was born on Feb. 7, 1935.)
“A year more, a year less, it doesn’t make a difference,” he said in a 2019 interview on Mexico’s Imagen Televisión.
The eldest of three siblings, he also had two half brothers.
His parents introduced him to music at a young age. His mother, Juana Canché, was a performer of folkloric Yucatán dances; his father, Santiago Manzanero, was a musician — “a magnificent guitarist,” Mr. Manzanero had said.
He studied at the National Conservatory of Music in Mexico City. In 1957, he married María Elena Arjona Torres, the first of five wives.
“People who are lucky in life get married just once,” Mr. Manzanero said.
His fourth wife, Olga Aradillas Lara, accused him of domestic abuse, a claim he publicly denied in a news conference in 2005. “I never mistreated her,” he was quoted as saying in the newspaper La Jornada. “I never hit her.”
Despite the accusation and his multiple marriages, in Mexico he was regarded as a hopeless romantic. The actress and singer Susana Zabaleta, who recorded two albums with Mr. Manzanero, said it was his love of love itself that she would remember most.
“The maestro always had a great fascination with being in love,” she said in a phone interview. “He was always in love, he was always a man who believed in love.” She added, “He was a great lover of falling in love again.”
He was also a workhorse. He had recently finished a new album and was halfway through recording another at his death. He and Ms. Zabaleta were planning to go on tour in Mexico and in the United States this year.
“He worked as if he wasn’t famous,” his son, Diego, said in a phone interview. “The 86 years he lived were marvelous, and we enjoyed him — he had so many people that loved him.”
In addition to his son, Mr. Manzanero’s survivors include his wife, Laura Elena Villa; six other children, Armando, Maria Elena, Martha, Mainca, Rodrigo and Juan Pablo; 16 grandchildren; one great-granddaughter; and two sisters.
Ms. Zabaleta said she was still planning to go on tour next year. Mr. Manzanero, she said, would live on “as long as we keep singing his songs.”
|
49. David Fincher, the Unhappiest Auteur.txt
|
By Manohla Dargis
For nearly three decades, David Fincher has been making gorgeous bummer movies that — in defiance of Hollywood’s first principle — insist that happy endings are a lie. Filled with virtuosic images of terrible deeds and violence, his movies entertain almost begrudgingly. Even when good somewhat triumphs, the victories come at a brutal cost. No one, Fincher warns, is going to save us. You will hurt and you will die, and sometimes your pretty wife’s severed head will end up in a box.
Long a specialized taste, Fincher in recent years started to feel like an endangered species: a commercial director who makes studio movies for adult audiences, in an industry in thrall to cartoons and comic books. His latest, “Mank,” a drama about the film industry, was made for Netflix, though. It’s an outlier in his filmography. Its violence is emotional and psychological, and there’s only one corpse, even if its self-destructive protagonist, Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman), can look alarmingly cadaverous. Set in Hollywood’s golden age, it revisits his tenure in one of the most reliably bitter and underappreciated Hollywood tribes, a.k.a. screenwriters.
Part of the movie takes place in the early 1930s, when Herman was at Paramount and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; the other section focuses on when he was holed up in 1940 writing “Citizen Kane” for Orson Welles, its star, producer, director and joint writer. Like that film, “Mank”— written by Fincher’s father, Jack Fincher — kinks time, using the past to reflect on the present. Its flashbacks largely involve Herman’s boozy, yakky days and nights at Hearst Castle in the company of its crypt keeper, the newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, and his lover, the actress Marion Davies. There amid the waxworks, Herman plays the court jester, as a few intimates unkindly note.
Hollywood loves gently self-flagellating stories about its horrible, wonderful doings; there’s a reason it keeps remaking “A Star Is Born.” The lash stings harder and more unforgivingly in “Mank” than it does in most of these reflexive entertainments, though Fincher’s movie also sentimentalizes the industry, most obviously in its soft-focus view of both Herman and Marion (Amanda Seyfried), a poor little rich dame. In narrative terms, Marion is Herman’s doppelgänger: a self-immolating avatar of decency that’s otherwise missing in their crowd. Their real tragedy, at least here, is that they’re in the movie business, and, as punishment, each must endure the unhappy patronage of a great man: Marion under Hearst and Herman with Orson.
The two narrative lines in “Mank” never make coherent, interesting sense, no matter how Fincher jams them together. The big news during Herman’s MGM years is the industry’s (and Hearst’s) propagandistic drive to torpedo the writer Upton Sinclair’s 1934 run for governor of California. The real Herman Mankiewicz doesn’t seem to have had much of anything to do with this chapter in American cinema, but Hollywood has rarely let fact get in the way of a juicy story and “Mank” fully commits to its chronicle of events. But it doesn’t just stop there: It tethers Mankiewicz’s nonexistent role in this disinformation campaign to his role in “Citizen Kane,” a fascinatingly self-serving flex.
FINCHER WAS 27 when he was hired for “Alien 3,” his first feature. Welles was 25 when he began filming “Citizen Kane,” the most famous directorial debut in cinema history. There’s little to connect the men other than cinema. Welles had a background in radio and theater; Fincher had worked in postproduction before he started directing commercials and music videos. The Hollywood each man worked in was also different, though by the time Fincher made his first film for 20th Century Fox, the industry had weathered multiple existential threats beyond the coming of sound, including the end of the old studio system and the introduction of television and, later, home video.
By the time that Fincher was working on “Alien 3” (1992), the Hollywood that had warily welcomed and then turned on Welles was gone and the studios were part of multinational conglomerates. If only they could get rid of these actors and directors, then maybe they’ve got something, dreams a film executive in Robert Altman’s satire “The Player” (1992), an acid summation of the industry’s corporate mind-set. Fincher had a tough time with Fox during “Alien 3,” and with many others involved in its creation, partly because it wasn’t his to control. But the film established his directorial persona as prodigiously talented and uncompromisingly meticulous. “David wants it to be perfect every second,” Michael London, a Fox executive, told Premiere.
The entertainment industry loves the word “genius” as much as it hates its actual geniuses, as Welles’s history illustrates. Fincher had already been anointed a wunderkind when he was directing videos, back when his production-company colleague, Michael Bay, was known as “the little Fincher.” Sigourney Weaver, the star of the “Alien” series, called Fincher a genius, and so did Charles Dance, who played a doctor in “Alien 3” and Hearst in “Mank.” Whether Fincher thought he was or not, he did repeat some wisdom that his father had once dropped on him: “Learn your craft — it will never stop you from being a genius.”
It was already clear from Fincher’s music videos that he knew where to put the camera, when to move it and, crucially, how to make all the many different moving parts in his work flow together into a harmonious whole. There’s a reason that Martin Scorsese met him early on and that when Steven Soderbergh was preparing to make his caper film “Ocean’s Eleven,” he studied Fincher’s work. “I realized that it’s all instinct for him,” Soderbergh said of his friend in a 2000 L.A. Weekly interview. “I was breaking it down, but he’s going on gut.” Fincher had also been developing his skill set since he was young: when he was a teenager, he worked at Industrial Light & Magic.
“Alien 3” bombed and, for Fincher, remains a wound that has never healed. His resurrection came a few years later with “Seven” (1995), a brutal thriller that turned him into Hollywood’s Mr. Buzzkill, and put him on the path toward fan devotion bordering on the cultlike. Its Grand Guignol flourishes were attention-grabbing, yes, but what knocked some of us out was Fincher’s visual style, with its crepuscular lighting, immaculate staging and tableaus. Striking too was the visceral, claustrophobic feeling of inescapable doom. It was as if Fincher were trying to seal his audience up in a very lovely, very cold tomb. It was an easier movie to admire than love, but I was hooked.
It can be foolish to try to read directors through their movies, though Fincher invites such speculation, partly because he isn’t particularly expansive on what drives him. While promoting “Seven,” Fincher told the journalist Mark Salisbury that he was “interested in movies that scar.” And when Salisbury noted that the end of “Seven” was unusually depressing for Hollywood, Fincher laughed. “Excellent,” he said, “most movies these days don’t make you feel anything so if you can make people feel something …” He didn’t finish that sentence; he didn’t need to. He finished it with his movies, with their bruises, despair and, unusual for today, insistently feel-bad endings.
Most of Fincher’s protagonists are nice-looking, somewhat boyish, WASP-y white male professionals, kind of like him. Even when they don’t die, they suffer. Notably, whatever their differences, they engage in an epistemological search that grows progressively obsessive and at times violent. These are characters who want to know, who need to know even when the answers remain elusive: Where is my wife? Who is the murderer? Who am I? Their search for answers is difficult and creates or exacerbates a crisis in their sense of self. In “Alien 3,” the heroine, Ripley, realizes that she will give birth to a monster. In “Fight Club” (1999), the hero’s split personalities beat each other up. Always there is a struggle for control, over oneself and over others.
“Fight Club” centers on an Everyman, Jack (Edward Norton), who unwittingly develops a split personality he calls Tyler (Brad Pitt). Together, they create a men’s movement that swells from bare-knuckle fights to acts of terroristic violence (they enjoy better production values). The movie flopped and several executives at Fox, which had backed it, lost their jobs. The Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch apparently hated the film, which helped solidify Fincher’s reputation as a kind of outsider, if one whom other studios continued to give millions. It’s the paradigmatic Fincher movie, a gut punch delivered by a dude in a baseball cap. “I am Jack’s smirking revenge.”
IN 1995, A FEW WEEKS after “Seven” opened, I interviewed Fincher at Propaganda Films, the production company he’d helped found. He was funny, chatty and spoke fluidly about movie history and the technological shifts affecting the art and industry. “If you can dream it,” he said of digital, “you can see it.” He talked about the silent era, John Huston and Billy Wilder. “And then you have Welles walking into the thing going, OK let’s turn the whole [expletive] thing on its ear,” Fincher said. “We know it can talk, can it move, can it be opera?” Welles was already a touchstone for Fincher, whose 1989 music video for Madonna, “Oh Father,” alludes to “Citizen Kane” with snowy flashbacks. Fincher also mentioned Mankiewicz in passing.
He talked about “being crucified” for “Alien 3,” and how he’d known that his next movie would need to use genre to get people in their seats and deal with some of what interested him, namely “a certain fascination with violence.” He was, he said, someone who slowed down on the freeway to look at accidents. “When I was a kid, literally from the time I was about 5 years old until I was about 10 years old,” Fincher said, “I could not go to sleep, I would have nightmares.” Years later, when he made “Zodiac” (2007), he told interviewers about growing up in Marin County, where the killer had threatened to shoot schoolkids. It was easy to wonder if this was why the young Fincher couldn’t sleep.
Two years after “Seven” blew up the box office, the trades started running items about “Mank,” which Fincher was interested in directing with Kevin Spacey in the title role. Fincher said “Mank” would be “a black-and-white period piece about the creation of one of the greatest screenplays ever written” and “the man who did it in almost total anonymity.” Instead, he triumphed with “The Social Network” (2010) and baffled with “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” (2011). By the time he managed to direct “Mank,” it was for Netflix and Murdoch had sold the Fox studio to Disney, which killed it. He hadn’t made a movie since “Gone Girl,” a pulpy hit, six years earlier.
Fincher has directed only 11 feature movies; since “Gone Girl,” he has been busy making television. These include the Netflix shows “House of Cards,” about D.C. power players, and “Mindhunter,” about criminal profilers. Each is of a thematic and visual piece with Fincher’s work, but neither feels worthy of his talent. Maybe he doesn’t care. He made what he wanted and, perhaps more important, the way that he wanted. He might care more if he wrote his movies, but like most old-studio directors, he doesn’t. Mostly, I think, he just wants to work. “Netflix has been incredibly respectful,” he told the DGA Quarterly in 2013. I wonder if he feels that respect when you hit pause, as I did during “Mank,” and a Netflix pop-up asks if you’re enjoying the program.
There are all sorts of ways to look at “Mank” — as a vindication of Mankiewicz, as an assault on Welles. It’s both, it’s neither. In truth, the two characters are fundamentally in service to a movie that, in its broadest strokes, enshrines its own loathing of the industry, partly through its strained relationship to the truth. It was Herman Mankiewicz’s filmmaker brother, Joe (“All About Eve”), who did his bit to help sink Upton Sinclair’s campaign. By bending the facts, though, “Mank” does give Herman Mankiewicz an ostensibly righteous excuse for putting what he’d picked up at Hearst Castle into “Citizen Kane.” In “Mank,” he sells out a friend to stick it to the industry.
There’s nothing new about movies taking liberties with the truth, and the canard that Herman Mankiewicz was the main architect of “Citizen Kane” has been rebutted by prodigious scholarship. The movie’s insistence on heroizing him, though, is a puzzle, particularly because Welles was the more persuasive outsider. “Hollywood is a gold-plated suburb suitable for golfers, gardeners, assorted middlemen and contented movie stars,” Welles said in 1947. “I am none of these things.” It’s no wonder that Hollywood and its birds in their gilded cages hated him. They kept flapping while Welles made his movies, becoming an independent filmmaker before Sundance existed.
I can’t shake how eulogistic “Mank” feels. Maybe it would have felt different on the big screen, but because of the pandemic I watched it on my television. As I did, I kept flashing on “Sunset Boulevard,” Billy Wilder’s grim 1950 satire about another studio writer adrift in the waxworks. During that film, a forgotten silent-screen star famously says that the pictures have gotten small, a nod both to TV’s threat and Hollywood itself. I wondered if “Mank” was Fincher’s own elegy for an industry that increasingly has no interest in making movies like his and is, perhaps relatedly, facing another existential threat in streaming. Not long after, I read that he’d signed an exclusive deal with Netflix. The pictures would remain small, but at least he would remain in control.
|
By Manohla Dargis
For nearly three decades, David Fincher has been making gorgeous bummer movies that — in defiance of Hollywood’s first principle — insist that happy endings are a lie. Filled with virtuosic images of terrible deeds and violence, his movies entertain almost begrudgingly. Even when good somewhat triumphs, the victories come at a brutal cost. No one, Fincher warns, is going to save us. You will hurt and you will die, and sometimes your pretty wife’s severed head will end up in a box.
Long a specialized taste, Fincher in recent years started to feel
|
like an endangered species: a commercial director who makes studio movies for adult audiences, in an industry in thrall to cartoons and comic books. His latest, “Mank,” a drama about the film industry, was made for Netflix, though. It’s an outlier in his filmography. Its violence is emotional and psychological, and there’s only one corpse, even if its self-destructive protagonist, Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman), can look alarmingly cadaverous. Set in Hollywood’s golden age, it revisits his tenure in one of the most reliably bitter and underappreciated Hollywood tribes, a.k.a. screenwriters.
Part of the movie takes place in the early 1930s, when Herman was at Paramount and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; the other section focuses on when he was holed up in 1940 writing “Citizen Kane” for Orson Welles, its star, producer, director and joint writer. Like that film, “Mank”— written by Fincher’s father, Jack Fincher — kinks time, using the past to reflect on the present. Its flashbacks largely involve Herman’s boozy, yakky days and nights at Hearst Castle in the company of its crypt keeper, the newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, and his lover, the actress Marion Davies. There amid the waxworks, Herman plays the court jester, as a few intimates unkindly note.
Hollywood loves gently self-flagellating stories about its horrible, wonderful doings; there’s a reason it keeps remaking “A Star Is Born.” The lash stings harder and more unforgivingly in “Mank” than it does in most of these reflexive entertainments, though Fincher’s movie also sentimentalizes the industry, most obviously in its soft-focus view of both Herman and Marion (Amanda Seyfried), a poor little rich dame. In narrative terms, Marion is Herman’s doppelgänger: a self-immolating avatar of decency that’s otherwise missing in their crowd. Their real tragedy, at least here, is that they’re in the movie business, and, as punishment, each must endure the unhappy patronage of a great man: Marion under Hearst and Herman with Orson.
The two narrative lines in “Mank” never make coherent, interesting sense, no matter how Fincher jams them together. The big news during Herman’s MGM years is the industry’s (and Hearst’s) propagandistic drive to torpedo the writer Upton Sinclair’s 1934 run for governor of California. The real Herman Mankiewicz doesn’t seem to have had much of anything to do with this chapter in American cinema, but Hollywood has rarely let fact get in the way of a juicy story and “Mank” fully commits to its chronicle of events. But it doesn’t just stop there: It tethers Mankiewicz’s nonexistent role in this disinformation campaign to his role in “Citizen Kane,” a fascinatingly self-serving flex.
FINCHER WAS 27 when he was hired for “Alien 3,” his first feature. Welles was 25 when he began filming “Citizen Kane,” the most famous directorial debut in cinema history. There’s little to connect the men other than cinema. Welles had a background in radio and theater; Fincher had worked in postproduction before he started directing commercials and music videos. The Hollywood each man worked in was also different, though by the time Fincher made his first film for 20th Century Fox, the industry had weathered multiple existential threats beyond the coming of sound, including the end of the old studio system and the introduction of television and, later, home video.
By the time that Fincher was working on “Alien 3” (1992), the Hollywood that had warily welcomed and then turned on Welles was gone and the studios were part of multinational conglomerates. If only they could get rid of these actors and directors, then maybe they’ve got something, dreams a film executive in Robert Altman’s satire “The Player” (1992), an acid summation of the industry’s corporate mind-set. Fincher had a tough time with Fox during “Alien 3,” and with many others involved in its creation, partly because it wasn’t his to control. But the film established his directorial persona as prodigiously talented and uncompromisingly meticulous. “David wants it to be perfect every second,” Michael London, a Fox executive, told Premiere.
The entertainment industry loves the word “genius” as much as it hates its actual geniuses, as Welles’s history illustrates. Fincher had already been anointed a wunderkind when he was directing videos, back when his production-company colleague, Michael Bay, was known as “the little Fincher.” Sigourney Weaver, the star of the “Alien” series, called Fincher a genius, and so did Charles Dance, who played a doctor in “Alien 3” and Hearst in “Mank.” Whether Fincher thought he was or not, he did repeat some wisdom that his father had once dropped on him: “Learn your craft — it will never stop you from being a genius.”
It was already clear from Fincher’s music videos that he knew where to put the camera, when to move it and, crucially, how to make all the many different moving parts in his work flow together into a harmonious whole. There’s a reason that Martin Scorsese met him early on and that when Steven Soderbergh was preparing to make his caper film “Ocean’s Eleven,” he studied Fincher’s work. “I realized that it’s all instinct for him,” Soderbergh said of his friend in a 2000 L.A. Weekly interview. “I was breaking it down, but he’s going on gut.” Fincher had also been developing his skill set since he was young: when he was a teenager, he worked at Industrial Light & Magic.
“Alien 3” bombed and, for Fincher, remains a wound that has never healed. His resurrection came a few years later with “Seven” (1995), a brutal thriller that turned him into Hollywood’s Mr. Buzzkill, and put him on the path toward fan devotion bordering on the cultlike. Its Grand Guignol flourishes were attention-grabbing, yes, but what knocked some of us out was Fincher’s visual style, with its crepuscular lighting, immaculate staging and tableaus. Striking too was the visceral, claustrophobic feeling of inescapable doom. It was as if Fincher were trying to seal his audience up in a very lovely, very cold tomb. It was an easier movie to admire than love, but I was hooked.
It can be foolish to try to read directors through their movies, though Fincher invites such speculation, partly because he isn’t particularly expansive on what drives him. While promoting “Seven,” Fincher told the journalist Mark Salisbury that he was “interested in movies that scar.” And when Salisbury noted that the end of “Seven” was unusually depressing for Hollywood, Fincher laughed. “Excellent,” he said, “most movies these days don’t make you feel anything so if you can make people feel something …” He didn’t finish that sentence; he didn’t need to. He finished it with his movies, with their bruises, despair and, unusual for today, insistently feel-bad endings.
Most of Fincher’s protagonists are nice-looking, somewhat boyish, WASP-y white male professionals, kind of like him. Even when they don’t die, they suffer. Notably, whatever their differences, they engage in an epistemological search that grows progressively obsessive and at times violent. These are characters who want to know, who need to know even when the answers remain elusive: Where is my wife? Who is the murderer? Who am I? Their search for answers is difficult and creates or exacerbates a crisis in their sense of self. In “Alien 3,” the heroine, Ripley, realizes that she will give birth to a monster. In “Fight Club” (1999), the hero’s split personalities beat each other up. Always there is a struggle for control, over oneself and over others.
“Fight Club” centers on an Everyman, Jack (Edward Norton), who unwittingly develops a split personality he calls Tyler (Brad Pitt). Together, they create a men’s movement that swells from bare-knuckle fights to acts of terroristic violence (they enjoy better production values). The movie flopped and several executives at Fox, which had backed it, lost their jobs. The Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch apparently hated the film, which helped solidify Fincher’s reputation as a kind of outsider, if one whom other studios continued to give millions. It’s the paradigmatic Fincher movie, a gut punch delivered by a dude in a baseball cap. “I am Jack’s smirking revenge.”
IN 1995, A FEW WEEKS after “Seven” opened, I interviewed Fincher at Propaganda Films, the production company he’d helped found. He was funny, chatty and spoke fluidly about movie history and the technological shifts affecting the art and industry. “If you can dream it,” he said of digital, “you can see it.” He talked about the silent era, John Huston and Billy Wilder. “And then you have Welles walking into the thing going, OK let’s turn the whole [expletive] thing on its ear,” Fincher said. “We know it can talk, can it move, can it be opera?” Welles was already a touchstone for Fincher, whose 1989 music video for Madonna, “Oh Father,” alludes to “Citizen Kane” with snowy flashbacks. Fincher also mentioned Mankiewicz in passing.
He talked about “being crucified” for “Alien 3,” and how he’d known that his next movie would need to use genre to get people in their seats and deal with some of what interested him, namely “a certain fascination with violence.” He was, he said, someone who slowed down on the freeway to look at accidents. “When I was a kid, literally from the time I was about 5 years old until I was about 10 years old,” Fincher said, “I could not go to sleep, I would have nightmares.” Years later, when he made “Zodiac” (2007), he told interviewers about growing up in Marin County, where the killer had threatened to shoot schoolkids. It was easy to wonder if this was why the young Fincher couldn’t sleep.
Two years after “Seven” blew up the box office, the trades started running items about “Mank,” which Fincher was interested in directing with Kevin Spacey in the title role. Fincher said “Mank” would be “a black-and-white period piece about the creation of one of the greatest screenplays ever written” and “the man who did it in almost total anonymity.” Instead, he triumphed with “The Social Network” (2010) and baffled with “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” (2011). By the time he managed to direct “Mank,” it was for Netflix and Murdoch had sold the Fox studio to Disney, which killed it. He hadn’t made a movie since “Gone Girl,” a pulpy hit, six years earlier.
Fincher has directed only 11 feature movies; since “Gone Girl,” he has been busy making television. These include the Netflix shows “House of Cards,” about D.C. power players, and “Mindhunter,” about criminal profilers. Each is of a thematic and visual piece with Fincher’s work, but neither feels worthy of his talent. Maybe he doesn’t care. He made what he wanted and, perhaps more important, the way that he wanted. He might care more if he wrote his movies, but like most old-studio directors, he doesn’t. Mostly, I think, he just wants to work. “Netflix has been incredibly respectful,” he told the DGA Quarterly in 2013. I wonder if he feels that respect when you hit pause, as I did during “Mank,” and a Netflix pop-up asks if you’re enjoying the program.
There are all sorts of ways to look at “Mank” — as a vindication of Mankiewicz, as an assault on Welles. It’s both, it’s neither. In truth, the two characters are fundamentally in service to a movie that, in its broadest strokes, enshrines its own loathing of the industry, partly through its strained relationship to the truth. It was Herman Mankiewicz’s filmmaker brother, Joe (“All About Eve”), who did his bit to help sink Upton Sinclair’s campaign. By bending the facts, though, “Mank” does give Herman Mankiewicz an ostensibly righteous excuse for putting what he’d picked up at Hearst Castle into “Citizen Kane.” In “Mank,” he sells out a friend to stick it to the industry.
There’s nothing new about movies taking liberties with the truth, and the canard that Herman Mankiewicz was the main architect of “Citizen Kane” has been rebutted by prodigious scholarship. The movie’s insistence on heroizing him, though, is a puzzle, particularly because Welles was the more persuasive outsider. “Hollywood is a gold-plated suburb suitable for golfers, gardeners, assorted middlemen and contented movie stars,” Welles said in 1947. “I am none of these things.” It’s no wonder that Hollywood and its birds in their gilded cages hated him. They kept flapping while Welles made his movies, becoming an independent filmmaker before Sundance existed.
I can’t shake how eulogistic “Mank” feels. Maybe it would have felt different on the big screen, but because of the pandemic I watched it on my television. As I did, I kept flashing on “Sunset Boulevard,” Billy Wilder’s grim 1950 satire about another studio writer adrift in the waxworks. During that film, a forgotten silent-screen star famously says that the pictures have gotten small, a nod both to TV’s threat and Hollywood itself. I wondered if “Mank” was Fincher’s own elegy for an industry that increasingly has no interest in making movies like his and is, perhaps relatedly, facing another existential threat in streaming. Not long after, I read that he’d signed an exclusive deal with Netflix. The pictures would remain small, but at least he would remain in control.
|
12. Drink That You Could Really Use.txt
|
By Caitlin Lovinger
Jan. 1, 2021
SATURDAY PUZZLE — This is the second grid in two days with number symbols; Joe Deeney adds some star power and a number of watery elements. There’s also some interesting geometry today: an extra column, necessitated by that spelled-out 16-letter span. It's the centerpiece, but with 11 other lengthy debuts and fantastic cluing, it certainly doesn’t have to carry the rest of this excellent solve.
Tricky Clues
My sentimental favorites today are small, but there’s a lot to love. I refer to PAT (on the back — such a cute image), TULIP (makes me think of spring) and TOONS. There are a few real standout name challenges, as clued: SEMELE is one, as is LIZA (that one made me feel old, and made me wonder if we’d have mostly internet celebrities by the end of this decade). The UMA reference, in the context of this puzzle, brought to mind this scene:
1A: I got off on the wrong foot immediately by filling in “belly lox” here, also appetizing, but the wrong fish. Sable is smoked BLACK COD, sweeter than salted salmon.
25A: I don’t know about you, but as a city dweller I can barely make out the belt on this constellation, although I do know where to find it. I’ve never noticed ORIONS sword, which is sheathed on the belt and contains the Great Orion Nebula, where stars coalesce from cosmic dust. (Stars being ASTERISKS, by the way — characters in the title of the clued show.)
36A: As long as you’re not thinking of human relations (Marie and Pierre Curie?), this is a very well-known physics relationship. It still looks wild in a puzzle — E EQUALS MC SQUARED — and if you were wondering, the actual equation has been in a Times grid before (an Elizabeth Gorski anniversary appreciation Sunday; phew!).
42A: With science and the sky in mind, this clue could throw you off, spinning in space. The “orbit” is anatomical; an artificial object placed in it could be a GLASS EYE.
59A: OK, this is a surprise. The whole southwest corner was my slowest spot, and even knowing that this was a pun, I got a good head smack from GO BALD, i.e., have nothing to part (with).
15D: Both of the long entries today are debuts, but they're common phrases. It took a lot of crosses for me to come up with THIRST QUENCHER here, given its quirky clue; it makes an interesting cross with MOO JUICE.
32D: I didn’t know whether to interpret those extra O’s in “Do-o-ope” as a hint or just a mood; I guess that the type that would say it that way might also say this one, HELLA COOL, which is new to the grid (and, referring to HELLA, a fairly recent addition to dictionaries. Skater/surfer talk, I think).
Constructor Notes
Stuck?
Subscribers can take a peek at the answer key.
Trying to get back to the puzzle page? Right here.
What did you think?
|
By Caitlin Lovinger
Jan. 1, 2021
SATURDAY PUZZLE — This is the second grid in two days with number symbols; Joe Deeney adds some star power and a number of watery elements. There’s also some interesting geometry today: an extra column, necessitated by that spelled-out 16-letter span. It's the centerpiece, but with 11 other lengthy debuts and fantastic cluing, it certainly doesn’t have to carry the rest of this excellent solve.
Tricky Clues
My sentimental favorites today are small, but there’s a
|
lot to love. I refer to PAT (on the back — such a cute image), TULIP (makes me think of spring) and TOONS. There are a few real standout name challenges, as clued: SEMELE is one, as is LIZA (that one made me feel old, and made me wonder if we’d have mostly internet celebrities by the end of this decade). The UMA reference, in the context of this puzzle, brought to mind this scene:
1A: I got off on the wrong foot immediately by filling in “belly lox” here, also appetizing, but the wrong fish. Sable is smoked BLACK COD, sweeter than salted salmon.
25A: I don’t know about you, but as a city dweller I can barely make out the belt on this constellation, although I do know where to find it. I’ve never noticed ORIONS sword, which is sheathed on the belt and contains the Great Orion Nebula, where stars coalesce from cosmic dust. (Stars being ASTERISKS, by the way — characters in the title of the clued show.)
36A: As long as you’re not thinking of human relations (Marie and Pierre Curie?), this is a very well-known physics relationship. It still looks wild in a puzzle — E EQUALS MC SQUARED — and if you were wondering, the actual equation has been in a Times grid before (an Elizabeth Gorski anniversary appreciation Sunday; phew!).
42A: With science and the sky in mind, this clue could throw you off, spinning in space. The “orbit” is anatomical; an artificial object placed in it could be a GLASS EYE.
59A: OK, this is a surprise. The whole southwest corner was my slowest spot, and even knowing that this was a pun, I got a good head smack from GO BALD, i.e., have nothing to part (with).
15D: Both of the long entries today are debuts, but they're common phrases. It took a lot of crosses for me to come up with THIRST QUENCHER here, given its quirky clue; it makes an interesting cross with MOO JUICE.
32D: I didn’t know whether to interpret those extra O’s in “Do-o-ope” as a hint or just a mood; I guess that the type that would say it that way might also say this one, HELLA COOL, which is new to the grid (and, referring to HELLA, a fairly recent addition to dictionaries. Skater/surfer talk, I think).
Constructor Notes
Stuck?
Subscribers can take a peek at the answer key.
Trying to get back to the puzzle page? Right here.
What did you think?
|
58. Why Markets Boomed in a Year of Human Misery.txt
|
By Neil Irwin and Weiyi Cai
Jan. 1, 2021
The central, befuddling economic reality of the United States at the close of 2020 is that everything is terrible in the world, while everything is wonderful in the financial markets.
It’s a macabre spectacle. Asset prices keep reaching new, extraordinary highs, when around 3,000 people a day are dying of coronavirus and 800,000 people a week are filing new unemployment claims. Even an enthusiast of modern capitalism might wonder if something is deeply broken in how the economy works.
To better understand this strange mix of buoyant markets and economic despair, it’s worth turning to the data. As it happens, the numbers offer a coherent narrative about how the United States arrived at this point — one with lessons about how policy, markets and the economy intersect — and reveal the sharp disparity between the pandemic year’s haves and have-nots.
Income
Personal income increased
Would have been sharply negative without P.P.P.
All other
income
+$265 billion
Proprietor’s income
+$29 billion
Stimulus checks
Total disposable
personal income
+$276 billion
+$1.03 trillion
Unemployment
insurance benefits
CARES Act
A lot of money
+$499 billion
Wages
Less than you
expected?
-$43 billion
Note: Data from March to November 2020 compared with the same time period in 2019.·Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis
It starts, as so many epic tales do, with a table of data from the National Income and Product Accounts, namely “Personal Income and Its Disposition, Monthly.”
This report captures how Americans are earning and spending, two activities that coronavirus drastically altered this year. By combining the numbers from March through November (the latest available), and comparing them with the same period in 2019, we can see more clearly the pandemic’s whipsaw effects.
The first important observation: Salaries and wages fell less, in the aggregate, than even a careful observer of the economy might think. Total employee compensation was down only 0.5 percent for those nine months, more akin to a mild recession than an economic catastrophe.
That might seem impossible. Large swaths of the economy have been shut down; millions are out of work. The number of jobs employers reported having on their payrolls was down 6.1 percent in November compared with a year earlier, according to separate Labor Department data.
So how can the number of jobs be down 6 percent but employee compensation be down only 0.5 percent? It has to do with which jobs have been lost. The millions of people no longer working because of the pandemic were disproportionately in lower-paying service jobs. Higher-paying professional jobs were more likely to be unaffected, and a handful of other sectors have been booming, such as warehousing and grocery stores, leading to higher incomes for those workers.
The arithmetic is as simple as it is disorienting. If a corporate executive gets a $100,000 bonus for steering a company through a difficult year, while four $25,000-per-year restaurant workers lose their jobs entirely, the net effect on total compensation is zero — even though in human terms a great deal of pain has been incurred.
Our Coverage of the Investment World
So wages, salaries and other forms of workers’ compensation dropped only a little — $43 billion over the nine months — despite mass unemployment. But there is more to the story.
For all the attacks on the CARES Act that Congress passed in late March, the degree to which it served to support the incomes of Americans, especially those who lost jobs, is extraordinary.
Americans’ income from unemployment insurance benefits was 25 times higher from March through November 2020 than in the same period of 2019. That partly reflects that millions more jobless people were seeking benefits, of course. But it also reflects a $600 weekly supplement to jobless benefits that the act included through late July — along with a program to support freelance and contract workers who lost jobs and who otherwise would have been ineligible for benefits.
In total, unemployment insurance programs pumped $499 billion more into Americans’ pockets from March to November than the previous year; $365 billion of it was a result of the expansion in the CARES Act.
The $1,200 checks to most American households that were included in that legislation contributed a further $276 billion to personal income — much of which accrued to families that did not experience a drop in earnings.
And the law’s signature program to encourage businesses to keep people on their payrolls, the Paycheck Protection Program, prevented a collapse in “proprietor’s income” — profits that accrued to owners of businesses and farms. This income rose narrowly, by $29 billion, but would have fallen by $143 billion if not for the P.P.P. and a coronavirus food assistance program.
These are remarkable numbers. When it’s all tallied up, Americans’ cumulative after-tax personal income was $1.03 trillion higher from March to November of 2020 than in 2019, an increase of more than 8 percent. Some of the pessimism among economic forecasters (and journalists) in the spring reflected a failure to understand just how large and influential those stimulus payments would turn out to be.
But income also is only part of the story. Big changes in 2020 also took place on the other side of the ledger: spending.
Spending
Spending decreased
Nondurable goods
Durable goods
+$39 billion
+$60 billion
Guess I’ll cook again tonight
All that home gym equipment
No trip to Vegas, or Miami
Services
Total household outlays
-$575 billion
-$535 billion
Here’s to
being frugal
Interest payments
and misc. outlays
-$59 billion
Thanks, Jay Powell!
Note: Data from March to November 2020 compared with the same time period in 2019.·Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis
By turning to another riveting story, “Personal Consumption Expenditures by Major Type of Product, Monthly,” we see a pattern that may seem obvious with hindsight but was not as easy to predict while the economy was collapsing during the spring.
The obvious part was a decline in spending on services: All those restaurant reservations never made, flights not taken, sports and concert tickets not bought added up to serious money. Services spending fell by $575 billion, or nearly 8 percent.
Less obvious were some of the other patterns affecting consumer spending in a pandemic. Americans spent meaningful dollars — those they wouldn’t or couldn’t spend on services — on stuff. Durable goods spending was up by $60 billion (a better chair for working from home, or maybe a new bicycle) while nondurable goods spending rose by $39 billion (think of the bourbon purchased for consumption at home that in an alternate universe would have been logged as “services” consumption in a bar).
But the extra spending on stuff did not exceed the drop in spending on services. And thanks to lower rates, households’ personal interest payments and other miscellaneous outlays dropped by $59 billion.
Not only were American households, in the aggregate, taking in more money, but they were also spending less of it. Total outlays fell by $535 billion.
Saving
Americans are saving a lot of money
Americans are
earning more …
Total disposable
personal income
+$1.03 trillion
American personal savings
+$1.56 trillion
That’s a 173% increase from 2019
… and
spending less
Total household
outlays
-$535 billion
Note: Data from March to November 2020 compared with the same time period in 2019.·Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis
This combination of soaring personal income and falling spending pushed Americans’ savings rate through the roof. From March through November, personal savings was $1.56 trillion higher than in 2019, a rise of 173 percent. Normally the savings rate bounces around in a narrow range, around 7 percent just before the pandemic. It spiked to 33.7 percent in April, its highest level on record dating to 1959.
Even as millions of individuals faced great financial hardship this year, Americans in the aggregate were building savings at a startling rate. It had to go somewhere. But where? Holding on to extra cash was one option — and sure enough, currency in circulation has spiked by $260 billion since February, a 14 percent increase. Deposits in commercial banks are way up — by 19 percent since the first week of March.
Or, for those a little more comfortable with risk, there was investing in stocks, which helps explain the 16 percent rise in the S&P 500 for the year. For those comfortable with a lot of risk — and with taking advantage of the market’s momentum — there was buying a market darling stock like Tesla or trading options.
Or you could have used the occasion of the pandemic to buy a new house: Home sales surged, and the S&P CoreLogic national home price index was up 8.4 percent in October from a year earlier.
Essentially, the rise in savings among the people who have avoided major economic damage from the pandemic is creating a tide lifting the values of nearly all financial assets.
Sign up for The Upshot Newsletter Analysis that explains politics, policy and everyday life, with an emphasis on data and charts. Get it sent to your inbox.
Certainly the Federal Reserve plays a role. The central bank has lowered interest rates to near zero; promised to keep them there for years; bought government debt; and supported corporate bond markets. But the surge in asset prices has made its way into many sectors far from any form of Fed support, like stocks and Bitcoin. And the surge has, if anything, accelerated this fall despite a lack of additional stimulative action from the Fed.
The Fed played a big part in engineering the stabilization of the markets in March and April, but the rally since then probably reflects these broader dynamics around savings.
Just because you can explain these market gains doesn’t mean that high asset prices will hold. You could tell a story in which the economy roars back as people are vaccinated, and the entire pattern reverses itself, with the savings rate turning negative as Americans spend down their stockpiled wealth on trips and other luxuries that have been off-limits in 2020. It could spur inflation, which, if severe enough, could cause the Fed to back off its easy money approach sooner than people now think.
But the 2021 economic narrative has yet to be written — and if 2020 teaches one thing, it is that the story arc is more unpredictable than you might think.
Neil Irwin is a senior economics correspondent for The Upshot. He is the author of “How to Win in a Winner-Take-All-World,” a guide to navigating a career in the modern economy. More about Neil Irwin
A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 2, 2021, Section B, Page 5 of the New York edition with the headline: Why the Markets Boomed in a Year of Abject Human Misery. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
Site Index
Site Information Navigation
|
By Neil Irwin and Weiyi Cai
Jan. 1, 2021
The central, befuddling economic reality of the United States at the close of 2020 is that everything is terrible in the world, while everything is wonderful in the financial markets.
It’s a macabre spectacle. Asset prices keep reaching new, extraordinary highs, when around 3,000 people a day are dying of coronavirus and 800,000 people a week are filing new unemployment claims. Even an enthusiast of modern capitalism might wonder if something is deeply broken in how the economy
|
works.
To better understand this strange mix of buoyant markets and economic despair, it’s worth turning to the data. As it happens, the numbers offer a coherent narrative about how the United States arrived at this point — one with lessons about how policy, markets and the economy intersect — and reveal the sharp disparity between the pandemic year’s haves and have-nots.
Income
Personal income increased
Would have been sharply negative without P.P.P.
All other
income
+$265 billion
Proprietor’s income
+$29 billion
Stimulus checks
Total disposable
personal income
+$276 billion
+$1.03 trillion
Unemployment
insurance benefits
CARES Act
A lot of money
+$499 billion
Wages
Less than you
expected?
-$43 billion
Note: Data from March to November 2020 compared with the same time period in 2019.·Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis
It starts, as so many epic tales do, with a table of data from the National Income and Product Accounts, namely “Personal Income and Its Disposition, Monthly.”
This report captures how Americans are earning and spending, two activities that coronavirus drastically altered this year. By combining the numbers from March through November (the latest available), and comparing them with the same period in 2019, we can see more clearly the pandemic’s whipsaw effects.
The first important observation: Salaries and wages fell less, in the aggregate, than even a careful observer of the economy might think. Total employee compensation was down only 0.5 percent for those nine months, more akin to a mild recession than an economic catastrophe.
That might seem impossible. Large swaths of the economy have been shut down; millions are out of work. The number of jobs employers reported having on their payrolls was down 6.1 percent in November compared with a year earlier, according to separate Labor Department data.
So how can the number of jobs be down 6 percent but employee compensation be down only 0.5 percent? It has to do with which jobs have been lost. The millions of people no longer working because of the pandemic were disproportionately in lower-paying service jobs. Higher-paying professional jobs were more likely to be unaffected, and a handful of other sectors have been booming, such as warehousing and grocery stores, leading to higher incomes for those workers.
The arithmetic is as simple as it is disorienting. If a corporate executive gets a $100,000 bonus for steering a company through a difficult year, while four $25,000-per-year restaurant workers lose their jobs entirely, the net effect on total compensation is zero — even though in human terms a great deal of pain has been incurred.
Our Coverage of the Investment World
So wages, salaries and other forms of workers’ compensation dropped only a little — $43 billion over the nine months — despite mass unemployment. But there is more to the story.
For all the attacks on the CARES Act that Congress passed in late March, the degree to which it served to support the incomes of Americans, especially those who lost jobs, is extraordinary.
Americans’ income from unemployment insurance benefits was 25 times higher from March through November 2020 than in the same period of 2019. That partly reflects that millions more jobless people were seeking benefits, of course. But it also reflects a $600 weekly supplement to jobless benefits that the act included through late July — along with a program to support freelance and contract workers who lost jobs and who otherwise would have been ineligible for benefits.
In total, unemployment insurance programs pumped $499 billion more into Americans’ pockets from March to November than the previous year; $365 billion of it was a result of the expansion in the CARES Act.
The $1,200 checks to most American households that were included in that legislation contributed a further $276 billion to personal income — much of which accrued to families that did not experience a drop in earnings.
And the law’s signature program to encourage businesses to keep people on their payrolls, the Paycheck Protection Program, prevented a collapse in “proprietor’s income” — profits that accrued to owners of businesses and farms. This income rose narrowly, by $29 billion, but would have fallen by $143 billion if not for the P.P.P. and a coronavirus food assistance program.
These are remarkable numbers. When it’s all tallied up, Americans’ cumulative after-tax personal income was $1.03 trillion higher from March to November of 2020 than in 2019, an increase of more than 8 percent. Some of the pessimism among economic forecasters (and journalists) in the spring reflected a failure to understand just how large and influential those stimulus payments would turn out to be.
But income also is only part of the story. Big changes in 2020 also took place on the other side of the ledger: spending.
Spending
Spending decreased
Nondurable goods
Durable goods
+$39 billion
+$60 billion
Guess I’ll cook again tonight
All that home gym equipment
No trip to Vegas, or Miami
Services
Total household outlays
-$575 billion
-$535 billion
Here’s to
being frugal
Interest payments
and misc. outlays
-$59 billion
Thanks, Jay Powell!
Note: Data from March to November 2020 compared with the same time period in 2019.·Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis
By turning to another riveting story, “Personal Consumption Expenditures by Major Type of Product, Monthly,” we see a pattern that may seem obvious with hindsight but was not as easy to predict while the economy was collapsing during the spring.
The obvious part was a decline in spending on services: All those restaurant reservations never made, flights not taken, sports and concert tickets not bought added up to serious money. Services spending fell by $575 billion, or nearly 8 percent.
Less obvious were some of the other patterns affecting consumer spending in a pandemic. Americans spent meaningful dollars — those they wouldn’t or couldn’t spend on services — on stuff. Durable goods spending was up by $60 billion (a better chair for working from home, or maybe a new bicycle) while nondurable goods spending rose by $39 billion (think of the bourbon purchased for consumption at home that in an alternate universe would have been logged as “services” consumption in a bar).
But the extra spending on stuff did not exceed the drop in spending on services. And thanks to lower rates, households’ personal interest payments and other miscellaneous outlays dropped by $59 billion.
Not only were American households, in the aggregate, taking in more money, but they were also spending less of it. Total outlays fell by $535 billion.
Saving
Americans are saving a lot of money
Americans are
earning more …
Total disposable
personal income
+$1.03 trillion
American personal savings
+$1.56 trillion
That’s a 173% increase from 2019
… and
spending less
Total household
outlays
-$535 billion
Note: Data from March to November 2020 compared with the same time period in 2019.·Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis
This combination of soaring personal income and falling spending pushed Americans’ savings rate through the roof. From March through November, personal savings was $1.56 trillion higher than in 2019, a rise of 173 percent. Normally the savings rate bounces around in a narrow range, around 7 percent just before the pandemic. It spiked to 33.7 percent in April, its highest level on record dating to 1959.
Even as millions of individuals faced great financial hardship this year, Americans in the aggregate were building savings at a startling rate. It had to go somewhere. But where? Holding on to extra cash was one option — and sure enough, currency in circulation has spiked by $260 billion since February, a 14 percent increase. Deposits in commercial banks are way up — by 19 percent since the first week of March.
Or, for those a little more comfortable with risk, there was investing in stocks, which helps explain the 16 percent rise in the S&P 500 for the year. For those comfortable with a lot of risk — and with taking advantage of the market’s momentum — there was buying a market darling stock like Tesla or trading options.
Or you could have used the occasion of the pandemic to buy a new house: Home sales surged, and the S&P CoreLogic national home price index was up 8.4 percent in October from a year earlier.
Essentially, the rise in savings among the people who have avoided major economic damage from the pandemic is creating a tide lifting the values of nearly all financial assets.
Sign up for The Upshot Newsletter Analysis that explains politics, policy and everyday life, with an emphasis on data and charts. Get it sent to your inbox.
Certainly the Federal Reserve plays a role. The central bank has lowered interest rates to near zero; promised to keep them there for years; bought government debt; and supported corporate bond markets. But the surge in asset prices has made its way into many sectors far from any form of Fed support, like stocks and Bitcoin. And the surge has, if anything, accelerated this fall despite a lack of additional stimulative action from the Fed.
The Fed played a big part in engineering the stabilization of the markets in March and April, but the rally since then probably reflects these broader dynamics around savings.
Just because you can explain these market gains doesn’t mean that high asset prices will hold. You could tell a story in which the economy roars back as people are vaccinated, and the entire pattern reverses itself, with the savings rate turning negative as Americans spend down their stockpiled wealth on trips and other luxuries that have been off-limits in 2020. It could spur inflation, which, if severe enough, could cause the Fed to back off its easy money approach sooner than people now think.
But the 2021 economic narrative has yet to be written — and if 2020 teaches one thing, it is that the story arc is more unpredictable than you might think.
Neil Irwin is a senior economics correspondent for The Upshot. He is the author of “How to Win in a Winner-Take-All-World,” a guide to navigating a career in the modern economy. More about Neil Irwin
A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 2, 2021, Section B, Page 5 of the New York edition with the headline: Why the Markets Boomed in a Year of Abject Human Misery. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
Site Index
Site Information Navigation
|
75. How Did Trump Do in Counties That Backed Him in 2016?.txt
|
By Denise Lu and Karen YourishNov. 11, 2020
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the popular vote by more than five million — and his margin is expected to grow as states finish counting. Still, results so far show that President Trump’s support remained strong in most of the counties that voted for him in 2016. Here’s how.
Shifts in margin of victory, over time, in counties that Trump won in 2016
+20D+20R+40R+60R
2008
2012
2016
2020
More Democratic
More Republican
Tie
Obama
McCain
Obama
Romney
Clinton
Trump
Biden
Trump
Mr. Trump won more than 2,600 counties in 2016. Each of them is represented here by a line, which shows the county’s margin in presidential elections since 2008. The line’s width is sized to the county’s voting population.
This black line shows the overall margin in each election from 2008 to 2016. Four years ago, Mr. Trump won these counties by about 28 percentage points.
He won most of them again in 2020, but his overall margin shifted slightly to the left — by nearly three points so far.
Let’s now look just at where Mr. Trump had the most enthusiastic support in 2016 — the more than 1,400 counties that swung 10 points or more to the right from 2012.
Some of these counties snaked to the left this year. Mr. Biden even flipped about a dozen of them ...
… including some of the counties that voted twice for Barack Obama before flipping to Mr. Trump in 2016.
But a vast majority of the counties that swung hard for Mr. Trump in 2016 continued to firmly support him this year, or shifted even further to the right.
How Trump counties shifted by demographics
The 2020 shifts in Mr. Trump’s 2016 counties parallel many of the demographic trends that are playing out across the country.
Mr. Trump’s strongest supporters four years ago tended to live in counties with fewer college-educated residents. These counties solidly backed Mr. Trump again in 2020, while many of those with a more educated populace shifted toward Mr. Biden.
|
By Denise Lu and Karen YourishNov. 11, 2020
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the popular vote by more than five million — and his margin is expected to grow as states finish counting. Still, results so far show that President Trump’s support remained strong in most of the counties that voted for him in 2016. Here’s how.
Shifts in margin of victory, over time, in counties that Trump won in 2016
+20D+20R+40R+60R
2008
20
|
12
2016
2020
More Democratic
More Republican
Tie
Obama
McCain
Obama
Romney
Clinton
Trump
Biden
Trump
Mr. Trump won more than 2,600 counties in 2016. Each of them is represented here by a line, which shows the county’s margin in presidential elections since 2008. The line’s width is sized to the county’s voting population.
This black line shows the overall margin in each election from 2008 to 2016. Four years ago, Mr. Trump won these counties by about 28 percentage points.
He won most of them again in 2020, but his overall margin shifted slightly to the left — by nearly three points so far.
Let’s now look just at where Mr. Trump had the most enthusiastic support in 2016 — the more than 1,400 counties that swung 10 points or more to the right from 2012.
Some of these counties snaked to the left this year. Mr. Biden even flipped about a dozen of them ...
… including some of the counties that voted twice for Barack Obama before flipping to Mr. Trump in 2016.
But a vast majority of the counties that swung hard for Mr. Trump in 2016 continued to firmly support him this year, or shifted even further to the right.
How Trump counties shifted by demographics
The 2020 shifts in Mr. Trump’s 2016 counties parallel many of the demographic trends that are playing out across the country.
Mr. Trump’s strongest supporters four years ago tended to live in counties with fewer college-educated residents. These counties solidly backed Mr. Trump again in 2020, while many of those with a more educated populace shifted toward Mr. Biden.
|
60. How the Oldest Old Can Endure Even This.txt
|
By John Leland
Jan. 1, 2021
It was sometime in the spring that Ruth Willig, then 96, first compared her pandemic life to being in prison. My mother, Dorothy, was still alive then, in a building much like the assisted-living facility in Brooklyn where Ruth lives. The buildings had shut down all visitors and stopped all group activities, including meals in the dining room. Residents spent their days in their apartments, alone.
“It’s very depressing,” Ruth said over the telephone in late March. At that time, the virus was raging in New York, most lethally in nursing homes. Facilities that were designed to prevent social isolation were now doing everything possible to enforce it.
“Two nights ago they came to my door and told me I couldn’t go outside,” Ruth said then. “I don’t know what reason there is, or if anybody has it in the building. They don’t tell you anything. But we’re stuck here. They bring the food. It’s just awful.”
That was how the pandemic began for Ruth Willig, the last surviving subject of a New York Times series that began nearly six years ago, following the lives of six people age 85 and up.
For Ruth, it was a year measured in what she gave up: visits from her children every weekend, daily meals with friends, chances to see her great-granddaughter, now 3 years old and changing daily. Also: Passover, Thanksgiving, her birthday and perhaps her last days of walking without a walker, even in her small apartment.
Her building’s management declined to provide numbers, but records at the State Department of Health show five deaths there either confirmed or presumed to have been caused by Covid-19. At my mother’s building, in Lower Manhattan, the count was three times as high.
“I say, ‘Why do I have to keep going?’” Ruth said back in the spring. “Judy” — her oldest daughter — “says, ‘Ma, if you die now we won’t be able to have a funeral. I won’t be able to see you.’” Ruth laughed. “That’s a terrible way to put it, but she’s right,” she said. “Meanwhile, I’m not dying. I guess it’s good. I laugh and I say I’m ready, but I’m really not.”
Her complaints over the next months were the same as my mother’s: the edict to shut down contact with other people, the food delivered cold to their rooms.
As Ruth’s building allowed a little more mobility over the summer, she became aware of the neighbors whom she did not see. “I don’t know if they’re alive or how their health is,” she said. “You have to ask, and they don’t always want to tell you. So we don’t always know. If I walk around I see a lot of empty rooms.”
The pandemic has wrought unequal effects on New York’s population groups. For older adults in institutional settings, it has meant ceding even more control of their lives to the institutions, unasked, in exchange for safety.
“It’s very paternalistic,” said Louise Aronson, a geriatrician and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “Like, we know what’s better for you. I get that the intent is good. But it’s basically putting draconian measures onto frail older people for society’s failure to create better systems.”
Ruth, who trained as a microbiologist, understood the restrictions but resented them.
“I’d like more freedom to get around,” she said. “I look out at the water and see these people walking back and forth, and I wish, Oh, my God, wouldn’t that be nice.”
The hairdresser and the rabbi stopped coming to the building. The meals, the bane of most institutions, were even less appealing without a companion at the table. Ruth lost weight.
But one day, amid complaints, she said: “I get my joy out of my plants, I really do. My Christmas cactus has four or five flowers.” She read Michelle Obama’s memoir, then Barack’s.
A surprise of the pandemic has been how well many older adults have adapted to the restrictions. “There’s crisis competence,” said Mark Brennan-Ing, a senior research scientist at Hunter College’s Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging. “As we get older, we get the sense that we’re going to be able to handle it, because we’ve been able to handle challenges in the past. You know you get past it. These things happen, but there’s an end to it, and there’s a life after that.”
While people of all ages have struggled this year, those 65 and up are still more likely to rate their mental health as excellent compared with people under 50.
For Ruth and her family, efforts to stay connected came with frustrations. Her children bought her an iPad so they could share video calls, but for months she kept it in the packaging because it was unappealing or hard to use.
She eventually started using it to play Cryptic Quotes, and occasionally for FaceTime calls.
In the spring, the only way Judy Willig could see her mother was on what she called “window visits,” at which they would talk via cellphone from opposite sides of the glass.
“That was the worst,” Judy said. “She’d reach her hand out to touch you, and there was glass between us. I would do those window visits and then go sit in my car and cry. They were just awful.”
Early in the pandemic, Ruth’s closest friend in the building stopped answering her phone. Since Ruth could not leave her apartment to check, for days she was left to wonder: Had her friend gotten the virus? Finally the friend called from a rehab center, and they resumed daily calls. But it was a scare.
A part of writing these articles, which began in 2015, has been learning to say goodbye. By the start of 2020, five of the six subjects — Fred Jones, John Sorensen, Jonas Mekas, Ping Wong and Helen Moses — had died, each facing the last days differently. For all, death meant not just the final heartbeat of one person, but a communal process that began well before the last breath and continued after.
The coronavirus, even when it spared a body in 2020, ravaged the rest of this process.
On May 30, my mother developed a urinary tract infection and went to the hospital in Lower Manhattan, where I was able to sit with her indoors for the first time in nearly three months. She made it back home but never recovered her strength, and in late June, when it became clear that she wouldn’t, her building let me visit in her final days. My brothers, in North Carolina and Oklahoma, who had not seen her since 2019, could not come to say goodbye.
Ruth was among the first to call me when my mother died.
As case numbers dropped in New York, in late August, Ruth’s building allowed family members to visit — outside, at opposite sides of a long table.
Her building started to open the dining room partially in September. A few times a week, Ruth goes downstairs and eats a meal by herself at a table, six feet away from her closest friend. It is near enough that they can talk a little, even with hearing aids. Intermittently the dining room will close again because someone in the building tests positive. But on days when Ruth dines downstairs, Judy said, she can notice the difference in her mother’s voice. “She’s much more alive,” Judy said.
In November, a day before her 97th birthday, Ruth fell in her apartment and hit her head, telephoning Judy from the floor when she could not get up. Mother and daughter were finally able to spend time together, four hours in the hospital emergency room.
By the time Ruth fell again a few weeks later, she had learned a lesson: “This time I wasn’t going to tell anyone, because I didn’t want to go back to the hospital,” she said. “You should’ve seen how I managed to get up. I moved around on my behind, otherwise known as my tush. And I had black and blue marks all over my elbows, and I managed to get up without calling anybody. I’m a stubborn mule.”
After the second fall, a physical therapist advised her to use a walker even in the apartment.
Just before her birthday, Ruth mentioned the prospect of living to 100 — a change from our past conversations, when she had said only that she did not want to get there. That same day she brought it up again with her daughter. “For the first time ever she said, ‘Maybe I’ll live to be 100, and if I do, we can have a party,’” Judy Willig said.
At last, on Dec. 7, the building opened for a few visitors — with an appointment and a negative test for the virus. Judy grabbed the first appointment, in order to get in before someone in the building tested positive and the doors shut again.
She was given one hour. She had a long list of chores, starting with Ruth’s closet.
“Mostly we hugged,” Ruth said, “which we haven’t been able to do forever.”
Judy Willig remembered it slightly differently. After 15 minutes of hugging, she said, “I finally had to say, ‘Now I only have 45 minutes left.’ And she said, ‘Can’t we just sit and talk?’ And I said, ‘Not today.’ Because my fear is that they’re going to shut it down again.”
The visit and the meals downstairs have made a difference for Ruth. “The nice thing is that things are getting a little better,” she said. “I’m lucky in one way that I can heat up the meals myself, but in the other way it’s nice when someone does it for you. So it’s like a tossup.”
My mother would have turned 92 on Dec. 21, largely against her wishes. Her remains rest atop a bookshelf in my bedroom, next to an action figure of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, waiting for a time our family can gather to scatter them.
Because of the pandemic, the medical school to which she had promised her body was no longer accepting them. The cemetery did not allow gatherings, so on a sweltering morning in early July, five of us said a few words over her in the loading bay behind the crematory, before her body went inside. The experience was probably worse for my brothers, who watched it on Zoom, but it would be hard to say how.
Her two home attendants, amazing women who traveled long distances to care for her during the pandemic, are still without work, their informal job network another casualty of the virus.
But for Ruth and others who made it this far, a better day was in sight: The first vaccine doses had started to reach nursing home residents.
Four years ago, at the end of 2016, Ruth wanted to knit a blanket for her coming great-grandchild, but she feared that the tremor in her hands would prevent her. She knitted it anyway. This year, during the pandemic, she was knitting again.
That is Ruth, 2020.
Catherine Thurston, chief program officer at Service Program for Older People, which provides mental health services, said her staff had seen this kind of resilience in many older clients this year.
“They’ve been a real lesson for us,” she said. “I often tell the story of my own parents, who were Holocaust survivors. And after 9/11 it was so good to talk to them, because they said, ‘Look, horrible stuff happens, and people rebound from it.’”
A motto to take into the new year: Horrible stuff happens, and people rebound from it.
And eventually, at Ruth Willig’s assisted living facility, the hairdresser will make a long-awaited return. “I really need a haircut so badly,” she said.
|
By John Leland
Jan. 1, 2021
It was sometime in the spring that Ruth Willig, then 96, first compared her pandemic life to being in prison. My mother, Dorothy, was still alive then, in a building much like the assisted-living facility in Brooklyn where Ruth lives. The buildings had shut down all visitors and stopped all group activities, including meals in the dining room. Residents spent their days in their apartments, alone.
“It’s very depressing,” Ruth said over the telephone in late March. At that time, the virus was raging in New York,
|
most lethally in nursing homes. Facilities that were designed to prevent social isolation were now doing everything possible to enforce it.
“Two nights ago they came to my door and told me I couldn’t go outside,” Ruth said then. “I don’t know what reason there is, or if anybody has it in the building. They don’t tell you anything. But we’re stuck here. They bring the food. It’s just awful.”
That was how the pandemic began for Ruth Willig, the last surviving subject of a New York Times series that began nearly six years ago, following the lives of six people age 85 and up.
For Ruth, it was a year measured in what she gave up: visits from her children every weekend, daily meals with friends, chances to see her great-granddaughter, now 3 years old and changing daily. Also: Passover, Thanksgiving, her birthday and perhaps her last days of walking without a walker, even in her small apartment.
Her building’s management declined to provide numbers, but records at the State Department of Health show five deaths there either confirmed or presumed to have been caused by Covid-19. At my mother’s building, in Lower Manhattan, the count was three times as high.
“I say, ‘Why do I have to keep going?’” Ruth said back in the spring. “Judy” — her oldest daughter — “says, ‘Ma, if you die now we won’t be able to have a funeral. I won’t be able to see you.’” Ruth laughed. “That’s a terrible way to put it, but she’s right,” she said. “Meanwhile, I’m not dying. I guess it’s good. I laugh and I say I’m ready, but I’m really not.”
Her complaints over the next months were the same as my mother’s: the edict to shut down contact with other people, the food delivered cold to their rooms.
As Ruth’s building allowed a little more mobility over the summer, she became aware of the neighbors whom she did not see. “I don’t know if they’re alive or how their health is,” she said. “You have to ask, and they don’t always want to tell you. So we don’t always know. If I walk around I see a lot of empty rooms.”
The pandemic has wrought unequal effects on New York’s population groups. For older adults in institutional settings, it has meant ceding even more control of their lives to the institutions, unasked, in exchange for safety.
“It’s very paternalistic,” said Louise Aronson, a geriatrician and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “Like, we know what’s better for you. I get that the intent is good. But it’s basically putting draconian measures onto frail older people for society’s failure to create better systems.”
Ruth, who trained as a microbiologist, understood the restrictions but resented them.
“I’d like more freedom to get around,” she said. “I look out at the water and see these people walking back and forth, and I wish, Oh, my God, wouldn’t that be nice.”
The hairdresser and the rabbi stopped coming to the building. The meals, the bane of most institutions, were even less appealing without a companion at the table. Ruth lost weight.
But one day, amid complaints, she said: “I get my joy out of my plants, I really do. My Christmas cactus has four or five flowers.” She read Michelle Obama’s memoir, then Barack’s.
A surprise of the pandemic has been how well many older adults have adapted to the restrictions. “There’s crisis competence,” said Mark Brennan-Ing, a senior research scientist at Hunter College’s Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging. “As we get older, we get the sense that we’re going to be able to handle it, because we’ve been able to handle challenges in the past. You know you get past it. These things happen, but there’s an end to it, and there’s a life after that.”
While people of all ages have struggled this year, those 65 and up are still more likely to rate their mental health as excellent compared with people under 50.
For Ruth and her family, efforts to stay connected came with frustrations. Her children bought her an iPad so they could share video calls, but for months she kept it in the packaging because it was unappealing or hard to use.
She eventually started using it to play Cryptic Quotes, and occasionally for FaceTime calls.
In the spring, the only way Judy Willig could see her mother was on what she called “window visits,” at which they would talk via cellphone from opposite sides of the glass.
“That was the worst,” Judy said. “She’d reach her hand out to touch you, and there was glass between us. I would do those window visits and then go sit in my car and cry. They were just awful.”
Early in the pandemic, Ruth’s closest friend in the building stopped answering her phone. Since Ruth could not leave her apartment to check, for days she was left to wonder: Had her friend gotten the virus? Finally the friend called from a rehab center, and they resumed daily calls. But it was a scare.
A part of writing these articles, which began in 2015, has been learning to say goodbye. By the start of 2020, five of the six subjects — Fred Jones, John Sorensen, Jonas Mekas, Ping Wong and Helen Moses — had died, each facing the last days differently. For all, death meant not just the final heartbeat of one person, but a communal process that began well before the last breath and continued after.
The coronavirus, even when it spared a body in 2020, ravaged the rest of this process.
On May 30, my mother developed a urinary tract infection and went to the hospital in Lower Manhattan, where I was able to sit with her indoors for the first time in nearly three months. She made it back home but never recovered her strength, and in late June, when it became clear that she wouldn’t, her building let me visit in her final days. My brothers, in North Carolina and Oklahoma, who had not seen her since 2019, could not come to say goodbye.
Ruth was among the first to call me when my mother died.
As case numbers dropped in New York, in late August, Ruth’s building allowed family members to visit — outside, at opposite sides of a long table.
Her building started to open the dining room partially in September. A few times a week, Ruth goes downstairs and eats a meal by herself at a table, six feet away from her closest friend. It is near enough that they can talk a little, even with hearing aids. Intermittently the dining room will close again because someone in the building tests positive. But on days when Ruth dines downstairs, Judy said, she can notice the difference in her mother’s voice. “She’s much more alive,” Judy said.
In November, a day before her 97th birthday, Ruth fell in her apartment and hit her head, telephoning Judy from the floor when she could not get up. Mother and daughter were finally able to spend time together, four hours in the hospital emergency room.
By the time Ruth fell again a few weeks later, she had learned a lesson: “This time I wasn’t going to tell anyone, because I didn’t want to go back to the hospital,” she said. “You should’ve seen how I managed to get up. I moved around on my behind, otherwise known as my tush. And I had black and blue marks all over my elbows, and I managed to get up without calling anybody. I’m a stubborn mule.”
After the second fall, a physical therapist advised her to use a walker even in the apartment.
Just before her birthday, Ruth mentioned the prospect of living to 100 — a change from our past conversations, when she had said only that she did not want to get there. That same day she brought it up again with her daughter. “For the first time ever she said, ‘Maybe I’ll live to be 100, and if I do, we can have a party,’” Judy Willig said.
At last, on Dec. 7, the building opened for a few visitors — with an appointment and a negative test for the virus. Judy grabbed the first appointment, in order to get in before someone in the building tested positive and the doors shut again.
She was given one hour. She had a long list of chores, starting with Ruth’s closet.
“Mostly we hugged,” Ruth said, “which we haven’t been able to do forever.”
Judy Willig remembered it slightly differently. After 15 minutes of hugging, she said, “I finally had to say, ‘Now I only have 45 minutes left.’ And she said, ‘Can’t we just sit and talk?’ And I said, ‘Not today.’ Because my fear is that they’re going to shut it down again.”
The visit and the meals downstairs have made a difference for Ruth. “The nice thing is that things are getting a little better,” she said. “I’m lucky in one way that I can heat up the meals myself, but in the other way it’s nice when someone does it for you. So it’s like a tossup.”
My mother would have turned 92 on Dec. 21, largely against her wishes. Her remains rest atop a bookshelf in my bedroom, next to an action figure of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, waiting for a time our family can gather to scatter them.
Because of the pandemic, the medical school to which she had promised her body was no longer accepting them. The cemetery did not allow gatherings, so on a sweltering morning in early July, five of us said a few words over her in the loading bay behind the crematory, before her body went inside. The experience was probably worse for my brothers, who watched it on Zoom, but it would be hard to say how.
Her two home attendants, amazing women who traveled long distances to care for her during the pandemic, are still without work, their informal job network another casualty of the virus.
But for Ruth and others who made it this far, a better day was in sight: The first vaccine doses had started to reach nursing home residents.
Four years ago, at the end of 2016, Ruth wanted to knit a blanket for her coming great-grandchild, but she feared that the tremor in her hands would prevent her. She knitted it anyway. This year, during the pandemic, she was knitting again.
That is Ruth, 2020.
Catherine Thurston, chief program officer at Service Program for Older People, which provides mental health services, said her staff had seen this kind of resilience in many older clients this year.
“They’ve been a real lesson for us,” she said. “I often tell the story of my own parents, who were Holocaust survivors. And after 9/11 it was so good to talk to them, because they said, ‘Look, horrible stuff happens, and people rebound from it.’”
A motto to take into the new year: Horrible stuff happens, and people rebound from it.
And eventually, at Ruth Willig’s assisted living facility, the hairdresser will make a long-awaited return. “I really need a haircut so badly,” she said.
|
65. How to Clean Your Office Chair.txt
|
By Melanie PinolaPublished November 12, 2020
Save your favorites
Use the bookmark icon to save picks and articles to your lists.
As with other furniture that gets regular, heavy use, your office chair can quickly become a hotbed of germs and allergens. But with common household cleaning supplies, you can keep your chair like new.
Office chairs—especially highly adjustable chairs—tend to have nooks and crannies where lint, dust, crumbs, and hair can hide and accumulate. We’ll help you clear those out, whether you have an upholstered or non-upholstered chair.
Obviously, if your chair has cleaning instructions, either attached to the chair or on the manufacturer’s website, follow those guidelines first and foremost. For example, Herman Miller has a care and maintenance guide for Aeron chairs (PDF). Most of our recommendations here are based on Steelcase’s surface materials guide (PDF), which covers different types of chair materials.
Clean Everything
Get step-by-step advice on how to keep everything in your home squeaky clean. Delivered every Wednesday.
For information about our privacy practices, including how to opt out of marketing emails, see our Privacy Policy. For general questions, contact us anytime.
What you need
The supplies used to clean an office chair, shown arranged on the seat of a chair. Featuring, alcohol, a duster, a hand vaccuum, and a spray bottle.
Some chairs have a tag (usually on the underside of the seat) with a cleaning code. That upholstery cleaning code—W, S, S/W, or X—suggests the best types of cleaners for use on the chair (water-based, for example, or dry-cleaning solvents only). Follow this guide to determine which cleaners to use based on the cleaning codes.
Chairs that are leather, vinyl, plastic mesh, or polyurethane-covered can be regularly maintained using these supplies:
For deep cleaning or stain removal:
How long will this take to clean?
On a daily basis, make sure you immediately clean up any spills or stains by blotting them with water or a water-and-soap solution, to prevent them from setting deeply. That should take about five minutes.
Regular maintenance cleaning can take as little as 15 minutes (plus air-drying time) to freshen up your chair and to remove dust and germs. We recommend doing this weekly, or as often as you vacuum or sweep your workspace or wipe down your desk.
To remove stubborn stains or do seasonal deep cleaning, set aside about 30 minutes.
Vacuum and dust off the entire chair
From the top of the chair to the wheels, thoroughly vacuum up any dust, lint, hair, or other debris. If there are spaces that are hard to reach with your vacuum, use a duster or a can of compressed air to clear out those tight areas.
A person's hand shown using a Swiffer duster to dust the plastic components of an office chair.
Wipe the chair with a soap-and-water solution
Mix a few drops of dish soap with lukewarm water in either a small bowl or a spray bottle. Steelcase recommends (PDF) a mix of one part soap to 16 parts water, but you don’t have to be that exact.
Gently wipe all the surfaces of the chair with a cloth dipped in the solution, or lightly spray the chair with the solution and dab it in with a cloth. Use enough to coat the surface of the chair, but not so much that it soaks through to the insert because that could damage the chair’s materials.
Rinse and dry
Dampen another cloth with clean water, and wipe away any soap residue. Then use another clean cloth to dry hard surfaces (such as armrests and chair legs) or seat coverings (such as leather and vinyl).
Let soft surfaces like fabric seats air-dry—or, if you’re in a hurry to get back to sitting, you can also remove moisture with a hair dryer on the cool setting or a wet/dry vac.
Spot-treat stains with rubbing alcohol or another cleaning agent
If the dish-soap solution doesn’t get rid of some stains, an alcohol-based cleaner might be able to lift them. First, test a small, inconspicuous area of the chair—like the underside of the seat—to make sure the cleaner won’t harm the fabric. Then gently rub a few drops of the alcohol into the stain, without saturating the fabric. Remove residue with a damp cloth and let the fabric air-dry; the alcohol should dry quickly.
If alcohol doesn’t remove the stain completely, attack it using a different agent. iFixit offers stain-removal advice for common stains including beer, blood, chocolate, coffee, and ink. You might need to reapply several times to completely remove the stain.
Go deep with an upholstery cleaner or a professional service
An office chair that has been thoroughly cleaned.
|
By Melanie PinolaPublished November 12, 2020
Save your favorites
Use the bookmark icon to save picks and articles to your lists.
As with other furniture that gets regular, heavy use, your office chair can quickly become a hotbed of germs and allergens. But with common household cleaning supplies, you can keep your chair like new.
Office chairs—especially highly adjustable chairs—tend to have nooks and crannies where lint, dust, crumbs, and hair can hide and accumulate. We’ll help you clear those out, whether you have an upholstered or non-u
|
pholstered chair.
Obviously, if your chair has cleaning instructions, either attached to the chair or on the manufacturer’s website, follow those guidelines first and foremost. For example, Herman Miller has a care and maintenance guide for Aeron chairs (PDF). Most of our recommendations here are based on Steelcase’s surface materials guide (PDF), which covers different types of chair materials.
Clean Everything
Get step-by-step advice on how to keep everything in your home squeaky clean. Delivered every Wednesday.
For information about our privacy practices, including how to opt out of marketing emails, see our Privacy Policy. For general questions, contact us anytime.
What you need
The supplies used to clean an office chair, shown arranged on the seat of a chair. Featuring, alcohol, a duster, a hand vaccuum, and a spray bottle.
Some chairs have a tag (usually on the underside of the seat) with a cleaning code. That upholstery cleaning code—W, S, S/W, or X—suggests the best types of cleaners for use on the chair (water-based, for example, or dry-cleaning solvents only). Follow this guide to determine which cleaners to use based on the cleaning codes.
Chairs that are leather, vinyl, plastic mesh, or polyurethane-covered can be regularly maintained using these supplies:
For deep cleaning or stain removal:
How long will this take to clean?
On a daily basis, make sure you immediately clean up any spills or stains by blotting them with water or a water-and-soap solution, to prevent them from setting deeply. That should take about five minutes.
Regular maintenance cleaning can take as little as 15 minutes (plus air-drying time) to freshen up your chair and to remove dust and germs. We recommend doing this weekly, or as often as you vacuum or sweep your workspace or wipe down your desk.
To remove stubborn stains or do seasonal deep cleaning, set aside about 30 minutes.
Vacuum and dust off the entire chair
From the top of the chair to the wheels, thoroughly vacuum up any dust, lint, hair, or other debris. If there are spaces that are hard to reach with your vacuum, use a duster or a can of compressed air to clear out those tight areas.
A person's hand shown using a Swiffer duster to dust the plastic components of an office chair.
Wipe the chair with a soap-and-water solution
Mix a few drops of dish soap with lukewarm water in either a small bowl or a spray bottle. Steelcase recommends (PDF) a mix of one part soap to 16 parts water, but you don’t have to be that exact.
Gently wipe all the surfaces of the chair with a cloth dipped in the solution, or lightly spray the chair with the solution and dab it in with a cloth. Use enough to coat the surface of the chair, but not so much that it soaks through to the insert because that could damage the chair’s materials.
Rinse and dry
Dampen another cloth with clean water, and wipe away any soap residue. Then use another clean cloth to dry hard surfaces (such as armrests and chair legs) or seat coverings (such as leather and vinyl).
Let soft surfaces like fabric seats air-dry—or, if you’re in a hurry to get back to sitting, you can also remove moisture with a hair dryer on the cool setting or a wet/dry vac.
Spot-treat stains with rubbing alcohol or another cleaning agent
If the dish-soap solution doesn’t get rid of some stains, an alcohol-based cleaner might be able to lift them. First, test a small, inconspicuous area of the chair—like the underside of the seat—to make sure the cleaner won’t harm the fabric. Then gently rub a few drops of the alcohol into the stain, without saturating the fabric. Remove residue with a damp cloth and let the fabric air-dry; the alcohol should dry quickly.
If alcohol doesn’t remove the stain completely, attack it using a different agent. iFixit offers stain-removal advice for common stains including beer, blood, chocolate, coffee, and ink. You might need to reapply several times to completely remove the stain.
Go deep with an upholstery cleaner or a professional service
An office chair that has been thoroughly cleaned.
|
98. Meet George Jetson? Orlando Unveils Plans for First Flying-Car Hub in U.S..txt
|
By Neil Vigdor
Nov. 11, 2020
In an announcement that drew immediate comparisons to “The Jetsons,” the city of Orlando, Fla., and a German aviation company formally unveiled plans on Wednesday to build the first hub for flying cars in the United States.
The 56,000-square-foot transportation hub, shown for the first time in renderings and in a video simulation, resembles an airport terminal. Think Eero Saarinen.
The so-called vertiport is scheduled to be completed in 2025 and will enable passengers to bypass Florida’s notoriously congested highways, the city and the hub’s developers contend.
The electric-powered aircraft will be capable of taking off vertically from the ground-based hub and reaching a top speed of 186 miles per hour, according to the Munich-based aviation company Lilium, which is working with the Orlando firm Tavistock Development Company on the project.
But is the ambitious project, intended to introduce Lilium’s flying taxis as a more time-efficient if costlier alternative to ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft, viable? There is a caveat: The aircraft are still in the developmental phase.
Orlando officials don’t seem to be dissuaded by that uncertainty. On Monday, the City Council approved more than $800,000 in potential tax rebates to Lilium.
Buddy Dyer, the city’s longtime mayor, framed the project as a transformational one in a statement on Wednesday.
“For this new technology to truly reshape the transportation ecosystem and benefit Orlando residents long-term, it is going to take a true partnership between cities, developers and transportation operators,” Mr. Dyer said. “We have been focused on finding the right partners to be a global leader in the advanced air mobility space.”
The site selected for the transportation hub is in Lake Nona, a 17-square-mile planned community within the city limits that is next to Orlando International Airport. It will require approval from the Federal Aviation Administration. The aircraft themselves will also fall under the agency’s oversight.
“The F.A.A. is the regulatory authority over all flight activities in the United States, including urban air mobility aircraft,” the F.A.A. said in a statement on Wednesday night. “The agency is in the preliminary stages of working with these applicants and will continue to engage with them as they work to meet certification standards.”
Jim Gray, a City Council commissioner whose district includes the site of the planned hub, said on Monday that tax incentives were justified and that the project would create about 140 jobs that paid about $65,000 a year on average.
“That’s what we need,” Mr. Gray said during the Council meeting. “We need better-paying jobs. So I think our investment, us priming the pump to help this work with some tax rebates, is absolutely the right thing to do.”
Orlando officials noted that the projected salaries would be more than 25 percent higher than the average salary in Orange County, which includes the city. They also said that the tax rebates were not taking away from existing funds.
“It also should be emphasized on rebates that’s on value that they’re generating,” Mr. Dyer said on Monday. “We’re rebating money that would not otherwise be there.”
In a January 2019 report on the emergence of flying cars, analysts at Morgan Stanley said that “autonomous urban aircraft may no longer be the stuff of comic books.” But they took a longer view on the technology, stating that flying cars would be common by 2040, with the global market projected to be $1.4 trillion to $2.9 trillion by then.
Some officials in Florida couldn’t help but bring up the 1960s animated series “The Jetsons,” in which the father, George Jetson, cruised through the skies in a flying car.
“This,” said Jerry L. Demings, Orange County’s mayor, “is truly ‘The Jetsons’ coming to reality in Central Florida’s backyard.”
|
By Neil Vigdor
Nov. 11, 2020
In an announcement that drew immediate comparisons to “The Jetsons,” the city of Orlando, Fla., and a German aviation company formally unveiled plans on Wednesday to build the first hub for flying cars in the United States.
The 56,000-square-foot transportation hub, shown for the first time in renderings and in a video simulation, resembles an airport terminal. Think Eero Saarinen.
The so-called vertiport is scheduled to be completed in 2025 and will enable passengers to bypass Florida’s notoriously congest
|
ed highways, the city and the hub’s developers contend.
The electric-powered aircraft will be capable of taking off vertically from the ground-based hub and reaching a top speed of 186 miles per hour, according to the Munich-based aviation company Lilium, which is working with the Orlando firm Tavistock Development Company on the project.
But is the ambitious project, intended to introduce Lilium’s flying taxis as a more time-efficient if costlier alternative to ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft, viable? There is a caveat: The aircraft are still in the developmental phase.
Orlando officials don’t seem to be dissuaded by that uncertainty. On Monday, the City Council approved more than $800,000 in potential tax rebates to Lilium.
Buddy Dyer, the city’s longtime mayor, framed the project as a transformational one in a statement on Wednesday.
“For this new technology to truly reshape the transportation ecosystem and benefit Orlando residents long-term, it is going to take a true partnership between cities, developers and transportation operators,” Mr. Dyer said. “We have been focused on finding the right partners to be a global leader in the advanced air mobility space.”
The site selected for the transportation hub is in Lake Nona, a 17-square-mile planned community within the city limits that is next to Orlando International Airport. It will require approval from the Federal Aviation Administration. The aircraft themselves will also fall under the agency’s oversight.
“The F.A.A. is the regulatory authority over all flight activities in the United States, including urban air mobility aircraft,” the F.A.A. said in a statement on Wednesday night. “The agency is in the preliminary stages of working with these applicants and will continue to engage with them as they work to meet certification standards.”
Jim Gray, a City Council commissioner whose district includes the site of the planned hub, said on Monday that tax incentives were justified and that the project would create about 140 jobs that paid about $65,000 a year on average.
“That’s what we need,” Mr. Gray said during the Council meeting. “We need better-paying jobs. So I think our investment, us priming the pump to help this work with some tax rebates, is absolutely the right thing to do.”
Orlando officials noted that the projected salaries would be more than 25 percent higher than the average salary in Orange County, which includes the city. They also said that the tax rebates were not taking away from existing funds.
“It also should be emphasized on rebates that’s on value that they’re generating,” Mr. Dyer said on Monday. “We’re rebating money that would not otherwise be there.”
In a January 2019 report on the emergence of flying cars, analysts at Morgan Stanley said that “autonomous urban aircraft may no longer be the stuff of comic books.” But they took a longer view on the technology, stating that flying cars would be common by 2040, with the global market projected to be $1.4 trillion to $2.9 trillion by then.
Some officials in Florida couldn’t help but bring up the 1960s animated series “The Jetsons,” in which the father, George Jetson, cruised through the skies in a flying car.
“This,” said Jerry L. Demings, Orange County’s mayor, “is truly ‘The Jetsons’ coming to reality in Central Florida’s backyard.”
|
89. Taking Down Bad Men Is Her Job.txt
|
By Molly Oswaks
Nov. 11, 2020
“It’s just something that comes natural,” said Carla Campbell, the foulmouthed breakout hero of “Love Fraud,” a Showtime docu-series about a romantic con man and the women who banded together to bring him to justice.
Since 1993, Ms. Campbell, a bounty hunter, has apprehended hundreds of individuals who have failed to appear in court after being bonded out of jail.
While she is not interested in discussing politics, and the prison system is indeed a fraught political point today — some legal activists are seeking an end to cash bail, for example — Ms. Campbell’s pet cause is bringing down men who’ve wronged women with impunity. “There is nothing more satisfying,” she said.
“When you look for somebody for so long, and then you get them — that’s like getting that first hot, yeasty cinnamon roll out of grandma’s oven,” she said.
Ms. Campbell, 60, was raised with three older biological brothers and a rotation of foster siblings in Versailles, Mo., a small town (a population just shy of 2,500 people, according to the 2010 United States census) that serves as the gateway to Lake of the Ozarks. “I had a rough childhood because it was ‘be one of the boys or you didn’t get to play at all,’” Ms Campbell said. “Kicking their butt or getting my butt kicked, you just get mean.”
At 16, she began waiting tables, quickly discovering that cocktail waitresses make better tips, and bartenders even better. “I don’t know where I thought I was going to end up,” she said. “Wherever the next road led me, that’s the one I was going to go down.”
One night, when a 30-something Ms. Campbell was tending bar in Virginia (where her second husband, Wes Campbell, was stationed in the military), she witnessed a customer hit his girlfriend. She tackled him to the ground, catching the attention of another patron, who asked Ms. Campbell if she’d ever considered bounty hunting.
Ms. Campbell was not paid to appear on “Love Fraud.” She offered her services pro bono to the women who appear in the series, so moved was she by their stories of deceit, fraud and violence by the “nickel-and-dime” con man Richard Scott Smith. Mr. Smith was convicted of identity theft for using a girlfriend’s information to apply for a credit card, which he then used for personal purchases.
After a period of surveillance, social media monitoring and speaking with his friends and family, Ms. Campbell tracked down Mr. Smith and he served 10 months in jail.
She described the process of bounty hunting: “I call local police and tell them we are bounty hunting in their area. Give them the name of the person. Then they tell us to ‘have fun, stay safe,’ and if we need them, call. They are always good backup for us. I’ve only called for them two times in 20 years. That’s because we were shot at.”
By the end of the fourth and final episode, Mr. Smith had served his 10-month sentence and was out in the world again, picking up new girlfriends to use to his financial advantage.
“If there was a Round 2 that happened to kick off because we’ve got enough evidence on new women and we’ve got new charges coming against him, would I do it again? Absolutely,” she said. “I’m completely in. I want this settled.”
In January, Ms. Campbell was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. She was told she had only two months to live if she did not get treated with radiation or chemotherapy.
“It sucked,” she said, beginning to cry. “It just knocks the wind out of you.”
As soon as she got the diagnosis, Ms. Campbell retired from Mannie’s Bonding Company in Olathe, Kan., where she worked alongside her husband, who is the general manager.
Ms. Campbell hired and has been training another woman to take over for her, in this mostly male-dominated field, when that time comes. “If I’ve got to have somebody subdue a female, I don’t need my guy touching that female, right?” she said
And while she’d always sworn she wouldn’t get radiation or chemotherapy, she’s been receiving monthly chemotherapy infusions, which have bought her more time with her family, including two adult sons, and two grandchildren under the age of 10.
“You need more than two months to explain to them that Nana’s going to go away and she’s not going to be around,” Ms. Campbell said. She said that she can’t keep food down and has lost 40 pounds.
“Sometimes I ask why I continue on. But then you see stuff like your husband sitting down on the deck playing his guitar, or the grandkid running around playing, and you’re like, this is why I stayed.”
Ms. Campbell has been married to her current husband for 38 years.
“My dad paid him $500 to walk away from the wedding,” she said. “And he put the money in his pocket and walked up to the altar anyway.”
|
By Molly Oswaks
Nov. 11, 2020
“It’s just something that comes natural,” said Carla Campbell, the foulmouthed breakout hero of “Love Fraud,” a Showtime docu-series about a romantic con man and the women who banded together to bring him to justice.
Since 1993, Ms. Campbell, a bounty hunter, has apprehended hundreds of individuals who have failed to appear in court after being bonded out of jail.
While she is not interested in discussing politics, and the prison system is indeed a fraught political point today — some legal
|
activists are seeking an end to cash bail, for example — Ms. Campbell’s pet cause is bringing down men who’ve wronged women with impunity. “There is nothing more satisfying,” she said.
“When you look for somebody for so long, and then you get them — that’s like getting that first hot, yeasty cinnamon roll out of grandma’s oven,” she said.
Ms. Campbell, 60, was raised with three older biological brothers and a rotation of foster siblings in Versailles, Mo., a small town (a population just shy of 2,500 people, according to the 2010 United States census) that serves as the gateway to Lake of the Ozarks. “I had a rough childhood because it was ‘be one of the boys or you didn’t get to play at all,’” Ms Campbell said. “Kicking their butt or getting my butt kicked, you just get mean.”
At 16, she began waiting tables, quickly discovering that cocktail waitresses make better tips, and bartenders even better. “I don’t know where I thought I was going to end up,” she said. “Wherever the next road led me, that’s the one I was going to go down.”
One night, when a 30-something Ms. Campbell was tending bar in Virginia (where her second husband, Wes Campbell, was stationed in the military), she witnessed a customer hit his girlfriend. She tackled him to the ground, catching the attention of another patron, who asked Ms. Campbell if she’d ever considered bounty hunting.
Ms. Campbell was not paid to appear on “Love Fraud.” She offered her services pro bono to the women who appear in the series, so moved was she by their stories of deceit, fraud and violence by the “nickel-and-dime” con man Richard Scott Smith. Mr. Smith was convicted of identity theft for using a girlfriend’s information to apply for a credit card, which he then used for personal purchases.
After a period of surveillance, social media monitoring and speaking with his friends and family, Ms. Campbell tracked down Mr. Smith and he served 10 months in jail.
She described the process of bounty hunting: “I call local police and tell them we are bounty hunting in their area. Give them the name of the person. Then they tell us to ‘have fun, stay safe,’ and if we need them, call. They are always good backup for us. I’ve only called for them two times in 20 years. That’s because we were shot at.”
By the end of the fourth and final episode, Mr. Smith had served his 10-month sentence and was out in the world again, picking up new girlfriends to use to his financial advantage.
“If there was a Round 2 that happened to kick off because we’ve got enough evidence on new women and we’ve got new charges coming against him, would I do it again? Absolutely,” she said. “I’m completely in. I want this settled.”
In January, Ms. Campbell was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. She was told she had only two months to live if she did not get treated with radiation or chemotherapy.
“It sucked,” she said, beginning to cry. “It just knocks the wind out of you.”
As soon as she got the diagnosis, Ms. Campbell retired from Mannie’s Bonding Company in Olathe, Kan., where she worked alongside her husband, who is the general manager.
Ms. Campbell hired and has been training another woman to take over for her, in this mostly male-dominated field, when that time comes. “If I’ve got to have somebody subdue a female, I don’t need my guy touching that female, right?” she said
And while she’d always sworn she wouldn’t get radiation or chemotherapy, she’s been receiving monthly chemotherapy infusions, which have bought her more time with her family, including two adult sons, and two grandchildren under the age of 10.
“You need more than two months to explain to them that Nana’s going to go away and she’s not going to be around,” Ms. Campbell said. She said that she can’t keep food down and has lost 40 pounds.
“Sometimes I ask why I continue on. But then you see stuff like your husband sitting down on the deck playing his guitar, or the grandkid running around playing, and you’re like, this is why I stayed.”
Ms. Campbell has been married to her current husband for 38 years.
“My dad paid him $500 to walk away from the wedding,” she said. “And he put the money in his pocket and walked up to the altar anyway.”
|
1. In Abrupt Reversal of Iran Strategy, Pentagon Orders Aircraft Carrier Home.txt
|
By Eric Schmitt
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 5, 2021
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has abruptly sent the aircraft carrier Nimitz home from the Middle East and Africa over the objections of top military advisers, marking a reversal of a weekslong muscle-flexing strategy aimed at deterring Iran from attacking American troops and diplomats in the Persian Gulf.
Officials said on Friday that the acting defense secretary, Christopher C. Miller, had ordered the redeployment of the ship in part as a “de-escalatory” signal to Tehran to avoid stumbling into a crisis in President Trump’s waning days in office. American intelligence reports indicate that Iran and its proxies may be preparing a strike as early as this weekend to avenge the death of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Senior Pentagon officials said that Mr. Miller assessed that dispatching the Nimitz now, before the first anniversary this Sunday of General Suleimani’s death in an American drone strike in Iraq, could remove what Iranian hard-liners see as a provocation that justifies their threats against American military targets. Some analysts said the return of the Nimitz to its home port of Bremerton, Wash., was a welcome reduction in tensions between the two countries.
“If the Nimitz is departing, that could be because the Pentagon believes that the threat could subside somewhat,” said Michael P. Mulroy, the Pentagon’s former top Middle East policy official.
But critics said the mixed messaging was another example of the inexperience and confusing decision-making at the Pentagon since Mr. Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and several of his top aides in November, and replaced them with Mr. Miller, a former White House counterterrorism aide, and several Trump loyalists.
“This decision sends at best a mixed signal to Iran, and reduces our range of options at precisely the wrong time,” said Matthew Spence, a former top Pentagon Middle East policy official. “It calls into serious question what the administration’s strategy is here.”
Mr. Miller’s order overruled a request from Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the commander of American forces in the Middle East, to extend the deployment of the Nimitz and keep its formidable wing of attack aircraft at the ready.
Sign up for the On Politics newsletter. Your guide to the 2024 elections. Get it sent to your inbox.
In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has repeatedly threatened Iran on Twitter, and in November top national security aides talked the president out of a pre-emptive strike against an Iranian nuclear site. It is unclear whether Mr. Trump was aware of Mr. Miller’s order to send the Nimitz home.
The Pentagon and General McKenzie’s Central Command had for weeks publicized several shows of force to warn Tehran of the consequences of any assault. The Nimitz and other warships arrived to provide air cover for American troops withdrawing from Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. The Air Force three times dispatched B-52 bombers to fly within 60 miles of the Iranian coast. And the Navy announced for the first time in nearly a decade that it had ordered a Tomahawk-missile-firing submarine into the Persian Gulf.
As recently as Wednesday, General McKenzie warned the Iranians and their Shia militia proxies in Iraq against any attacks around the anniversary of General Suleimani’s death on Jan. 3.
But on Thursday senior military advisers, including General McKenzie and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were surprised by Mr. Miller’s decision on the Nimitz.
The Navy had sought to limit more extensions to the carrier’s already lengthy deployment, but commanders believed the warship would stay at least another several days to help counter what military intelligence analysts considered a growing and imminent threat.
American intelligence analysts in recent days say they have detected Iranian air defenses, maritime forces and other security units on higher alert. They have also determined that Iran has moved more short-range missiles and drones into Iraq. But senior Defense Department officials acknowledge they cannot tell if Iran or its Shia proxies in Iraq are readying to strike American troops or are preparing defensive measures in case Mr. Trump orders a pre-emptive attack against them.
“What you have here is a classic security dilemma, where maneuvers on both sides can be misread and increase risks of miscalculation,” said Brett H. McGurk, Mr. Trump’s former special envoy to the coalition to defeat the Islamic State.
Some top aides to Mr. Miller, including Ezra Cohen-Watnick, one of the White House loyalists newly installed as the Pentagon’s top intelligence policy official, raised doubts about the deterrence value of the Nimitz, especially when balanced against the morale costs of extending its tour. Some aides also questioned the imminence of any attack by Iran or its proxies, an assessment reported earlier by CNN.
Pentagon officials said they had sent additional land-based fighter and attack jets, as well as refueling planes, to Saudi Arabia and other gulf countries to offset the loss of the Nimitz’s firepower.
On Friday the top commander of Iran’s paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said his country was fully prepared to respond to any American military pressure amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington in the waning days of Mr. Trump’s presidency.
“Today, we have no problem, concern or apprehension toward encountering any powers,” Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami said at a ceremony at Tehran University commemorating the anniversary of General Suleimani’s death.
“We will give our final words to our enemies on the battlefield,” General Salami said, without mentioning the United States directly.
Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, said on Thursday that the Trump administration was creating a pretext for war.
“Instead of fighting Covid in US, @realDonaldTrump & cohorts waste billions to fly B52s & send armadas to OUR region,” Mr. Zarif said in a tweet. “Intelligence from Iraq indicate plot to FABRICATE pretext for war. Iran doesn’t seek war but will OPENLY & DIRECTLY defend its people, security & vital interests.”
In another provocation from Iran on Friday, Tehran notified international inspectors that it was about to begin producing uranium at a significantly higher level of enrichment at Fordow, a plant that is deep under a mountain and thus harder to attack. The move seemed primarily aimed at putting pressure on President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to rejoin the nuclear agreement with Iran. There was little activity permitted at the Fordow plant under the 2015 deal.
The notification to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, the United Nations group that oversees the production of nuclear material, said that Iran would resume production of uranium enriched to 20 percent purity. That is the highest level it produced before the nuclear deal, which the country justified at the time as necessary to make medical isotopes for its Tehran Research Reactor.
Fuel enriched to that level is not sufficient to produce a bomb, but it is close. It requires relatively little further enrichment to get to the 90 percent purity that is traditionally used for bomb-grade fuel.
The move was not unexpected. Iran’s Parliament passed legislation recently requiring the government to increase both the quantity of fuel it is making and the enrichment level. But the choice of doing that production at Fordow, its newest facility, was telling. The plant is built deep underneath a mountain at a well-protected Islamic Revolutionary Guards base, and successfully striking it would require repeated attacks with the largest bunker-busting bomb in the American arsenal.
It would take months for Iran to produce any significant amount of fuel at the 20 percent enrichment level, but the mere announcement could be another red flag for Mr. Trump to rekindle bombing options.
David E. Sanger contributed reporting.
|
By Eric Schmitt
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 5, 2021
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has abruptly sent the aircraft carrier Nimitz home from the Middle East and Africa over the objections of top military advisers, marking a reversal of a weekslong muscle-flexing strategy aimed at deterring Iran from attacking American troops and diplomats in the Persian Gulf.
Officials said on Friday that the acting defense secretary, Christopher C. Miller, had ordered the redeployment of the ship in part as a “de-escalatory” signal to Tehran to avoid stumbling
|
into a crisis in President Trump’s waning days in office. American intelligence reports indicate that Iran and its proxies may be preparing a strike as early as this weekend to avenge the death of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Senior Pentagon officials said that Mr. Miller assessed that dispatching the Nimitz now, before the first anniversary this Sunday of General Suleimani’s death in an American drone strike in Iraq, could remove what Iranian hard-liners see as a provocation that justifies their threats against American military targets. Some analysts said the return of the Nimitz to its home port of Bremerton, Wash., was a welcome reduction in tensions between the two countries.
“If the Nimitz is departing, that could be because the Pentagon believes that the threat could subside somewhat,” said Michael P. Mulroy, the Pentagon’s former top Middle East policy official.
But critics said the mixed messaging was another example of the inexperience and confusing decision-making at the Pentagon since Mr. Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and several of his top aides in November, and replaced them with Mr. Miller, a former White House counterterrorism aide, and several Trump loyalists.
“This decision sends at best a mixed signal to Iran, and reduces our range of options at precisely the wrong time,” said Matthew Spence, a former top Pentagon Middle East policy official. “It calls into serious question what the administration’s strategy is here.”
Mr. Miller’s order overruled a request from Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the commander of American forces in the Middle East, to extend the deployment of the Nimitz and keep its formidable wing of attack aircraft at the ready.
Sign up for the On Politics newsletter. Your guide to the 2024 elections. Get it sent to your inbox.
In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has repeatedly threatened Iran on Twitter, and in November top national security aides talked the president out of a pre-emptive strike against an Iranian nuclear site. It is unclear whether Mr. Trump was aware of Mr. Miller’s order to send the Nimitz home.
The Pentagon and General McKenzie’s Central Command had for weeks publicized several shows of force to warn Tehran of the consequences of any assault. The Nimitz and other warships arrived to provide air cover for American troops withdrawing from Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. The Air Force three times dispatched B-52 bombers to fly within 60 miles of the Iranian coast. And the Navy announced for the first time in nearly a decade that it had ordered a Tomahawk-missile-firing submarine into the Persian Gulf.
As recently as Wednesday, General McKenzie warned the Iranians and their Shia militia proxies in Iraq against any attacks around the anniversary of General Suleimani’s death on Jan. 3.
But on Thursday senior military advisers, including General McKenzie and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were surprised by Mr. Miller’s decision on the Nimitz.
The Navy had sought to limit more extensions to the carrier’s already lengthy deployment, but commanders believed the warship would stay at least another several days to help counter what military intelligence analysts considered a growing and imminent threat.
American intelligence analysts in recent days say they have detected Iranian air defenses, maritime forces and other security units on higher alert. They have also determined that Iran has moved more short-range missiles and drones into Iraq. But senior Defense Department officials acknowledge they cannot tell if Iran or its Shia proxies in Iraq are readying to strike American troops or are preparing defensive measures in case Mr. Trump orders a pre-emptive attack against them.
“What you have here is a classic security dilemma, where maneuvers on both sides can be misread and increase risks of miscalculation,” said Brett H. McGurk, Mr. Trump’s former special envoy to the coalition to defeat the Islamic State.
Some top aides to Mr. Miller, including Ezra Cohen-Watnick, one of the White House loyalists newly installed as the Pentagon’s top intelligence policy official, raised doubts about the deterrence value of the Nimitz, especially when balanced against the morale costs of extending its tour. Some aides also questioned the imminence of any attack by Iran or its proxies, an assessment reported earlier by CNN.
Pentagon officials said they had sent additional land-based fighter and attack jets, as well as refueling planes, to Saudi Arabia and other gulf countries to offset the loss of the Nimitz’s firepower.
On Friday the top commander of Iran’s paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said his country was fully prepared to respond to any American military pressure amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington in the waning days of Mr. Trump’s presidency.
“Today, we have no problem, concern or apprehension toward encountering any powers,” Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami said at a ceremony at Tehran University commemorating the anniversary of General Suleimani’s death.
“We will give our final words to our enemies on the battlefield,” General Salami said, without mentioning the United States directly.
Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, said on Thursday that the Trump administration was creating a pretext for war.
“Instead of fighting Covid in US, @realDonaldTrump & cohorts waste billions to fly B52s & send armadas to OUR region,” Mr. Zarif said in a tweet. “Intelligence from Iraq indicate plot to FABRICATE pretext for war. Iran doesn’t seek war but will OPENLY & DIRECTLY defend its people, security & vital interests.”
In another provocation from Iran on Friday, Tehran notified international inspectors that it was about to begin producing uranium at a significantly higher level of enrichment at Fordow, a plant that is deep under a mountain and thus harder to attack. The move seemed primarily aimed at putting pressure on President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to rejoin the nuclear agreement with Iran. There was little activity permitted at the Fordow plant under the 2015 deal.
The notification to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, the United Nations group that oversees the production of nuclear material, said that Iran would resume production of uranium enriched to 20 percent purity. That is the highest level it produced before the nuclear deal, which the country justified at the time as necessary to make medical isotopes for its Tehran Research Reactor.
Fuel enriched to that level is not sufficient to produce a bomb, but it is close. It requires relatively little further enrichment to get to the 90 percent purity that is traditionally used for bomb-grade fuel.
The move was not unexpected. Iran’s Parliament passed legislation recently requiring the government to increase both the quantity of fuel it is making and the enrichment level. But the choice of doing that production at Fordow, its newest facility, was telling. The plant is built deep underneath a mountain at a well-protected Islamic Revolutionary Guards base, and successfully striking it would require repeated attacks with the largest bunker-busting bomb in the American arsenal.
It would take months for Iran to produce any significant amount of fuel at the 20 percent enrichment level, but the mere announcement could be another red flag for Mr. Trump to rekindle bombing options.
David E. Sanger contributed reporting.
|
16. Senate Overrides Trump’s Veto of Defense Bill, Dealing a Legislative Blow.txt
|
By Catie Edmondson
Jan. 1, 2021
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Friday voted overwhelmingly to override President Trump’s veto of the annual military policy bill as most Republicans joined Democrats to rebuke Mr. Trump in the final days of his presidency.
The 81-to-13 vote was the first time lawmakers have overridden one of Mr. Trump’s vetoes. It reflected the sweeping popularity of a measure that authorized a pay raise for the nation’s military.
The margin surpassed the two-thirds majority needed to force enactment of the bill over Mr. Trump’s objections, and only seven Republicans voted to sustain the veto. The House passed the legislation on Monday in a similarly lopsided 322-to-87 vote that also mustered the two-thirds majority required.
The vote ended a devastating legislative week for Mr. Trump, effectively denying him two of the last demands of his presidency. Senate Republican leaders on Wednesday had declared that there was “no realistic path” for a vote on increasing stimulus checks to $2,000 from the current $600, a measure Mr. Trump had pressed lawmakers to take up.
Republicans have also divided over supporting the president’s determination to make one last and futile attempt to overturn the 2020 election results in Congress next week.
Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, typically a strong ally of the president, took to the Senate floor on Friday to encourage his colleagues to override Mr. Trump’s veto, calling the passage of the bill “the most significant vote lawmakers take.”
More on U.S. Armed Forces
“This year especially so, in light of all of the disruptions and problems that we’ve had,” Mr. Inhofe said.
The main disruption Mr. Inhofe was referring to was the president. Making good on a monthslong series of threats, the president vetoed the bipartisan legislation last week, citing a shifting list of reasons, including his objection to a provision directing the military to strip the names of Confederate leaders from bases. He also demanded that the bill include the repeal of what is known as Section 230, a legal shield for social media companies that he has tangled with. Republicans and Democrats alike have said that the repeal, a significant legislative change, is irrelevant to a bill that dictates military policy.
Mr. Trump took to Twitter on Friday shortly after the vote to register his anger at Republican lawmakers’ unwillingness to meet his demands.
“Our Republican Senate just missed the opportunity to get rid of Section 230, which gives unlimited power to Big Tech companies. Pathetic!!!” Mr. Trump wrote. “Now they want to give people ravaged by the China Virus $600, rather than the $2000 which they so desperately need. Not fair, or smart!”
Those objections, registered late in the legislative process, infuriated lawmakers, who had labored for months to put together a bipartisan bill. They had prided themselves on passing the military bill each year for 60 years, and lawmakers in Mr. Trump’s own party ultimately moved to mow over his concerns and advance the legislation. It was a sharp departure from the deference Mr. Trump has normally been shown on Capitol Hill by members of his party.
The vote on Friday ensures that the legislation will be enacted into law over Mr. Trump’s objections, including the provision requiring the Pentagon to strip the names of Confederates from military bases that so riled the president. The bill also takes steps to slow or block Mr. Trump’s planned drawdown of American troops from Germany and Afghanistan, and would make it more difficult for the president to deploy military personnel to the southern border.
All of the Republican conference leaders voted to override the veto on Friday, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader. He called the legislation “a tremendous opportunity to direct our national security priorities to reflect the resolve of the American people.”
Just seven Republicans voted to sustain the veto, including Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a longtime defense hawk who criticized the legislation as the product of a rushed and faulty process that failed to satisfy Mr. Trump’s demand to repeal the legal protections for social media companies.
“Some seem to have forgotten to consult with the commander in chief or recall that he has a veto power,” Mr. Cotton said last month in a speech on the Senate floor. “The bill stiff-arms the president: not a word in more than 4,500 pages about Section 230.”
Lawmakers over the past four years tried but failed to override Mr. Trump’s vetoes of legislation cutting off arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf nations, and to overturn his emergency declaration at the southwestern border.
But his attempt to derail the widely popular defense bill, seen by lawmakers in both parties as an opportunity to secure wins for their communities and support the military, proved to be a bridge too far. That was especially the case for those in his party who proudly championed their commitment to national security and have grown weary of the president’s mercurial demands.
Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, tried on Friday to take up Mr. Trump’s demand to increase the size of pandemic relief checks to $2,000. He called for votes on both a House-passed bill authorizing larger checks and a separate measure by Mr. McConnell that lumped together three of Mr. Trump’s demands: the larger payments, a repeal of legal protections for social media platforms and the creation of a bipartisan panel to investigate the integrity of the 2020 election.
Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican, blocked the request, underscoring the scant appetite in the party for increasing the size of the checks. The chamber then moved on to override Mr. Trump’s veto on the defense bill.
The bill contains a 3 percent increase in pay for service members and a boost in hazardous duty incentive pay, new benefits for tens of thousands of Vietnam-era veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange and a landmark provision aimed at preventing the use of shell companies to evade anti-money-laundering rules.
The last time Congress overrode a presidential veto was in 2016, the final year of Barack Obama’s presidency, after he vetoed legislation allowing families of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to sue the government of Saudi Arabia.
|
By Catie Edmondson
Jan. 1, 2021
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Friday voted overwhelmingly to override President Trump’s veto of the annual military policy bill as most Republicans joined Democrats to rebuke Mr. Trump in the final days of his presidency.
The 81-to-13 vote was the first time lawmakers have overridden one of Mr. Trump’s vetoes. It reflected the sweeping popularity of a measure that authorized a pay raise for the nation’s military.
The margin surpassed the two-thirds majority needed to force enactment of the bill over Mr. Trump’s objections,
|
and only seven Republicans voted to sustain the veto. The House passed the legislation on Monday in a similarly lopsided 322-to-87 vote that also mustered the two-thirds majority required.
The vote ended a devastating legislative week for Mr. Trump, effectively denying him two of the last demands of his presidency. Senate Republican leaders on Wednesday had declared that there was “no realistic path” for a vote on increasing stimulus checks to $2,000 from the current $600, a measure Mr. Trump had pressed lawmakers to take up.
Republicans have also divided over supporting the president’s determination to make one last and futile attempt to overturn the 2020 election results in Congress next week.
Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, typically a strong ally of the president, took to the Senate floor on Friday to encourage his colleagues to override Mr. Trump’s veto, calling the passage of the bill “the most significant vote lawmakers take.”
More on U.S. Armed Forces
“This year especially so, in light of all of the disruptions and problems that we’ve had,” Mr. Inhofe said.
The main disruption Mr. Inhofe was referring to was the president. Making good on a monthslong series of threats, the president vetoed the bipartisan legislation last week, citing a shifting list of reasons, including his objection to a provision directing the military to strip the names of Confederate leaders from bases. He also demanded that the bill include the repeal of what is known as Section 230, a legal shield for social media companies that he has tangled with. Republicans and Democrats alike have said that the repeal, a significant legislative change, is irrelevant to a bill that dictates military policy.
Mr. Trump took to Twitter on Friday shortly after the vote to register his anger at Republican lawmakers’ unwillingness to meet his demands.
“Our Republican Senate just missed the opportunity to get rid of Section 230, which gives unlimited power to Big Tech companies. Pathetic!!!” Mr. Trump wrote. “Now they want to give people ravaged by the China Virus $600, rather than the $2000 which they so desperately need. Not fair, or smart!”
Those objections, registered late in the legislative process, infuriated lawmakers, who had labored for months to put together a bipartisan bill. They had prided themselves on passing the military bill each year for 60 years, and lawmakers in Mr. Trump’s own party ultimately moved to mow over his concerns and advance the legislation. It was a sharp departure from the deference Mr. Trump has normally been shown on Capitol Hill by members of his party.
The vote on Friday ensures that the legislation will be enacted into law over Mr. Trump’s objections, including the provision requiring the Pentagon to strip the names of Confederates from military bases that so riled the president. The bill also takes steps to slow or block Mr. Trump’s planned drawdown of American troops from Germany and Afghanistan, and would make it more difficult for the president to deploy military personnel to the southern border.
All of the Republican conference leaders voted to override the veto on Friday, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader. He called the legislation “a tremendous opportunity to direct our national security priorities to reflect the resolve of the American people.”
Just seven Republicans voted to sustain the veto, including Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a longtime defense hawk who criticized the legislation as the product of a rushed and faulty process that failed to satisfy Mr. Trump’s demand to repeal the legal protections for social media companies.
“Some seem to have forgotten to consult with the commander in chief or recall that he has a veto power,” Mr. Cotton said last month in a speech on the Senate floor. “The bill stiff-arms the president: not a word in more than 4,500 pages about Section 230.”
Lawmakers over the past four years tried but failed to override Mr. Trump’s vetoes of legislation cutting off arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf nations, and to overturn his emergency declaration at the southwestern border.
But his attempt to derail the widely popular defense bill, seen by lawmakers in both parties as an opportunity to secure wins for their communities and support the military, proved to be a bridge too far. That was especially the case for those in his party who proudly championed their commitment to national security and have grown weary of the president’s mercurial demands.
Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, tried on Friday to take up Mr. Trump’s demand to increase the size of pandemic relief checks to $2,000. He called for votes on both a House-passed bill authorizing larger checks and a separate measure by Mr. McConnell that lumped together three of Mr. Trump’s demands: the larger payments, a repeal of legal protections for social media platforms and the creation of a bipartisan panel to investigate the integrity of the 2020 election.
Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican, blocked the request, underscoring the scant appetite in the party for increasing the size of the checks. The chamber then moved on to override Mr. Trump’s veto on the defense bill.
The bill contains a 3 percent increase in pay for service members and a boost in hazardous duty incentive pay, new benefits for tens of thousands of Vietnam-era veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange and a landmark provision aimed at preventing the use of shell companies to evade anti-money-laundering rules.
The last time Congress overrode a presidential veto was in 2016, the final year of Barack Obama’s presidency, after he vetoed legislation allowing families of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to sue the government of Saudi Arabia.
|
18. Tyshawn Sorey: The Busiest Composer of the Bleakest Year.txt
|
By Zachary Woolfe
Jan. 1, 2021
“Everything Changes, Nothing Changes”: Tyshawn Sorey wrote the string quartet that bears that title in 2018. But the sentiment is so tailor-made for the past year that when the JACK Quartet announced it would stream a performance of the work in December, I briefly forgot and assumed it was a premiere, created for these tumultuous yet static times.
I should have known better. Mr. Sorey already had enough on his plate without cooking up a new quartet. The final two months of 2020 alone brought the premieres of a pair of concerto-ish works, one for violin and one for cello, as well as a fresh iteration of “Autoschediasms,” his series of conducted ensemble improvisations, with Alarm Will Sound.
That wasn’t all that happened for him since November. Mills College, where Mr. Sorey is composer in residence, streamed his solo piano set. Opera Philadelphia filmed a stark black-and-white version of his song sequence “Cycles of My Being,” about Black masculinity and racial hatred. JACK did “Everything Changes” for the Library of Congress, alongside the violin solo “For Conrad Tao.” Da Camera, of Houston, put online a 2016 performance of “Perle Noire,” a tribute to Josephine Baker that Mr. Sorey arranged with the soprano Julia Bullock. His most recent album, “Unfiltered,” was released early in March, days before lockdown.
He was the composer of the year.
That’s both coincidental — some of this burst of work was planned long ago — and not. Mr. Sorey has been on everyone’s radar at least since winning a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2017, but the shock to the performing arts since late winter brought him suddenly to the fore as an artist at the nexus of the music industry’s artistic and social concerns.
Undefinable, he is appealing to almost everyone. He works at the blurry and productive boundary of improvised (“jazz”) and notated (“classical”) music, a composer who is also a performer. He is valuable to ensembles and institutions because of his versatility — he can do somber solos as well as large-scale vocal works. And he is Black, at a time when those ensembles and institutions are desperate to belatedly address the racial representation in their programming.
He’s in such demand, and has had so much success, that the trolls have come for him, dragging him on Facebook for the over-the-topness of the biography on his website. (Admittedly, it is a bit adjective-heavy: “celebrated for his incomparable virtuosity, effortless mastery,” etc.)
The style for which he has been best known since his 2007 album “That/Not,” his debut release as a bandleader, owes much to the composer Morton Feldman (1926-87): spare, spacious, glacially paced, often quiet yet often ominous, focusing the listener purely on the music’s unfolding. Mr. Sorey has called this vision that of an “imaginary landscape where pretty much nothing exists.”
There is a direct line connecting “Permutations for Solo Piano,” a 43-minute study in serene resonance on that 2007 album, and the first of the two improvised solos in his recent Mills recital, filmed on an upright piano at his home. Even the far briefer second solo, more frenetic and bright, seems at the end to want to settle back into gloomy shadows.
“Everything Changes, Nothing Changes,” a hovering, lightly dissonant 27-minute gauze, is in this vein, as is the new work for violin and orchestra, “For Marcos Balter,” premiered on Nov. 7 by Jennifer Koh and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Sorey insists in a program note that this is a “non-certo,” without a traditional concerto’s overt virtuosity, contrasting tempos or vivid interplay between soloist and ensemble.
“For Marcos Balter” is even-keeled, steadily slow, a commune of players rather than a metaphorical give-and-take between an individual and society. Ms. Koh’s deliberate long tones, like cautious exhalations, are met with spectral effects on the marimba. Quiet piano chords amplify quiet string chords. At the end, a timpani roll is muted to sound almost gonglike, with Ms. Koh’s violin a coppery tremble above it.
It is pristine and elegant, but I prefer Mr. Sorey’s new cello-and-orchestra piece, “For Roscoe Mitchell,” premiered on Nov. 19 by Seth Parker Woods and the Seattle Symphony. There is more tension here between discreet, uneasy minimalism and an impulse toward lushness, fullness — more tension between the soloist receding and speaking his mind.
The piece is less pristine than “For Marcos Balter,” and more restless. The ensemble backdrop is crystalline, misty sighs, while the solo cello line expands into melancholy arias without words; sometimes the tone is passionate, dark-hued nocturne, sometimes ethereal lullaby. “For Roscoe Mitchell” feels like a composer challenging himself while expressing himself confidently — testing the balance of introversion and extroversion, privacy and exposure.
But it’s not right to make it seem like an outlier in this respect; Mr. Sorey’s music has never been solely Feldmanian stillness. In Alarm Will Sound’s inspiringly well executed virtual performance of “Autoschediasms,” Mr. Sorey conducted 17 players in five states over video chat, calm at his desk as he wrote symbols on cards and held them up to the camera, an obscure silent language that resulted in a low buzz of noise, varying in texture, and then, excitingly, a spacey, oozy section marked by keening bassoon tones.
And he isn’t afraid of pushing into a kind of Neo-Romantic vibe. “Cycles of My Being,” featuring the tenor Lawrence Brownlee and texts by the poet Terrance Hayes, nods to the ardently declarative mid-20th-century American art songs of Samuel Barber and Lee Hoiby, just as “Perle Noire” features, near the end, a sweetly mournful instrumental hymn out of Copland.
“Cycles,” which felt turgid when I heard it in a voice-and-piano version three years ago, bloomed in Opera Philadelphia’s presentation of the original instrumentation, which adds a couple of energizing strings and a wailing clarinet. And after a year of protests, what seemed in 2018 like stiffness — in both texts and music — now seems more implacable strength. (Opera Philadelphia presents yet another Sorey premiere, “Save the Boys,” with the countertenor John Holiday, on Feb. 12.)
“Perle Noire” still strikes me as the best of Sorey. Turning Josephine Baker’s lively numbers into unresolved meditations, here is both suave, jazzy swing and glacial expanse, an exploration of race and identity that is ultimately undecided — a mood of endless disappointment and endless wishing. (“My father, how long,” Ms. Bullock intones again and again near the end.)
In works this strong, the extravagant praise for which some have ribbed Mr. Sorey on social media — that biography, for one, or the JACK Quartet lauding “the knife’s-edge precision of Sorey’s chess-master mind” — feels justified. And, anyway, isn’t it a relief to talk about a 40-year-old composer with the immoderate enthusiasm we generally reserve for the pillars of the classical canon?
|
By Zachary Woolfe
Jan. 1, 2021
“Everything Changes, Nothing Changes”: Tyshawn Sorey wrote the string quartet that bears that title in 2018. But the sentiment is so tailor-made for the past year that when the JACK Quartet announced it would stream a performance of the work in December, I briefly forgot and assumed it was a premiere, created for these tumultuous yet static times.
I should have known better. Mr. Sorey already had enough on his plate without cooking up a new quartet. The final two months of 2020
|
alone brought the premieres of a pair of concerto-ish works, one for violin and one for cello, as well as a fresh iteration of “Autoschediasms,” his series of conducted ensemble improvisations, with Alarm Will Sound.
That wasn’t all that happened for him since November. Mills College, where Mr. Sorey is composer in residence, streamed his solo piano set. Opera Philadelphia filmed a stark black-and-white version of his song sequence “Cycles of My Being,” about Black masculinity and racial hatred. JACK did “Everything Changes” for the Library of Congress, alongside the violin solo “For Conrad Tao.” Da Camera, of Houston, put online a 2016 performance of “Perle Noire,” a tribute to Josephine Baker that Mr. Sorey arranged with the soprano Julia Bullock. His most recent album, “Unfiltered,” was released early in March, days before lockdown.
He was the composer of the year.
That’s both coincidental — some of this burst of work was planned long ago — and not. Mr. Sorey has been on everyone’s radar at least since winning a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2017, but the shock to the performing arts since late winter brought him suddenly to the fore as an artist at the nexus of the music industry’s artistic and social concerns.
Undefinable, he is appealing to almost everyone. He works at the blurry and productive boundary of improvised (“jazz”) and notated (“classical”) music, a composer who is also a performer. He is valuable to ensembles and institutions because of his versatility — he can do somber solos as well as large-scale vocal works. And he is Black, at a time when those ensembles and institutions are desperate to belatedly address the racial representation in their programming.
He’s in such demand, and has had so much success, that the trolls have come for him, dragging him on Facebook for the over-the-topness of the biography on his website. (Admittedly, it is a bit adjective-heavy: “celebrated for his incomparable virtuosity, effortless mastery,” etc.)
The style for which he has been best known since his 2007 album “That/Not,” his debut release as a bandleader, owes much to the composer Morton Feldman (1926-87): spare, spacious, glacially paced, often quiet yet often ominous, focusing the listener purely on the music’s unfolding. Mr. Sorey has called this vision that of an “imaginary landscape where pretty much nothing exists.”
There is a direct line connecting “Permutations for Solo Piano,” a 43-minute study in serene resonance on that 2007 album, and the first of the two improvised solos in his recent Mills recital, filmed on an upright piano at his home. Even the far briefer second solo, more frenetic and bright, seems at the end to want to settle back into gloomy shadows.
“Everything Changes, Nothing Changes,” a hovering, lightly dissonant 27-minute gauze, is in this vein, as is the new work for violin and orchestra, “For Marcos Balter,” premiered on Nov. 7 by Jennifer Koh and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Sorey insists in a program note that this is a “non-certo,” without a traditional concerto’s overt virtuosity, contrasting tempos or vivid interplay between soloist and ensemble.
“For Marcos Balter” is even-keeled, steadily slow, a commune of players rather than a metaphorical give-and-take between an individual and society. Ms. Koh’s deliberate long tones, like cautious exhalations, are met with spectral effects on the marimba. Quiet piano chords amplify quiet string chords. At the end, a timpani roll is muted to sound almost gonglike, with Ms. Koh’s violin a coppery tremble above it.
It is pristine and elegant, but I prefer Mr. Sorey’s new cello-and-orchestra piece, “For Roscoe Mitchell,” premiered on Nov. 19 by Seth Parker Woods and the Seattle Symphony. There is more tension here between discreet, uneasy minimalism and an impulse toward lushness, fullness — more tension between the soloist receding and speaking his mind.
The piece is less pristine than “For Marcos Balter,” and more restless. The ensemble backdrop is crystalline, misty sighs, while the solo cello line expands into melancholy arias without words; sometimes the tone is passionate, dark-hued nocturne, sometimes ethereal lullaby. “For Roscoe Mitchell” feels like a composer challenging himself while expressing himself confidently — testing the balance of introversion and extroversion, privacy and exposure.
But it’s not right to make it seem like an outlier in this respect; Mr. Sorey’s music has never been solely Feldmanian stillness. In Alarm Will Sound’s inspiringly well executed virtual performance of “Autoschediasms,” Mr. Sorey conducted 17 players in five states over video chat, calm at his desk as he wrote symbols on cards and held them up to the camera, an obscure silent language that resulted in a low buzz of noise, varying in texture, and then, excitingly, a spacey, oozy section marked by keening bassoon tones.
And he isn’t afraid of pushing into a kind of Neo-Romantic vibe. “Cycles of My Being,” featuring the tenor Lawrence Brownlee and texts by the poet Terrance Hayes, nods to the ardently declarative mid-20th-century American art songs of Samuel Barber and Lee Hoiby, just as “Perle Noire” features, near the end, a sweetly mournful instrumental hymn out of Copland.
“Cycles,” which felt turgid when I heard it in a voice-and-piano version three years ago, bloomed in Opera Philadelphia’s presentation of the original instrumentation, which adds a couple of energizing strings and a wailing clarinet. And after a year of protests, what seemed in 2018 like stiffness — in both texts and music — now seems more implacable strength. (Opera Philadelphia presents yet another Sorey premiere, “Save the Boys,” with the countertenor John Holiday, on Feb. 12.)
“Perle Noire” still strikes me as the best of Sorey. Turning Josephine Baker’s lively numbers into unresolved meditations, here is both suave, jazzy swing and glacial expanse, an exploration of race and identity that is ultimately undecided — a mood of endless disappointment and endless wishing. (“My father, how long,” Ms. Bullock intones again and again near the end.)
In works this strong, the extravagant praise for which some have ribbed Mr. Sorey on social media — that biography, for one, or the JACK Quartet lauding “the knife’s-edge precision of Sorey’s chess-master mind” — feels justified. And, anyway, isn’t it a relief to talk about a 40-year-old composer with the immoderate enthusiasm we generally reserve for the pillars of the classical canon?
|
34. Black and Hispanic Americans turn to doctors who look like them for reassurance on vaccinations..txt
|
By Gina Kolata
Jan. 1, 2021
Denese Rankin, a 55-year-old retired bookkeeper and receptionist in Castleberry, Ala., did not want the Covid-19 vaccine. Her opinion toward the vaccine was like many Black, rural Americans: The vaccine had come about too quickly to be safe.
Her worry prompted her niece, Dr. Zanthia Wiley, to come to town. Dr. Wiley, who is an infectious disease specialist at Emory University in Atlanta, said one of her goals on her trip was to let her family hear the truth about vaccines from someone they knew, someone who is Black.
Across the country, Black and Hispanic physicians like Dr. Wiley are reaching out to Americans in minority communities who are suspicious of Covid-19 vaccines and often mistrustful of the officials they see on television telling them to get vaccinated. Many are dismissive of public service announcements, the doctors say, and of the federal government. The government’s long history of medical experimentation on Black people is also not helping the matter.
But it’s the assurance from Black and Hispanic doctors that can make all the difference.
“I don’t want us to benefit the least,” Dr. Wiley said. “We should be first in line to get it.”
Physicians across the U.S. are making themselves readily available to dispel myths and address concerns about Covid-19 vaccinations. Some have even gone as far to host video calls and post messages on social media.
“I think it makes a whole lot of difference,” said Dr. Valeria Daniela Lucio Cantos, an infectious disease specialist at Emory who has been running online town halls and webinars on the subject of vaccination.
Black and Hispanic communities have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus, with Black and Hispanic Americans being three times more likely to be infected with the coronavirus compared to white people.
Many of the vaccine-hesitant are linchpins of health in their own families. Ms. Rankin, for example, helps care for Dr. Wiley’s grandmother, who is blind, and her grandfather, who cannot walk. Ms. Rankin looks in on Dr. Wiley’s mother, whose health is fragile. And she is the single mother of three girls, including a 14-year-old who still lives at home.
“If my aunt got infected, my family would be in tough shape,” Dr. Wiley said.
Dr. Virginia Banks, an infectious disease specialist in Youngstown, Ohio, who is Black, said she has seen too many people — and not all of them old — suffer and die in the pandemic. She often recites stories of her experiences dealing with those infected to people hesitant about getting vaccinated.
“We have to tell these stories” to Black Americans, she said. “And it has to come from someone who looks like them.”
“My friends and family say, ‘Even if the risk is one in a million, I am not taking it,’” she added. “I say, ‘I understand your mistrust, but this is beyond Tuskegee. This is beyond “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” We are in a pandemic now. We have to put our faith in the science.’”
COVID-19 VACCINES
Read more about how doctors are assuaging the concerns of Black and Hispanic Americans who are hesitant about vaccinations.
|
By Gina Kolata
Jan. 1, 2021
Denese Rankin, a 55-year-old retired bookkeeper and receptionist in Castleberry, Ala., did not want the Covid-19 vaccine. Her opinion toward the vaccine was like many Black, rural Americans: The vaccine had come about too quickly to be safe.
Her worry prompted her niece, Dr. Zanthia Wiley, to come to town. Dr. Wiley, who is an infectious disease specialist at Emory University in Atlanta, said one of her goals on her trip was to let her family hear the truth about vaccines from someone
|
they knew, someone who is Black.
Across the country, Black and Hispanic physicians like Dr. Wiley are reaching out to Americans in minority communities who are suspicious of Covid-19 vaccines and often mistrustful of the officials they see on television telling them to get vaccinated. Many are dismissive of public service announcements, the doctors say, and of the federal government. The government’s long history of medical experimentation on Black people is also not helping the matter.
But it’s the assurance from Black and Hispanic doctors that can make all the difference.
“I don’t want us to benefit the least,” Dr. Wiley said. “We should be first in line to get it.”
Physicians across the U.S. are making themselves readily available to dispel myths and address concerns about Covid-19 vaccinations. Some have even gone as far to host video calls and post messages on social media.
“I think it makes a whole lot of difference,” said Dr. Valeria Daniela Lucio Cantos, an infectious disease specialist at Emory who has been running online town halls and webinars on the subject of vaccination.
Black and Hispanic communities have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus, with Black and Hispanic Americans being three times more likely to be infected with the coronavirus compared to white people.
Many of the vaccine-hesitant are linchpins of health in their own families. Ms. Rankin, for example, helps care for Dr. Wiley’s grandmother, who is blind, and her grandfather, who cannot walk. Ms. Rankin looks in on Dr. Wiley’s mother, whose health is fragile. And she is the single mother of three girls, including a 14-year-old who still lives at home.
“If my aunt got infected, my family would be in tough shape,” Dr. Wiley said.
Dr. Virginia Banks, an infectious disease specialist in Youngstown, Ohio, who is Black, said she has seen too many people — and not all of them old — suffer and die in the pandemic. She often recites stories of her experiences dealing with those infected to people hesitant about getting vaccinated.
“We have to tell these stories” to Black Americans, she said. “And it has to come from someone who looks like them.”
“My friends and family say, ‘Even if the risk is one in a million, I am not taking it,’” she added. “I say, ‘I understand your mistrust, but this is beyond Tuskegee. This is beyond “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” We are in a pandemic now. We have to put our faith in the science.’”
COVID-19 VACCINES
Read more about how doctors are assuaging the concerns of Black and Hispanic Americans who are hesitant about vaccinations.
|
52. Swimming in Very Cold Water Keeps Me Sane.txt
|
By Sarah Miller
Jan. 1, 2021
I’m standing with two friends in the 39-degree air on the edge of a lake in northeastern California in just our bathing suits. A lone fisherman in several layers of outerwear stares, drinks from a bottle of Racer Ale and says, “Tell me you ladies aren’t going in that water.”
We go in that water. It’s probably 56 degrees. It’s not the coldest water in the world currently being swum, not “My Octopus Teacher” cold — that guy swims in 48-degree water all the time, but hey, he’s in love with an octopus. What do you expect?
Still, it’s cold. I am always last, and I always scream the loudest. It is so cold, like jumping into a martini. The misery lasts about two minutes, and then you are just alone in a giant lake. Some people sneer at this lake for being man-made, but the water itself — pristine, cool, deep blue and tropically turquoise at its shallow edges — has no idea if the big hole it’s sitting in was dug by machines or by a glacier. It doesn’t know that the beach is ugly and covered with blasted rocks and studded with tree stumps. It’s just water, amazing water, fresh from the Sierra, and to have it to yourself is a pretty good return for agreeing to be uncomfortable for 90 or so seconds, before your heart just starts chugging away and a special, private warmth blooms inside you, as if E.T. himself were sitting on your heart, holding up his finger.
Daily swimming in really cold water began innocently enough, with daily swimming in warm water, which began, less innocently, with a drunk neighbor sideswiping my car and landing it in the shop. I started getting rides to the lake with the two friends in the summer, and on one of these pleasant summer swims they casually mentioned they had a regular habit of swimming, without wetsuits, until Thanksgiving.
Cold water swimming is in now, which is somewhat embarrassing for anyone who does it. People gush over the ponds at Hampstead Heath in winter, there’s the Octopus Guy and President-elect Joe Biden is known for taking Thanksgiving “polar plunges” in the waters off Nantucket, to say nothing of Wim Hof.
Wim Hof is this Dutch guy who not only swims a lot in cold water but calls himself a global health leader, which means that he has managed to parlay cold tolerance into a business that helps people do everything from kicking drugs to just generally not being unhappy. Gwyneth Paltrow’s “Goop Lab” on Netflix did a whole episode with Hof, which begins with him assuring teary Goop staffers that he can help them with their problems and culminates in the same staffers jumping into wintry Lake Tahoe, swimming to shore and proclaiming various states of healing. Granted, the water they were in was probably 43 degrees, but they were in for about 30 seconds. I am sure they felt exhilarated when they got out, but if I actually thought there was any permanent result from this exercise, believe me, I’d be driving the 90 minutes to Tahoe right now instead of writing this.
Indeed, the next person who asks me if I know about Wim Hof is going to get a swat. Still, whenever something is really popular and you start doing it just as it becomes popular, you must ask yourself: Am I, too, a lemming? Surely something led me to this moment other than just free will, an amazing personality and an exceptional ability to withstand discomfort, especially since I am confident I have an exceptional inability to withstand discomfort.
On the July day my friends told me they swum until Thanksgiving, I was like, no way. Then, on Aug. 17 the town where I live, Nevada City, had its fire, the Jones Fire, which was just the beginning of it all, of fire horrors that topped themselves every day. At two o’clock in the afternoon on Sept. 17, just hours after getting back from swimming during the short window where the air wasn’t too smoky for swimming, more smoke poured in, so much that the sun disappeared. It was nighttime in an instant. I looked at Twitter and saw that much of the West Coast was in the dark.
I went into the bedroom and pulled down the blinds so that I could feel I had chosen the darkness. I sat on the floor with my back against my bed frame and my head in my hands. I can’t bear this, I must bear this, I can’t bear this, I must bear this, was all I could think.
I thought that I was never going to swim with my friends again, which was ridiculous, because of course climate change doesn’t happen all at once. The horrors would recede, regroup and advance again with new strength, and there was no law saying we couldn’t go swimming through it all.
And before long we were back out there every day, in that beautiful water. It wasn’t so much that I planned on swimming into mid-November in a lake in Northern California at 3,017 feet, as I just kept going every single day and over time, the water kept getting colder and colder. It was around Oct. 26 where I started to feel that I was doing something unusual and brave and at times painful. My first thought every morning was resentment that my day had this big hard part in the middle of it. But even as the air and water got colder, it didn’t get worse, it got better. My body started to get used to it. The big hard part of my day became the best thing in it. My first thought every morning became “swimming.” And then I would just lie there smiling stupidly into the dark.
For the first minute in very cold water, your brain just goes on a vacation. (Cue several million people Googling “cold water near me.”) You are nothing except a body experiencing itself. I laugh at this stage, I laugh like my guts are going to fall out of my body, then scream. It’s so cold, and yes, that is hard. But it doesn’t last that long, and you can feel the unpleasantness of the cold melding with the pleasantness of it until it is all pleasantness, until all you feel is bliss.
Your skin is cold, but inside, you are warm, and safe-feeling, so that the cold is just a sensation, and not a misery. It’s unlike anything else I have ever felt in my entire life, and it is just a moment every day when I feel too good to remember that things are bad. And then, honestly, I spend the rest of the day recovering from it, not hyper-focusing on a million tasks, not being free from anxiety, not feeling ready to conquer things. I take a long bath and often fall asleep, and at some point manage to do the work required of me, but it’s basically a whole day lost to 20 minutes of extreme pleasure, and that’s fine with me.
I think it’s funny that whenever people talk about swimming in cold water they immediately start talking about how good it is for you. “Oh that’s so good for your immune system, it’s good for your heart, it’s good for your skin, it’s good for your circulation, good for your anxiety. Maybe at another time in human history I would have cared, but at this point, I’m like, what does “good for you” even mean? Two months ago I saw the sun disappear, and it will not be the last time, so, forgive me if I feel like the “good for you” ship has sailed.
The lake is not my source of strength or my fountain of youth. I swim in the cold water because it feels good, and I will keep doing it for that reason, until one of us is no longer here.
|
By Sarah Miller
Jan. 1, 2021
I’m standing with two friends in the 39-degree air on the edge of a lake in northeastern California in just our bathing suits. A lone fisherman in several layers of outerwear stares, drinks from a bottle of Racer Ale and says, “Tell me you ladies aren’t going in that water.”
We go in that water. It’s probably 56 degrees. It’s not the coldest water in the world currently being swum, not “My Octopus Teacher” cold — that guy swims in 48-degree water all the
|
time, but hey, he’s in love with an octopus. What do you expect?
Still, it’s cold. I am always last, and I always scream the loudest. It is so cold, like jumping into a martini. The misery lasts about two minutes, and then you are just alone in a giant lake. Some people sneer at this lake for being man-made, but the water itself — pristine, cool, deep blue and tropically turquoise at its shallow edges — has no idea if the big hole it’s sitting in was dug by machines or by a glacier. It doesn’t know that the beach is ugly and covered with blasted rocks and studded with tree stumps. It’s just water, amazing water, fresh from the Sierra, and to have it to yourself is a pretty good return for agreeing to be uncomfortable for 90 or so seconds, before your heart just starts chugging away and a special, private warmth blooms inside you, as if E.T. himself were sitting on your heart, holding up his finger.
Daily swimming in really cold water began innocently enough, with daily swimming in warm water, which began, less innocently, with a drunk neighbor sideswiping my car and landing it in the shop. I started getting rides to the lake with the two friends in the summer, and on one of these pleasant summer swims they casually mentioned they had a regular habit of swimming, without wetsuits, until Thanksgiving.
Cold water swimming is in now, which is somewhat embarrassing for anyone who does it. People gush over the ponds at Hampstead Heath in winter, there’s the Octopus Guy and President-elect Joe Biden is known for taking Thanksgiving “polar plunges” in the waters off Nantucket, to say nothing of Wim Hof.
Wim Hof is this Dutch guy who not only swims a lot in cold water but calls himself a global health leader, which means that he has managed to parlay cold tolerance into a business that helps people do everything from kicking drugs to just generally not being unhappy. Gwyneth Paltrow’s “Goop Lab” on Netflix did a whole episode with Hof, which begins with him assuring teary Goop staffers that he can help them with their problems and culminates in the same staffers jumping into wintry Lake Tahoe, swimming to shore and proclaiming various states of healing. Granted, the water they were in was probably 43 degrees, but they were in for about 30 seconds. I am sure they felt exhilarated when they got out, but if I actually thought there was any permanent result from this exercise, believe me, I’d be driving the 90 minutes to Tahoe right now instead of writing this.
Indeed, the next person who asks me if I know about Wim Hof is going to get a swat. Still, whenever something is really popular and you start doing it just as it becomes popular, you must ask yourself: Am I, too, a lemming? Surely something led me to this moment other than just free will, an amazing personality and an exceptional ability to withstand discomfort, especially since I am confident I have an exceptional inability to withstand discomfort.
On the July day my friends told me they swum until Thanksgiving, I was like, no way. Then, on Aug. 17 the town where I live, Nevada City, had its fire, the Jones Fire, which was just the beginning of it all, of fire horrors that topped themselves every day. At two o’clock in the afternoon on Sept. 17, just hours after getting back from swimming during the short window where the air wasn’t too smoky for swimming, more smoke poured in, so much that the sun disappeared. It was nighttime in an instant. I looked at Twitter and saw that much of the West Coast was in the dark.
I went into the bedroom and pulled down the blinds so that I could feel I had chosen the darkness. I sat on the floor with my back against my bed frame and my head in my hands. I can’t bear this, I must bear this, I can’t bear this, I must bear this, was all I could think.
I thought that I was never going to swim with my friends again, which was ridiculous, because of course climate change doesn’t happen all at once. The horrors would recede, regroup and advance again with new strength, and there was no law saying we couldn’t go swimming through it all.
And before long we were back out there every day, in that beautiful water. It wasn’t so much that I planned on swimming into mid-November in a lake in Northern California at 3,017 feet, as I just kept going every single day and over time, the water kept getting colder and colder. It was around Oct. 26 where I started to feel that I was doing something unusual and brave and at times painful. My first thought every morning was resentment that my day had this big hard part in the middle of it. But even as the air and water got colder, it didn’t get worse, it got better. My body started to get used to it. The big hard part of my day became the best thing in it. My first thought every morning became “swimming.” And then I would just lie there smiling stupidly into the dark.
For the first minute in very cold water, your brain just goes on a vacation. (Cue several million people Googling “cold water near me.”) You are nothing except a body experiencing itself. I laugh at this stage, I laugh like my guts are going to fall out of my body, then scream. It’s so cold, and yes, that is hard. But it doesn’t last that long, and you can feel the unpleasantness of the cold melding with the pleasantness of it until it is all pleasantness, until all you feel is bliss.
Your skin is cold, but inside, you are warm, and safe-feeling, so that the cold is just a sensation, and not a misery. It’s unlike anything else I have ever felt in my entire life, and it is just a moment every day when I feel too good to remember that things are bad. And then, honestly, I spend the rest of the day recovering from it, not hyper-focusing on a million tasks, not being free from anxiety, not feeling ready to conquer things. I take a long bath and often fall asleep, and at some point manage to do the work required of me, but it’s basically a whole day lost to 20 minutes of extreme pleasure, and that’s fine with me.
I think it’s funny that whenever people talk about swimming in cold water they immediately start talking about how good it is for you. “Oh that’s so good for your immune system, it’s good for your heart, it’s good for your skin, it’s good for your circulation, good for your anxiety. Maybe at another time in human history I would have cared, but at this point, I’m like, what does “good for you” even mean? Two months ago I saw the sun disappear, and it will not be the last time, so, forgive me if I feel like the “good for you” ship has sailed.
The lake is not my source of strength or my fountain of youth. I swim in the cold water because it feels good, and I will keep doing it for that reason, until one of us is no longer here.
|
86. Jeffrey Toobin Is Fired by The New Yorker.txt
|
By Katie Robertson
Published Nov. 11, 2020Updated June 10, 2021
The New Yorker has fired the star journalist Jeffrey Toobin after an investigation into his behavior during a work video call last month, the magazine’s parent company, Condé Nast, said on Wednesday.
As a result of the internal investigation, Mr. Toobin “is no longer affiliated with our company,” Condé Nast’s chief people officer, Stan Duncan, said in a staff note, which was reviewed by The New York Times.
Mr. Toobin, 60, reported the news of his firing on Twitter.
In his memo, Mr. Duncan wrote: “I want to assure everyone that we take workplace matters seriously. We are committed to fostering an environment where everyone feels respected and upholds our standards of conduct.”
Mr. Toobin did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The New Yorker suspended Mr. Toobin after he exposed himself during a Zoom call with employees of the magazine and WNYC radio.
The call was held to discuss a future episode of a podcast that The New Yorker and the public radio station produce. During breakout discussions, Mr. Toobin switched to a second call that was the video-call equivalent of phone sex.
“I made an embarrassingly stupid mistake, believing I was off camera,” Mr. Toobin said last month. “I apologize to my wife, family, friends and co-workers.”
Vice first reported the incident last month.
Mr. Toobin, a former assistant U.S. attorney, joined The New Yorker in 1993, under the editor Tina Brown, and quickly made a splash in publishing circles with his coverage of the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Mr. Toobin had applied for a job at the magazine on the advice of a friend, David Remnick, who had joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 1992 and would become its top editor in 1998.
Mr. Toobin is also the chief legal analyst for CNN, having worked for the network since 2002. In a statement last month, CNN said he had asked for time off “while he deals with a personal issue, which we have granted.” CNN had no comment on Wednesday.
Mr. Toobin wrote on a wide range of subjects for The New Yorker, including the Citizens United Supreme Court case, the relationship between The National Enquirer and Donald J. Trump, and the longtime Trump associate Roger Stone.
He has also written a number of books, including “The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court” and “Too Close to Call,” about the 2000 presidential election. Another of his books, “The Run of His Life,” was adapted for television as the FX series “American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson.”
|
By Katie Robertson
Published Nov. 11, 2020Updated June 10, 2021
The New Yorker has fired the star journalist Jeffrey Toobin after an investigation into his behavior during a work video call last month, the magazine’s parent company, Condé Nast, said on Wednesday.
As a result of the internal investigation, Mr. Toobin “is no longer affiliated with our company,” Condé Nast’s chief people officer, Stan Duncan, said in a staff note, which was reviewed by The New York Times.
Mr. Toobin, 60, reported the
|
news of his firing on Twitter.
In his memo, Mr. Duncan wrote: “I want to assure everyone that we take workplace matters seriously. We are committed to fostering an environment where everyone feels respected and upholds our standards of conduct.”
Mr. Toobin did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The New Yorker suspended Mr. Toobin after he exposed himself during a Zoom call with employees of the magazine and WNYC radio.
The call was held to discuss a future episode of a podcast that The New Yorker and the public radio station produce. During breakout discussions, Mr. Toobin switched to a second call that was the video-call equivalent of phone sex.
“I made an embarrassingly stupid mistake, believing I was off camera,” Mr. Toobin said last month. “I apologize to my wife, family, friends and co-workers.”
Vice first reported the incident last month.
Mr. Toobin, a former assistant U.S. attorney, joined The New Yorker in 1993, under the editor Tina Brown, and quickly made a splash in publishing circles with his coverage of the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Mr. Toobin had applied for a job at the magazine on the advice of a friend, David Remnick, who had joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 1992 and would become its top editor in 1998.
Mr. Toobin is also the chief legal analyst for CNN, having worked for the network since 2002. In a statement last month, CNN said he had asked for time off “while he deals with a personal issue, which we have granted.” CNN had no comment on Wednesday.
Mr. Toobin wrote on a wide range of subjects for The New Yorker, including the Citizens United Supreme Court case, the relationship between The National Enquirer and Donald J. Trump, and the longtime Trump associate Roger Stone.
He has also written a number of books, including “The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court” and “Too Close to Call,” about the 2000 presidential election. Another of his books, “The Run of His Life,” was adapted for television as the FX series “American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson.”
|
61. Upcoming N.H.L. Season Will Have Flashes of Other Difficult Eras.txt
|
By Stephen Smith
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Oct. 13, 2021
The first time a pandemic halted a professional hockey season was in 1919, when an outbreak of the Spanish flu ended the Stanley Cup finals before a champion could be crowned. Just days after the cancellation, Montreal Canadiens defenseman Joe Hall, who had played in the finals, died in a Seattle hospital of pneumonia related to the flu. He was 37.
A century later, amid the dread of the coronavirus pandemic, the N.H.L. did what hockey authorities couldn’t do back then, recalibrating after a shutdown to finish the 2019-20 campaign in two Canadian bubbles, with the Tampa Bay Lightning winning the Stanley Cup in September.
Now, as the N.H.L. prepares for the mid-January start of a second season that will be impacted by the virus, crises and contingencies echo from deep in the league’s 103-year history.
If all goes according to plan, the N.H.L. will play a 56-game schedule — rather than the usual 82 — that will go through May, with playoffs to follow. The Stanley Cup is slated to be awarded no later than July 9. The league said it hoped to start the 2021-22 season as usual, in October.
With the league’s 31 teams realigned to eliminate cross-border travel during the regular season, the N.H.L. will, for the first time in its history, have every Canadian team, all seven of them, alone in one division.
There is something of a precedent for that: Starting in 1926, when the Rangers made their debut, and lasting through 1938, the N.H.L. split its teams into Canadian and American divisions. But to balance the numbers, the Canadian division accommodated the New York Americans and the St. Louis Eagles.
In the 1970s, the upstart World Hockey Association featured a truly all-Canadian division for two of its seven seasons, with as many as six teams. Not everybody was enthusiastic about it: Owners of the W.H.A.’s nine teams based in the United States during those two seasons feared that the arrangement might lead to secession and an exclusively Canadian league.
While that didn’t transpire, when the W.H.A. merged with the N.H.L. in 1979, three of the four teams the N.H.L. absorbed were based in Canada: the Quebec Nordiques, the Edmonton Oilers and the Winnipeg Jets.
Like everything else in the past 10 months, a new N.H.L. season will begin amid lurking doubts.
In that, it recalls the era when the upheaval of World War II whittled rosters and raised questions of whether the league should carry on at all.
In 1939, when Canada went to war, five of the seven N.H.L. teams were based in the U.S., but hockey still predominantly ran on Canadian fuel: That season, 90 percent of the players had been born north of the border.
The first wartime season carried on more or less as usual, with some notable modifications. The Toronto Maple Leafs, for example, incorporated a course on firing machine-guns into their preseason training regimen. The following spring, the Rangers collected the 1940 Stanley Cup.
From there, things got increasingly difficult. Before his death in 1943, N.H.L. President Frank Calder navigated the league through complications like limited manpower as players entered the armed forces, border restrictions and ongoing questions about the morality of playing sports in a world at war.
In 1940, after the Canadian government passed a new mobilization act, all able-bodied men aged 21 to 45 were required to complete 30 days of military training. N.H.L. players were permitted to do theirs before the season started, and the Montreal Canadiens joined a militia unit en masse, the local 17th Duke of York’s Royal Canadian Hussars.
In the summer of 1942, just months after the United States joined the fight, it seemed that the Canadian government would finally determine that pro hockey was more of a distraction than the war effort could afford.
Calder made the case for continuing. Prospects were bleak, he was led to understand. But Elliott M. Little, director of Canada’s Selective Service, acknowledged the value of maintaining the N.H.L. in some form. “Or else,” he told The Canadian Press, “we would face the problem of replacing what it at present means to hundreds of thousands of Canadians in entertainment and maintenance of morale.”
The season proceeded, with adjustments. Roster sizes were reduced from 15 to 14, and the league no longer required teams to dress a minimum of 12 players for every game. Overtime was abolished, too, in order to get traveling teams out of rinks on time, in deference to wartime restrictions on delaying or rescheduling trains.
“Every sport is experiencing war problems, and hockey has by far the toughest going of all,” Rangers General Manager Lester Patrick said early that season in an interview with The New York Daily News. He had his eye on the big picture at the time, but he was also sizing up his team’s straitened competitive circumstances.
There were, that fall, 74 N.H.L. players on active service with the U.S. and Canadian armed forces. The men recruited to replace them on the ice weren’t always top talents.
The Rangers, Patrick argued, had suffered more than most, having lost nine regulars from the previous season’s squad. “We’re about all out of players,” he said.
More and more players were called to the colors, or volunteered to serve, as the war went on. They included some of the league’s brightest stars, like the Leafs captain Syl Apps (Canadian Army), Boston goaltender Frank Brimsek (U.S. Coast Guard), and the Bruins’ entire first line of Milt Schmidt, Bobby Bauer and Woody Dumart (Royal Canadian Air Force).
For the season starting this month, the N.H.L. will reflect the times in much smaller ways.
Rosters will be altered, for instance — although this time, instead of contracting, league lineups will expand. Each team will carry a taxi squad of four to six players to facilitate replacing injured players without call-ups having to go into quarantine.
Many of the other shifts in operating procedures have become common during the coronavirus pandemic. Coaches will be required to wear masks while patrolling their benches. If need be, teams will temporarily relocate to neutral arenas in cities not their own.
As for fans, several U.S. teams, including the Arizona Coyotes, hope to accommodate reduced crowds in their arenas, but current health regulations won’t allow any spectators in Canada.
|
By Stephen Smith
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Oct. 13, 2021
The first time a pandemic halted a professional hockey season was in 1919, when an outbreak of the Spanish flu ended the Stanley Cup finals before a champion could be crowned. Just days after the cancellation, Montreal Canadiens defenseman Joe Hall, who had played in the finals, died in a Seattle hospital of pneumonia related to the flu. He was 37.
A century later, amid the dread of the coronavirus pandemic, the N.H.L. did what hockey authorities couldn’t do back
|
then, recalibrating after a shutdown to finish the 2019-20 campaign in two Canadian bubbles, with the Tampa Bay Lightning winning the Stanley Cup in September.
Now, as the N.H.L. prepares for the mid-January start of a second season that will be impacted by the virus, crises and contingencies echo from deep in the league’s 103-year history.
If all goes according to plan, the N.H.L. will play a 56-game schedule — rather than the usual 82 — that will go through May, with playoffs to follow. The Stanley Cup is slated to be awarded no later than July 9. The league said it hoped to start the 2021-22 season as usual, in October.
With the league’s 31 teams realigned to eliminate cross-border travel during the regular season, the N.H.L. will, for the first time in its history, have every Canadian team, all seven of them, alone in one division.
There is something of a precedent for that: Starting in 1926, when the Rangers made their debut, and lasting through 1938, the N.H.L. split its teams into Canadian and American divisions. But to balance the numbers, the Canadian division accommodated the New York Americans and the St. Louis Eagles.
In the 1970s, the upstart World Hockey Association featured a truly all-Canadian division for two of its seven seasons, with as many as six teams. Not everybody was enthusiastic about it: Owners of the W.H.A.’s nine teams based in the United States during those two seasons feared that the arrangement might lead to secession and an exclusively Canadian league.
While that didn’t transpire, when the W.H.A. merged with the N.H.L. in 1979, three of the four teams the N.H.L. absorbed were based in Canada: the Quebec Nordiques, the Edmonton Oilers and the Winnipeg Jets.
Like everything else in the past 10 months, a new N.H.L. season will begin amid lurking doubts.
In that, it recalls the era when the upheaval of World War II whittled rosters and raised questions of whether the league should carry on at all.
In 1939, when Canada went to war, five of the seven N.H.L. teams were based in the U.S., but hockey still predominantly ran on Canadian fuel: That season, 90 percent of the players had been born north of the border.
The first wartime season carried on more or less as usual, with some notable modifications. The Toronto Maple Leafs, for example, incorporated a course on firing machine-guns into their preseason training regimen. The following spring, the Rangers collected the 1940 Stanley Cup.
From there, things got increasingly difficult. Before his death in 1943, N.H.L. President Frank Calder navigated the league through complications like limited manpower as players entered the armed forces, border restrictions and ongoing questions about the morality of playing sports in a world at war.
In 1940, after the Canadian government passed a new mobilization act, all able-bodied men aged 21 to 45 were required to complete 30 days of military training. N.H.L. players were permitted to do theirs before the season started, and the Montreal Canadiens joined a militia unit en masse, the local 17th Duke of York’s Royal Canadian Hussars.
In the summer of 1942, just months after the United States joined the fight, it seemed that the Canadian government would finally determine that pro hockey was more of a distraction than the war effort could afford.
Calder made the case for continuing. Prospects were bleak, he was led to understand. But Elliott M. Little, director of Canada’s Selective Service, acknowledged the value of maintaining the N.H.L. in some form. “Or else,” he told The Canadian Press, “we would face the problem of replacing what it at present means to hundreds of thousands of Canadians in entertainment and maintenance of morale.”
The season proceeded, with adjustments. Roster sizes were reduced from 15 to 14, and the league no longer required teams to dress a minimum of 12 players for every game. Overtime was abolished, too, in order to get traveling teams out of rinks on time, in deference to wartime restrictions on delaying or rescheduling trains.
“Every sport is experiencing war problems, and hockey has by far the toughest going of all,” Rangers General Manager Lester Patrick said early that season in an interview with The New York Daily News. He had his eye on the big picture at the time, but he was also sizing up his team’s straitened competitive circumstances.
There were, that fall, 74 N.H.L. players on active service with the U.S. and Canadian armed forces. The men recruited to replace them on the ice weren’t always top talents.
The Rangers, Patrick argued, had suffered more than most, having lost nine regulars from the previous season’s squad. “We’re about all out of players,” he said.
More and more players were called to the colors, or volunteered to serve, as the war went on. They included some of the league’s brightest stars, like the Leafs captain Syl Apps (Canadian Army), Boston goaltender Frank Brimsek (U.S. Coast Guard), and the Bruins’ entire first line of Milt Schmidt, Bobby Bauer and Woody Dumart (Royal Canadian Air Force).
For the season starting this month, the N.H.L. will reflect the times in much smaller ways.
Rosters will be altered, for instance — although this time, instead of contracting, league lineups will expand. Each team will carry a taxi squad of four to six players to facilitate replacing injured players without call-ups having to go into quarantine.
Many of the other shifts in operating procedures have become common during the coronavirus pandemic. Coaches will be required to wear masks while patrolling their benches. If need be, teams will temporarily relocate to neutral arenas in cities not their own.
As for fans, several U.S. teams, including the Arizona Coyotes, hope to accommodate reduced crowds in their arenas, but current health regulations won’t allow any spectators in Canada.
|
46. Meteor Showers in 2021 That Will Light Up Night Skies.txt
|
By Nicholas St. Fleur
Oct. 20, 2021
All year long as Earth revolves around the sun, it passes through streams of cosmic debris. The resulting meteor showers can light up night skies from dusk to dawn, and if you’re lucky you might be able to catch one.
If you spot a meteor shower, what you’re really seeing is the leftovers of icy comets crashing into Earth’s atmosphere. Comets are sort of like dirty snowballs: As they travel through the solar system, they leave behind a dusty trail of rocks and ice that lingers in space long after they leave. When Earth passes through these cascades of comet waste, the bits of debris — which can be as small as grains of sand — pierce the sky at such speeds that they burst, creating a celestial fireworks display.
[Sign up to get reminders for space and astronomy events on your calendar.]
A general rule of thumb with meteor showers: You are never watching the Earth cross into remnants from a comet’s most recent orbit. Instead, the burning bits come from the previous passes. For example, during the Perseid meteor shower you are seeing meteors ejected from when its parent comet, Comet Swift-Tuttle, visited in 1862 or earlier, not from its most recent pass in 1992.
That’s because it takes time for debris from a comet’s orbit to drift into a position where it intersects with Earth’s orbit, according to Bill Cooke, an astronomer with NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office.
The name attached to a meteor shower is usually tied to the constellation in the sky from which they seem to originate, known as their radiant. For instance, the Orionid meteor shower can be found in the sky when stargazers have a good view of the Orion constellation.
How to Watch
The best way to see a meteor shower is to get to a location that has a clear view of the entire night sky. Ideally, that would be somewhere with dark skies, away from city lights and traffic. To maximize your chances of catching the show, look for a spot that offers a wide, unobstructed view.
Bits and pieces of meteor showers are visible for a certain period of time, but they really peak visibly from dusk to dawn on a given few days. Those days are when Earth’s orbit crosses through the thickest part of the cosmic stream. Meteor showers can vary in their peak times, with some reaching their maximums for only a few hours and others for several nights. The showers tend to be most visible after midnight and before dawn.
It is best to use your naked eye to spot a meteor shower. Binoculars or telescopes tend to limit your field of view. You might need to spend about half an hour in the dark to let your eyes get used to the reduced light.
Stargazers should be warned that too much moonlight and the weather can obscure a meteor shower. You can check the phase of the moon, and your local weather report, to see if you’ll get a good show or not.
If your local skies don’t light up, there are sometimes meteor livestreams online, such as those hosted by NASA or Slooh.
While the International Meteor Organization lists a variety of meteor showers that could be seen, below you’ll find the showers that are most likely to be visible in the sky this year. Peak dates may change during the year as astronomers update their estimates.
The Quadrantids
Active from Dec. 28 to Jan. 12. Peaks around Jan. 2-3.
The Quadrantids give off their own New Years fireworks show. Compared with most other meteor showers, they are unusual because they are thought to have originated from an asteroid. They tend to be fainter with fewer streaks in the sky than others on this list.
The Lyrids
Active from April 14 to April 30. Peaks around April 21-22.
There are records from ancient Chinese astronomers spotting these bursts of light more than 2,700 years ago. They blaze through the sky at about 107,000 miles per hour and explode about 55 miles up in the planet’s atmosphere. This shower comes from Comet Thatcher, which journeys around the sun about every 415 years. Its last trip was in 1861 and its next rendezvous near the sun will be in 2276.
The Eta Aquariids
Active from April 19 to May 28. Peaks around May 5-6.
The Eta Aquariids, also sometimes known as the Eta Aquarids, are one of two meteor showers from Halley’s comet. Its sister shower, the Orionids, will peak in October. Specks from the Eta Aquariids streak through the sky at about 148,000 miles per hour, making it one of the fastest meteor showers. Its display is better seen from the Southern Hemisphere where people normally enjoy between 20 and 30 meteors per hour during its peak. The Northern Hemisphere tends to see about half as many.
The Southern Delta Aquariids
Active from July 12 to Aug. 23. Peaks around July 28-29.
They come from Comet 96P Machholz, which passes by the sun every five years. Its meteors, which number between 10 and 20 per hour, are most visible predawn, between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. It tends to be more visible from the Southern Hemisphere.
The Perseids
Active from July 17 to Aug. 24. Peaks around Aug. 11-12.
The Perseids light up the night sky when Earth runs into pieces of cosmic debris left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle. The dirty snowball is 17 miles wide and takes about 133 years to orbit the sun. Its last go-round was in 1992.
Usually between 160 and 200 meteors dazzle in Earth’s atmosphere every hour during the display’s peak. They zoom through the atmosphere at around 133,000 miles per hour and burst about 60 miles overhead.
The Orionids
Active from Oct. 2 to Nov. 7. Peaks around Oct. 20-21.
The Orionids are an encore to the Eta Aquariid meteor shower, which peaks in May. Both come from cosmic material spewed from Halley’s comet. Since the celestial celebrity orbits past Earth once every 76 years, the showers this weekend are your chance to view the comet’s leftovers until the real deal next passes by in 2061.
The Leonids
Active between Nov. 6 and Nov. 30. Peaks around Nov. 16-17.
The Leonids are one of the most dazzling meteor showers and every few decades it produces a meteor storm where more than 1,000 meteors can be seen an hour. Cross your fingers for some good luck — the last time the Leonids were that strong was in 2002. Its parent comet is called Comet-Temple/Tuttle and it orbits the sun every 33 years.
The Geminids
Active from Dec. 4 to Dec. 20. Peaks around Dec. 13-14.
The Geminids, along with the Quadrantids that peaked in January, are thought to originate not from comets, but from asteroid-like space rocks. The Geminids are thought to have been produced by an object called 3200 Phaethon. If you manage to see them, this meteor shower can brighten the night sky with between 120 and 160 meteors per hour.
The Ursids
Active from Dec. 17 to Dec. 26. Peaks around Dec. 21-22.
The Ursids tend to illuminate the night sky around the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. They only shoot around 10 to 20 meteors per hour. They appear to radiate from Ursa Minor, and come from Comet 8P/Tuttle.
Sync your calendar with the solar system
Never miss an eclipse, a meteor shower, a rocket launch or any other astronomical and space event that's out of this world.
Nicholas St. Fleur is a science reporter who writes about archaeology, paleontology, space and other topics. He joined The Times in 2015. Before that, he was an assistant editor at The Atlantic. More about Nicholas St. Fleur
Site Index
Site Information Navigation
|
By Nicholas St. Fleur
Oct. 20, 2021
All year long as Earth revolves around the sun, it passes through streams of cosmic debris. The resulting meteor showers can light up night skies from dusk to dawn, and if you’re lucky you might be able to catch one.
If you spot a meteor shower, what you’re really seeing is the leftovers of icy comets crashing into Earth’s atmosphere. Comets are sort of like dirty snowballs: As they travel through the solar system, they leave behind a dusty trail of rocks and ice that lingers in space
|
long after they leave. When Earth passes through these cascades of comet waste, the bits of debris — which can be as small as grains of sand — pierce the sky at such speeds that they burst, creating a celestial fireworks display.
[Sign up to get reminders for space and astronomy events on your calendar.]
A general rule of thumb with meteor showers: You are never watching the Earth cross into remnants from a comet’s most recent orbit. Instead, the burning bits come from the previous passes. For example, during the Perseid meteor shower you are seeing meteors ejected from when its parent comet, Comet Swift-Tuttle, visited in 1862 or earlier, not from its most recent pass in 1992.
That’s because it takes time for debris from a comet’s orbit to drift into a position where it intersects with Earth’s orbit, according to Bill Cooke, an astronomer with NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office.
The name attached to a meteor shower is usually tied to the constellation in the sky from which they seem to originate, known as their radiant. For instance, the Orionid meteor shower can be found in the sky when stargazers have a good view of the Orion constellation.
How to Watch
The best way to see a meteor shower is to get to a location that has a clear view of the entire night sky. Ideally, that would be somewhere with dark skies, away from city lights and traffic. To maximize your chances of catching the show, look for a spot that offers a wide, unobstructed view.
Bits and pieces of meteor showers are visible for a certain period of time, but they really peak visibly from dusk to dawn on a given few days. Those days are when Earth’s orbit crosses through the thickest part of the cosmic stream. Meteor showers can vary in their peak times, with some reaching their maximums for only a few hours and others for several nights. The showers tend to be most visible after midnight and before dawn.
It is best to use your naked eye to spot a meteor shower. Binoculars or telescopes tend to limit your field of view. You might need to spend about half an hour in the dark to let your eyes get used to the reduced light.
Stargazers should be warned that too much moonlight and the weather can obscure a meteor shower. You can check the phase of the moon, and your local weather report, to see if you’ll get a good show or not.
If your local skies don’t light up, there are sometimes meteor livestreams online, such as those hosted by NASA or Slooh.
While the International Meteor Organization lists a variety of meteor showers that could be seen, below you’ll find the showers that are most likely to be visible in the sky this year. Peak dates may change during the year as astronomers update their estimates.
The Quadrantids
Active from Dec. 28 to Jan. 12. Peaks around Jan. 2-3.
The Quadrantids give off their own New Years fireworks show. Compared with most other meteor showers, they are unusual because they are thought to have originated from an asteroid. They tend to be fainter with fewer streaks in the sky than others on this list.
The Lyrids
Active from April 14 to April 30. Peaks around April 21-22.
There are records from ancient Chinese astronomers spotting these bursts of light more than 2,700 years ago. They blaze through the sky at about 107,000 miles per hour and explode about 55 miles up in the planet’s atmosphere. This shower comes from Comet Thatcher, which journeys around the sun about every 415 years. Its last trip was in 1861 and its next rendezvous near the sun will be in 2276.
The Eta Aquariids
Active from April 19 to May 28. Peaks around May 5-6.
The Eta Aquariids, also sometimes known as the Eta Aquarids, are one of two meteor showers from Halley’s comet. Its sister shower, the Orionids, will peak in October. Specks from the Eta Aquariids streak through the sky at about 148,000 miles per hour, making it one of the fastest meteor showers. Its display is better seen from the Southern Hemisphere where people normally enjoy between 20 and 30 meteors per hour during its peak. The Northern Hemisphere tends to see about half as many.
The Southern Delta Aquariids
Active from July 12 to Aug. 23. Peaks around July 28-29.
They come from Comet 96P Machholz, which passes by the sun every five years. Its meteors, which number between 10 and 20 per hour, are most visible predawn, between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. It tends to be more visible from the Southern Hemisphere.
The Perseids
Active from July 17 to Aug. 24. Peaks around Aug. 11-12.
The Perseids light up the night sky when Earth runs into pieces of cosmic debris left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle. The dirty snowball is 17 miles wide and takes about 133 years to orbit the sun. Its last go-round was in 1992.
Usually between 160 and 200 meteors dazzle in Earth’s atmosphere every hour during the display’s peak. They zoom through the atmosphere at around 133,000 miles per hour and burst about 60 miles overhead.
The Orionids
Active from Oct. 2 to Nov. 7. Peaks around Oct. 20-21.
The Orionids are an encore to the Eta Aquariid meteor shower, which peaks in May. Both come from cosmic material spewed from Halley’s comet. Since the celestial celebrity orbits past Earth once every 76 years, the showers this weekend are your chance to view the comet’s leftovers until the real deal next passes by in 2061.
The Leonids
Active between Nov. 6 and Nov. 30. Peaks around Nov. 16-17.
The Leonids are one of the most dazzling meteor showers and every few decades it produces a meteor storm where more than 1,000 meteors can be seen an hour. Cross your fingers for some good luck — the last time the Leonids were that strong was in 2002. Its parent comet is called Comet-Temple/Tuttle and it orbits the sun every 33 years.
The Geminids
Active from Dec. 4 to Dec. 20. Peaks around Dec. 13-14.
The Geminids, along with the Quadrantids that peaked in January, are thought to originate not from comets, but from asteroid-like space rocks. The Geminids are thought to have been produced by an object called 3200 Phaethon. If you manage to see them, this meteor shower can brighten the night sky with between 120 and 160 meteors per hour.
The Ursids
Active from Dec. 17 to Dec. 26. Peaks around Dec. 21-22.
The Ursids tend to illuminate the night sky around the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. They only shoot around 10 to 20 meteors per hour. They appear to radiate from Ursa Minor, and come from Comet 8P/Tuttle.
Sync your calendar with the solar system
Never miss an eclipse, a meteor shower, a rocket launch or any other astronomical and space event that's out of this world.
Nicholas St. Fleur is a science reporter who writes about archaeology, paleontology, space and other topics. He joined The Times in 2015. Before that, he was an assistant editor at The Atlantic. More about Nicholas St. Fleur
Site Index
Site Information Navigation
|
40. A Soft Spot for Yalies.txt
|
By Rosalie R. Radomsky
Jan. 1, 2021
Elizabeth M. Schneider always had a soft spot for Yalies — her father and son went there — and she could belt out Bulldog football team fight songs and the “Bright College Years” unofficial alma mater with the best of them.
So, she decided to place a personal ad in the Yale Alumni Magazine, inspired by her ties to the school and her upcoming 50th reunion from Bryn Mawr, from which she graduated cum laude. (She would have applied to Yale if women were accepted in 1964).
“College alumni magazines are very, very enthusiastic about personal ads,” said Professor Schneider, 72.
Benjamin Liptzin, 75, who graduated magna cum laude from Yale, noticed the ad in the November 2017 alumni issue, but he didn’t respond until six months later. He had been caring for his wife Sharon of 50 years, who had Alzheimer’s.
“I was thinking what would happen as my wife got worse,” said Dr. Liptzin, a retired geriatric psychiatrist who was the chair of psychiatry at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., and professor of psychiatry, now emeritus, at Tufts University School of Medicine. He received a medical degree from the University of Rochester. “I anticipated I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life alone.”
In May 2018, his wife, who had shown symptoms of the disease since 2011, moved into the memory unit at an assisted-living facility in Lenox, Mass. It was then that he reached out to Professor Schneider, explaining the situation.
“Liz had said she was looking for a long-term relationship,” said Dr. Liptzin, who has three children, also Yale alumni, and six grandchildren. “I didn’t know if I could commit. I was a married man.”
His belated response surprised and moved Professor Schneider.
“His response was so thoughtful and so kind,” she said. “I could completely relate. I was an only child who helped support my father because my mother had Alzheimer’s for 14 years. I could understand how devastating that was.”
A few days later they met for tea at a Midtown Manhattan coffee shop when Dr. Liptzin drove in to have dinner with friends.
“Never in my life did I imagine until I met Ben, I could meet someone I had so much in common with,” said Professor Schneider, who lived in Greenwich Village. She teaches civil procedure as well as gender and law at Brooklyn Law School. She received a master’s degree in political sociology from the London School of Economics and a law degree from N.Y.U.
“Both of us had been pioneers in our fields of work and got tremendous pleasure in mentoring people,” she said, and she also considered him “handsome, smart, warm and funny.” She loved that he lived in the Berkshires where she had gone to camp and she had a house in nearby upstate New York during her previous marriage, which ended in divorce in 1986. She has two children.
Dr. Liptzin likes to say they were “simpatico,” and July 4 weekend she joined him for the James Taylor opening concert at Tanglewood, where they danced by their seats and sang along.
“I thought she was a very attractive, lively, interesting and accomplished woman,” he said. In August she helped him host his annual Yale alumni brunch and Tanglewood gathering.
“We tried to be very sensitive,” Professor Schneider said. “I knew from my own experience that Ben’s children were grieving their mother’s decline.” She died in October 2019.
In December, Professor Schneider joined Dr. Liptzin and his family on their annual holiday trip, this time to Captiva Island, Fla. He helped her sell her house in Greenwich Village and buy a co-op, and in March, when the pandemic set in, she began teaching remotely from his place.
“When you’re cooped up in a house 24 hours, seven days a week, it made it clear how much we loved being together,” he said. On Oct. 25, 2020, he proposed there.
They were married Dec. 20 via Zoom by Rabbi Liz P.G. Hirsch under a huppah at Dr. Liptzin’s house in Stockbridge, Mass., while about 300 friends and family from around the world livestreamed the two-hour celebration, which was hosted by her son in Singapore and his son in Denver.
|
By Rosalie R. Radomsky
Jan. 1, 2021
Elizabeth M. Schneider always had a soft spot for Yalies — her father and son went there — and she could belt out Bulldog football team fight songs and the “Bright College Years” unofficial alma mater with the best of them.
So, she decided to place a personal ad in the Yale Alumni Magazine, inspired by her ties to the school and her upcoming 50th reunion from Bryn Mawr, from which she graduated cum laude. (She would have applied to Yale if women were accepted in 1
|
964).
“College alumni magazines are very, very enthusiastic about personal ads,” said Professor Schneider, 72.
Benjamin Liptzin, 75, who graduated magna cum laude from Yale, noticed the ad in the November 2017 alumni issue, but he didn’t respond until six months later. He had been caring for his wife Sharon of 50 years, who had Alzheimer’s.
“I was thinking what would happen as my wife got worse,” said Dr. Liptzin, a retired geriatric psychiatrist who was the chair of psychiatry at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., and professor of psychiatry, now emeritus, at Tufts University School of Medicine. He received a medical degree from the University of Rochester. “I anticipated I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life alone.”
In May 2018, his wife, who had shown symptoms of the disease since 2011, moved into the memory unit at an assisted-living facility in Lenox, Mass. It was then that he reached out to Professor Schneider, explaining the situation.
“Liz had said she was looking for a long-term relationship,” said Dr. Liptzin, who has three children, also Yale alumni, and six grandchildren. “I didn’t know if I could commit. I was a married man.”
His belated response surprised and moved Professor Schneider.
“His response was so thoughtful and so kind,” she said. “I could completely relate. I was an only child who helped support my father because my mother had Alzheimer’s for 14 years. I could understand how devastating that was.”
A few days later they met for tea at a Midtown Manhattan coffee shop when Dr. Liptzin drove in to have dinner with friends.
“Never in my life did I imagine until I met Ben, I could meet someone I had so much in common with,” said Professor Schneider, who lived in Greenwich Village. She teaches civil procedure as well as gender and law at Brooklyn Law School. She received a master’s degree in political sociology from the London School of Economics and a law degree from N.Y.U.
“Both of us had been pioneers in our fields of work and got tremendous pleasure in mentoring people,” she said, and she also considered him “handsome, smart, warm and funny.” She loved that he lived in the Berkshires where she had gone to camp and she had a house in nearby upstate New York during her previous marriage, which ended in divorce in 1986. She has two children.
Dr. Liptzin likes to say they were “simpatico,” and July 4 weekend she joined him for the James Taylor opening concert at Tanglewood, where they danced by their seats and sang along.
“I thought she was a very attractive, lively, interesting and accomplished woman,” he said. In August she helped him host his annual Yale alumni brunch and Tanglewood gathering.
“We tried to be very sensitive,” Professor Schneider said. “I knew from my own experience that Ben’s children were grieving their mother’s decline.” She died in October 2019.
In December, Professor Schneider joined Dr. Liptzin and his family on their annual holiday trip, this time to Captiva Island, Fla. He helped her sell her house in Greenwich Village and buy a co-op, and in March, when the pandemic set in, she began teaching remotely from his place.
“When you’re cooped up in a house 24 hours, seven days a week, it made it clear how much we loved being together,” he said. On Oct. 25, 2020, he proposed there.
They were married Dec. 20 via Zoom by Rabbi Liz P.G. Hirsch under a huppah at Dr. Liptzin’s house in Stockbridge, Mass., while about 300 friends and family from around the world livestreamed the two-hour celebration, which was hosted by her son in Singapore and his son in Denver.
|
88. What Impact Could the U.S. Election Have on Your Country?.txt
|
By Rachel L. Harris and Lisa Tarchak
Ms. Harris and Ms. Tarchak are senior editorial assistants.
President Trump “appears determined to use his final 10 weeks in office to pursue a scorched-earth foreign policy that will only make Mr. Biden’s job harder,” write Robert Malley and Philip Gordon in “Trump Still Has 70 Days to Wreak Havoc Around the World.”
Do people around the world agree? We’d like to hear from readers living outside of the United States. What is your reaction to the results, and what do you think the impact could be on other countries, including your own?
You can submit your thoughts in the form below. We may use your response in an upcoming article.
Readers living outside of the United States, what's your perspective?
What are your thoughts on the U.S. presidential election? How do you feel about the results? What are your hopes and/or concerns about how this election might impact the United States' relationship with the rest of the world, including with your own country?
0 words
American expats, what do people in your communities think?
0 words
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
Site Index
Site Information Navigation
|
By Rachel L. Harris and Lisa Tarchak
Ms. Harris and Ms. Tarchak are senior editorial assistants.
President Trump “appears determined to use his final 10 weeks in office to pursue a scorched-earth foreign policy that will only make Mr. Biden’s job harder,” write Robert Malley and Philip Gordon in “Trump Still Has 70 Days to Wreak Havoc Around the World.”
Do people around the world agree? We’d like to hear from readers living outside of the United States. What is your reaction to the results, and what do you think the impact could be on other countries
|
, including your own?
You can submit your thoughts in the form below. We may use your response in an upcoming article.
Readers living outside of the United States, what's your perspective?
What are your thoughts on the U.S. presidential election? How do you feel about the results? What are your hopes and/or concerns about how this election might impact the United States' relationship with the rest of the world, including with your own country?
0 words
American expats, what do people in your communities think?
0 words
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
Site Index
Site Information Navigation
|
97. What Are You Thankful for This Year?.txt
|
By Melissa Kirsch
Nov. 11, 2020
Welcome. In a couple weeks, it will be Thanksgiving, a holiday whose most cherished traditions — gathering in large groups, communal meals, a million permutations of togetherness — are off limits this year. We’re reconfiguring our celebrations, arranging video feasts, halving or quartering the mashed potato recipe to make Thanksgiving conform to the new rules of the season.
One tradition that inspires mixed feelings is the time during dinner when each attendee tells the assembled what they’re thankful for. Reflecting during a raucous banquet is an often disconsonant moment, a call for vulnerability that can be moving or (depending on the amount of wine consumed) embarrassing. The writer A.J. Jacobs, in 2018, described the custom as “more painful than hand-scrubbing the casserole pan,” before endorsing the practice anyway.
This year, expressing gratitude seems more essential than ever. It’s been difficult lately not to focus on what we’re missing, the people we’re not seeing, the places we’re not going and the things we’re not doing. Articulating what we’re thankful for is a radical act in the midst of a hard time. Turning our attention to the things we do have rather than what we don’t is a tough task, but a crucial one.
The psychologist David DeSteno wrote in The Times last year that gratitude is wasted on Thanksgiving. He pointed out that “one of gratitude’s central purposes is to help us form strong bonds with other people” and the moment when we’re surrounded by our families and those we love best, we’re not looking to forge bonds. Of course, that observation presupposed a regular Thanksgiving, a scrum of loved ones around the dinner table, passing the yams. This year, we are doing what we can to feel closer, to generate Thanksgiving intimacy without actually occupying the same space. If we’re separated from our family and friends, then giving thanks, whether via video, email, text or from six feet across the yard may help us feel a little more connected to each other.
What are you thankful for this year? Whether you’ll formally express gratitude at Thanksgiving dinner, note it in a journal or meditate on it throughout the holiday season, what things, people, ideas are you appreciating right now? Write to us: athome@nytimes.com. Include your name, age and location. We’re At Home. We’ll read every letter sent. As always, more ideas for leading a full and thankful life at home appear below. See you on Friday.
How to deal.
What to eat.
How to pass the time.
Like what you see?
Sign up to receive the At Home newsletter. You can always find much more to read, watch and do every day on At Home. And let us know what you think!
|
By Melissa Kirsch
Nov. 11, 2020
Welcome. In a couple weeks, it will be Thanksgiving, a holiday whose most cherished traditions — gathering in large groups, communal meals, a million permutations of togetherness — are off limits this year. We’re reconfiguring our celebrations, arranging video feasts, halving or quartering the mashed potato recipe to make Thanksgiving conform to the new rules of the season.
One tradition that inspires mixed feelings is the time during dinner when each attendee tells the assembled what they’re thankful for. Reflecting during a raucous banquet is an
|
often disconsonant moment, a call for vulnerability that can be moving or (depending on the amount of wine consumed) embarrassing. The writer A.J. Jacobs, in 2018, described the custom as “more painful than hand-scrubbing the casserole pan,” before endorsing the practice anyway.
This year, expressing gratitude seems more essential than ever. It’s been difficult lately not to focus on what we’re missing, the people we’re not seeing, the places we’re not going and the things we’re not doing. Articulating what we’re thankful for is a radical act in the midst of a hard time. Turning our attention to the things we do have rather than what we don’t is a tough task, but a crucial one.
The psychologist David DeSteno wrote in The Times last year that gratitude is wasted on Thanksgiving. He pointed out that “one of gratitude’s central purposes is to help us form strong bonds with other people” and the moment when we’re surrounded by our families and those we love best, we’re not looking to forge bonds. Of course, that observation presupposed a regular Thanksgiving, a scrum of loved ones around the dinner table, passing the yams. This year, we are doing what we can to feel closer, to generate Thanksgiving intimacy without actually occupying the same space. If we’re separated from our family and friends, then giving thanks, whether via video, email, text or from six feet across the yard may help us feel a little more connected to each other.
What are you thankful for this year? Whether you’ll formally express gratitude at Thanksgiving dinner, note it in a journal or meditate on it throughout the holiday season, what things, people, ideas are you appreciating right now? Write to us: athome@nytimes.com. Include your name, age and location. We’re At Home. We’ll read every letter sent. As always, more ideas for leading a full and thankful life at home appear below. See you on Friday.
How to deal.
What to eat.
How to pass the time.
Like what you see?
Sign up to receive the At Home newsletter. You can always find much more to read, watch and do every day on At Home. And let us know what you think!
|
79. 19% Positivity Rate as Virus Soars in Newark, New Jersey’s Largest City.txt
|
By Kevin Armstrong and Tracey Tully
Published Nov. 11, 2020Updated Aug. 11, 2021
NEWARK — As the coronavirus started surging in New Jersey’s largest city, officials introduced the state’s first new coronavirus lockdown two weeks ago, mandating an 8 p.m. indoor closing time for all restaurants, bars and nonessential businesses citywide.
But then the number of new cases in the city, Newark, climbed even higher: Over the last four days, there have been 842 new reported infections, and 19 percent of people tested over three days last week were found to have the virus, city and county officials said.
The uptick mirrors a troubling statewide trend that has resulted in a spike in Covid-19 hospitalizations across New Jersey to levels not seen since June.
On Tuesday, New Jersey reported 3,877 new cases, a figure the governor called “devastating.” By the next day, 3,078 new cases were recorded. Hospitals also reported 15 coronavirus deaths, adding to the more than 16,400 New Jersey fatalities already linked to the virus.
Newark, a commuter hub, is about a 15-mile drive from New York City, where officials are struggling to contain an outbreak on Staten Island and bracing for a second wave of cases citywide.
New York’s governor has announced that bars, restaurants and gyms across the state must close nightly at 10 p.m. starting Friday, and that private residential gatherings should not exceed 10 people.
Of the Northeast states, only Rhode Island and Connecticut have higher rates of infection per 100,000 residents than New Jersey, according to a New York Times database.
The rates in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania are not far behind, however, as the region, which had been an early epicenter of the pandemic, struggles to regain control of a virus that had largely been tamped down just a few months ago.
Alarmed by the new data, Newark turned to a new tactic on Tuesday.
The mayor, Ras J. Baraka, implemented a sweeping set of rules designed to avoid a repeat of the springtime outbreak of the coronavirus, which has been linked to at least 680 deaths in the city of 282,000 — the hardest-hit municipality in the state’s hardest-hit county, Essex.
Mr. Baraka, a Democrat, ordered a 9 p.m. weekday curfew for residents of three ZIP codes and the cancellation of all team sports activities citywide, effective immediately. Newark’s nursing homes were barred from accepting visitors for two weeks. And gatherings throughout the city — indoors and outdoors — were capped at 10 people until at least Dec. 1.
More on Covid-19
Aides said Mr. Baraka would not hesitate to shut down businesses, issue fines and suspend liquor licenses.
The tough talk has created an inherent tension between Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a Democrat, and Mr. Baraka, one of his closest political allies.
Mr. Murphy had taken pains to say that he had no desire to renew a statewide lockdown as he announced limited measures that kick in on Thursday: 10 p.m. indoor closing times at nightclubs and restaurants; no seating at bars; and a ban on out-of-state youth sports tournaments.
But when asked about Newark’s rules, Mr. Murphy’s top lawyer, Parimal Garg, said that state law superseded actions taken by municipalities. Mr. Murphy’s aides declined to comment on Tuesday or Wednesday about the confusion.
“Newark’s prescription is not the state’s prescription,” Mr. Baraka said in a statement on Tuesday. “Stricter measures are required in the city’s hot spots in order to contain the virus and limit the spread. I know we are all tired, but the virus is not.”
On Tuesday night in Newark, less than an hour before the curfew took hold, Daysi Moreno, a hairdresser, rushed to pull down the gates to the store she owns on Bloomfield Avenue, a bustling business corridor in the city’s North Ward.
Six blocks away, in Branch Brook Park, a club softball team for girls was practicing, preparing to leave in the coming days for a tournament in Clearwater, Fla.
“We kept waiting for the lights to shut off, but they didn’t — so we kept practicing,” said Jessie Dreswick, 24, one of the coaches for the team, the New Jersey Pride. “I’m just happy we’re still playing.”
Based on the guidance from the city and state, the team should not have been on the field or preparing to travel out of state. But the competing shutdown orders were adding to a sense of trepidation in New Jersey.
“There is confusion,” said Perry N. Halkitis, a dean of biostatistics and urban-global public health at the School of Public Health at Rutgers University. “Mixed messaging.”
But he said the governor’s overarching approach, and the emphasis on quelling indoor drinking during late-night hours, when inhibitions drop, was appropriate. He said he was equally concerned about private indoor gatherings that are harder to monitor.
“People feel like it’s their God-given right to be with their families on Thanksgiving,” said Dr. Halkitis, who lives and works in Newark.
“You really love your family?” he added. “For Thanksgiving, you should not be with them.”
The governor has repeatedly said that private indoor gatherings are a main source of spread. Halloween parties were linked to five outbreaks across the state, involving a total of 70 people, state health officials said on Wednesday.
Edward Lifshitz, medical director for the Communicable Disease Service at New Jersey’s Department of Health, said that it was often hard to pinpoint a precise source of infection, given the limits of contact tracing and people’s travel habits.
What is clear is that the virus is now spreading rapidly through the community, and that indoor gatherings remain less safe than outdoor events, he said. Elementary and middle schools have not been shown to be a major source of spread, Dr. Lifshitz said; K-12 schools are linked to 146 cases since the start of September.
The seven-day average rate of positive virus tests in New Jersey was 7.95 percent.
“We need to separate as much as possible,” Dr. Lifshitz said. “It’s hard wearing that mask every day. It’s hard not being able to see your friends and family. But none of them are as hard as dealing with the loss of a family member or a friend.”
In Newark, Ms. Moreno, 47, said she had cut the number of staffers at Latinos Beauty Salon to six people, down from 10, after salons in the city were told late last month they could remain open for appointments only.
She said she would prefer a total lockdown for the month of January, to give the state a chance to recover for good. “Business is very slow now,” she said. “Appointment-only is hard for people figuring out when they come off work.”
Residents of three Newark ZIP codes — 07104, 07105 and 07107 — are being asked to remain off the street after 9 p.m. on weekdays and 10 p.m. on weekends, until 5 a.m., unless traveling to or from work, or in the case of an emergency.
The weather during the first night of the curfew was balmy, but the streets were like ghost towns.
Still, the ovens at Calandra’s Bakery on First Avenue, in a section of Newark now subject to the mandatory curfew, remained on, operating 24 hours a day to supply supermarkets from New York City to Pennsylvania with handmade bread.
A Calandra’s manager, Carlos Ribeiro, 55, said his hands were chapped from constant washing.
“If I touch something, I wash. I support masks 200 percent!” Mr. Ribeiro said. “Everybody worries. We are concerned. It’s why we are more and more on top of the employees: ‘Wash your hands, keep your distance.’
“We all need to help each other.”
|
By Kevin Armstrong and Tracey Tully
Published Nov. 11, 2020Updated Aug. 11, 2021
NEWARK — As the coronavirus started surging in New Jersey’s largest city, officials introduced the state’s first new coronavirus lockdown two weeks ago, mandating an 8 p.m. indoor closing time for all restaurants, bars and nonessential businesses citywide.
But then the number of new cases in the city, Newark, climbed even higher: Over the last four days, there have been 842 new reported infections, and 19 percent of people tested
|
over three days last week were found to have the virus, city and county officials said.
The uptick mirrors a troubling statewide trend that has resulted in a spike in Covid-19 hospitalizations across New Jersey to levels not seen since June.
On Tuesday, New Jersey reported 3,877 new cases, a figure the governor called “devastating.” By the next day, 3,078 new cases were recorded. Hospitals also reported 15 coronavirus deaths, adding to the more than 16,400 New Jersey fatalities already linked to the virus.
Newark, a commuter hub, is about a 15-mile drive from New York City, where officials are struggling to contain an outbreak on Staten Island and bracing for a second wave of cases citywide.
New York’s governor has announced that bars, restaurants and gyms across the state must close nightly at 10 p.m. starting Friday, and that private residential gatherings should not exceed 10 people.
Of the Northeast states, only Rhode Island and Connecticut have higher rates of infection per 100,000 residents than New Jersey, according to a New York Times database.
The rates in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania are not far behind, however, as the region, which had been an early epicenter of the pandemic, struggles to regain control of a virus that had largely been tamped down just a few months ago.
Alarmed by the new data, Newark turned to a new tactic on Tuesday.
The mayor, Ras J. Baraka, implemented a sweeping set of rules designed to avoid a repeat of the springtime outbreak of the coronavirus, which has been linked to at least 680 deaths in the city of 282,000 — the hardest-hit municipality in the state’s hardest-hit county, Essex.
Mr. Baraka, a Democrat, ordered a 9 p.m. weekday curfew for residents of three ZIP codes and the cancellation of all team sports activities citywide, effective immediately. Newark’s nursing homes were barred from accepting visitors for two weeks. And gatherings throughout the city — indoors and outdoors — were capped at 10 people until at least Dec. 1.
More on Covid-19
Aides said Mr. Baraka would not hesitate to shut down businesses, issue fines and suspend liquor licenses.
The tough talk has created an inherent tension between Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a Democrat, and Mr. Baraka, one of his closest political allies.
Mr. Murphy had taken pains to say that he had no desire to renew a statewide lockdown as he announced limited measures that kick in on Thursday: 10 p.m. indoor closing times at nightclubs and restaurants; no seating at bars; and a ban on out-of-state youth sports tournaments.
But when asked about Newark’s rules, Mr. Murphy’s top lawyer, Parimal Garg, said that state law superseded actions taken by municipalities. Mr. Murphy’s aides declined to comment on Tuesday or Wednesday about the confusion.
“Newark’s prescription is not the state’s prescription,” Mr. Baraka said in a statement on Tuesday. “Stricter measures are required in the city’s hot spots in order to contain the virus and limit the spread. I know we are all tired, but the virus is not.”
On Tuesday night in Newark, less than an hour before the curfew took hold, Daysi Moreno, a hairdresser, rushed to pull down the gates to the store she owns on Bloomfield Avenue, a bustling business corridor in the city’s North Ward.
Six blocks away, in Branch Brook Park, a club softball team for girls was practicing, preparing to leave in the coming days for a tournament in Clearwater, Fla.
“We kept waiting for the lights to shut off, but they didn’t — so we kept practicing,” said Jessie Dreswick, 24, one of the coaches for the team, the New Jersey Pride. “I’m just happy we’re still playing.”
Based on the guidance from the city and state, the team should not have been on the field or preparing to travel out of state. But the competing shutdown orders were adding to a sense of trepidation in New Jersey.
“There is confusion,” said Perry N. Halkitis, a dean of biostatistics and urban-global public health at the School of Public Health at Rutgers University. “Mixed messaging.”
But he said the governor’s overarching approach, and the emphasis on quelling indoor drinking during late-night hours, when inhibitions drop, was appropriate. He said he was equally concerned about private indoor gatherings that are harder to monitor.
“People feel like it’s their God-given right to be with their families on Thanksgiving,” said Dr. Halkitis, who lives and works in Newark.
“You really love your family?” he added. “For Thanksgiving, you should not be with them.”
The governor has repeatedly said that private indoor gatherings are a main source of spread. Halloween parties were linked to five outbreaks across the state, involving a total of 70 people, state health officials said on Wednesday.
Edward Lifshitz, medical director for the Communicable Disease Service at New Jersey’s Department of Health, said that it was often hard to pinpoint a precise source of infection, given the limits of contact tracing and people’s travel habits.
What is clear is that the virus is now spreading rapidly through the community, and that indoor gatherings remain less safe than outdoor events, he said. Elementary and middle schools have not been shown to be a major source of spread, Dr. Lifshitz said; K-12 schools are linked to 146 cases since the start of September.
The seven-day average rate of positive virus tests in New Jersey was 7.95 percent.
“We need to separate as much as possible,” Dr. Lifshitz said. “It’s hard wearing that mask every day. It’s hard not being able to see your friends and family. But none of them are as hard as dealing with the loss of a family member or a friend.”
In Newark, Ms. Moreno, 47, said she had cut the number of staffers at Latinos Beauty Salon to six people, down from 10, after salons in the city were told late last month they could remain open for appointments only.
She said she would prefer a total lockdown for the month of January, to give the state a chance to recover for good. “Business is very slow now,” she said. “Appointment-only is hard for people figuring out when they come off work.”
Residents of three Newark ZIP codes — 07104, 07105 and 07107 — are being asked to remain off the street after 9 p.m. on weekdays and 10 p.m. on weekends, until 5 a.m., unless traveling to or from work, or in the case of an emergency.
The weather during the first night of the curfew was balmy, but the streets were like ghost towns.
Still, the ovens at Calandra’s Bakery on First Avenue, in a section of Newark now subject to the mandatory curfew, remained on, operating 24 hours a day to supply supermarkets from New York City to Pennsylvania with handmade bread.
A Calandra’s manager, Carlos Ribeiro, 55, said his hands were chapped from constant washing.
“If I touch something, I wash. I support masks 200 percent!” Mr. Ribeiro said. “Everybody worries. We are concerned. It’s why we are more and more on top of the employees: ‘Wash your hands, keep your distance.’
“We all need to help each other.”
|
84. How One Firm Drove Influence Campaigns Nationwide for Big Oil.txt
|
By Hiroko Tabuchi
Nov. 11, 2020
In early 2017, the Texans for Natural Gas website went live to urge voters to “thank a roughneck” and support fracking. Around the same time, the Arctic Energy Center ramped up its advocacy for drilling in Alaskan waters and in a vast Arctic wildlife refuge. The next year, the Main Street Investors Coalition warned that climate activism doesn’t help mom-and-pop investors in the stock market.
All three appeared to be separate efforts to amplify local voices or speak up for regular people.
On closer look, however, the groups had something in common: They were part of a network of corporate influence campaigns designed, staffed and at times run by FTI Consulting, which had been hired by some of the largest oil and gas companies in the world to help them promote fossil fuels.
An examination of FTI’s work provides an anatomy of the oil industry’s efforts to influence public opinion in the face of increasing political pressure over climate change, an issue likely to grow in prominence, given President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s pledge to pursue bolder climate regulations. The campaigns often obscure the industry’s role, portraying pro-petroleum groups as grass-roots movements.
As part of its services to the industry, FTI monitored environmental activists online, and in one instance an employee created a fake Facebook persona — an imaginary, middle-aged Texas woman with a dog — to help keep tabs on protesters. Former FTI employees say they studied other online influence campaigns and compiled strategies for affecting public discourse. They helped run a campaign that sought a securities rule change, described as protecting the interests of mom-and-pop investors, that aimed to protect oil and gas companies from shareholder pressure to address climate and other concerns.
FTI employees also staffed two news and information sites, Energy In Depth and Western Wire, writing pro-industry articles on fracking, climate lawsuits and other hot-button issues. Former employees familiar with Energy In Depth said the site’s content had direction from Exxon Mobil, one of the major clients of the FTI division that worked on these oil and gas campaigns.
The Energy In Depth website notes its affiliation with an energy trade group that Exxon is a member of, though not Exxon’s role in directing content that the site published.
This article is based on interviews with a dozen former FTI employees, including former managing directors, a review of hundreds of internal FTI documents and an examination of the digital trail of domain-name registrations and other details left by the creation of the websites. In all, FTI has been involved in the operations of at least 15 current and past influence campaigns promoting fossil-fuel interests in addition to its direct work for oil and gas clients.
Matthew Bashalany, an FTI spokesman, disputed the idea that FTI worked behind the scenes for these groups. “We hide behind no one,” he said.
“We summarily reject as false, misleading and defamatory the general narrative and specific claims,” he said. “We hold ourselves to the highest professional and ethical standards of conduct; when and where shortfalls are identified in this regard, they are addressed appropriately.”
An Exxon spokesman, Casey Norton, said he would not comment on the findings because he considered the reporter to be biased against the fossil fuel industry. Kathleen Sgamma, a spokeswoman for the Western Energy Alliance, which funds Western Wire, said her group had been open about its partnership with FTI and about its approach to fracking.
The business of corporate consulting and public relations is vast, and countless companies routinely provide media outreach, public messaging, crisis management and other services. FTI is among them, and it has taken up an important role in helping promote the messages of the fossil fuel industry.
Those messages have sometimes run counter to the scientific consensus that the world must burn less oil and gas to avoid the worst effects of global warming. Texans for Natural Gas, for example, has downplayed the magnitude of emissions of methane, the prime component of natural gas and a potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas production.
Latest News on Climate Change and the Environment
Card 1 of 5
Protecting groundwater. After years of decline in the nation’s groundwater, a series of developments indicate that U.S. state and federal officials may begin tightening protections for the dwindling resource. In Nevada, Idaho and Montana, court decisions have strengthened states’ ability to restrict overpumping. California is considering penalizing officials for draining aquifers. And the White House has asked scientists to advise how the federal government can help.
Weather-related disasters. An estimated 2.5 million people were forced from their homes in the United States by weather-related disasters in 2023, according to new data from the Census Bureau. The numbers paint a more complete picture than ever before of the lives of people affected by such events as climate change supercharges extreme weather.
Amazon rainforest. Up to half of the Amazon rainforest could transform into grasslands or weakened ecosystems in the coming decades, a new study found, as climate change, deforestation and severe droughts damage huge areas beyond their ability to recover. Those stresses in the most vulnerable parts of the rainforest could eventually drive the entire forest ecosystem past a tipping point that would trigger a forest-wide collapse, researchers said.
A significant threshold. Over the past 12 months, the average temperature worldwide was more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, higher than it was at the dawn of the industrial age. That number carries special significance, as nations agreed under the 2015 Paris Agreement to try to keep the difference between average temperatures today and in preindustrial times to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or at least below 2 degrees Celsius.
New highs. The exceptional warmth that first enveloped the planet last summer is continuing strong into 2024: Last month clocked in as the hottest January ever measured, and the hottest January on record for the oceans, too. Sea surface temperatures were just slightly lower than in August 2023, the oceans’ warmest month on the books.
FTI’s work is the latest chapter in a long history of campaigns by the fossil fuel industry, political strategists and public relations professionals to influence climate policy. The industry has faced tough headwinds this year, in particular, as demand for oil and gas has tumbled amid the pandemic.
Founded in 1982 in Annapolis, Md., as a firm that provided expert witnesses and presentations for litigation, FTI has grown into a multinational firm that employs almost 5,000 people in 28 countries. Its business spans a wide range of services, from business consulting to crisis communications.
One of FTI’s largest shareholders, the investment firm BlackRock, won kudos this year for saying it would put environmental sustainability at the center of its investment approach. Main Street Investors, one of FTI’s projects, has spoken out against shareholders who press corporations on climate and other issues — an effort that would seem to be in conflict with BlackRock’s stance.
Mr. Bashalany, the FTI spokesman, said the firm’s work “in no way contravenes — nor is it misaligned with” BlackRock’s statement. BlackRock declined to comment.
‘Do something big’
On a clear day in July, a plane soared over America’s biggest oil and gas field with a banner trailing behind it that read: “Thank you essential oil and gas workers.”
“We wanted to do something big, and what’s bigger than an airplane with a banner?” Elizabeth Caldwell of Texans for Natural Gas said in a statement. The group, which describes itself as a local organization representing “citizens and officeholders, business owners and students” with more than 400,000 supporters, is funded by oil and gas companies including XTO Energy, an Exxon subsidiary, according to its website.
The statement identifies Ms. Caldwell as “a spokeswoman for the grass-roots organization.” She is also a director at FTI, according to her LinkedIn page. (There was nothing unusual about an organization receiving corporate support and public relations help, FTI’s spokesman said.)
Acting as Texans for Natural Gas representatives, FTI employees have launched pro-industry petitions, produced videos and reports on the importance of the Permian Basin oil field, and written opinion pieces for local newspapers supporting fossil fuels. The site features testimonials from three women, two of whom are represented with stock photos and one with a photo used without permission from the Flickr page of a photographer in the Philippines.
FTI’s Mr. Bashalany acknowledged the use of the stock photos and said adjustments would be made to avoid confusion. He said the supporters and testimonials were real.
Articles and campaigns on the website of Texans for Natural Gas, which describes itself as a local, grass-roots organization.
Texans for Natural Gas has also shared misleading information about greenhouse gas emissions. In 2018, it issued a study inaccurately claiming that emissions of methane had decreased significantly in the heart of Texas oil country at the height of the fracking boom.
To arrive at that conclusion, scientists say, the report tallied data from the Environmental Protection Agency that the agency itself states does not represent overall emissions: The numbers, which are reported by the energy industry about a limited number of compressor stations and other facilities, do not include emissions from the area’s thousands of wells. The data are “too low by at least a factor of two, and quite likely more,” said Robert W. Howarth, a professor at Cornell University who has researched methane emissions.
FTI stood by the report, calling its findings “on track with broader trends in Texas’ oil fields.”
Texans for Natural Gas is just one campaign run with the help of FTI employees. Others include: Citizens to Protect PA Jobs, New Mexicans for Economic Prosperity, the Liberty Energy Project and the Arctic Energy Center, according to interviews, internal documents and an examination of the digital trail of domain-name registrations and other details left by the creation of the websites.
Another such organization, the Marcellus Shale Coalition, said of FTI in a statement: “We are proud to have them as a contract partner, especially when it comes to direct and transparent media support.”
‘Susan,’ the fake Facebook user
Within FTI, a group called StratCom, short for Strategic Communications, focuses on industry messaging campaigns. In the United States, the group is led by Brian Kennedy, former press secretary for the office of the House minority leader and a former spokesman for Transocean, the drilling contractor involved in the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The StratCom group studied environmental protesters on behalf of the driller Apache Energy. Apache was seeking to drill near Balmorhea State Park in Texas and was concerned that protesters were planning camps similar to those set up to oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline, according to two people with direct knowledge of the work.
One FTI document prepared for Apache, dated Jan. 25, 2017, included a link to a list of groceries and camp supplies compiled by organizers, which the document said provided a hint of the proposed camp’s size.
The fictitious Facebook profile — of a Texas woman named Susan McDonald who likes ice cream, the movie “Annie” and her local farmers’ market — was also intended to help FTI keep tabs on activists, former FTI employees said. The “friends” list on the fake profile, which remained present on Facebook as of Wednesday, includes one current and one former FTI employee.
Mr. Bashalany of FTI said, “A Facebook profile was created by a former employee to monitor social media anonymously. This was wrong, and it is against our policy.”
Apache declined to comment on the substance of the reporting.
StratCom employees also studied and developed strategies designed to influence public discourse, according to five former employees. An internal document dated Nov. 20, 2015, laid out various techniques. The “Semantic Nitpicker,” the document explained, “asks an endless series of questions.” The “Dog Typing on a Keyboard” uses “very poor grammar, spelling and punctuation and posts frequently to clutter up the thread and make it hard to read.”
A successful effort, the document advised, might use several commenters, “each with an assigned role.”
Mr. Bashalany said senior managers were never aware of the document and it “never informed any activities or approaches to social or digital media engagement of any kind.”
An internal FTI document laid out strategies to influence public discourse.
Other campaigns used common techniques, buying social media ads to target people with interests in Alaska and energy and steer them toward the Arctic Energy Center, an industry-funded site that promoted drilling in the waters off Alaska and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Exxon was a backer of the Arctic Energy Center, according to documents and people who worked on the project. An FTI presentation prepared for Exxon, dated July 13, 2016, showed Exxon was scheduled to spend $120,000 over six months across social-media platforms, a draft budget dated the previous month shows.
The Arctic Energy Center’s website has since been taken down.
Climate lawsuit spurs action
In 2018, as New York City moved to sue Exxon Mobil and other fossil fuel companies, claiming that the companies had defrauded shareholders by downplaying climate change, a team within FTI’s StratCom group prepared a pushback.
The task at hand was to produce an article and tweets for Energy In Depth, the pro-industry site. The target: Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, who was under fire at the time for his SUV use.
According to an internal planning calendar, one tweet should show “Bill de Blasio in a giant SUV, wearing shirt that says WAR ON FOSSIL FUELS, or maybe a speech bubble with WAR ON FOSSIL FUELS!”
New York lost that court battle.
According to its website, Energy In Depth is a project of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, a trade organization representing hundreds of mostly smaller oil and gas producers. FTI employees familiar with the project said the site’s content had direction from Exxon. FTI employees also wrote much of the content published on Energy In Depth.
In a statement, an Independent Petroleum Association of America senior vice president, Jeff Eshelman, said “support for Energy In Depth comes from a wide segment of industry.”
Mr. Bashalany, the FTI spokesman, said, “Any contention that it is supported in whole or even substantially in part by one company is categorically false.” He said FTI staff members reach out to companies, academics and others for input, “not the other way around.”
Energy In Depth, along with the other industry-funded site that FTI helps run, Western Wire, has been central to the fossil fuel industry’s championing of fracking. Both sites, staffed by FTI writers, have pushed back against the #ExxonKnew campaign waged by environmental activists, which claims that the company knew about climate change for decades yet blocked action to confront it.
‘This is really fishy’
In spring 2018, Nell Minow noticed a tweet from a new group, one she had never heard of, seeming to support small investors. Ms. Minow, vice chair of ValueEdge, a firm that advises investors, and a longtime advocate for mom-and-pop investors, was excited.
“I thought, ‘Great, a shareholder group! I need to know about them,’” she said. “Then I started looking into them and thought, this is really fishy.”
Though the group, Main Street Investors, described itself as representing small investors, it was started by a number of industry organizations, including the National Association of Manufacturers. Main Street has criticized the ability of pension funds and other powerful investors to influence companies’ policies on matters like climate and the environment.
Working for the National Association of Manufacturers, FTI produced a study arguing that activist shareholders tend not to help shareholder value. The report’s five authors were employees of the consulting firm Compass Lexecon, a wholly owned FTI subsidiary. The Main Street Investors website is now offline.
FTI also worked with the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the industry group associated with Energy In Depth, to start DivestmentFacts.com, which warns that divesting from fossil fuels — a growing trend among university endowments and pension funds — could cost those institutions millions of dollars. At least six academic papers published on Divestmentfacts.com were by professors who, in addition to their university jobs, were also working for Compass Lexecon, the FTI subsidiary.
FTI monitored Ms. Minow after she publicly said Main Street Investors was using “inflammatory language, unsupported assertions, and out-and-out falsehoods” to spread its message. Internal memos show FTI employees compiled reports on her background, noting, among other things, that she was once dubbed “the C.E.O. killer” by Fortune magazine for her record of ousting underperforming executives. FTI also tracked her tweets in a spreadsheet.
FTI’s Mr. Bashalany said that no attempt had been made to hide any of the report authors’ affiliation. He said neither FTI through its Compass Lexecon subsidiary nor its clients “had any influence whatsoever over the form or direction” of the reports. FTI staff conducted “some basic biographic research” of Ms. Minow, he said, “but that’s it — we did nothing else.”
This month, the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the oil and gas lobby group, announced it had launched a major initiative to support oil and gas companies looking into adopting environmental, social and governance strategies. In its announcement, the group stressed the importance of efforts that were “authentic and effective.”
Its partner in the endeavor is FTI.
Climate Fwd What on earth is going on? Get the latest news about climate change, plus tips on how you can help. Get it in your inbox.
|
By Hiroko Tabuchi
Nov. 11, 2020
In early 2017, the Texans for Natural Gas website went live to urge voters to “thank a roughneck” and support fracking. Around the same time, the Arctic Energy Center ramped up its advocacy for drilling in Alaskan waters and in a vast Arctic wildlife refuge. The next year, the Main Street Investors Coalition warned that climate activism doesn’t help mom-and-pop investors in the stock market.
All three appeared to be separate efforts to amplify local voices or speak up for regular people.
On closer look
|
, however, the groups had something in common: They were part of a network of corporate influence campaigns designed, staffed and at times run by FTI Consulting, which had been hired by some of the largest oil and gas companies in the world to help them promote fossil fuels.
An examination of FTI’s work provides an anatomy of the oil industry’s efforts to influence public opinion in the face of increasing political pressure over climate change, an issue likely to grow in prominence, given President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s pledge to pursue bolder climate regulations. The campaigns often obscure the industry’s role, portraying pro-petroleum groups as grass-roots movements.
As part of its services to the industry, FTI monitored environmental activists online, and in one instance an employee created a fake Facebook persona — an imaginary, middle-aged Texas woman with a dog — to help keep tabs on protesters. Former FTI employees say they studied other online influence campaigns and compiled strategies for affecting public discourse. They helped run a campaign that sought a securities rule change, described as protecting the interests of mom-and-pop investors, that aimed to protect oil and gas companies from shareholder pressure to address climate and other concerns.
FTI employees also staffed two news and information sites, Energy In Depth and Western Wire, writing pro-industry articles on fracking, climate lawsuits and other hot-button issues. Former employees familiar with Energy In Depth said the site’s content had direction from Exxon Mobil, one of the major clients of the FTI division that worked on these oil and gas campaigns.
The Energy In Depth website notes its affiliation with an energy trade group that Exxon is a member of, though not Exxon’s role in directing content that the site published.
This article is based on interviews with a dozen former FTI employees, including former managing directors, a review of hundreds of internal FTI documents and an examination of the digital trail of domain-name registrations and other details left by the creation of the websites. In all, FTI has been involved in the operations of at least 15 current and past influence campaigns promoting fossil-fuel interests in addition to its direct work for oil and gas clients.
Matthew Bashalany, an FTI spokesman, disputed the idea that FTI worked behind the scenes for these groups. “We hide behind no one,” he said.
“We summarily reject as false, misleading and defamatory the general narrative and specific claims,” he said. “We hold ourselves to the highest professional and ethical standards of conduct; when and where shortfalls are identified in this regard, they are addressed appropriately.”
An Exxon spokesman, Casey Norton, said he would not comment on the findings because he considered the reporter to be biased against the fossil fuel industry. Kathleen Sgamma, a spokeswoman for the Western Energy Alliance, which funds Western Wire, said her group had been open about its partnership with FTI and about its approach to fracking.
The business of corporate consulting and public relations is vast, and countless companies routinely provide media outreach, public messaging, crisis management and other services. FTI is among them, and it has taken up an important role in helping promote the messages of the fossil fuel industry.
Those messages have sometimes run counter to the scientific consensus that the world must burn less oil and gas to avoid the worst effects of global warming. Texans for Natural Gas, for example, has downplayed the magnitude of emissions of methane, the prime component of natural gas and a potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas production.
Latest News on Climate Change and the Environment
Card 1 of 5
Protecting groundwater. After years of decline in the nation’s groundwater, a series of developments indicate that U.S. state and federal officials may begin tightening protections for the dwindling resource. In Nevada, Idaho and Montana, court decisions have strengthened states’ ability to restrict overpumping. California is considering penalizing officials for draining aquifers. And the White House has asked scientists to advise how the federal government can help.
Weather-related disasters. An estimated 2.5 million people were forced from their homes in the United States by weather-related disasters in 2023, according to new data from the Census Bureau. The numbers paint a more complete picture than ever before of the lives of people affected by such events as climate change supercharges extreme weather.
Amazon rainforest. Up to half of the Amazon rainforest could transform into grasslands or weakened ecosystems in the coming decades, a new study found, as climate change, deforestation and severe droughts damage huge areas beyond their ability to recover. Those stresses in the most vulnerable parts of the rainforest could eventually drive the entire forest ecosystem past a tipping point that would trigger a forest-wide collapse, researchers said.
A significant threshold. Over the past 12 months, the average temperature worldwide was more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, higher than it was at the dawn of the industrial age. That number carries special significance, as nations agreed under the 2015 Paris Agreement to try to keep the difference between average temperatures today and in preindustrial times to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or at least below 2 degrees Celsius.
New highs. The exceptional warmth that first enveloped the planet last summer is continuing strong into 2024: Last month clocked in as the hottest January ever measured, and the hottest January on record for the oceans, too. Sea surface temperatures were just slightly lower than in August 2023, the oceans’ warmest month on the books.
FTI’s work is the latest chapter in a long history of campaigns by the fossil fuel industry, political strategists and public relations professionals to influence climate policy. The industry has faced tough headwinds this year, in particular, as demand for oil and gas has tumbled amid the pandemic.
Founded in 1982 in Annapolis, Md., as a firm that provided expert witnesses and presentations for litigation, FTI has grown into a multinational firm that employs almost 5,000 people in 28 countries. Its business spans a wide range of services, from business consulting to crisis communications.
One of FTI’s largest shareholders, the investment firm BlackRock, won kudos this year for saying it would put environmental sustainability at the center of its investment approach. Main Street Investors, one of FTI’s projects, has spoken out against shareholders who press corporations on climate and other issues — an effort that would seem to be in conflict with BlackRock’s stance.
Mr. Bashalany, the FTI spokesman, said the firm’s work “in no way contravenes — nor is it misaligned with” BlackRock’s statement. BlackRock declined to comment.
‘Do something big’
On a clear day in July, a plane soared over America’s biggest oil and gas field with a banner trailing behind it that read: “Thank you essential oil and gas workers.”
“We wanted to do something big, and what’s bigger than an airplane with a banner?” Elizabeth Caldwell of Texans for Natural Gas said in a statement. The group, which describes itself as a local organization representing “citizens and officeholders, business owners and students” with more than 400,000 supporters, is funded by oil and gas companies including XTO Energy, an Exxon subsidiary, according to its website.
The statement identifies Ms. Caldwell as “a spokeswoman for the grass-roots organization.” She is also a director at FTI, according to her LinkedIn page. (There was nothing unusual about an organization receiving corporate support and public relations help, FTI’s spokesman said.)
Acting as Texans for Natural Gas representatives, FTI employees have launched pro-industry petitions, produced videos and reports on the importance of the Permian Basin oil field, and written opinion pieces for local newspapers supporting fossil fuels. The site features testimonials from three women, two of whom are represented with stock photos and one with a photo used without permission from the Flickr page of a photographer in the Philippines.
FTI’s Mr. Bashalany acknowledged the use of the stock photos and said adjustments would be made to avoid confusion. He said the supporters and testimonials were real.
Articles and campaigns on the website of Texans for Natural Gas, which describes itself as a local, grass-roots organization.
Texans for Natural Gas has also shared misleading information about greenhouse gas emissions. In 2018, it issued a study inaccurately claiming that emissions of methane had decreased significantly in the heart of Texas oil country at the height of the fracking boom.
To arrive at that conclusion, scientists say, the report tallied data from the Environmental Protection Agency that the agency itself states does not represent overall emissions: The numbers, which are reported by the energy industry about a limited number of compressor stations and other facilities, do not include emissions from the area’s thousands of wells. The data are “too low by at least a factor of two, and quite likely more,” said Robert W. Howarth, a professor at Cornell University who has researched methane emissions.
FTI stood by the report, calling its findings “on track with broader trends in Texas’ oil fields.”
Texans for Natural Gas is just one campaign run with the help of FTI employees. Others include: Citizens to Protect PA Jobs, New Mexicans for Economic Prosperity, the Liberty Energy Project and the Arctic Energy Center, according to interviews, internal documents and an examination of the digital trail of domain-name registrations and other details left by the creation of the websites.
Another such organization, the Marcellus Shale Coalition, said of FTI in a statement: “We are proud to have them as a contract partner, especially when it comes to direct and transparent media support.”
‘Susan,’ the fake Facebook user
Within FTI, a group called StratCom, short for Strategic Communications, focuses on industry messaging campaigns. In the United States, the group is led by Brian Kennedy, former press secretary for the office of the House minority leader and a former spokesman for Transocean, the drilling contractor involved in the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The StratCom group studied environmental protesters on behalf of the driller Apache Energy. Apache was seeking to drill near Balmorhea State Park in Texas and was concerned that protesters were planning camps similar to those set up to oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline, according to two people with direct knowledge of the work.
One FTI document prepared for Apache, dated Jan. 25, 2017, included a link to a list of groceries and camp supplies compiled by organizers, which the document said provided a hint of the proposed camp’s size.
The fictitious Facebook profile — of a Texas woman named Susan McDonald who likes ice cream, the movie “Annie” and her local farmers’ market — was also intended to help FTI keep tabs on activists, former FTI employees said. The “friends” list on the fake profile, which remained present on Facebook as of Wednesday, includes one current and one former FTI employee.
Mr. Bashalany of FTI said, “A Facebook profile was created by a former employee to monitor social media anonymously. This was wrong, and it is against our policy.”
Apache declined to comment on the substance of the reporting.
StratCom employees also studied and developed strategies designed to influence public discourse, according to five former employees. An internal document dated Nov. 20, 2015, laid out various techniques. The “Semantic Nitpicker,” the document explained, “asks an endless series of questions.” The “Dog Typing on a Keyboard” uses “very poor grammar, spelling and punctuation and posts frequently to clutter up the thread and make it hard to read.”
A successful effort, the document advised, might use several commenters, “each with an assigned role.”
Mr. Bashalany said senior managers were never aware of the document and it “never informed any activities or approaches to social or digital media engagement of any kind.”
An internal FTI document laid out strategies to influence public discourse.
Other campaigns used common techniques, buying social media ads to target people with interests in Alaska and energy and steer them toward the Arctic Energy Center, an industry-funded site that promoted drilling in the waters off Alaska and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Exxon was a backer of the Arctic Energy Center, according to documents and people who worked on the project. An FTI presentation prepared for Exxon, dated July 13, 2016, showed Exxon was scheduled to spend $120,000 over six months across social-media platforms, a draft budget dated the previous month shows.
The Arctic Energy Center’s website has since been taken down.
Climate lawsuit spurs action
In 2018, as New York City moved to sue Exxon Mobil and other fossil fuel companies, claiming that the companies had defrauded shareholders by downplaying climate change, a team within FTI’s StratCom group prepared a pushback.
The task at hand was to produce an article and tweets for Energy In Depth, the pro-industry site. The target: Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, who was under fire at the time for his SUV use.
According to an internal planning calendar, one tweet should show “Bill de Blasio in a giant SUV, wearing shirt that says WAR ON FOSSIL FUELS, or maybe a speech bubble with WAR ON FOSSIL FUELS!”
New York lost that court battle.
According to its website, Energy In Depth is a project of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, a trade organization representing hundreds of mostly smaller oil and gas producers. FTI employees familiar with the project said the site’s content had direction from Exxon. FTI employees also wrote much of the content published on Energy In Depth.
In a statement, an Independent Petroleum Association of America senior vice president, Jeff Eshelman, said “support for Energy In Depth comes from a wide segment of industry.”
Mr. Bashalany, the FTI spokesman, said, “Any contention that it is supported in whole or even substantially in part by one company is categorically false.” He said FTI staff members reach out to companies, academics and others for input, “not the other way around.”
Energy In Depth, along with the other industry-funded site that FTI helps run, Western Wire, has been central to the fossil fuel industry’s championing of fracking. Both sites, staffed by FTI writers, have pushed back against the #ExxonKnew campaign waged by environmental activists, which claims that the company knew about climate change for decades yet blocked action to confront it.
‘This is really fishy’
In spring 2018, Nell Minow noticed a tweet from a new group, one she had never heard of, seeming to support small investors. Ms. Minow, vice chair of ValueEdge, a firm that advises investors, and a longtime advocate for mom-and-pop investors, was excited.
“I thought, ‘Great, a shareholder group! I need to know about them,’” she said. “Then I started looking into them and thought, this is really fishy.”
Though the group, Main Street Investors, described itself as representing small investors, it was started by a number of industry organizations, including the National Association of Manufacturers. Main Street has criticized the ability of pension funds and other powerful investors to influence companies’ policies on matters like climate and the environment.
Working for the National Association of Manufacturers, FTI produced a study arguing that activist shareholders tend not to help shareholder value. The report’s five authors were employees of the consulting firm Compass Lexecon, a wholly owned FTI subsidiary. The Main Street Investors website is now offline.
FTI also worked with the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the industry group associated with Energy In Depth, to start DivestmentFacts.com, which warns that divesting from fossil fuels — a growing trend among university endowments and pension funds — could cost those institutions millions of dollars. At least six academic papers published on Divestmentfacts.com were by professors who, in addition to their university jobs, were also working for Compass Lexecon, the FTI subsidiary.
FTI monitored Ms. Minow after she publicly said Main Street Investors was using “inflammatory language, unsupported assertions, and out-and-out falsehoods” to spread its message. Internal memos show FTI employees compiled reports on her background, noting, among other things, that she was once dubbed “the C.E.O. killer” by Fortune magazine for her record of ousting underperforming executives. FTI also tracked her tweets in a spreadsheet.
FTI’s Mr. Bashalany said that no attempt had been made to hide any of the report authors’ affiliation. He said neither FTI through its Compass Lexecon subsidiary nor its clients “had any influence whatsoever over the form or direction” of the reports. FTI staff conducted “some basic biographic research” of Ms. Minow, he said, “but that’s it — we did nothing else.”
This month, the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the oil and gas lobby group, announced it had launched a major initiative to support oil and gas companies looking into adopting environmental, social and governance strategies. In its announcement, the group stressed the importance of efforts that were “authentic and effective.”
Its partner in the endeavor is FTI.
Climate Fwd What on earth is going on? Get the latest news about climate change, plus tips on how you can help. Get it in your inbox.
|
41. Getting Married Where It All Began.txt
|
By Emma Grillo
Jan. 1, 2021
On the first day of his first college class, Brandon Hsuan-Yuan Shih was nervously awaiting his turn to speak. He was in a freshman seminar at Princeton, and the students were asked to share something about themselves as an icebreaker. Mr. Shih had an answer prepared about how he loved music and playing tennis, until the woman sitting right next to him said the exact same thing.
“It was a very awkward situation for me,” said Mr. Shih, 27, with a laugh. “I didn’t want to just look like that guy who was just trying to copy the pretty girl’s answer.”
The woman sitting next to him was Wenyi Gu, who goes by Wendy, and despite Mr. Shih’s initial worries, they quickly hit it off. After class they learned that they lived in the same dorm, two floors from each other.
“We just got really close,” said Ms. Gu, 28. “I feel like we had an instant connection and chemistry.”
They had a few friends in common, but mostly found themselves hanging out together, confiding in each other as they navigated their first year of college.
“It was a very deep friendship,” Mr. Shih said. “It was not superficial at all.”
The people around them took notice, and when they both arrived back on campus for their sophomore year, one of Ms. Gu’s friends suggested that she and Mr. Shih’s relationship might be more than just a friendship.
“She mentioned that to me, and it kind of clicked in my head,” Ms. Gu said.
About a year and a half after they first met, they decided to go on their first date, and made reservations for lunch at an upscale restaurant. They were both nervous, but being overworked college students, they were also exhausted — they both overslept, and ended up missing the reservation altogether.
Instead, they went to a Panera Bread later that afternoon, where Ms. Gu tried to gracefully eat an enormous panini. She eventually asked Mr. Shih to look away, because she was so embarrassed by how messy it was.
“It’s always funny to us how self-conscious she was on that first date,” Mr. Shih said.
They dated for the rest of college, including eight months of long distance when Ms. Gu was studying abroad. After they graduated, they both moved to New York.
“I feel like a lot of our relationship has just been something we can’t really explain,” Ms. Gu said. “Everything has just been flowing so naturally.”
In August 2018, Ms. Gu moved to Washington, where she is currently a third-year law student at Georgetown. Mr. Shih, who is a fixed-income trader at Citadel in Greenwich, Conn., stayed in New York, and the couple began a long-distance relationship again.
“I think going through that long-distance experience in undergrad,” Ms. Gu said, “just gave me confidence that we could also do it after undergrad.”
In June 2019, Mr. Shih and Ms. Gu went for a walk in Central Park. Mr. Shih had been acting nervous all day, and right as they were leaving the park, he was hit with pigeon droppings.
“In retrospect, a sign of good luck,” Ms. Gu said.
That night they went out to dinner, and when they got back to Mr. Shih’s building, he led Ms. Gu to the rooftop, where their friends were waiting with champagne. Mr. Shih turned to Ms. Gu, and asked her to marry him.
“The idea of making it official and being able to call Brandon my husband just makes me giddy and happy inside,” Ms. Gu said.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Ms. Gu’s law school classes went remote, and she moved in with Mr. Shih in New York, where she plans to join the law firm Latham & Watkins, in their New York office, in the fall. They were originally set to be married Sept. 27, but rescheduled because of the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, they were married Dec. 6, their anniversary as boyfriend and girlfriend, under the Blair Arch on the Princeton campus. Vivian Qin, a Universal Life minister and a friend of the couple since their college days, officiated.
|
By Emma Grillo
Jan. 1, 2021
On the first day of his first college class, Brandon Hsuan-Yuan Shih was nervously awaiting his turn to speak. He was in a freshman seminar at Princeton, and the students were asked to share something about themselves as an icebreaker. Mr. Shih had an answer prepared about how he loved music and playing tennis, until the woman sitting right next to him said the exact same thing.
“It was a very awkward situation for me,” said Mr. Shih, 27, with a laugh. “I didn’t want to just
|
look like that guy who was just trying to copy the pretty girl’s answer.”
The woman sitting next to him was Wenyi Gu, who goes by Wendy, and despite Mr. Shih’s initial worries, they quickly hit it off. After class they learned that they lived in the same dorm, two floors from each other.
“We just got really close,” said Ms. Gu, 28. “I feel like we had an instant connection and chemistry.”
They had a few friends in common, but mostly found themselves hanging out together, confiding in each other as they navigated their first year of college.
“It was a very deep friendship,” Mr. Shih said. “It was not superficial at all.”
The people around them took notice, and when they both arrived back on campus for their sophomore year, one of Ms. Gu’s friends suggested that she and Mr. Shih’s relationship might be more than just a friendship.
“She mentioned that to me, and it kind of clicked in my head,” Ms. Gu said.
About a year and a half after they first met, they decided to go on their first date, and made reservations for lunch at an upscale restaurant. They were both nervous, but being overworked college students, they were also exhausted — they both overslept, and ended up missing the reservation altogether.
Instead, they went to a Panera Bread later that afternoon, where Ms. Gu tried to gracefully eat an enormous panini. She eventually asked Mr. Shih to look away, because she was so embarrassed by how messy it was.
“It’s always funny to us how self-conscious she was on that first date,” Mr. Shih said.
They dated for the rest of college, including eight months of long distance when Ms. Gu was studying abroad. After they graduated, they both moved to New York.
“I feel like a lot of our relationship has just been something we can’t really explain,” Ms. Gu said. “Everything has just been flowing so naturally.”
In August 2018, Ms. Gu moved to Washington, where she is currently a third-year law student at Georgetown. Mr. Shih, who is a fixed-income trader at Citadel in Greenwich, Conn., stayed in New York, and the couple began a long-distance relationship again.
“I think going through that long-distance experience in undergrad,” Ms. Gu said, “just gave me confidence that we could also do it after undergrad.”
In June 2019, Mr. Shih and Ms. Gu went for a walk in Central Park. Mr. Shih had been acting nervous all day, and right as they were leaving the park, he was hit with pigeon droppings.
“In retrospect, a sign of good luck,” Ms. Gu said.
That night they went out to dinner, and when they got back to Mr. Shih’s building, he led Ms. Gu to the rooftop, where their friends were waiting with champagne. Mr. Shih turned to Ms. Gu, and asked her to marry him.
“The idea of making it official and being able to call Brandon my husband just makes me giddy and happy inside,” Ms. Gu said.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Ms. Gu’s law school classes went remote, and she moved in with Mr. Shih in New York, where she plans to join the law firm Latham & Watkins, in their New York office, in the fall. They were originally set to be married Sept. 27, but rescheduled because of the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, they were married Dec. 6, their anniversary as boyfriend and girlfriend, under the Blair Arch on the Princeton campus. Vivian Qin, a Universal Life minister and a friend of the couple since their college days, officiated.
|
87. Lucille Bridges, 86, Dies; Led Her Daughter Across a Color Line.txt
|
By John Ismay
Nov. 11, 2020
Lucille Commadore Bridges, who in 1960 broke through the segregated education system of the Deep South by enrolling her 6-year-old daughter, Ruby, in an all-white elementary school in New Orleans and escorting her there during her first year of classes, died on Tuesday at her home in the Uptown section of New Orleans. She was 86.
The cause was cancer, according to Ruby Bridges.
Lucille Bridges and her daughter braved a fusillade of abuse from white protesters as they walked up to the doors of the William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans on Nov. 14, 1960, under the escort of federal marshals, making good on the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional.
The scene was immortalized in the Norman Rockwell painting “The Problem We All Live With,” originally published in Look magazine as a two-page spread.
Ms. Bridges escorted her daughter to school every day for a year because of continuing protests, according to the National Women’s History Museum.
“She was very determined, and she took education very seriously,” Ruby Bridges, an author and activist, said in an interview on Wednesday. “I think it was because it was something that neither her nor my father was allowed to have. And ultimately that’s what she wanted for her kids — having a better life for them.”
Lucille Commadore was born in Tylertown, Miss., on Aug. 12, 1934. Her parents, Curtis and Amy Commadore, were sharecroppers, and she stopped attending school after the eighth grade so that she could help them in the fields, Ruby Bridges said. Her mother worked as a housekeeper, and in 1953 she married Abon Bridges, a mechanic. The couple had eight children and separated in the late 1960s. Mr. Bridges died in 1978.
In 1956, the family relocated from Mississippi to New Orleans to give their children a chance at a better education than they had had, Ruby Bridges said.
“We decided to leave so that we could make it better,” Lucille Bridges said in an interview in 2016 for the “Power of Children” exhibit at the Altharetta Yeargin Art Museum in Houston. “I wanted it better for my kids than it was for us.”
In 1960, 165 Black children took a test for admission to the all-white William Frantz Elementary School, Lucille Bridges said, and Ruby was among only five who passed it. Ms. Bridges and her husband met with the school district superintendent before Ruby began classes. The superintendent explained that, as religious people, they should pray, because things were about to get much worse, she recalled.
When she and Ruby arrived for Ruby’s first day of school, she said, they encountered many protesters and federal marshals. Some of the protesters screamed “Two, four, six, eight, we don’t want to integrate!” and hurled eggs and tomatoes at Ms. Bridges and her daughter, she said. But the marshals prevented them from being struck.
Ruby Bridges said she could not recall her mother and father telling her anything other than that she would be going to a new school. “They didn’t try to explain to me what I was about to venture into,” she said in the interview. “But I just think that’s because it would be hard for any parent to prepare their kids to walk into an environment like that, so they didn’t try.”
Lucille Bridges said in the 2016 interview that two city police officers had blocked their path as she tried to escort her daughter through the school doors, insisting that they could not go in. She remembered two of the marshals replying, “The United States president said we can.”
The marshals who took Ruby to and from school were heavily armed and kept a machine gun in their car. “And that’s the way we lived it for a whole year,” Lucille Bridges said.
The N.A.A.C.P. supported Lucille and Abon Bridges for several years because they had lost their jobs when the integration of the school made headlines. Friends in their all-Black neighborhood took turns guarding their home.
Lucille Bridges, who enjoyed gardening, moved from New Orleans to Houston because of Hurricane Katrina, her daughter said. She remained in Houston to have better access to better health care and returned to New Orleans about five years ago.
Later in life, Ms. Bridges did not harbor ill will against the protesters. “All those people calling us names, you just have to charge that to their ignorance and just go on,” she said. “Be yourself, and God will bring you through.”
In addition to her daughter Ruby, Lucille Bridges is survived by five other children, numerous grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
“Study, listen to what their teachers tell them, and their mothers and fathers,” Lucille Bridges advised children during the 2016 interview. “After they get their education, they can be any person they wanted to be: doctors, lawyers or anything. But you have to have that education, and I would love for them to just listen to my story so they can know how hard it was for my kids to go to school.”
|
By John Ismay
Nov. 11, 2020
Lucille Commadore Bridges, who in 1960 broke through the segregated education system of the Deep South by enrolling her 6-year-old daughter, Ruby, in an all-white elementary school in New Orleans and escorting her there during her first year of classes, died on Tuesday at her home in the Uptown section of New Orleans. She was 86.
The cause was cancer, according to Ruby Bridges.
Lucille Bridges and her daughter braved a fusillade of abuse from white protesters as they walked up to
|
the doors of the William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans on Nov. 14, 1960, under the escort of federal marshals, making good on the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional.
The scene was immortalized in the Norman Rockwell painting “The Problem We All Live With,” originally published in Look magazine as a two-page spread.
Ms. Bridges escorted her daughter to school every day for a year because of continuing protests, according to the National Women’s History Museum.
“She was very determined, and she took education very seriously,” Ruby Bridges, an author and activist, said in an interview on Wednesday. “I think it was because it was something that neither her nor my father was allowed to have. And ultimately that’s what she wanted for her kids — having a better life for them.”
Lucille Commadore was born in Tylertown, Miss., on Aug. 12, 1934. Her parents, Curtis and Amy Commadore, were sharecroppers, and she stopped attending school after the eighth grade so that she could help them in the fields, Ruby Bridges said. Her mother worked as a housekeeper, and in 1953 she married Abon Bridges, a mechanic. The couple had eight children and separated in the late 1960s. Mr. Bridges died in 1978.
In 1956, the family relocated from Mississippi to New Orleans to give their children a chance at a better education than they had had, Ruby Bridges said.
“We decided to leave so that we could make it better,” Lucille Bridges said in an interview in 2016 for the “Power of Children” exhibit at the Altharetta Yeargin Art Museum in Houston. “I wanted it better for my kids than it was for us.”
In 1960, 165 Black children took a test for admission to the all-white William Frantz Elementary School, Lucille Bridges said, and Ruby was among only five who passed it. Ms. Bridges and her husband met with the school district superintendent before Ruby began classes. The superintendent explained that, as religious people, they should pray, because things were about to get much worse, she recalled.
When she and Ruby arrived for Ruby’s first day of school, she said, they encountered many protesters and federal marshals. Some of the protesters screamed “Two, four, six, eight, we don’t want to integrate!” and hurled eggs and tomatoes at Ms. Bridges and her daughter, she said. But the marshals prevented them from being struck.
Ruby Bridges said she could not recall her mother and father telling her anything other than that she would be going to a new school. “They didn’t try to explain to me what I was about to venture into,” she said in the interview. “But I just think that’s because it would be hard for any parent to prepare their kids to walk into an environment like that, so they didn’t try.”
Lucille Bridges said in the 2016 interview that two city police officers had blocked their path as she tried to escort her daughter through the school doors, insisting that they could not go in. She remembered two of the marshals replying, “The United States president said we can.”
The marshals who took Ruby to and from school were heavily armed and kept a machine gun in their car. “And that’s the way we lived it for a whole year,” Lucille Bridges said.
The N.A.A.C.P. supported Lucille and Abon Bridges for several years because they had lost their jobs when the integration of the school made headlines. Friends in their all-Black neighborhood took turns guarding their home.
Lucille Bridges, who enjoyed gardening, moved from New Orleans to Houston because of Hurricane Katrina, her daughter said. She remained in Houston to have better access to better health care and returned to New Orleans about five years ago.
Later in life, Ms. Bridges did not harbor ill will against the protesters. “All those people calling us names, you just have to charge that to their ignorance and just go on,” she said. “Be yourself, and God will bring you through.”
In addition to her daughter Ruby, Lucille Bridges is survived by five other children, numerous grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
“Study, listen to what their teachers tell them, and their mothers and fathers,” Lucille Bridges advised children during the 2016 interview. “After they get their education, they can be any person they wanted to be: doctors, lawyers or anything. But you have to have that education, and I would love for them to just listen to my story so they can know how hard it was for my kids to go to school.”
|
99. When Co-Parents Clash in a Pandemic.txt
|
By Jill Waldbieser
Nov. 11, 2020
My ex and I aren’t friends — amicable might be pushing it — but in the four years since we split, we have navigated new homes, new partners and our 6-year-old son entering the public school system with minimal drama. When the pandemic hit and schools shut down, I almost felt guilty about my ability to ship my kid off to his father’s for five-day stretches while married friends lost sleep and fought with their husbands about whose turn it was to supervise virtual geometry.
Then, in late August, I got word that my son’s school district would be opening special education classrooms early. My son, who is deaf and on the autism spectrum, would have the chance to go back to school, with his real teacher, in a real classroom, with his peers, for six hours a day. I’ve never won a lottery but at that moment I knew what it felt like.
Sign Up for NYT Parenting Get evidence-based guidance, plus personal stories and tiny victories from other parents. Get it in your inbox.
I was soon deflated to learn my ex didn’t share my enthusiasm. He pointed to the health risk, not only to our kid but also to my former in-laws, who helped him with child care. For that reason, my ex hadn’t missed a day of work since the pandemic began, nor endured the great pleasure of trying to teach a kindergartner who wouldn’t sit still for more than a few minutes at a time how to read via Zoom. We spent precious days going back and forth with the school start date looming, it became clear neither of us was going to budge. “What happens if we can’t agree?” he asked. What indeed.
With no courts to turn to, parents relied on ‘self-help’
Our dilemma wasn’t unique. The pandemic and sudden shutdown had effectively stranded parents who were divorced or separated without their usual resource: the legal system. “In mid-March, courts closed and there was no access to anything by anyone for some time,” said Michael A. Mosberg, who practices family law in Manhattan. Barring a life-or-death emergency order, there was no judge, no mediator, no referee. This was, for many co-parents, effectively like sticking two quarreling kids in a room and telling them to work it out themselves. Parents like me had to rely on open and constant communication with their former partners — you know, the thing that worked so well when we were married.
Only a few states, including Texas, even released statements instructing parents to continue to follow their court-issued custody orders. This lack of clear legal guidance opened the door for some parents to exercise what the law refers to as “self-help” — essentially taking matters into their own hands — according to Meredith Johnson Harbach, a professor of family law at the University of Richmond School of Law in Virginia.
In one such case Harbach described, a mother who was anxious about Covid decided to skip several of her daughter’s court-ordered visits with her dad and have her video conference with him instead. The dad asked that those missing in-person visitation days be made up at a later date, and when the courts reopened and heard the case, they agreed. “They ruled that a generalized fear of the pandemic is not sufficient reason to violate or modify a court order,” said Harbach. “Courts are generally loath to make modifications because it interrupts continuity and stability for the kids.” This has held true during other states of emergency, such as hurricanes and wildfires.
Of course, the coronavirus pandemic has presented some challenges you don’t typically see with other states of emergency. Challenges even the most prescient parenting plan may not have accounted for.
For Monica Ma, 42, a communications vice president in Danville, Calif., the pandemic marked the first time she and her ex-husband made any parenting decisions together since their split in 2016. “It was a very contentious divorce,” she said. “Everything has been through the courts and by the courts.” They continued to follow the custody arrangement to the letter, never discussing social distancing, masks or other pandemic-specific matters until the former husband of her ex’s new partner contracted Covid around Labor Day.
With children from both relationships moving back and forth between their homes, the risk of spreading the virus became very real, and Ma had her elderly parents living with her. “For the first time in four-and-a-half years, my ex and I were able to agree on how to handle the situation,” she said. “He was very willing to compromise and, truly, the kids came first.” She agreed to have them quarantine with their dad for 12 days (the longest she’d ever been away from them), and brought doughnuts and In & Out meals for them to share in a makeshift driveway picnic.
While Ma sees this as a hopeful step toward a better co-parenting relationship, there is still plenty she and her ex don’t agree on. He’s much more open to play dates and wasn’t even having the kids wear masks until recently. And this is something couples will continue to struggle with. Can I take the kids to a restaurant with outdoor seating? What about indoor seating? Do they have to wear masks? Can they travel for the holidays? To say nothing of upcoming vaccines, which legal experts predict will be the next big battle to flood the family court system.
‘What’s in the child’s best interest’
During uncertain times, “these kinds of discussions are on the table even for families that live together,” said Sanam Hafeez, a psychologist and expert witness in child custody cases in New York. “Everyone has to be flexible because these are going to be ongoing conversations.”
As the divorced mom of twins, she stresses that even agreeable ex-partners should put their parenting plan, and any changes to it, in writing. “If your agreement is at all unclear, things can very quickly spiral,” she said.
A common catalyst for that spiral is when one partner starts seeing someone new. Under normal circumstances, adding a new romantic partner to the mix can intensify an already strained relationship between exes. But these aren’t normal circumstances.
“Not being able to control that other environment your child is walking into wasn’t as much of an issue before Covid,” said Jennifer Rankin, 48, an author and lecturer in Laguna Beach, Calif., who shares custody of her 10-year-old daughter with her ex-husband. She was still finalizing her divorce in March when her elderly mediator went MIA, so she had little recourse when she discovered that her ex had a woman or women staying at his place on his noncustodial days.
Normally, what a parent does on their noncustodial days is up to them, but when you’re talking about a virus that spreads through human contact, suddenly you have to consider all the potential risks to your child and anyone they come in contact with. Rankin told her ex she wanted to limit their daughter’s visits with him, but he only relented after hearing his daughter’s concerns about getting sick from her therapist.
As courts open up, in person or virtually, the law has continued to lean on the “what’s in the child’s best interest” standard. But Covid can muddy the waters even in that regard. “Uncertainty brings out anxiety in people, and throughout this pandemic, there has been very little clear-cut expert guidance on what to do,” said Rebecca Berry, a clinical psychologist at the The Child Study Center at Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at N.Y.U. Langone Health. The virus has also affected different parts of the country in different ways at different times, which means that trying to find a universal standard for applying the law is next to impossible.
If you and your child’s other parent can’t agree on something, Berry suggested agreeing on what guidelines you’ll use or which experts you trust to make the decision for you. That can include your child’s pediatrician, teacher, therapist, the C.D.C. or W.H.O. Drawing on the advice of experts you both agree on is more neutral territory than the opinion of a friend or relative, and can make the decision feel like a joint one rather than one party saying, “We’re going to do it my way.” This was ultimately how my ex and I agreed on our decision to send our son back to school. We spoke to his teachers, aides, and pediatrician, then had a Zoom call with his therapists. They all seemed to think he would thrive in an in-person classroom, and so far, he has.
“Don’t approach the topic by spewing facts or telling the other parent they’re wrong,” Berry said. “Stay open and be inquisitive. Sometimes if the parent at least feels their perspective is being heard, that can assuage a kneejerk reaction to deny a request.”
And remember, these are temporary changes — you can both re-evaluate and negotiate anytime. But courts frown on parents who take matters into their own hands, regardless of the circumstances. “Don’t be shortsighted,” said Mosberg. “If a judge determines that you acted in your own interest above that of your child or co-parent, it could affect your ability to be involved in decision-making long term.”
Jill Waldbieser is a journalist who writes about wellness and nutrition.
|
By Jill Waldbieser
Nov. 11, 2020
My ex and I aren’t friends — amicable might be pushing it — but in the four years since we split, we have navigated new homes, new partners and our 6-year-old son entering the public school system with minimal drama. When the pandemic hit and schools shut down, I almost felt guilty about my ability to ship my kid off to his father’s for five-day stretches while married friends lost sleep and fought with their husbands about whose turn it was to supervise virtual geometry.
Then, in late August, I got word that
|
my son’s school district would be opening special education classrooms early. My son, who is deaf and on the autism spectrum, would have the chance to go back to school, with his real teacher, in a real classroom, with his peers, for six hours a day. I’ve never won a lottery but at that moment I knew what it felt like.
Sign Up for NYT Parenting Get evidence-based guidance, plus personal stories and tiny victories from other parents. Get it in your inbox.
I was soon deflated to learn my ex didn’t share my enthusiasm. He pointed to the health risk, not only to our kid but also to my former in-laws, who helped him with child care. For that reason, my ex hadn’t missed a day of work since the pandemic began, nor endured the great pleasure of trying to teach a kindergartner who wouldn’t sit still for more than a few minutes at a time how to read via Zoom. We spent precious days going back and forth with the school start date looming, it became clear neither of us was going to budge. “What happens if we can’t agree?” he asked. What indeed.
With no courts to turn to, parents relied on ‘self-help’
Our dilemma wasn’t unique. The pandemic and sudden shutdown had effectively stranded parents who were divorced or separated without their usual resource: the legal system. “In mid-March, courts closed and there was no access to anything by anyone for some time,” said Michael A. Mosberg, who practices family law in Manhattan. Barring a life-or-death emergency order, there was no judge, no mediator, no referee. This was, for many co-parents, effectively like sticking two quarreling kids in a room and telling them to work it out themselves. Parents like me had to rely on open and constant communication with their former partners — you know, the thing that worked so well when we were married.
Only a few states, including Texas, even released statements instructing parents to continue to follow their court-issued custody orders. This lack of clear legal guidance opened the door for some parents to exercise what the law refers to as “self-help” — essentially taking matters into their own hands — according to Meredith Johnson Harbach, a professor of family law at the University of Richmond School of Law in Virginia.
In one such case Harbach described, a mother who was anxious about Covid decided to skip several of her daughter’s court-ordered visits with her dad and have her video conference with him instead. The dad asked that those missing in-person visitation days be made up at a later date, and when the courts reopened and heard the case, they agreed. “They ruled that a generalized fear of the pandemic is not sufficient reason to violate or modify a court order,” said Harbach. “Courts are generally loath to make modifications because it interrupts continuity and stability for the kids.” This has held true during other states of emergency, such as hurricanes and wildfires.
Of course, the coronavirus pandemic has presented some challenges you don’t typically see with other states of emergency. Challenges even the most prescient parenting plan may not have accounted for.
For Monica Ma, 42, a communications vice president in Danville, Calif., the pandemic marked the first time she and her ex-husband made any parenting decisions together since their split in 2016. “It was a very contentious divorce,” she said. “Everything has been through the courts and by the courts.” They continued to follow the custody arrangement to the letter, never discussing social distancing, masks or other pandemic-specific matters until the former husband of her ex’s new partner contracted Covid around Labor Day.
With children from both relationships moving back and forth between their homes, the risk of spreading the virus became very real, and Ma had her elderly parents living with her. “For the first time in four-and-a-half years, my ex and I were able to agree on how to handle the situation,” she said. “He was very willing to compromise and, truly, the kids came first.” She agreed to have them quarantine with their dad for 12 days (the longest she’d ever been away from them), and brought doughnuts and In & Out meals for them to share in a makeshift driveway picnic.
While Ma sees this as a hopeful step toward a better co-parenting relationship, there is still plenty she and her ex don’t agree on. He’s much more open to play dates and wasn’t even having the kids wear masks until recently. And this is something couples will continue to struggle with. Can I take the kids to a restaurant with outdoor seating? What about indoor seating? Do they have to wear masks? Can they travel for the holidays? To say nothing of upcoming vaccines, which legal experts predict will be the next big battle to flood the family court system.
‘What’s in the child’s best interest’
During uncertain times, “these kinds of discussions are on the table even for families that live together,” said Sanam Hafeez, a psychologist and expert witness in child custody cases in New York. “Everyone has to be flexible because these are going to be ongoing conversations.”
As the divorced mom of twins, she stresses that even agreeable ex-partners should put their parenting plan, and any changes to it, in writing. “If your agreement is at all unclear, things can very quickly spiral,” she said.
A common catalyst for that spiral is when one partner starts seeing someone new. Under normal circumstances, adding a new romantic partner to the mix can intensify an already strained relationship between exes. But these aren’t normal circumstances.
“Not being able to control that other environment your child is walking into wasn’t as much of an issue before Covid,” said Jennifer Rankin, 48, an author and lecturer in Laguna Beach, Calif., who shares custody of her 10-year-old daughter with her ex-husband. She was still finalizing her divorce in March when her elderly mediator went MIA, so she had little recourse when she discovered that her ex had a woman or women staying at his place on his noncustodial days.
Normally, what a parent does on their noncustodial days is up to them, but when you’re talking about a virus that spreads through human contact, suddenly you have to consider all the potential risks to your child and anyone they come in contact with. Rankin told her ex she wanted to limit their daughter’s visits with him, but he only relented after hearing his daughter’s concerns about getting sick from her therapist.
As courts open up, in person or virtually, the law has continued to lean on the “what’s in the child’s best interest” standard. But Covid can muddy the waters even in that regard. “Uncertainty brings out anxiety in people, and throughout this pandemic, there has been very little clear-cut expert guidance on what to do,” said Rebecca Berry, a clinical psychologist at the The Child Study Center at Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at N.Y.U. Langone Health. The virus has also affected different parts of the country in different ways at different times, which means that trying to find a universal standard for applying the law is next to impossible.
If you and your child’s other parent can’t agree on something, Berry suggested agreeing on what guidelines you’ll use or which experts you trust to make the decision for you. That can include your child’s pediatrician, teacher, therapist, the C.D.C. or W.H.O. Drawing on the advice of experts you both agree on is more neutral territory than the opinion of a friend or relative, and can make the decision feel like a joint one rather than one party saying, “We’re going to do it my way.” This was ultimately how my ex and I agreed on our decision to send our son back to school. We spoke to his teachers, aides, and pediatrician, then had a Zoom call with his therapists. They all seemed to think he would thrive in an in-person classroom, and so far, he has.
“Don’t approach the topic by spewing facts or telling the other parent they’re wrong,” Berry said. “Stay open and be inquisitive. Sometimes if the parent at least feels their perspective is being heard, that can assuage a kneejerk reaction to deny a request.”
And remember, these are temporary changes — you can both re-evaluate and negotiate anytime. But courts frown on parents who take matters into their own hands, regardless of the circumstances. “Don’t be shortsighted,” said Mosberg. “If a judge determines that you acted in your own interest above that of your child or co-parent, it could affect your ability to be involved in decision-making long term.”
Jill Waldbieser is a journalist who writes about wellness and nutrition.
|
29. Britain Has Lost Itself.txt
|
By Peter Gumbel
At long last, it happened.
Shortly before midnight on Thursday, Britain completed its exit from the European Union, replacing a close 47-year long relationship with the continent with something far more distant. Now it will have to live through difficult years of separation that will sap its political vibrancy and diminish its role on the world stage. Though a trade deal was belatedly agreed, the economic fallout may be dire, too.
Yet for many, it’s also a deeply personal moment. My grandparents, who escaped Nazi Germany on the eve of World War II, found a home in Britain — to them, it was a beacon of light and hope. But they would be heartbroken to see it today. Inward, polarized and absurdly self-aggrandizing, Britain has lost itself. In sorrow, I mourn the passing of the country that was my family’s salvation.
My grandparents arrived in England in 1939 as stateless refugees. They felt not just gratitude for their immediate safety but also a deep attachment to the values of openness, decency and tolerance they found in their adopted homeland. Once the war ended, they became naturalized British citizens as soon as they could. In a letter to a friend, my grandfather praised the “generous hospitality and nearly unrestricted freedom” they enjoyed as migrants. They never shed their German accents but switched to speaking only in English.
My parents’ generation, in turn, gave their all for the country that took them in. They inevitably faced some anti-German sentiment in the early postwar years, but simply ignored it. My uncle, who arrived in Britain on a Kindertransport train when he was 15 years old, joined a commando unit of the British Army composed of German refugees and was killed on a Normandy beach on D-Day, aged 21. In the 1980s, my father, a businessman, and my aunt, a radiographer, were both decorated by Queen Elizabeth II for their contributions to the country. “After all the trauma of leaving Germany I had struck fresh roots in England,” my father wrote in a private memoir. “We had found a new home in every sense of the word.”
But the openness and tolerance that made the country a safe haven for them are in retreat. The vote to leave the European Union in 2016 and the surge of national exceptionalism that accompanied it revealed deeply held prejudices about migrants. Xenophobia and racism, presumed to be banished to the margins of public life, made an ugly return to the mainstream. And anyone with an international mind-set was suddenly at risk of being tarred, in the words of the former prime minister, Theresa May, as a “citizen of nowhere” — an ominous phrase not just for a family like mine that was once stateless.
Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
Since the 2016 referendum, the government has alienated many of the 3.5 million European Union nationals in the country, cynically treating them as bargaining chips in their negotiations with the bloc. Such people make a big contribution to British life — not just as City bankers, as they are often caricatured, but also as frontline medical staff, university teachers and entrepreneurs. Without them, the country would be greatly diminished. Alarmingly, large numbers appear to have left in 2020.
And political rot has set in. Led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the government plays fast and loose with parliamentary procedure and international treaties. When Moody’s downgraded Britain’s credit rating in October, it cited the “diminished” quality of British executive and legislative institutions. Ethical standards have taken a tumble, too, with the government turning a blind eye to workplace harassment of civil servants and cronyism creeping into the award of public contracts through the pandemic.
I take no joy in this state of affairs, and neither do many fellow Britons. The country is just as divided as the United States has been over President Trump. Nearly half the voters opposed Brexit in the referendum: Many are as angry and disillusioned as I am. But unlike in the United States, where the election of Joe Biden offers a reprieve from the crassness and cruelty of Mr. Trump, Brexit cannot be undone. There will be no turning back.
My American friends tell me that, to them at least, I am quintessentially British, a devoted tea drinker and fan of Marmite, Monty Python and fair play. Yet I am also strongly pro-European, a feeling reinforced by having lived in several European countries over the years. The two identities always seemed to me to be complementary. But Brexit made it impossible to be British and European at the same time. I felt I had been orphaned.
Fearful of losing my connection with the continent and alarmed by the direction in which Britain appeared to be heading, I took a decision I never dreamed I would even consider: I applied for German citizenship. As the grandson of refugees who lost their citizenship for racial or religious reasons, I was allowed to do so by the postwar German constitution.
I didn’t take the decision lightly. I can never forget what happened to my family; my great-aunt perished in Auschwitz and several other cousins died in the Holocaust. But I can also recognize how much Germany has changed and the lengths to which it has gone to atone for the atrocities of the Third Reich.
Indeed, roles have been reversed in some ways: Today, it is Germany that opens its door to refugees and whose chancellor, Angela Merkel, is outspoken in defense of global values and embodies decency and respect. By contrast, the Britain that sheltered and nurtured my family is a sad shadow of its former self.
After 80 years, I feel ready to close a cycle of history. British by birth, I am European by heritage and conviction — and now have an unambiguously European nationality to prove it. I am still proud to be British, but I am also proud to be German. I think my grandparents and parents would approve.
|
By Peter Gumbel
At long last, it happened.
Shortly before midnight on Thursday, Britain completed its exit from the European Union, replacing a close 47-year long relationship with the continent with something far more distant. Now it will have to live through difficult years of separation that will sap its political vibrancy and diminish its role on the world stage. Though a trade deal was belatedly agreed, the economic fallout may be dire, too.
Yet for many, it’s also a deeply personal moment. My grandparents, who escaped Nazi Germany on the eve of World War II, found a home in Britain — to
|
them, it was a beacon of light and hope. But they would be heartbroken to see it today. Inward, polarized and absurdly self-aggrandizing, Britain has lost itself. In sorrow, I mourn the passing of the country that was my family’s salvation.
My grandparents arrived in England in 1939 as stateless refugees. They felt not just gratitude for their immediate safety but also a deep attachment to the values of openness, decency and tolerance they found in their adopted homeland. Once the war ended, they became naturalized British citizens as soon as they could. In a letter to a friend, my grandfather praised the “generous hospitality and nearly unrestricted freedom” they enjoyed as migrants. They never shed their German accents but switched to speaking only in English.
My parents’ generation, in turn, gave their all for the country that took them in. They inevitably faced some anti-German sentiment in the early postwar years, but simply ignored it. My uncle, who arrived in Britain on a Kindertransport train when he was 15 years old, joined a commando unit of the British Army composed of German refugees and was killed on a Normandy beach on D-Day, aged 21. In the 1980s, my father, a businessman, and my aunt, a radiographer, were both decorated by Queen Elizabeth II for their contributions to the country. “After all the trauma of leaving Germany I had struck fresh roots in England,” my father wrote in a private memoir. “We had found a new home in every sense of the word.”
But the openness and tolerance that made the country a safe haven for them are in retreat. The vote to leave the European Union in 2016 and the surge of national exceptionalism that accompanied it revealed deeply held prejudices about migrants. Xenophobia and racism, presumed to be banished to the margins of public life, made an ugly return to the mainstream. And anyone with an international mind-set was suddenly at risk of being tarred, in the words of the former prime minister, Theresa May, as a “citizen of nowhere” — an ominous phrase not just for a family like mine that was once stateless.
Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
Since the 2016 referendum, the government has alienated many of the 3.5 million European Union nationals in the country, cynically treating them as bargaining chips in their negotiations with the bloc. Such people make a big contribution to British life — not just as City bankers, as they are often caricatured, but also as frontline medical staff, university teachers and entrepreneurs. Without them, the country would be greatly diminished. Alarmingly, large numbers appear to have left in 2020.
And political rot has set in. Led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the government plays fast and loose with parliamentary procedure and international treaties. When Moody’s downgraded Britain’s credit rating in October, it cited the “diminished” quality of British executive and legislative institutions. Ethical standards have taken a tumble, too, with the government turning a blind eye to workplace harassment of civil servants and cronyism creeping into the award of public contracts through the pandemic.
I take no joy in this state of affairs, and neither do many fellow Britons. The country is just as divided as the United States has been over President Trump. Nearly half the voters opposed Brexit in the referendum: Many are as angry and disillusioned as I am. But unlike in the United States, where the election of Joe Biden offers a reprieve from the crassness and cruelty of Mr. Trump, Brexit cannot be undone. There will be no turning back.
My American friends tell me that, to them at least, I am quintessentially British, a devoted tea drinker and fan of Marmite, Monty Python and fair play. Yet I am also strongly pro-European, a feeling reinforced by having lived in several European countries over the years. The two identities always seemed to me to be complementary. But Brexit made it impossible to be British and European at the same time. I felt I had been orphaned.
Fearful of losing my connection with the continent and alarmed by the direction in which Britain appeared to be heading, I took a decision I never dreamed I would even consider: I applied for German citizenship. As the grandson of refugees who lost their citizenship for racial or religious reasons, I was allowed to do so by the postwar German constitution.
I didn’t take the decision lightly. I can never forget what happened to my family; my great-aunt perished in Auschwitz and several other cousins died in the Holocaust. But I can also recognize how much Germany has changed and the lengths to which it has gone to atone for the atrocities of the Third Reich.
Indeed, roles have been reversed in some ways: Today, it is Germany that opens its door to refugees and whose chancellor, Angela Merkel, is outspoken in defense of global values and embodies decency and respect. By contrast, the Britain that sheltered and nurtured my family is a sad shadow of its former self.
After 80 years, I feel ready to close a cycle of history. British by birth, I am European by heritage and conviction — and now have an unambiguously European nationality to prove it. I am still proud to be British, but I am also proud to be German. I think my grandparents and parents would approve.
|
48. Why Emptier Streets Meant an Especially Deadly Year for Traffic Deaths.txt
|
By Christina Goldbaum
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Sept. 30, 2021
When the pandemic hit New York City, cars seemed to disappear from many streets as the lockdown brought urban life to a halt and drivers stayed home.
Today, traffic is still lighter than usual at times. But in a troubling trend echoed across the country, the number of deadly car crashes has soared.
At least 243 people died in traffic crashes in New York City in 2020 — making it the deadliest year on record since Mayor Bill de Blasio introduced his signature plan to improve street safety in 2014.
The spike in traffic deaths defied historical trends: Economic downturns and reduced congestion typically lead to fewer fatal crashes, federal researchers say. But during the pandemic, it seemed that drivers who felt cooped up in their homes flocked to wide open streets.
People sped recklessly down vacant highways. Riders who had not been on a motorcycle in years — or ever — took to roadways. In big cities, late-night drag racing became more popular as other entertainment vanished.
Deaths of drivers, passengers and motorcyclists rose sharply in 2020, to 120, from 68 in 2019 — an increase of 76 percent and the highest level in over a decade, according to city data.
Those figures do not include deaths of pedestrians, which dropped, and of bicyclists, which remained about the same.
The overall spike in fatalities is a blow to Mr. de Blasio’s Vision Zero program, which aimed to eliminate all traffic deaths by 2024, and a challenge for the coming months, when traffic patterns are unlikely to return to normal.
“We always knew that Vision Zero would not be linear, we would have some years when fatalities rose and we would have some better years,” Margaret Forgione, the city’s acting transportation commissioner, said in an interview. “But this year threw everything into disarray.”
She added, “It’s not a year reflective of what’s typically been happening in our city.”
New York was not an outlier. Across the country, fatality rates for traffic crashes increased for the first time in years, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a federal agency. Between April and June, the fatality rate rose to around 30 percent higher than the first three months of the year, federal researchers found.
Transportation in New York City
The spike can be explained, in no small part, by the coronavirus crisis.
Older people, who tend to be more cautious drivers, stayed home. Without their usual diversions, younger drivers — who are more prone to risk-taking — hit the road. And increased alcohol and drug use to cope with pandemic-related stress factored into many crashes, the federal agency said.
In the spring, tickets for speeding over 100 miles per hour surged 87 percent in California during the first month of a statewide lockdown. New York City’s automated cameras issued nearly twice as many speeding tickets daily, and rush-hour traffic speeds in Brooklyn and Queens shot up more than 80 percent. State troopers in Georgia cited 140 drivers for speeds over 100 m.p.h. in a two-week period in April.
“There were places that saw more speeding tickets issued during Covid than ever before,” said Richard Retting, a traffic safety expert with Sam Schwartz Engineering, a traffic and transportation planning firm. “Bottom line is, the risk on the road during the Covid era is significantly higher. The chance of dying in a car crash is higher than pre-Covid.”
In New York, officials said most fatal crashes in the city last year involved drivers cruising at high speeds, often late at night and on highways outside Manhattan.
Motorcyclist fatalities also reached their highest level in over 30 years, and about 60 percent of them involved riders who did not have a valid motorcycle license, according to city data.
The number of crashes in which only the rider was killed or injured was also up, suggesting that more inexperienced motorcyclists were riding at high speeds, city officials said.
“We saw a lot of younger people, young men in particular, seem to be seeking an outlet from the stress and the boredom of Covid and getting on motorcycles when they had no business doing so,” Ms. Forgione said.
The result of all these trends was a string of particularly horrific crashes: One Saturday evening in July, a group of teenagers were gathered at a decommissioned airfield in southeast Brooklyn to watch as two of them “did doughnuts,” or spun their cars in loops at high speeds. The cars collided, killing an 11-year-old boy and two teenagers.
Over two days in August, three motorcyclists — including two men in their 20s — were killed in three separate crashes. And last month in Yonkers, just outside New York City, four recent high school graduates were killed when a speeding driver hit their car, tearing it in half.
To crack down on speeding, city officials in September reduced speed limits by five m.p.h. on nine of the most dangerous roads across the five boroughs.
Mr. de Blasio also called on the State Legislature last month to allow the city’s speed camera program — which limits cameras to operating only in school zones and at certain times of day — to operate round-the-clock.
The city has more than 1,300 automated cameras, spread across 750 school zones, that operate between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. More than a third of fatal crashes that happened off highways in 2020 occurred in zones when cameras were not active, according to city data.
The Police Department has also deployed its vehicles to multilane roads in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, where dozens of fatal crashes have occurred and where state law does not allow speed cameras.
“Quite frankly, drivers took advantage of the open roads and sped with their vehicles,” said Kim Royster, the Police Department’s transportation chief. “Visibility is very important when it comes to traffic enforcement, especially for speeding and drag-racing drivers.”
Chief Royster noted that police had issued fewer overall traffic summonses, including arrests for driving while intoxicated or driving without a license, compared to 2019 because of staff shortages last spring and summer, when officers fell sick or were deployed for protests against police brutality.
But the police issued about 140,000 speeding summonses between November 2019 and November 2020 — only 7 percent less than in the same period the prior year, according to police data.
In a bright spot, pedestrian deaths reached a record low last year as fewer people walked the streets in places like Midtown Manhattan. City streets had their longest stretch without a pedestrian fatality — 58 days — since officials began tracking those deaths in 1983.
And despite a surge in cycling, fatalities among bicyclists were about the same as last year, which city officials attributed to reduced traffic, the effect of safety in numbers and the record 28.6 miles of protected bike lanes that were rolled out in 2020.
Still, transportation advocacy groups have urged Mr. de Blasio to take a more aggressive approach and point to the examples set by cities like Paris, which committed to adding around 400 miles of bicycle lanes when the pandemic hit.
Making major changes to the streetscape would allow cities to build on the momentum the pandemic created toward using eco-friendly forms of transport and keep people on bicycles, scooters and mo-peds even as urban life and traffic returns, the groups say.
“Whatever your memory is of life on the street before Covid, it probably wasn’t positive — there was congestion, smog, danger for vulnerable street users,” said Danny Harris, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group. “We cannot go back to that normal.”
|
By Christina Goldbaum
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Sept. 30, 2021
When the pandemic hit New York City, cars seemed to disappear from many streets as the lockdown brought urban life to a halt and drivers stayed home.
Today, traffic is still lighter than usual at times. But in a troubling trend echoed across the country, the number of deadly car crashes has soared.
At least 243 people died in traffic crashes in New York City in 2020 — making it the deadliest year on record since Mayor Bill de Blasio introduced his
|
signature plan to improve street safety in 2014.
The spike in traffic deaths defied historical trends: Economic downturns and reduced congestion typically lead to fewer fatal crashes, federal researchers say. But during the pandemic, it seemed that drivers who felt cooped up in their homes flocked to wide open streets.
People sped recklessly down vacant highways. Riders who had not been on a motorcycle in years — or ever — took to roadways. In big cities, late-night drag racing became more popular as other entertainment vanished.
Deaths of drivers, passengers and motorcyclists rose sharply in 2020, to 120, from 68 in 2019 — an increase of 76 percent and the highest level in over a decade, according to city data.
Those figures do not include deaths of pedestrians, which dropped, and of bicyclists, which remained about the same.
The overall spike in fatalities is a blow to Mr. de Blasio’s Vision Zero program, which aimed to eliminate all traffic deaths by 2024, and a challenge for the coming months, when traffic patterns are unlikely to return to normal.
“We always knew that Vision Zero would not be linear, we would have some years when fatalities rose and we would have some better years,” Margaret Forgione, the city’s acting transportation commissioner, said in an interview. “But this year threw everything into disarray.”
She added, “It’s not a year reflective of what’s typically been happening in our city.”
New York was not an outlier. Across the country, fatality rates for traffic crashes increased for the first time in years, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a federal agency. Between April and June, the fatality rate rose to around 30 percent higher than the first three months of the year, federal researchers found.
Transportation in New York City
The spike can be explained, in no small part, by the coronavirus crisis.
Older people, who tend to be more cautious drivers, stayed home. Without their usual diversions, younger drivers — who are more prone to risk-taking — hit the road. And increased alcohol and drug use to cope with pandemic-related stress factored into many crashes, the federal agency said.
In the spring, tickets for speeding over 100 miles per hour surged 87 percent in California during the first month of a statewide lockdown. New York City’s automated cameras issued nearly twice as many speeding tickets daily, and rush-hour traffic speeds in Brooklyn and Queens shot up more than 80 percent. State troopers in Georgia cited 140 drivers for speeds over 100 m.p.h. in a two-week period in April.
“There were places that saw more speeding tickets issued during Covid than ever before,” said Richard Retting, a traffic safety expert with Sam Schwartz Engineering, a traffic and transportation planning firm. “Bottom line is, the risk on the road during the Covid era is significantly higher. The chance of dying in a car crash is higher than pre-Covid.”
In New York, officials said most fatal crashes in the city last year involved drivers cruising at high speeds, often late at night and on highways outside Manhattan.
Motorcyclist fatalities also reached their highest level in over 30 years, and about 60 percent of them involved riders who did not have a valid motorcycle license, according to city data.
The number of crashes in which only the rider was killed or injured was also up, suggesting that more inexperienced motorcyclists were riding at high speeds, city officials said.
“We saw a lot of younger people, young men in particular, seem to be seeking an outlet from the stress and the boredom of Covid and getting on motorcycles when they had no business doing so,” Ms. Forgione said.
The result of all these trends was a string of particularly horrific crashes: One Saturday evening in July, a group of teenagers were gathered at a decommissioned airfield in southeast Brooklyn to watch as two of them “did doughnuts,” or spun their cars in loops at high speeds. The cars collided, killing an 11-year-old boy and two teenagers.
Over two days in August, three motorcyclists — including two men in their 20s — were killed in three separate crashes. And last month in Yonkers, just outside New York City, four recent high school graduates were killed when a speeding driver hit their car, tearing it in half.
To crack down on speeding, city officials in September reduced speed limits by five m.p.h. on nine of the most dangerous roads across the five boroughs.
Mr. de Blasio also called on the State Legislature last month to allow the city’s speed camera program — which limits cameras to operating only in school zones and at certain times of day — to operate round-the-clock.
The city has more than 1,300 automated cameras, spread across 750 school zones, that operate between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. More than a third of fatal crashes that happened off highways in 2020 occurred in zones when cameras were not active, according to city data.
The Police Department has also deployed its vehicles to multilane roads in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, where dozens of fatal crashes have occurred and where state law does not allow speed cameras.
“Quite frankly, drivers took advantage of the open roads and sped with their vehicles,” said Kim Royster, the Police Department’s transportation chief. “Visibility is very important when it comes to traffic enforcement, especially for speeding and drag-racing drivers.”
Chief Royster noted that police had issued fewer overall traffic summonses, including arrests for driving while intoxicated or driving without a license, compared to 2019 because of staff shortages last spring and summer, when officers fell sick or were deployed for protests against police brutality.
But the police issued about 140,000 speeding summonses between November 2019 and November 2020 — only 7 percent less than in the same period the prior year, according to police data.
In a bright spot, pedestrian deaths reached a record low last year as fewer people walked the streets in places like Midtown Manhattan. City streets had their longest stretch without a pedestrian fatality — 58 days — since officials began tracking those deaths in 1983.
And despite a surge in cycling, fatalities among bicyclists were about the same as last year, which city officials attributed to reduced traffic, the effect of safety in numbers and the record 28.6 miles of protected bike lanes that were rolled out in 2020.
Still, transportation advocacy groups have urged Mr. de Blasio to take a more aggressive approach and point to the examples set by cities like Paris, which committed to adding around 400 miles of bicycle lanes when the pandemic hit.
Making major changes to the streetscape would allow cities to build on the momentum the pandemic created toward using eco-friendly forms of transport and keep people on bicycles, scooters and mo-peds even as urban life and traffic returns, the groups say.
“Whatever your memory is of life on the street before Covid, it probably wasn’t positive — there was congestion, smog, danger for vulnerable street users,” said Danny Harris, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group. “We cannot go back to that normal.”
|
90. Natan Zach, Blunt and Cherished Israeli Poet, Dies at 89.txt
|
By Joseph Berger
Nov. 11, 2020
Natan Zach, a cherished Israeli poet who helped revolutionize Hebrew poetry by spurning the formality of his more established contemporaries in favor of plain-spoken, loose-limbed verse, died on Nov. 6 in Ramat Gan, outside Tel Aviv. He was 89.
His death, at a hospital, was announced in a statement by Israel’s culture minister, Hili Tropper, who called him “one of Israel’s greatest poets.” He had been struggling with Alzheimer’s disease, according to a nearby nursing home, where he lived.
Although Israel is a relatively young country, with a language that had to be reconstructed in the late 19th century after it had nearly died out during the Roman Empire, it has a rich and sometimes tumultuous poetic tradition. Volumes of verse are common on Israeli bookshelves, and the merits of various poets are argued as vociferously as New York baseball fans once quarreled over the abilities of Mantle, Snider and Mays.
When Mr. Zach published his first poems, in the early 1950s, the reigning poet was Nathan Alterman. Mr. Zach, a brash newcomer on the literary scene, chafed at Mr. Alterman’s influence, seeing his rhymes and meters as rigid, his wording as ornamented and his themes as impersonal. He said as much in a watershed article in 1959 that shook up Israel’s literary world.
“It was an act of patricide, but also a defiant and condescending act of criticism by a man who was very knowledgeable about world literature,” the literary critic Ariana Melamed wrote in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz after Mr. Zach’s death.
Mr. Zach joined with other rebel poets — most notably the premier modernist, Yehuda Amichai — to form an avant-garde nucleus anchored in the journal Likrat (Toward). He went on to publish two dozen collections, with poems often touching on the fleeting nature of relationships and the fragility of the human body and of existence itself. They were always set to intriguing rhythms and rendered in a lucid Hebrew, filled, as a Haaretz editorial said, with the “words with which we trade and curse, argue and clash.’’
The poet Peter Cole, a MacArthur “genius” grant winner and a translator of some of Mr. Zach’s poems, said, “He changed the language of Hebrew poetry, period,” adding, “He heard a quiet music in the spokenness of modern Hebrew — a music that dignified the language of ordinary speech and all it implied.”
The poem “To Put it Differently,” which was translated by Mr. Cole, gives glimmers of Mr. Zach’s audacity and mischievous humor:
Mr. Zach and Mr. Amichai, who died at 76 in 2000, were the literary guerrillas of their generation, but they carved out distinct paths, said Leon Wieseltier, the editor of Liberties, a new journal of culture and politics.
“Amichai made lyricism out of the vernacular; Zach fell under the chilly spell of Eliot,” he wrote in an email, adding that “often a current of tenderness sneaks past the poet’s forbidding persona, a gust of warmth amid the cool literariness.”
Though both poets were secular Jews, Mr. Amichai grew up in an Orthodox home and dappled his stanzas with allusions to Jewish rituals and biblical vignettes; Mr. Zach, the son of an interfaith marriage, almost never did.
Often stepping into Israel’s clamorous politics, Mr. Zach embraced a leftist perspective on the perennial tensions between Israel and the Palestinians, even voicing support for the flotilla of six vessels that in May 2010 tried to penetrate an Israeli blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
He took an elitist view toward the culture of right-wing Israeli Jews who traced their roots to predominantly Muslim countries. Comparing them in a 2010 television interview with Westerners like himself, he said: “The one lot comes from the highest culture there is — Western European culture — and the other lot comes from the caves.”
A petition signed by more than 500 people accused him of racism and asked that he be fired from his teaching positions.
Yet he continued to garner awards — he had already won the prestigious Bialik Prize for literature and the Israel Prize for Hebrew poetry — and teach, testifying to the democratic tolerance of Israelis for unfettered speech.
Mr. Zach was born Harry Seitelbach on Dec. 13, 1930, in Berlin to Norbert and Clementine Seitelbach. His father was a well-off German Jew who managed a family business; his mother, an Italian Catholic, tended the home. In 1936, the family fled Hitler’s Germany and emigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine, settling in Haifa and then Tel Aviv. His father failed in a construction business, could never adjust to Israeli culture or master the language and eventually committed suicide.
Like many immigrants to Palestine and Israel, Mr. Zach chose a Hebrew name. (Zach means “clear.”) At 17, he served in the military during the 1948 war for Israel’s independence. Afterward he enrolled at Hebrew University in Jerusalem to study philosophy and comparative literature but dropped out. He finished his bachelor’s degree in Hebrew and comparative literature at Tel Aviv University in 1963 after he had begun teaching there.
His poems first appeared in print in 1951, and a solo collection, “First Poems,” was published in 1955. His collection “Other Poems” (1960) is considered his masterwork.
Mr. Zach moved to England in 1969 and completed a doctorate there at the University of Essex in 1978. He then returned to Israel. Among his works was a translation into Hebrew of Allen Ginsberg’s “Kaddish and Other Poems.”
His marriage to Asya Haramati in 1958 lasted less than a year. He began a relationship in the 1970s with Sarah Avital, and they married in 2014. She survives him, as does his son, Ido Assif.
Some Zach poems touched on romance, but like a Stephen Sondheim lyric they were often edged with cynicism. “As Agreed” is a poem about parting lovers but is utterly devoid of sentimentality, as reflected in these stanzas, translated by Tsipi Keller:
Etan Nechin contributed reporting.
|
By Joseph Berger
Nov. 11, 2020
Natan Zach, a cherished Israeli poet who helped revolutionize Hebrew poetry by spurning the formality of his more established contemporaries in favor of plain-spoken, loose-limbed verse, died on Nov. 6 in Ramat Gan, outside Tel Aviv. He was 89.
His death, at a hospital, was announced in a statement by Israel’s culture minister, Hili Tropper, who called him “one of Israel’s greatest poets.” He had been struggling with Alzheimer’s disease, according to a nearby nursing home, where he
|
lived.
Although Israel is a relatively young country, with a language that had to be reconstructed in the late 19th century after it had nearly died out during the Roman Empire, it has a rich and sometimes tumultuous poetic tradition. Volumes of verse are common on Israeli bookshelves, and the merits of various poets are argued as vociferously as New York baseball fans once quarreled over the abilities of Mantle, Snider and Mays.
When Mr. Zach published his first poems, in the early 1950s, the reigning poet was Nathan Alterman. Mr. Zach, a brash newcomer on the literary scene, chafed at Mr. Alterman’s influence, seeing his rhymes and meters as rigid, his wording as ornamented and his themes as impersonal. He said as much in a watershed article in 1959 that shook up Israel’s literary world.
“It was an act of patricide, but also a defiant and condescending act of criticism by a man who was very knowledgeable about world literature,” the literary critic Ariana Melamed wrote in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz after Mr. Zach’s death.
Mr. Zach joined with other rebel poets — most notably the premier modernist, Yehuda Amichai — to form an avant-garde nucleus anchored in the journal Likrat (Toward). He went on to publish two dozen collections, with poems often touching on the fleeting nature of relationships and the fragility of the human body and of existence itself. They were always set to intriguing rhythms and rendered in a lucid Hebrew, filled, as a Haaretz editorial said, with the “words with which we trade and curse, argue and clash.’’
The poet Peter Cole, a MacArthur “genius” grant winner and a translator of some of Mr. Zach’s poems, said, “He changed the language of Hebrew poetry, period,” adding, “He heard a quiet music in the spokenness of modern Hebrew — a music that dignified the language of ordinary speech and all it implied.”
The poem “To Put it Differently,” which was translated by Mr. Cole, gives glimmers of Mr. Zach’s audacity and mischievous humor:
Mr. Zach and Mr. Amichai, who died at 76 in 2000, were the literary guerrillas of their generation, but they carved out distinct paths, said Leon Wieseltier, the editor of Liberties, a new journal of culture and politics.
“Amichai made lyricism out of the vernacular; Zach fell under the chilly spell of Eliot,” he wrote in an email, adding that “often a current of tenderness sneaks past the poet’s forbidding persona, a gust of warmth amid the cool literariness.”
Though both poets were secular Jews, Mr. Amichai grew up in an Orthodox home and dappled his stanzas with allusions to Jewish rituals and biblical vignettes; Mr. Zach, the son of an interfaith marriage, almost never did.
Often stepping into Israel’s clamorous politics, Mr. Zach embraced a leftist perspective on the perennial tensions between Israel and the Palestinians, even voicing support for the flotilla of six vessels that in May 2010 tried to penetrate an Israeli blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
He took an elitist view toward the culture of right-wing Israeli Jews who traced their roots to predominantly Muslim countries. Comparing them in a 2010 television interview with Westerners like himself, he said: “The one lot comes from the highest culture there is — Western European culture — and the other lot comes from the caves.”
A petition signed by more than 500 people accused him of racism and asked that he be fired from his teaching positions.
Yet he continued to garner awards — he had already won the prestigious Bialik Prize for literature and the Israel Prize for Hebrew poetry — and teach, testifying to the democratic tolerance of Israelis for unfettered speech.
Mr. Zach was born Harry Seitelbach on Dec. 13, 1930, in Berlin to Norbert and Clementine Seitelbach. His father was a well-off German Jew who managed a family business; his mother, an Italian Catholic, tended the home. In 1936, the family fled Hitler’s Germany and emigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine, settling in Haifa and then Tel Aviv. His father failed in a construction business, could never adjust to Israeli culture or master the language and eventually committed suicide.
Like many immigrants to Palestine and Israel, Mr. Zach chose a Hebrew name. (Zach means “clear.”) At 17, he served in the military during the 1948 war for Israel’s independence. Afterward he enrolled at Hebrew University in Jerusalem to study philosophy and comparative literature but dropped out. He finished his bachelor’s degree in Hebrew and comparative literature at Tel Aviv University in 1963 after he had begun teaching there.
His poems first appeared in print in 1951, and a solo collection, “First Poems,” was published in 1955. His collection “Other Poems” (1960) is considered his masterwork.
Mr. Zach moved to England in 1969 and completed a doctorate there at the University of Essex in 1978. He then returned to Israel. Among his works was a translation into Hebrew of Allen Ginsberg’s “Kaddish and Other Poems.”
His marriage to Asya Haramati in 1958 lasted less than a year. He began a relationship in the 1970s with Sarah Avital, and they married in 2014. She survives him, as does his son, Ido Assif.
Some Zach poems touched on romance, but like a Stephen Sondheim lyric they were often edged with cynicism. “As Agreed” is a poem about parting lovers but is utterly devoid of sentimentality, as reflected in these stanzas, translated by Tsipi Keller:
Etan Nechin contributed reporting.
|
36. Top Sales Show How Pandemic Continues to Influence the Market.txt
|
By Vivian Marino
Jan. 1, 2021
Several more Manhattan townhouse sales closed in December, many at holiday-style discounts.
The priciest were in Greenwich Village. A stately house at 14 East 11th Street closed at $28 million and was the month’s most expensive transaction in New York City; and a house at 111 Waverly Place went for nearly $18.4 million.
In TriBeCa, Michael P. Davies, who runs the Sony Pictures production company Embassy Row, and his wife, Claude Davies, an actor and producer, sold their townhouse unit at 7 Hubert Street, a.k.a. the Hubert condominiums, for $11.4 million.
Over the past year, townhouses have been a bright spot in an otherwise dismal housing market, reflecting a desire among luxury buyers for more personal space, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. “You get to control your own environment,” said Hall F. Willkie, the president of Brown Harris Stevens. “There are no shared lobbies and you get outdoor space.”
Demand for roomier homes in general has been on the rise, and having outdoor space considered a big plus. Downtown, a sponsor duplex at 90 Morton Street sold for $24.8 million; a full-floor penthouse at the Hubert for $20 million; a full-floor apartment at 24 Leonard Street for $18 million; and a half-floor sponsor unit at 157 West 57th Street for $18.4 million. On the Upper East Side, the actress Christine Baranski bought a co-op duplex. And on the Upper West Side, the estate of Robby Browne, a top real estate broker who died in April, found a buyer for his apartment with a terrace.
The month’s top sale is an Italianate-style brick house on 11th Street, between Fifth Avenue and University Place, that was built in the 1850s and recently underwent a top-to-bottom renovation and sold for $28 million. Its most recent asking price was $28.5 million.
Standing five stories high and 21 feet wide, the structure has 7,411 square feet, with five bedrooms, six full bathrooms and two powder rooms, as well as a finished basement with a playroom, gym and laundry room. The primary bedroom suite occupies the fourth floor.
Among the home’s many flourishes are four fireplaces, paneled walls, soaring ceilings and an elevator. There are also about 1,400 square feet of outdoor space that includes a meticulously landscaped rear garden and terraces on the roof and fifth floor.
Both the buyer and seller were anonymous. The new owner used the limited partnership Ben Here, while the seller’s identity was shielded by the limited liability company Village Townhouse.
The house at 111 Waverly Place is a 25-foot-wide Greek Revival erected in the late 1830s near MacDougal Street. Once a multifamily dwelling, it, too, had been extensively renovated and modernized, and sold for $18.4 million.
The five-story brick building has around 8,500 square feet that includes a finished basement with a wine cellar and recreation room. There are six bedrooms, six full bathrooms and two powder rooms — along with a movie theater, two laundry rooms, a fitness room and nine fireplaces, and, of course, an elevator to get to them all. There is also a landscaped backyard garden.
The main bedroom suite takes up the third level and features a large bathroom, two walk-in closets, an office and a study.
The home’s most recent asking price was $19.5 million. Property records list the sellers as Kenneth B. Picache and Tamara L. Totah; they bought the house in 2005 for $5.6 million. The buyer was Oscar’s Nest LLC.
At 90 Morton Street in the West Village, Penthouse 11B, takes up 4,685 square feet on the 11th and 12th floors, and sold for $24.8 million. It features five bedrooms, four and a half baths and a great room with a fireplace. The home also comes with two large terraces — one on each level — totaling 1,105 square feet that offer striking vistas of the Hudson, Statue of Liberty and the downtown skyline.
The new owner, listed as Yorkshire Pudding LLC, also got a price discount in the deal. The unit had been on the market for $31 million.
The boutique condominium, a former printing factory near West Street, was converted into 35 luxury residences in 2018.
At 7 Hubert Street, Penthouse B sold for $20 million, just below its $21 million asking price. The loftlike apartment extends 4,200 square feet and features wall-to-ceiling windows that provide stunning Hudson River and cityscape views. There are three bedrooms, three and a half baths, a living room with a wood-burning fireplace, a spacious dining area and media room. The primary bedroom suite has an office and two large dressing rooms.
The seller used the limited liability company JLM Hubert St. in the transaction, while the buyer was listed as 7 Hubert, PHB LLC.
Townhouse 3C at 7 Hubert, sold by Michael and Claude Davies, has five bedrooms, five and a half baths and 6,443 square feet of interior space, for $11.4 million. The three-level unit also comes with an attached one-car garage, as well as a private rooftop terrace. It had been on the market for nearly $15 million.
Mr. Davies, the president of Embassy Row, has produced numerous TV game shows, including “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?,” “Wife Swap,” and ESPN’s “2 Minute Drill.” The buyers were listed as Jean and Daniel Yun.
The 33-unit condominium at 7 Hubert Street sits on a cobblestone street blocks from the Hudson, between Collister and Hudson Streets.
A few blocks away at 24 Leonard Street, a new boutique condo on a cobblestone street in TriBeCa, a five-bedroom, five-and-a-half-bathroom apartment sold to an anonymous buyer for $18 million.
The sprawling, second-floor unit has 4,859 square feet inside and around 4,300 square feet of terrace space, featuring a lush landscaped garden, a hot tub, and a fully equipped outdoor kitchen. Each of the bedrooms contains an en-suite bath, and the primary suite, which has a dressing area and walk-in closet, opens to the garden. An automated parking spot also comes with the unit.
The buyer was listed as Leonard Two, LLC.
At 157 West 57th Street, a.k.a One57, a 90-story tower on Billionaires’ Row in Midtown, a sponsor apartment that encompasses half the 59th floor sold for $18.4 million.
The 4,193-square-foot residence has three bedrooms and three and a half baths, as well as a great room with 11-foot ceilings. Floor-to-ceiling windows throughout provide stellar views of Central Park and Midtown.
The home had been on the market for $27.1 million. The buyer’s identity was shielded by the limited liability company Villa Borghese.
Ms. Baranski bought a duplex at 125 East 74th Street, off Park Avenue, for $2.2 million, which was just under the $2.5 million asking price. The apartment — virtually staged and in need of a little T.L.C., according to the listing photos — has four bedrooms, three baths and a formal dining room. It also comes with a separate office/staff quarters off the building’s lobby.
Ms. Baranski, who currently stars in the TV drama series “The Good Fight,” has won Tony Awards for her performances in “Rumors” and “The Real Thing.”
The apartment was sold by the 1989 Cristina Monet Zilkha Trust.
The estate of Mr. Browne sold his apartment at 25 Central Park West for just under $5 million. The home was listed in August for $5.85 million, four months after his death from Covid-19, and was under contract in September. The buyer was listed as Xeamo Inc.
The two-bedroom, two-bath residence is on the 21st floor of the prewar building, a.k.a. Century Condominium. It is 1,216 square feet and has an 800-square-foot landscaped terrace that was a source of pride for Mr. Browne and the centerpiece of his many parties and charitable events. Most of the rooms in the unit open to the terrace, which has a shower and flower gardens.
Mr. Browne, who worked for the Corcoran Group, brokered numerous deals in Manhattan during his long career as a real estate agent and represented many high-profile clients, like the rocker Jon Bon Jovi and the actors Uma Thurman and Alec Baldwin.
For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.
|
By Vivian Marino
Jan. 1, 2021
Several more Manhattan townhouse sales closed in December, many at holiday-style discounts.
The priciest were in Greenwich Village. A stately house at 14 East 11th Street closed at $28 million and was the month’s most expensive transaction in New York City; and a house at 111 Waverly Place went for nearly $18.4 million.
In TriBeCa, Michael P. Davies, who runs the Sony Pictures production company Embassy Row, and his wife, Claude Davies, an actor and producer, sold
|
their townhouse unit at 7 Hubert Street, a.k.a. the Hubert condominiums, for $11.4 million.
Over the past year, townhouses have been a bright spot in an otherwise dismal housing market, reflecting a desire among luxury buyers for more personal space, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. “You get to control your own environment,” said Hall F. Willkie, the president of Brown Harris Stevens. “There are no shared lobbies and you get outdoor space.”
Demand for roomier homes in general has been on the rise, and having outdoor space considered a big plus. Downtown, a sponsor duplex at 90 Morton Street sold for $24.8 million; a full-floor penthouse at the Hubert for $20 million; a full-floor apartment at 24 Leonard Street for $18 million; and a half-floor sponsor unit at 157 West 57th Street for $18.4 million. On the Upper East Side, the actress Christine Baranski bought a co-op duplex. And on the Upper West Side, the estate of Robby Browne, a top real estate broker who died in April, found a buyer for his apartment with a terrace.
The month’s top sale is an Italianate-style brick house on 11th Street, between Fifth Avenue and University Place, that was built in the 1850s and recently underwent a top-to-bottom renovation and sold for $28 million. Its most recent asking price was $28.5 million.
Standing five stories high and 21 feet wide, the structure has 7,411 square feet, with five bedrooms, six full bathrooms and two powder rooms, as well as a finished basement with a playroom, gym and laundry room. The primary bedroom suite occupies the fourth floor.
Among the home’s many flourishes are four fireplaces, paneled walls, soaring ceilings and an elevator. There are also about 1,400 square feet of outdoor space that includes a meticulously landscaped rear garden and terraces on the roof and fifth floor.
Both the buyer and seller were anonymous. The new owner used the limited partnership Ben Here, while the seller’s identity was shielded by the limited liability company Village Townhouse.
The house at 111 Waverly Place is a 25-foot-wide Greek Revival erected in the late 1830s near MacDougal Street. Once a multifamily dwelling, it, too, had been extensively renovated and modernized, and sold for $18.4 million.
The five-story brick building has around 8,500 square feet that includes a finished basement with a wine cellar and recreation room. There are six bedrooms, six full bathrooms and two powder rooms — along with a movie theater, two laundry rooms, a fitness room and nine fireplaces, and, of course, an elevator to get to them all. There is also a landscaped backyard garden.
The main bedroom suite takes up the third level and features a large bathroom, two walk-in closets, an office and a study.
The home’s most recent asking price was $19.5 million. Property records list the sellers as Kenneth B. Picache and Tamara L. Totah; they bought the house in 2005 for $5.6 million. The buyer was Oscar’s Nest LLC.
At 90 Morton Street in the West Village, Penthouse 11B, takes up 4,685 square feet on the 11th and 12th floors, and sold for $24.8 million. It features five bedrooms, four and a half baths and a great room with a fireplace. The home also comes with two large terraces — one on each level — totaling 1,105 square feet that offer striking vistas of the Hudson, Statue of Liberty and the downtown skyline.
The new owner, listed as Yorkshire Pudding LLC, also got a price discount in the deal. The unit had been on the market for $31 million.
The boutique condominium, a former printing factory near West Street, was converted into 35 luxury residences in 2018.
At 7 Hubert Street, Penthouse B sold for $20 million, just below its $21 million asking price. The loftlike apartment extends 4,200 square feet and features wall-to-ceiling windows that provide stunning Hudson River and cityscape views. There are three bedrooms, three and a half baths, a living room with a wood-burning fireplace, a spacious dining area and media room. The primary bedroom suite has an office and two large dressing rooms.
The seller used the limited liability company JLM Hubert St. in the transaction, while the buyer was listed as 7 Hubert, PHB LLC.
Townhouse 3C at 7 Hubert, sold by Michael and Claude Davies, has five bedrooms, five and a half baths and 6,443 square feet of interior space, for $11.4 million. The three-level unit also comes with an attached one-car garage, as well as a private rooftop terrace. It had been on the market for nearly $15 million.
Mr. Davies, the president of Embassy Row, has produced numerous TV game shows, including “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?,” “Wife Swap,” and ESPN’s “2 Minute Drill.” The buyers were listed as Jean and Daniel Yun.
The 33-unit condominium at 7 Hubert Street sits on a cobblestone street blocks from the Hudson, between Collister and Hudson Streets.
A few blocks away at 24 Leonard Street, a new boutique condo on a cobblestone street in TriBeCa, a five-bedroom, five-and-a-half-bathroom apartment sold to an anonymous buyer for $18 million.
The sprawling, second-floor unit has 4,859 square feet inside and around 4,300 square feet of terrace space, featuring a lush landscaped garden, a hot tub, and a fully equipped outdoor kitchen. Each of the bedrooms contains an en-suite bath, and the primary suite, which has a dressing area and walk-in closet, opens to the garden. An automated parking spot also comes with the unit.
The buyer was listed as Leonard Two, LLC.
At 157 West 57th Street, a.k.a One57, a 90-story tower on Billionaires’ Row in Midtown, a sponsor apartment that encompasses half the 59th floor sold for $18.4 million.
The 4,193-square-foot residence has three bedrooms and three and a half baths, as well as a great room with 11-foot ceilings. Floor-to-ceiling windows throughout provide stellar views of Central Park and Midtown.
The home had been on the market for $27.1 million. The buyer’s identity was shielded by the limited liability company Villa Borghese.
Ms. Baranski bought a duplex at 125 East 74th Street, off Park Avenue, for $2.2 million, which was just under the $2.5 million asking price. The apartment — virtually staged and in need of a little T.L.C., according to the listing photos — has four bedrooms, three baths and a formal dining room. It also comes with a separate office/staff quarters off the building’s lobby.
Ms. Baranski, who currently stars in the TV drama series “The Good Fight,” has won Tony Awards for her performances in “Rumors” and “The Real Thing.”
The apartment was sold by the 1989 Cristina Monet Zilkha Trust.
The estate of Mr. Browne sold his apartment at 25 Central Park West for just under $5 million. The home was listed in August for $5.85 million, four months after his death from Covid-19, and was under contract in September. The buyer was listed as Xeamo Inc.
The two-bedroom, two-bath residence is on the 21st floor of the prewar building, a.k.a. Century Condominium. It is 1,216 square feet and has an 800-square-foot landscaped terrace that was a source of pride for Mr. Browne and the centerpiece of his many parties and charitable events. Most of the rooms in the unit open to the terrace, which has a shower and flower gardens.
Mr. Browne, who worked for the Corcoran Group, brokered numerous deals in Manhattan during his long career as a real estate agent and represented many high-profile clients, like the rocker Jon Bon Jovi and the actors Uma Thurman and Alec Baldwin.
For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.
|
38. Furnishing Your Home in a Pandemic Will Require Patience.txt
|
By Ronda Kaysen
Jan. 1, 2021
Shopping for a dishwasher isn’t what it used to be.
Who knew that trying to find such a banal appliance would remind you of what it felt like to find toilet paper in April? Or dry yeast in April. Or a bicycle in May. You might be left wondering: When did dishwashers become the next hot item?
That’s what Sonya Racine began to think after she started shopping for one in early August. She had just bought a 2,000-square-foot house in LaSalle, Ill., and the dishwasher in the small, 1920s kitchen was broken. So she decided to buy an 18-inch Bosch in stainless steel — a seemingly reasonable purchase. The narrow model “is pretty common,” said Ms. Racine, 54, a retired flight attendant. “A lot of my friends have them in Chicago.”
But when she went to a local appliance store, she was told they had none, nor had they idea when they would get any. They wouldn’t even take her order. Home Depot was back-ordered until November. She had no luck at Lowe’s or Best Buy, either.
“Even the white ones were out of stock,” she said. In August, she found one at a local New Jersey chain that could ship in October. But the machine arrived damaged and had to be sent back. By then, that November Home Depot option didn’t look so bad, so she ordered one and actually got it at the end of the month.
Ms. Racine could handle the wait — she could live without a dishwasher for a few months — but the scale of the delays and lack of inventory concerned her. “My mom grew up in Germany during World War II and some days her whole meal would be a potato. In perspective, I have everything I need,” she said. “But this is a worrisome sign.”
Dishwashers are just the start. Homeowners are having difficulty finding sofas, chairs, refrigerators, wood, insulation, and furnaces to heat their homes. Interior designers say they’ve faced shortages of everything from wallpaper to the samples of materials they show clients. Pamela Eberhard, an interior designer in Beacon, N.Y., described “delays like I’ve never seen,” including a $1,300 gray tufted sofa from Urban Outfitters that was back-ordered until November 2021.
“It’s impossible to get anything,” said Ms. Eberhard, who owns North Nine Designs. “I can’t get a sofa, can’t get dining room chairs, can’t get dining room tables. Everything is out of stock, everything is backed up.”
The pandemic has upended the global supply chain, with problems plaguing it at nearly every turn and affecting the availability of a spectrum of goods from laptops to beer and Clorox wipes.
Back in March, many companies, worried that customers wouldn’t be shopping, halted orders and set off a ripple effect. Factories shut down or slowed production. Materials, like fillings and fabrics for sofas, dried up, which made it a lot harder to make a sofa.
Goods coming from China that used to arrive in three to four weeks now take three months, said Per Hong, a senior partner specializing in global supply chains at Kearney, a global management consultancy. Once they do arrive, they often face more delays at warehouses or getting onto trucks for delivery.
Consumer behavior has also been wildly unpredictable during months of quarantine, with homebound Americans making unexpected runs on items like heating lamps, desks and blowup pools. Basic materials like aluminum are in short supply as people buy more canned soda and beer to drink at home rather than ordering from fountains at bars and restaurants.
“We’re seeing the fallout of this pandemic that is impacting every single level of that supply chain end to end,” Mr. Hong said. “And we’re seeing it all start to come together at once.”
Another piece of the puzzle: It turns out that homebound Americans like to sink their money into their homes. Home-furnishing stores, including big ones like Pottery Barn, West Elm and Wayfair, saw online sales surge by 66 percent year over year through November, according to 1010data, which analyzes consumer habits.
But it’s hard to decorate if you can’t actually get the stuff you ordered. Facebook groups, including one for fans of Pottery Barn, Serena and Lily, and Ballard Design, commiserate about monthslong waits for accent chairs and drapery, hemming over whether it’s better to hold out for the item or cancel the order.
The delays can seem random and arbitrary — some items are readily available, some spontaneously arrive weeks ahead of schedule, and others see their delivery dates delayed indefinitely. It can all feel like a spin of the roulette wheel.
Sarah and Adam Nichols are still waiting on a sofa and love seat that they ordered in September to furnish their new home, a five-bedroom Victorian near Harrisburg, Pa. The most recent estimated arrival: sometime in January. Ms. Nichols, 33, who works for an office supply company, puts the odds of that happening at 60 percent.
“The lady that helped us that day in the store and took our order was pretty much like, ‘I know this is pretty much going to stink, you want your furniture now and this is all I can offer,’” said Ms. Nichols, 33.
Until the furniture arrives, the couple are sitting on a rocking chair and a couple of folding chairs in the living room. Even secondhand items have been hard to come by, like chairs for their dining room table. “I could probably get them used; that’s OK because I do crafts and could fix them up,” she said. “But every time something would come up, they’d be gone within the hour.”
She finally found a set of chairs at a local Habitat for Humanity ReStore, and snatched them up. “You almost had to impulse buy,” she said.
These delays could be with us for a while. The pandemic is worsening, even as vaccines trickle out. And global trade is a complicated beast, plagued by breakdowns without quick fixes. “It’s going to be months still, if not years, before we get to a level of normalcy in the way that we can satisfy these needs,” Mr. Hong said.
For General Judd, an interior designer and principal at Me and General Design in Brooklyn, the changes have reset expectations, sending him back to the drawing board to redesign spaces and explain to clients that a material that used to take six weeks to arrive could now take six months, or longer. “We’ve learned to pivot,” he said.
But he has come to see the problem as an extension of his experiences at the grocery store, where he’s no longer surprised when paper towels are out of stock. “Before, we were all moving so fast all the time and everything was readily available and you get used to that,” Mr. Judd said. “And now that we’ve had this wrench thrown in, we should use this time to look back and say, ‘Hey, you know, it’s going to get here when it gets here.’ ”
Until then, we’ll just have to wait.
For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.
|
By Ronda Kaysen
Jan. 1, 2021
Shopping for a dishwasher isn’t what it used to be.
Who knew that trying to find such a banal appliance would remind you of what it felt like to find toilet paper in April? Or dry yeast in April. Or a bicycle in May. You might be left wondering: When did dishwashers become the next hot item?
That’s what Sonya Racine began to think after she started shopping for one in early August. She had just bought a 2,000-square-foot house in LaSalle, Ill.,
|
and the dishwasher in the small, 1920s kitchen was broken. So she decided to buy an 18-inch Bosch in stainless steel — a seemingly reasonable purchase. The narrow model “is pretty common,” said Ms. Racine, 54, a retired flight attendant. “A lot of my friends have them in Chicago.”
But when she went to a local appliance store, she was told they had none, nor had they idea when they would get any. They wouldn’t even take her order. Home Depot was back-ordered until November. She had no luck at Lowe’s or Best Buy, either.
“Even the white ones were out of stock,” she said. In August, she found one at a local New Jersey chain that could ship in October. But the machine arrived damaged and had to be sent back. By then, that November Home Depot option didn’t look so bad, so she ordered one and actually got it at the end of the month.
Ms. Racine could handle the wait — she could live without a dishwasher for a few months — but the scale of the delays and lack of inventory concerned her. “My mom grew up in Germany during World War II and some days her whole meal would be a potato. In perspective, I have everything I need,” she said. “But this is a worrisome sign.”
Dishwashers are just the start. Homeowners are having difficulty finding sofas, chairs, refrigerators, wood, insulation, and furnaces to heat their homes. Interior designers say they’ve faced shortages of everything from wallpaper to the samples of materials they show clients. Pamela Eberhard, an interior designer in Beacon, N.Y., described “delays like I’ve never seen,” including a $1,300 gray tufted sofa from Urban Outfitters that was back-ordered until November 2021.
“It’s impossible to get anything,” said Ms. Eberhard, who owns North Nine Designs. “I can’t get a sofa, can’t get dining room chairs, can’t get dining room tables. Everything is out of stock, everything is backed up.”
The pandemic has upended the global supply chain, with problems plaguing it at nearly every turn and affecting the availability of a spectrum of goods from laptops to beer and Clorox wipes.
Back in March, many companies, worried that customers wouldn’t be shopping, halted orders and set off a ripple effect. Factories shut down or slowed production. Materials, like fillings and fabrics for sofas, dried up, which made it a lot harder to make a sofa.
Goods coming from China that used to arrive in three to four weeks now take three months, said Per Hong, a senior partner specializing in global supply chains at Kearney, a global management consultancy. Once they do arrive, they often face more delays at warehouses or getting onto trucks for delivery.
Consumer behavior has also been wildly unpredictable during months of quarantine, with homebound Americans making unexpected runs on items like heating lamps, desks and blowup pools. Basic materials like aluminum are in short supply as people buy more canned soda and beer to drink at home rather than ordering from fountains at bars and restaurants.
“We’re seeing the fallout of this pandemic that is impacting every single level of that supply chain end to end,” Mr. Hong said. “And we’re seeing it all start to come together at once.”
Another piece of the puzzle: It turns out that homebound Americans like to sink their money into their homes. Home-furnishing stores, including big ones like Pottery Barn, West Elm and Wayfair, saw online sales surge by 66 percent year over year through November, according to 1010data, which analyzes consumer habits.
But it’s hard to decorate if you can’t actually get the stuff you ordered. Facebook groups, including one for fans of Pottery Barn, Serena and Lily, and Ballard Design, commiserate about monthslong waits for accent chairs and drapery, hemming over whether it’s better to hold out for the item or cancel the order.
The delays can seem random and arbitrary — some items are readily available, some spontaneously arrive weeks ahead of schedule, and others see their delivery dates delayed indefinitely. It can all feel like a spin of the roulette wheel.
Sarah and Adam Nichols are still waiting on a sofa and love seat that they ordered in September to furnish their new home, a five-bedroom Victorian near Harrisburg, Pa. The most recent estimated arrival: sometime in January. Ms. Nichols, 33, who works for an office supply company, puts the odds of that happening at 60 percent.
“The lady that helped us that day in the store and took our order was pretty much like, ‘I know this is pretty much going to stink, you want your furniture now and this is all I can offer,’” said Ms. Nichols, 33.
Until the furniture arrives, the couple are sitting on a rocking chair and a couple of folding chairs in the living room. Even secondhand items have been hard to come by, like chairs for their dining room table. “I could probably get them used; that’s OK because I do crafts and could fix them up,” she said. “But every time something would come up, they’d be gone within the hour.”
She finally found a set of chairs at a local Habitat for Humanity ReStore, and snatched them up. “You almost had to impulse buy,” she said.
These delays could be with us for a while. The pandemic is worsening, even as vaccines trickle out. And global trade is a complicated beast, plagued by breakdowns without quick fixes. “It’s going to be months still, if not years, before we get to a level of normalcy in the way that we can satisfy these needs,” Mr. Hong said.
For General Judd, an interior designer and principal at Me and General Design in Brooklyn, the changes have reset expectations, sending him back to the drawing board to redesign spaces and explain to clients that a material that used to take six weeks to arrive could now take six months, or longer. “We’ve learned to pivot,” he said.
But he has come to see the problem as an extension of his experiences at the grocery store, where he’s no longer surprised when paper towels are out of stock. “Before, we were all moving so fast all the time and everything was readily available and you get used to that,” Mr. Judd said. “And now that we’ve had this wrench thrown in, we should use this time to look back and say, ‘Hey, you know, it’s going to get here when it gets here.’ ”
Until then, we’ll just have to wait.
For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.
|
73. Sindika Dokolo, Crusader for Return of African Art, Dies at 48.txt
|
By Richard Sandomir
Nov. 11, 2020
Sindika Dokolo, a wealthy Congolese art collector who crusaded for the return of African art removed during the colonial era by Western museums, art dealers and auction houses, but who became embroiled this year in investigations into how his Angolan wife had acquired her riches, died on Oct. 29 in Dubai. He was 48.
His family announced his death on his Twitter account. According to news media reports, he died in a diving accident off the coast of Dubai.
“Works that used to be clearly in African museums must absolutely return to Africa,” Mr. Dokolo told The New York Times in 2015. “There are works that disappeared from Africa and are now circulating on the world market based on obvious lies about how they got there.”
Mr. Dokolo, who amassed a 5,000-piece collection of contemporary African art, established a foundation in 2013 that uses a network of dealers, researchers and lawyers working in Brussels and London to monitor the art market and scour archives for African art that might be repatriated.
When a stolen piece is tracked down, Mr. Dokolo told Artnet News last year, “we confront the current owner and we offer them two options: Either we go to court based on the evidence that we have, which means reputational damage, or we pay an indemnity, which is not the current market price, but the price they paid when they acquired it.”
His foundation has so far located 17 artworks and returned 12 to their rightful places. “If I have to spend a large deal of money and five years in court, I will do it,” Mr. Dokolo told The African Report in 2016.
His early recoveries include ancestral female masks and a male statue of the Chokwe people of central and southern Africa. They had been looted from the Dundo Museum in Angola during the Angolan civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 2002.
Mr. Dokolo had money aplenty to repatriate purloined African art. His father founded the Bank of Kinshasa in Congo during the dictatorial reign of Mobutu Sese Seko, and Mr. Dokolo was married to Isabel dos Santos, a daughter of Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who was the president of Angola from 1979 to 2017. A billionaire, Ms. dos Santos is said to be Africa’s richest woman.
In January, the Angolan authorities charged Ms. dos Santos with money laundering and embezzlement. Investigations by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and 36 media partners, including The New York Times, showed how Western financial firms, consultants, lawyers and accountants had helped her profit from her father’s rule of Angola and move hundreds of millions of dollars in public money out of the country. The journalists were aided by 715,000 documents, called the Luanda Leaks, which were provided by a whistle-blower.
Ms. dos Santos’ assets, as well as Mr. Dokolo’s, were frozen in Angola, then in Portugal and the Netherlands, where they had business interests. The Angolan government is trying to recover about $1 billion in assets from the couple.
Mr. Dokolo had said that he and wife were scapegoats of the Angolan government, which is now led by President João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço.
“It does not attack the agents of public companies accused of embezzlement, just a family operating in the private sector,” Mr. Dokolo told Radio France Internationale in January.
Sindika Dokolo was born on May 16, 1972, in Kinshasa, Zaire (the former name of the Democratic Republic of Congo). His father, Augustin Dokolo Sanu, inspired his son to collect African art; his mother, Hanne (Kruse) Dokolo, was born in Denmark and moved to Congo in 1966 to oversee the Danish Red Cross dispensary there. She married Augustin Dokolo in 1968.
Sindika was raised in France and Belgium with his two sisters and a brother, attended the Lycée Saint-Louis-de-Gonzague in Paris and studied economics, commerce and foreign languages at the Pierre and Marie Curie University of Paris. According to his online biography, he left France in 1995 to be with his father and pursue family investments.
Mr. Dokolo and Ms. dos Santos married in 2002, bringing him to Angola, a Congo neighbor. Information about his survivors other than his wife was not immediately available.
Mr. Dokolo’s vast African collection includes works by the British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare and the South Africans Zanele Muholi and William Kentridge. He helped African artists show their work at Western events, lent some of his collection to the Venice Biennale in 2007 and gave 340,000 euros, through his foundation, to 17 artists who exhibited at Documenta, the German art event, in 2017.
But he seemed most passionate about bringing stolen art back to Africa, with a focus on his adopted homeland. Announcing the purchase of a Chokwe mask from a French dealer in 2016, he said, “Now is the time for all of Angola’s lost cultural treasures to return home, where they can play their role to the full; a role that will help strengthen Angola’s culture and knowledge.”
|
By Richard Sandomir
Nov. 11, 2020
Sindika Dokolo, a wealthy Congolese art collector who crusaded for the return of African art removed during the colonial era by Western museums, art dealers and auction houses, but who became embroiled this year in investigations into how his Angolan wife had acquired her riches, died on Oct. 29 in Dubai. He was 48.
His family announced his death on his Twitter account. According to news media reports, he died in a diving accident off the coast of Dubai.
“Works that used to be clearly in African
|
museums must absolutely return to Africa,” Mr. Dokolo told The New York Times in 2015. “There are works that disappeared from Africa and are now circulating on the world market based on obvious lies about how they got there.”
Mr. Dokolo, who amassed a 5,000-piece collection of contemporary African art, established a foundation in 2013 that uses a network of dealers, researchers and lawyers working in Brussels and London to monitor the art market and scour archives for African art that might be repatriated.
When a stolen piece is tracked down, Mr. Dokolo told Artnet News last year, “we confront the current owner and we offer them two options: Either we go to court based on the evidence that we have, which means reputational damage, or we pay an indemnity, which is not the current market price, but the price they paid when they acquired it.”
His foundation has so far located 17 artworks and returned 12 to their rightful places. “If I have to spend a large deal of money and five years in court, I will do it,” Mr. Dokolo told The African Report in 2016.
His early recoveries include ancestral female masks and a male statue of the Chokwe people of central and southern Africa. They had been looted from the Dundo Museum in Angola during the Angolan civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 2002.
Mr. Dokolo had money aplenty to repatriate purloined African art. His father founded the Bank of Kinshasa in Congo during the dictatorial reign of Mobutu Sese Seko, and Mr. Dokolo was married to Isabel dos Santos, a daughter of Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who was the president of Angola from 1979 to 2017. A billionaire, Ms. dos Santos is said to be Africa’s richest woman.
In January, the Angolan authorities charged Ms. dos Santos with money laundering and embezzlement. Investigations by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and 36 media partners, including The New York Times, showed how Western financial firms, consultants, lawyers and accountants had helped her profit from her father’s rule of Angola and move hundreds of millions of dollars in public money out of the country. The journalists were aided by 715,000 documents, called the Luanda Leaks, which were provided by a whistle-blower.
Ms. dos Santos’ assets, as well as Mr. Dokolo’s, were frozen in Angola, then in Portugal and the Netherlands, where they had business interests. The Angolan government is trying to recover about $1 billion in assets from the couple.
Mr. Dokolo had said that he and wife were scapegoats of the Angolan government, which is now led by President João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço.
“It does not attack the agents of public companies accused of embezzlement, just a family operating in the private sector,” Mr. Dokolo told Radio France Internationale in January.
Sindika Dokolo was born on May 16, 1972, in Kinshasa, Zaire (the former name of the Democratic Republic of Congo). His father, Augustin Dokolo Sanu, inspired his son to collect African art; his mother, Hanne (Kruse) Dokolo, was born in Denmark and moved to Congo in 1966 to oversee the Danish Red Cross dispensary there. She married Augustin Dokolo in 1968.
Sindika was raised in France and Belgium with his two sisters and a brother, attended the Lycée Saint-Louis-de-Gonzague in Paris and studied economics, commerce and foreign languages at the Pierre and Marie Curie University of Paris. According to his online biography, he left France in 1995 to be with his father and pursue family investments.
Mr. Dokolo and Ms. dos Santos married in 2002, bringing him to Angola, a Congo neighbor. Information about his survivors other than his wife was not immediately available.
Mr. Dokolo’s vast African collection includes works by the British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare and the South Africans Zanele Muholi and William Kentridge. He helped African artists show their work at Western events, lent some of his collection to the Venice Biennale in 2007 and gave 340,000 euros, through his foundation, to 17 artists who exhibited at Documenta, the German art event, in 2017.
But he seemed most passionate about bringing stolen art back to Africa, with a focus on his adopted homeland. Announcing the purchase of a Chokwe mask from a French dealer in 2016, he said, “Now is the time for all of Angola’s lost cultural treasures to return home, where they can play their role to the full; a role that will help strengthen Angola’s culture and knowledge.”
|
68. Trump’s Election Tantrum.txt
|
By Charles M. Blow
Opinion Columnist
When my oldest son was 3 years old we got him into a preschool class at an elite private school across the street from Prospect Park in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn.
It was more than we could afford — we couldn’t even afford to live in Park Slope, but instead lived in the neighboring Prospect Heights section — but, nervous and stressed by the unreasonable pressure new parents often feel with a first child to give them the absolute best at all costs, we found the money anyway.
I thought my son was well adjusted. I had worked evening or late shifts since my son was born. He spent his mornings with me. I took him to the park and to play spaces with other children. He always seemed to socialize well with them. In the interview for the preschool — yes, there was an interview for a 3-year-old — the admissions officer dumped a tub of toys on the floor, watched him play with them, and asked him questions. Apparently, he passed.
On the first day of school, I took him to class. He seemed fine, navigating the space with comfort and ease. But, then they told the parents that it was time for us to go. We nervously shuffled out and stood near the door in the hall, peeking through the gaps in the artwork taped to the window.
Some of the children cried, but none of them like my son. He threw a full tantrum, fighting and scratching the teachers who tried to calm him, screaming and crying until he finally threw up. I was stunned and anxious and mortified. I came back into the room and they let me take him home. His tiny body heaved in my arms as I walked him home until the crying stopped and he dozed off.
Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
I realized that he was always so comfortable when in the park or in play spaces because I was always there. I was the comfort. I was the safety. I was his power.
For a week, I took him to class, and the scene repeated itself every day: fighting, scratching, screaming, crying and then the vomit. At which point, each day, I would collect him and take him home.
This could not continue. I asked his teachers if I could sit in the back of the class with him — his school day ended at noon — until he got comfortable. They allowed it. So, every day I would sit in the back of the class in a chair design for a preschool — yes, they are very, very, very small and low, like sitting on a small stack of books — with my coffee and newspaper, him glancing over every now and then to make sure that I was still there.
When they snacked, I snacked. When they went out for recess, I went out for recess.
This went on for months until one day when we were heading out for recess, he turned to me and said, “Dad, it’s OK, you don’t have to come.” And that was it. That was the last day I stayed with him at school.
I am reminded of that story now that President Trump is refusing to concede the election and throwing into question whether or not he will peacefully relinquish power: He is acting like a child throwing a tantrum because he is being displaced from his comfort and power. The smattering of states that four years ago handed Trump the presidency abandoned him this year and he is unable to handle that idea.
But, my son didn’t hold the power of the presidency. Americans simply don’t have months to let Trump grow up and get comfortable with his loss.
So he is doing, and has done, everything in his power to undermine the legitimacy of this election. And, among his supporters, that is working. A poll this week by The Economist/YouGov found that 86 percent of Trump voters believe that Joe Biden didn’t legitimately win the election. That would represent about 62 million voters under Trump’s misinformation spell.
Trump is of course being aided and abetted in his deceit by a devout, deceitful conservative press and the conservative cowards in Congress who don’t want to get crosswise with him, even if Trump does damage to our democracy.
Trump has essentially thrown in the towel on fighting the surging coronavirus pandemic, instead choosing to fight the will of the majority of the American electorate.
Many legislators think that they can simply ride Trump’s anger as he works his way through the stages of grief, finally to acceptance. That’s the mistake they made when Trump was first elected. They thought he would grow into the normalcy of the presidency. He didn’t. He took their silence as license. And by the time they thought they needed to confront him, he had grown too strong for them to do so.
Trump is once again taking Republicans’ silence as license, and by the time they speak up, he could be too invested in the idea of resisting the Election Day reality.
Trump isn’t only throwing a tantrum, he’s cutting his teeth.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram.
|
By Charles M. Blow
Opinion Columnist
When my oldest son was 3 years old we got him into a preschool class at an elite private school across the street from Prospect Park in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn.
It was more than we could afford — we couldn’t even afford to live in Park Slope, but instead lived in the neighboring Prospect Heights section — but, nervous and stressed by the unreasonable pressure new parents often feel with a first child to give them the absolute best at all costs, we found the money anyway.
I thought my son was well adjusted. I had worked evening or late shifts since my
|
son was born. He spent his mornings with me. I took him to the park and to play spaces with other children. He always seemed to socialize well with them. In the interview for the preschool — yes, there was an interview for a 3-year-old — the admissions officer dumped a tub of toys on the floor, watched him play with them, and asked him questions. Apparently, he passed.
On the first day of school, I took him to class. He seemed fine, navigating the space with comfort and ease. But, then they told the parents that it was time for us to go. We nervously shuffled out and stood near the door in the hall, peeking through the gaps in the artwork taped to the window.
Some of the children cried, but none of them like my son. He threw a full tantrum, fighting and scratching the teachers who tried to calm him, screaming and crying until he finally threw up. I was stunned and anxious and mortified. I came back into the room and they let me take him home. His tiny body heaved in my arms as I walked him home until the crying stopped and he dozed off.
Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
I realized that he was always so comfortable when in the park or in play spaces because I was always there. I was the comfort. I was the safety. I was his power.
For a week, I took him to class, and the scene repeated itself every day: fighting, scratching, screaming, crying and then the vomit. At which point, each day, I would collect him and take him home.
This could not continue. I asked his teachers if I could sit in the back of the class with him — his school day ended at noon — until he got comfortable. They allowed it. So, every day I would sit in the back of the class in a chair design for a preschool — yes, they are very, very, very small and low, like sitting on a small stack of books — with my coffee and newspaper, him glancing over every now and then to make sure that I was still there.
When they snacked, I snacked. When they went out for recess, I went out for recess.
This went on for months until one day when we were heading out for recess, he turned to me and said, “Dad, it’s OK, you don’t have to come.” And that was it. That was the last day I stayed with him at school.
I am reminded of that story now that President Trump is refusing to concede the election and throwing into question whether or not he will peacefully relinquish power: He is acting like a child throwing a tantrum because he is being displaced from his comfort and power. The smattering of states that four years ago handed Trump the presidency abandoned him this year and he is unable to handle that idea.
But, my son didn’t hold the power of the presidency. Americans simply don’t have months to let Trump grow up and get comfortable with his loss.
So he is doing, and has done, everything in his power to undermine the legitimacy of this election. And, among his supporters, that is working. A poll this week by The Economist/YouGov found that 86 percent of Trump voters believe that Joe Biden didn’t legitimately win the election. That would represent about 62 million voters under Trump’s misinformation spell.
Trump is of course being aided and abetted in his deceit by a devout, deceitful conservative press and the conservative cowards in Congress who don’t want to get crosswise with him, even if Trump does damage to our democracy.
Trump has essentially thrown in the towel on fighting the surging coronavirus pandemic, instead choosing to fight the will of the majority of the American electorate.
Many legislators think that they can simply ride Trump’s anger as he works his way through the stages of grief, finally to acceptance. That’s the mistake they made when Trump was first elected. They thought he would grow into the normalcy of the presidency. He didn’t. He took their silence as license. And by the time they thought they needed to confront him, he had grown too strong for them to do so.
Trump is once again taking Republicans’ silence as license, and by the time they speak up, he could be too invested in the idea of resisting the Election Day reality.
Trump isn’t only throwing a tantrum, he’s cutting his teeth.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram.
|
11. Make Tinier New Year’s Resolutions This Year.txt
|
By Melissa Kirsch
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 25, 2021
Sign up to receive the At Home newsletter.
Welcome. A group of friends and I used to gather for brunch every year on New Year’s Day, and at the end of the meal, we’d each write a resolution on a slip of paper and put it in a hat. Then everyone drew from the hat, each receiving a random resolution, an assignment for the year from someone else at the table.
The resolution might be practical, something the person writing it hoped to do themselves: “Fold your clothes every night when you take them off,” “Sign up for voice lessons.” Or it might be something ridiculous: One year I drew, “Every morning when you wake up, stick your arms out at your sides, wiggle your fingers and say, “It’s showtime!”
We were trying to add some whimsy to resolution-making, to make entertaining a self-improvement practice that can sometimes feel punishing. As a result we were nudged out of our comfort zones (the friend who drew the “voice lessons” resolution actually took some lessons, something he wouldn’t have done otherwise). Since we hadn’t come up with the resolutions ourselves, they seemed like fun challenges rather than aspirations in pursuit of which we could fall short. (It took about a month for “It’s showtime” to fade from my morning schedule, but I still do it every now and then: a silly, theatrical flourish to start the day.)
For 2021, why not go gentle on the resolutions, keeping in mind that your nerves might be frayed, your zest for a life overhaul a bit depleted? Just as, earlier in the pandemic, I suggested making tiny changes in your day in order to create a routine instead of adopting a rigid schedule, you might look at resolutions as ways to tinker with your habits, not to totally replace them.
My colleague Christina Caron wrote a wonderful guide to downsizing your resolutions. Instead of declaring, “This is the year I get fit!,” start with something small, specific and attainable — this might be resolving to take a walk or jog, do a yoga video or stretch before bed a certain number of times per week. A small, achievable resolution is the perfect foundation on which to build. Get the satisfaction of following through on a reasonable goal, then you can build on it over the course of the year.
While you’re mulling your resolutions, I recommend this story about a service in D.C. that sells books by the foot to those who want to appear well-read on video calls.
I am enjoying the KCRW podcast “Welcome to L.A.,” in which the journalist David Weinberg tells a different, magical story about the city in each episode. My favorite episode so far: “The Case of the Missing Sprinkles,” about, among other things, the history of “The People’s Court.”
And here’s The Zombies performing “This Will Be Our Year” live in a bike shop in Austin in 2013.
What’s your small, manageable resolution for 2021? What tiny change will you commit to on this first day of the new year? Write to us: athome@nytimes.com. Include your name, age and location. We’re At Home. We’ll read every letter sent. As always, more ideas for leading a good life at home, all year long, appear below.
Like what you see?
You can always find much more to read, watch and do every day on At Home. And let us know what you think!
|
By Melissa Kirsch
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 25, 2021
Sign up to receive the At Home newsletter.
Welcome. A group of friends and I used to gather for brunch every year on New Year’s Day, and at the end of the meal, we’d each write a resolution on a slip of paper and put it in a hat. Then everyone drew from the hat, each receiving a random resolution, an assignment for the year from someone else at the table.
The resolution might be practical, something the person writing it hoped to do themselves: “
|
Fold your clothes every night when you take them off,” “Sign up for voice lessons.” Or it might be something ridiculous: One year I drew, “Every morning when you wake up, stick your arms out at your sides, wiggle your fingers and say, “It’s showtime!”
We were trying to add some whimsy to resolution-making, to make entertaining a self-improvement practice that can sometimes feel punishing. As a result we were nudged out of our comfort zones (the friend who drew the “voice lessons” resolution actually took some lessons, something he wouldn’t have done otherwise). Since we hadn’t come up with the resolutions ourselves, they seemed like fun challenges rather than aspirations in pursuit of which we could fall short. (It took about a month for “It’s showtime” to fade from my morning schedule, but I still do it every now and then: a silly, theatrical flourish to start the day.)
For 2021, why not go gentle on the resolutions, keeping in mind that your nerves might be frayed, your zest for a life overhaul a bit depleted? Just as, earlier in the pandemic, I suggested making tiny changes in your day in order to create a routine instead of adopting a rigid schedule, you might look at resolutions as ways to tinker with your habits, not to totally replace them.
My colleague Christina Caron wrote a wonderful guide to downsizing your resolutions. Instead of declaring, “This is the year I get fit!,” start with something small, specific and attainable — this might be resolving to take a walk or jog, do a yoga video or stretch before bed a certain number of times per week. A small, achievable resolution is the perfect foundation on which to build. Get the satisfaction of following through on a reasonable goal, then you can build on it over the course of the year.
While you’re mulling your resolutions, I recommend this story about a service in D.C. that sells books by the foot to those who want to appear well-read on video calls.
I am enjoying the KCRW podcast “Welcome to L.A.,” in which the journalist David Weinberg tells a different, magical story about the city in each episode. My favorite episode so far: “The Case of the Missing Sprinkles,” about, among other things, the history of “The People’s Court.”
And here’s The Zombies performing “This Will Be Our Year” live in a bike shop in Austin in 2013.
What’s your small, manageable resolution for 2021? What tiny change will you commit to on this first day of the new year? Write to us: athome@nytimes.com. Include your name, age and location. We’re At Home. We’ll read every letter sent. As always, more ideas for leading a good life at home, all year long, appear below.
Like what you see?
You can always find much more to read, watch and do every day on At Home. And let us know what you think!
|
56. Infrared Drones, Search Parties and a Lasso: Chasing a Runaway Llama.txt
|
By Sarah Maslin Nir
Jan. 1, 2021
BEDFORD CORNERS, N.Y. — Diana Heimann is the kind of person who traps mice in her farmhouse and releases them into nature preserves. The kind of person who kept Silkie chickens in her living room and their eggs in the cup holders of her car.
She’s not the kind of person who loses a llama.
But there she was on Wednesday, speeding from the North Castle Town Hall in Armonk, N.Y., to the police station in Mt. Kisco, the footwells of her Toyota scattered with spilled llama treats, passing out bushels of fliers: “LOST LLAMA,” one read. “Try not to scare him.”
“Gizmo,” she said aloud, as if a missing llama roving the hills of Bedford Corners, a wealthy, equestrian pocket of Westchester County, could hear her. “Where are you?”
Word of the weekslong hunt for Gizmo, the 7-year-old llama who absconded on Dec. 13, had already ricocheted around the town, the state and far beyond. Prayers and tips poured in from people who knew neither Ms. Heimann nor the first thing about pack animals. But a llama was on the loose, and it had captured the public’s imagination.
As the days stretched into llama-less weeks and concern grew, Ms. Heimann’s increasingly desperate Facebook posts morphed into calls for llama search parties.
Tipsters from around the region began calling her at all hours. Someone sent pictures of a llama — a different llama, safe in its paddock. Someone else sent a photo of “llama” dung that turned out to be the leavings of a deer. Complete strangers took to the hills and dales between the mansions and horse estates of the surrounding towns to find Gizmo. One caller said she had located him — with her psychic.
In this moment of unfathomable worry, of airborne plagues and economic ruin, the opportunity to fret over a lost llama became its own kind of balm. The search for Gizmo drew in strangers perhaps seeking a simpler thing to care about at a time when even our quotidian cares — to not get sick, to muddle through, to survive — are monumental.
“Everything is going real crazy in the world so anything that shows some love, being there for others, is important,” said Steven Brink, who with his daughter Celena, 9, spent four hours on Wednesday hiking the 225-acre Arthur W. Butler Memorial Sanctuary in Mt. Kisco, looking for Gizmo.
“The people in the woods thought I was a little crazy when I asked them if they saw a llama,” said Mr. Brink, who works in construction. “But I got the word out.”
Gizmo, whose coat is a patchwork of white and brown spots and whose face wears a permanent expression of mild offense, had arrived only the day before his disappearance, from Fairland, Indiana, just southeast of Indianapolis. He came with his best friend, a blondish llama named Sandman, whose unusual hair resembles the fronds of a mop.
But as soon as they arrived in their paddock beside the mansion on a 120-acre farm Ms. Heimann manages in New York, where Martha Stewart has an estate nearby, the pair went renegade, jumping the 5-foot fence of their new pasture. It was all too much for the sheltered Indiana llama, said Gizmo’s former owner, Heather Bruce: “He only knew his llama buddies.”
Both llamas had jumped the fence, but Sandman was apprehended quickly. Leo Garcia, the farm’s groundskeeper, spotted the pair loose on the lawn that morning. A cowboy who learned roping on the ranches of Guatemala, he grabbed a lasso from his truck bed and hurled it — right over Sandman’s head. “In one shot!” Mr. Garcia, 35, said later.
Sandman had been apprehended, but Gizmo, for all his supposed fealty to his stablemate, took off. Llamas can reach speeds of up to about 35 miles per hour, and Gizmo was out of Mr. Garcia’s lassoing range immediately. “Llamas,” said Mr. Garcia, “are too smart.”
Back on her farm in Indiana, Ms. Bruce, 45, prayed for Gizmo’s safe return. “The Lord loves animals as much as I do,” she said. “He took the care to put them all on the ark — and I believe truly that that happened — and he has always cared for them and will continue to care for them.”
But in Bedford Corners, Ms. Heimann was leaving nothing to divine providence. On Dec. 14, days before a walloping nor’easter would dump over a foot of snow on her town and any llamas unlucky enough to be outdoors, she placed a panicked call to Rochester Aerial Photography.
The owners of the drone photography business outside Rochester, David Olney Jr., 29, and Doug Grotke, 34, have been experimenting with infrared drones, but admitted they had never hunted the heat signature of a llama before.
As the storm barreled toward New York, the pair packed their drones and drove the six hours south to Bedford Corners on Dec. 15, where they spent another six hours fruitlessly scanning the area with their aircraft.
“I am an animal lover, and my wife is an animal lover,” Mr. Olney said. “She more or less said, ‘You need to get down there and help find that llama.’”
As the days wore on, Ms. Heimann began to fear the worst. She contacted the New York State Department of Transportation, she said, to ask, with trepidation, if any llamas had been hit by cars. None. Next, she called local hunting clubs asking them to keep an eye out — and hold their fire.
A specialist who uses sniffer dogs to find lost people and animals suggested she employ her two Tibetan spaniels to track Gizmo, she said, but they were better at barking than searching. An animal rescue organization said she should leave clippings of Sandman’s hair in the woods to draw out his friend, but the blond llama wouldn’t let her snip his locks.
And so on Wednesday, she whipped up $750 worth of posters featuring the patchwork llama and his typical perturbed face. (They also include a photo of his rear: “In case people see him while he’s running away,” she said). By late afternoon, Gizmo’s legion of online worriers had picked them up at the precinct and the town hall, and posted the fliers from Main Street in Mt. Kisco to the gravel roads of Bedford Corners.
That night, on the 17th day of Gizmo’s absence, another picture of a llama flashed on Ms. Heimann’s phone. The familiar patchwork, the same mildly miffed air. Could it be?
Just under a mile away from where Gizmo escaped, Jose Blanco and four colleagues had spent the last two weeks remodeling a bathroom in a house on Lounsbery Road — and not paying much attention to the llama wandering the yard of the vacant home next door.
“I never said anything because I thought the llama belonged to the other house,” said Mr. Blanco, 20. That changed when he saw a poster on Wednesday. After he texted the picture to her, Ms. Heimann sped over with Mr. Garcia — and his lasso.
By 7 p.m. Gizmo was wrangled and back home with Sandman; thinner, wearier, found.
At their job site the next morning, on the final day of the year, Mr. Blanco and his colleagues toasted Gizmo over their coffees. “Horrible things are happening in 2020 and we did a good thing: We found the llama and everybody felt so good,” Mr. Blanco said.
“Maybe it could be a sign for all of us,” he added. “It’s like good things are coming.”
|
By Sarah Maslin Nir
Jan. 1, 2021
BEDFORD CORNERS, N.Y. — Diana Heimann is the kind of person who traps mice in her farmhouse and releases them into nature preserves. The kind of person who kept Silkie chickens in her living room and their eggs in the cup holders of her car.
She’s not the kind of person who loses a llama.
But there she was on Wednesday, speeding from the North Castle Town Hall in Armonk, N.Y., to the police station in Mt. Kisco, the footwells of her Toyota scattered
|
with spilled llama treats, passing out bushels of fliers: “LOST LLAMA,” one read. “Try not to scare him.”
“Gizmo,” she said aloud, as if a missing llama roving the hills of Bedford Corners, a wealthy, equestrian pocket of Westchester County, could hear her. “Where are you?”
Word of the weekslong hunt for Gizmo, the 7-year-old llama who absconded on Dec. 13, had already ricocheted around the town, the state and far beyond. Prayers and tips poured in from people who knew neither Ms. Heimann nor the first thing about pack animals. But a llama was on the loose, and it had captured the public’s imagination.
As the days stretched into llama-less weeks and concern grew, Ms. Heimann’s increasingly desperate Facebook posts morphed into calls for llama search parties.
Tipsters from around the region began calling her at all hours. Someone sent pictures of a llama — a different llama, safe in its paddock. Someone else sent a photo of “llama” dung that turned out to be the leavings of a deer. Complete strangers took to the hills and dales between the mansions and horse estates of the surrounding towns to find Gizmo. One caller said she had located him — with her psychic.
In this moment of unfathomable worry, of airborne plagues and economic ruin, the opportunity to fret over a lost llama became its own kind of balm. The search for Gizmo drew in strangers perhaps seeking a simpler thing to care about at a time when even our quotidian cares — to not get sick, to muddle through, to survive — are monumental.
“Everything is going real crazy in the world so anything that shows some love, being there for others, is important,” said Steven Brink, who with his daughter Celena, 9, spent four hours on Wednesday hiking the 225-acre Arthur W. Butler Memorial Sanctuary in Mt. Kisco, looking for Gizmo.
“The people in the woods thought I was a little crazy when I asked them if they saw a llama,” said Mr. Brink, who works in construction. “But I got the word out.”
Gizmo, whose coat is a patchwork of white and brown spots and whose face wears a permanent expression of mild offense, had arrived only the day before his disappearance, from Fairland, Indiana, just southeast of Indianapolis. He came with his best friend, a blondish llama named Sandman, whose unusual hair resembles the fronds of a mop.
But as soon as they arrived in their paddock beside the mansion on a 120-acre farm Ms. Heimann manages in New York, where Martha Stewart has an estate nearby, the pair went renegade, jumping the 5-foot fence of their new pasture. It was all too much for the sheltered Indiana llama, said Gizmo’s former owner, Heather Bruce: “He only knew his llama buddies.”
Both llamas had jumped the fence, but Sandman was apprehended quickly. Leo Garcia, the farm’s groundskeeper, spotted the pair loose on the lawn that morning. A cowboy who learned roping on the ranches of Guatemala, he grabbed a lasso from his truck bed and hurled it — right over Sandman’s head. “In one shot!” Mr. Garcia, 35, said later.
Sandman had been apprehended, but Gizmo, for all his supposed fealty to his stablemate, took off. Llamas can reach speeds of up to about 35 miles per hour, and Gizmo was out of Mr. Garcia’s lassoing range immediately. “Llamas,” said Mr. Garcia, “are too smart.”
Back on her farm in Indiana, Ms. Bruce, 45, prayed for Gizmo’s safe return. “The Lord loves animals as much as I do,” she said. “He took the care to put them all on the ark — and I believe truly that that happened — and he has always cared for them and will continue to care for them.”
But in Bedford Corners, Ms. Heimann was leaving nothing to divine providence. On Dec. 14, days before a walloping nor’easter would dump over a foot of snow on her town and any llamas unlucky enough to be outdoors, she placed a panicked call to Rochester Aerial Photography.
The owners of the drone photography business outside Rochester, David Olney Jr., 29, and Doug Grotke, 34, have been experimenting with infrared drones, but admitted they had never hunted the heat signature of a llama before.
As the storm barreled toward New York, the pair packed their drones and drove the six hours south to Bedford Corners on Dec. 15, where they spent another six hours fruitlessly scanning the area with their aircraft.
“I am an animal lover, and my wife is an animal lover,” Mr. Olney said. “She more or less said, ‘You need to get down there and help find that llama.’”
As the days wore on, Ms. Heimann began to fear the worst. She contacted the New York State Department of Transportation, she said, to ask, with trepidation, if any llamas had been hit by cars. None. Next, she called local hunting clubs asking them to keep an eye out — and hold their fire.
A specialist who uses sniffer dogs to find lost people and animals suggested she employ her two Tibetan spaniels to track Gizmo, she said, but they were better at barking than searching. An animal rescue organization said she should leave clippings of Sandman’s hair in the woods to draw out his friend, but the blond llama wouldn’t let her snip his locks.
And so on Wednesday, she whipped up $750 worth of posters featuring the patchwork llama and his typical perturbed face. (They also include a photo of his rear: “In case people see him while he’s running away,” she said). By late afternoon, Gizmo’s legion of online worriers had picked them up at the precinct and the town hall, and posted the fliers from Main Street in Mt. Kisco to the gravel roads of Bedford Corners.
That night, on the 17th day of Gizmo’s absence, another picture of a llama flashed on Ms. Heimann’s phone. The familiar patchwork, the same mildly miffed air. Could it be?
Just under a mile away from where Gizmo escaped, Jose Blanco and four colleagues had spent the last two weeks remodeling a bathroom in a house on Lounsbery Road — and not paying much attention to the llama wandering the yard of the vacant home next door.
“I never said anything because I thought the llama belonged to the other house,” said Mr. Blanco, 20. That changed when he saw a poster on Wednesday. After he texted the picture to her, Ms. Heimann sped over with Mr. Garcia — and his lasso.
By 7 p.m. Gizmo was wrangled and back home with Sandman; thinner, wearier, found.
At their job site the next morning, on the final day of the year, Mr. Blanco and his colleagues toasted Gizmo over their coffees. “Horrible things are happening in 2020 and we did a good thing: We found the llama and everybody felt so good,” Mr. Blanco said.
“Maybe it could be a sign for all of us,” he added. “It’s like good things are coming.”
|
24. Will 250 Lanterns Be Enough to Save Chinatown?.txt
|
By Alyson Krueger
Jan. 1, 2021
Two days before Christmas, Mott Street, right in the heart of Chinatown, was filled with lights overnight. Residents woke up to 250 violet, pink, orange and gold lanterns hanging above the street. Local artists had painted whimsical designs and auspicious characters onto them: fu, for good fortune; he, for peace. Other characters stood for love, happiness, wealth and longevity.
It is a neighborhood that could use some cheer, said Max Davidson from Admerasia, an advertising agency that focuses on Asian-American entrepreneurs. “Even in January,” he said, referring to the early days of the coronavirus pandemic and the xenophobia that Chinatown suffered, “a lot of the local businesses were reporting a 50 to 70 percent revenue drop.” Since then there has been little improvement.
The lanterns are here to stay, at least into the new year. Light Up Chinatown is a grass-roots initiative that is kept going by donations, and so far, the group has raised almost $32,000. The actor Will Smith even gave $10,000, in conjunction with the nonprofit Asian Americans for Equality, after hearing about the project. Light Up Chinatown hopes ultimately to raise $47,000 to make more blocks look just as appealing (Bayard Street between Mott and Bowery is next).
The idea for the lanterns came from Patrick Mock, 26, who was born and raised in Chinatown and is the manager of 46 Mott Bakery.
In March, his bakery was still open, supplying meals for the homeless, the elderly and hospital workers on the night shift at nearby Mount Sinai Beth Israel. But most neighboring businesses were not. “All the storefronts were closed, and there were no lights,” he said. “When it’s a dark street, you are a bit more on edge.”
Other festive displays across the city have been honed over decades. The first Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center went up in 1931. The extravagant Christmas lights tradition in the Dyker Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn started in the 1980s. But Light Up Chinatown materialized in a matter of weeks thanks to Mr. Mock’s coalescing forces in the community.
“Light Up Chinatown was just an idea about two months ago,” said Wendy He, 25, a consultant at IBM who helped raise money for the project. “This was more of a collective group effort. Different people did different things.”
Send Chinatown Love, an organization that she works with and that supports local businesses, oversaw much of the financing.
“We launched the fund-raising website on Nov. 17,” she said. Donations of any size were welcome, but $45 would get someone’s name inscribed in a hanging lantern, and $150 would get the donor a matching paper lantern to take home.
The street lanterns came from Pearl River Mart, the longtime Chinese-American department store, which is relocating its flagship store this year, though it has not announced where.
“We ordered them on Dec. 4,” said Joanne Kwong, the second-generation owner of Pearl River. “Ordinarily a traditional lantern installation would be red, but it just so happens red lanterns were out of stock. I guess people needed a lot of luck this year.”
Mr. Mock persuaded more than a dozen volunteers to work alongside lighting professionals (some stayed until 3 in the morning) one night to help hang the lanterns. Inspired by the elaborate outdoor dining setup at Buddakan, which is part of Chelsea Market, Ms. Kwong set up a station to dip each of the 250 lanterns in a polyurethane mixture to protect them from the elements.
Pearl River Mart has a location at Chelsea Market, and Ms. Kwong asked the owner of Buddakan what made its lanterns so hardy. (Nylon, the material from which the lanterns are made, is waterproof. The glue that holds the parts together is not.) The restaurant owner happily passed on the urethane formula, and the Mott Street lanterns stood up to their first test: a Christmas Eve storm that left hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers without power.
For Mr. Mock, the greatest challenge was convincing the members of the older Chinatown organizations that lights could bring real change. It helped that a public confrontation with Mayor Bill de Blasio, in which Mr. Mock implored the mayor to do more to help rescue Chinatown, went viral after a New York Post reporter, Elizabeth Meryl Rosner, posted a video of the incident on Twitter.
The old-timers of Chinatown, never very demonstrative, seem to approve. Mr. Mock said it’s hard for people of his parents’ generation to say “I love you.”
“But they do other things,” he added.
“They all try to feed me, they say I don’t eat enough, or I don’t sleep enough. They stop me on the streets. That is their way of saying thank you.”
|
By Alyson Krueger
Jan. 1, 2021
Two days before Christmas, Mott Street, right in the heart of Chinatown, was filled with lights overnight. Residents woke up to 250 violet, pink, orange and gold lanterns hanging above the street. Local artists had painted whimsical designs and auspicious characters onto them: fu, for good fortune; he, for peace. Other characters stood for love, happiness, wealth and longevity.
It is a neighborhood that could use some cheer, said Max Davidson from Admerasia, an advertising agency that focuses on Asian
|
-American entrepreneurs. “Even in January,” he said, referring to the early days of the coronavirus pandemic and the xenophobia that Chinatown suffered, “a lot of the local businesses were reporting a 50 to 70 percent revenue drop.” Since then there has been little improvement.
The lanterns are here to stay, at least into the new year. Light Up Chinatown is a grass-roots initiative that is kept going by donations, and so far, the group has raised almost $32,000. The actor Will Smith even gave $10,000, in conjunction with the nonprofit Asian Americans for Equality, after hearing about the project. Light Up Chinatown hopes ultimately to raise $47,000 to make more blocks look just as appealing (Bayard Street between Mott and Bowery is next).
The idea for the lanterns came from Patrick Mock, 26, who was born and raised in Chinatown and is the manager of 46 Mott Bakery.
In March, his bakery was still open, supplying meals for the homeless, the elderly and hospital workers on the night shift at nearby Mount Sinai Beth Israel. But most neighboring businesses were not. “All the storefronts were closed, and there were no lights,” he said. “When it’s a dark street, you are a bit more on edge.”
Other festive displays across the city have been honed over decades. The first Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center went up in 1931. The extravagant Christmas lights tradition in the Dyker Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn started in the 1980s. But Light Up Chinatown materialized in a matter of weeks thanks to Mr. Mock’s coalescing forces in the community.
“Light Up Chinatown was just an idea about two months ago,” said Wendy He, 25, a consultant at IBM who helped raise money for the project. “This was more of a collective group effort. Different people did different things.”
Send Chinatown Love, an organization that she works with and that supports local businesses, oversaw much of the financing.
“We launched the fund-raising website on Nov. 17,” she said. Donations of any size were welcome, but $45 would get someone’s name inscribed in a hanging lantern, and $150 would get the donor a matching paper lantern to take home.
The street lanterns came from Pearl River Mart, the longtime Chinese-American department store, which is relocating its flagship store this year, though it has not announced where.
“We ordered them on Dec. 4,” said Joanne Kwong, the second-generation owner of Pearl River. “Ordinarily a traditional lantern installation would be red, but it just so happens red lanterns were out of stock. I guess people needed a lot of luck this year.”
Mr. Mock persuaded more than a dozen volunteers to work alongside lighting professionals (some stayed until 3 in the morning) one night to help hang the lanterns. Inspired by the elaborate outdoor dining setup at Buddakan, which is part of Chelsea Market, Ms. Kwong set up a station to dip each of the 250 lanterns in a polyurethane mixture to protect them from the elements.
Pearl River Mart has a location at Chelsea Market, and Ms. Kwong asked the owner of Buddakan what made its lanterns so hardy. (Nylon, the material from which the lanterns are made, is waterproof. The glue that holds the parts together is not.) The restaurant owner happily passed on the urethane formula, and the Mott Street lanterns stood up to their first test: a Christmas Eve storm that left hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers without power.
For Mr. Mock, the greatest challenge was convincing the members of the older Chinatown organizations that lights could bring real change. It helped that a public confrontation with Mayor Bill de Blasio, in which Mr. Mock implored the mayor to do more to help rescue Chinatown, went viral after a New York Post reporter, Elizabeth Meryl Rosner, posted a video of the incident on Twitter.
The old-timers of Chinatown, never very demonstrative, seem to approve. Mr. Mock said it’s hard for people of his parents’ generation to say “I love you.”
“But they do other things,” he added.
“They all try to feed me, they say I don’t eat enough, or I don’t sleep enough. They stop me on the streets. That is their way of saying thank you.”
|
53. 7 Ways to Socialize in a Frigid New York City.txt
|
By Alyson Krueger
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 5, 2021
It’s officially winter. So what?
New Yorkers, creative and resilient as ever, have found ways to continue socializing outdoors, whether it’s eating pizza in an inflatable hot tub on a roof or dining together al fresco at a snow-encrusted table.
As the temperatures drop, here is how seven New Yorkers will continue to do what they do outside.
Thermoses in Central Park
Damien Nunes, design director, Greenwich Village
The last time I ate outdoors I was at American Bar, and I had so much anxiety about being cold during dinner that I put on long johns, a Uniqlo Heattech turtleneck, a regular turtleneck over that, plus a wool hat. I had the clothes from a ski trip. It was a bit of an overkill, and my friend made fun of me. But then he was the one who was cold.
I have a text chain with people I usually see over the holidays to discuss what to do this year. I said, “Why don’t we layer up, fill a thermos with hot toddies, and walk around Central Park?” Three people said that sounds great. The fourth was like, “I’ll think of another idea.”
Meet-Ups in the Parking Lot
Chazz Lynes, mentor, Harlem
I work with Rising Ground, which helps young people process trauma. Until last week, my group met outside once a week in the Bronx. We set up chairs in a parking lot, and I check in with the group — everyone is between the ages of 14 and 19 — to find out how they are doing. Before it got cold, we used to meet for close to an hour. Now it’s quicker, around 15 minutes.
Most of the teens are in jackets, hoodies and scarves. When one teen was going through a difficult time, I gave him some of my clothes so he wouldn’t freeze. We are troupers.
.
Cutting Fingertips Out of Gloves
Bela Horvath, violinist, Washington Heights
I play a few times a week on the terrace at the Mondrian Park Avenue for this program called Candlelight concerts.
The problem with playing outside in the cold is that the strings of the violin are made of steel. They get so cold, it’s hard to even feel what you are playing. It is like walking on ice without shoes. I have experimented with different ways to stay warm. I went to Target, bought fitted gloves and cut the fingertips out. I also put hand warmers, the kind you shake, into the glove. There are space heaters next to us, and we are now going to sit in igloos, which should make it easier.
Camping Blankets for Restaurant Outings
Ginger Clark, literary agent, Midwood, Brooklyn
I am so worried we are going to lose more of our beloved places, and I think we need to get them through March. I am willing to eat outside at restaurants in the cold at least a few times a week.
My husband and I have bought blankets to bring with us to restaurants. They are meant for camping, wind- and water-resistant. They can also be thrown in the wash if there is a spill.
Somebody suggested bringing a travel mug and then ordering a warm drink at a restaurant, like coffee or cider. That way it doesn’t cool down. It’s also helpful to put your gloves on or your hands in your pocket between courses so your hands don’t get cold.
Layers for Patrolling on Horseback
Hannah Larson, parks enforcement officer, Washington Heights
My unit is based in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, so most of the patrolling is there. But we can go to any park. We spend a lot of time at Orchard Beach in Pelham Bay Park. We offer directions, hand out masks and answer a lot of questions about the horses.
Most of my day is spent outside, and it’s very cold. The trick is to put all my layers on at the beginning of the day even if I feel hot. It’s much easier for your body to maintain heat than to generate new heat once you get cold.
We also keep busy, always moving around even just a little bit. It’s amazing how much moving helps; you can go from feeling you can’t stand the cold much longer to working up a sweat.
It’s amazing how New Yorkers are still in the parks in 30-degree weather this year. The other day we saw a little birthday party with people eating pizza out of boxes. We even had an incident where a father and son tried to camp.
You Call This Winter?
Titta Houni, Finnish expat, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
It was so funny when everyone was preparing for the blizzard, because that’s just a normal day in Finland. Back home there is nothing we like better than a cold, crisp day. We go walking on the ice when the sea freezes, we ski, we even cut holes in the ice and swim in it before heading into the sauna.
I learned growing up that there is no bad weather, just a bad way to dress. We layer up with cashmere and wool as base layers, and of course, my long johns. I put my down jackets and my snow boots on and I’m fine. I never get cold.
Dance Class, Outside
Aaron Gretzinger, single dad, Ditmas Park, Brooklyn
The days I have my son, I am pretty much one on one with him. We try to get outside as much as possible.
We signed him up for an outdoor dance class on Tuesdays. It gets a little cold, but at least they are bundled up and moving. The teacher is a professional dancer, and she plays really funky breakbeats. They are doing spins and whatever goofy stuff 4-year-olds do, and it is a great way for him to at least see other kids.
The playground can get busy, and a lot of people aren’t wearing masks, so it’s nerve-racking. With the snow, we went to the front of the building and made a snowman.
Sometimes it is hard to get him outside, because he says it is too cold. All I can say back is, “I hear you, man.”
|
By Alyson Krueger
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 5, 2021
It’s officially winter. So what?
New Yorkers, creative and resilient as ever, have found ways to continue socializing outdoors, whether it’s eating pizza in an inflatable hot tub on a roof or dining together al fresco at a snow-encrusted table.
As the temperatures drop, here is how seven New Yorkers will continue to do what they do outside.
Thermoses in Central Park
Damien Nunes, design director, Greenwich Village
The last time I
|
ate outdoors I was at American Bar, and I had so much anxiety about being cold during dinner that I put on long johns, a Uniqlo Heattech turtleneck, a regular turtleneck over that, plus a wool hat. I had the clothes from a ski trip. It was a bit of an overkill, and my friend made fun of me. But then he was the one who was cold.
I have a text chain with people I usually see over the holidays to discuss what to do this year. I said, “Why don’t we layer up, fill a thermos with hot toddies, and walk around Central Park?” Three people said that sounds great. The fourth was like, “I’ll think of another idea.”
Meet-Ups in the Parking Lot
Chazz Lynes, mentor, Harlem
I work with Rising Ground, which helps young people process trauma. Until last week, my group met outside once a week in the Bronx. We set up chairs in a parking lot, and I check in with the group — everyone is between the ages of 14 and 19 — to find out how they are doing. Before it got cold, we used to meet for close to an hour. Now it’s quicker, around 15 minutes.
Most of the teens are in jackets, hoodies and scarves. When one teen was going through a difficult time, I gave him some of my clothes so he wouldn’t freeze. We are troupers.
.
Cutting Fingertips Out of Gloves
Bela Horvath, violinist, Washington Heights
I play a few times a week on the terrace at the Mondrian Park Avenue for this program called Candlelight concerts.
The problem with playing outside in the cold is that the strings of the violin are made of steel. They get so cold, it’s hard to even feel what you are playing. It is like walking on ice without shoes. I have experimented with different ways to stay warm. I went to Target, bought fitted gloves and cut the fingertips out. I also put hand warmers, the kind you shake, into the glove. There are space heaters next to us, and we are now going to sit in igloos, which should make it easier.
Camping Blankets for Restaurant Outings
Ginger Clark, literary agent, Midwood, Brooklyn
I am so worried we are going to lose more of our beloved places, and I think we need to get them through March. I am willing to eat outside at restaurants in the cold at least a few times a week.
My husband and I have bought blankets to bring with us to restaurants. They are meant for camping, wind- and water-resistant. They can also be thrown in the wash if there is a spill.
Somebody suggested bringing a travel mug and then ordering a warm drink at a restaurant, like coffee or cider. That way it doesn’t cool down. It’s also helpful to put your gloves on or your hands in your pocket between courses so your hands don’t get cold.
Layers for Patrolling on Horseback
Hannah Larson, parks enforcement officer, Washington Heights
My unit is based in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, so most of the patrolling is there. But we can go to any park. We spend a lot of time at Orchard Beach in Pelham Bay Park. We offer directions, hand out masks and answer a lot of questions about the horses.
Most of my day is spent outside, and it’s very cold. The trick is to put all my layers on at the beginning of the day even if I feel hot. It’s much easier for your body to maintain heat than to generate new heat once you get cold.
We also keep busy, always moving around even just a little bit. It’s amazing how much moving helps; you can go from feeling you can’t stand the cold much longer to working up a sweat.
It’s amazing how New Yorkers are still in the parks in 30-degree weather this year. The other day we saw a little birthday party with people eating pizza out of boxes. We even had an incident where a father and son tried to camp.
You Call This Winter?
Titta Houni, Finnish expat, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
It was so funny when everyone was preparing for the blizzard, because that’s just a normal day in Finland. Back home there is nothing we like better than a cold, crisp day. We go walking on the ice when the sea freezes, we ski, we even cut holes in the ice and swim in it before heading into the sauna.
I learned growing up that there is no bad weather, just a bad way to dress. We layer up with cashmere and wool as base layers, and of course, my long johns. I put my down jackets and my snow boots on and I’m fine. I never get cold.
Dance Class, Outside
Aaron Gretzinger, single dad, Ditmas Park, Brooklyn
The days I have my son, I am pretty much one on one with him. We try to get outside as much as possible.
We signed him up for an outdoor dance class on Tuesdays. It gets a little cold, but at least they are bundled up and moving. The teacher is a professional dancer, and she plays really funky breakbeats. They are doing spins and whatever goofy stuff 4-year-olds do, and it is a great way for him to at least see other kids.
The playground can get busy, and a lot of people aren’t wearing masks, so it’s nerve-racking. With the snow, we went to the front of the building and made a snowman.
Sometimes it is hard to get him outside, because he says it is too cold. All I can say back is, “I hear you, man.”
|
70. ‘I Don’t Have a Happy Ending’: A Pollster on What Went Wrong.txt
|
By Lisa Lerer
Nov. 11, 2020
Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the day in national politics. I’m Lisa Lerer, your host.
Sign up here to get On Politics in your inbox every weekday.
Over the past few days, there’s been much consternation over this year’s polling of the presidential race. How did we end up with a close election in key swing states after months of surveys that suggested there could be a Democratic landslide?
It’s a familiar crisis: After the 2016 election, pollsters faced a chorus of recrimination about missing the mark and conducted a major analysis of what went wrong.
Charles Franklin, the director of Wisconsin’s best-known political survey, the Marquette University Law School Poll, helped compile that 2016 report. He’s been involved with political polling since 1980 and has been polling his swing state for more than a dozen years. This cycle, his polls missed the mark again — though not by as large a gap as many of his competitors (including the New York Times/Siena College polls).
I talked to Dr. Franklin about the crisis of confidence in polling, the challenge in identifying Trump supporters and why the surveys got it wrong, again. As usual, our conversation has been edited and condensed.
You and I spoke last year about what the polling got wrong in the Midwest in 2016. Well, here we are again, with another poll-defying outcome.
The last Times/Siena poll of Wisconsin, conducted just days before the election, gave Joe Biden an 11-point lead in the state. Your survey had Mr. Biden leading by five points. He won Wisconsin by less than a point. What happened?
I want to begin with the obvious, which is that I know about my data, but I only know what I know from public sources about everybody else’s.
Politics Across the United States
What we see in our data is that we have been getting the Democratic vote amazingly close. Almost all of the error in our 2016 poll came from a substantial understatement of Trump’s vote. It was clear that we were understating Trump’s vote in the suburbs, especially in the Milwaukee suburbs and to a lesser extent the Green Bay suburbs.
Flash forward to this past week. I was worried that we had Trump voters lurking that we didn’t find in 2016. So what we did this time is, for voters who said they were undecided or declined to say how they would vote, we used their favorable or unfavorable views of the candidates to allocate them to either a Biden or a Trump vote. If you were favorable to Biden but not favorable to Trump, we allocated that person as a Biden voter, and vice versa. (Three percent of respondents were still unallocated, most of whom were unfavorable to both.)
After doing that, we did a lot better this time than four years ago. We were off on the winner last time — we had Clinton up by six points and Trump won by 0.77 points. So a seven-point error for us last time. It’s a four-point error this time. That’s better.
We have the right winner but the same phenomena occurred — accurate on the Democrats, understating Trump.
That seems to be a trend in the polls again this year. Why did pollsters have so much trouble finding Trump supporters?
I don’t think this is the “shy Trump” voter in the way we’ve understood it, as people not wanting to admit they’re voting for him. Lots of effort has gone into finding evidence of that and it just doesn’t seem to exist.
I’m more inclined to think we’re seeing a phenomenon of some fairly small segment — 3 or 4 percent, maybe, of Trump supporters — who systematically decline to do surveys altogether. That would fit with the notion that some segment of his supporters are pretty anti-press, anti-polls and in a lot of ways anti-conventional political engagement. But they may also be people who are not, in fact, strongly identified with the Republican Party. My hypothesis going forward is to search for the evidence that there is this small but critical segment of the electorate.
I’m going to hold out one other possibility, which I don’t have the data for yet. And that is the possibility that there was a surge in Election Day turnout that we didn’t catch in the polling, given the partisan imbalance between early and Election Day voting.
So if Trump is no longer on the ballot, will polling become more accurate? Or has it simply become more difficult to survey Republicans? If that’s true, it would really complicate our ability to get a sense of the electorate.
The worry that we have is that survey nonresponse might become correlated with partisanship. One of the questions that I always get is: “I never pick up the phone if I don’t know the number. How can you possibly do surveys?” And my routine answer is that Republicans and Democrats alike hate telemarketing and scam phone calls. That has been the great blessing of the political polling industry. While our response rates may be lower, it has been an equal opportunity.
Over the last four years of the Trump presidency, we have not seen any trend of a falling Republican percentage of the electorate, which you would expect to see if Republicans were now systematically as group refusing to do interviews. So I don’t think this has spread to the broader Republican electorate. However, it’s certainly a worry, because if it should spread, it will make Republicans’ standing in the electorate look worse because we’re missing Republicans.
The Times conducted a large number of polls this cycle that had many of the same problems. We’re not blameless either. Is there a better way that media organizations should be using polling?
This is not sucking up, but I’m really impressed with the job The Times and CNN have done over the last couple of years. The thing that’s puzzling is that every serious polling operation looked for the hints that the polling problems of 2016 were still there. And it’s really worrisome that we failed to find those hints.
Alternatively, it may be that we were looking for hints of problems different from the ones we actually experienced. To quote a former defense secretary, it’s always the unknown unknowns rather than the known unknowns.
What I think will be very hard to convey to anybody outside the polling world is that this is a result despite widespread efforts to address the problems of 2016, not because of negligence and ignoring problems that we knew we had.
In a way that’s more disturbing. Despite trying to find sources of error, we failed to do it.
For the average consumer of polling, this looks like two huge mistakes in back-to-back presidential elections. Are you worried about the reputation of polling, especially in an environment where the president has politicized the polls?
Sure. How could you not be if you take this at all seriously?
Polling has had its bad times. The irony is that we had generally been doing better at election outcomes before 2016. You have to earn that trust back, and the only way you do that is to have the next election do better. And in 2018, by and large, we did do better.
But then you have an error in ’20 that undoes that credibility-building of 2018. I insist that the Marquette poll did better than most of the polls in the state. Relatively speaking, we did quite well, and we did improve over the prior performance.
But I don’t really expect the public in Wisconsin or elsewhere to take away a nuanced view from this. The obvious and not wrong impression is that the polling had a really bad year. That means that for the next four years at least, we’ll be talking just like we are today about what went wrong with polling.
I don’t have a happy ending to this story except, you know, wait for 2024 and let’s hope we do a lot better.
Drop us a line!
We want to hear from our readers. Have a question? We’ll try to answer it. Have a comment? We’re all ears. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
… Seriously
Read Sam Anderson on the delights of a very old snowball fight.
Thanks for reading. On Politics is your guide to the political news cycle, delivering clarity from the chaos.
On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.
Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
|
By Lisa Lerer
Nov. 11, 2020
Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the day in national politics. I’m Lisa Lerer, your host.
Sign up here to get On Politics in your inbox every weekday.
Over the past few days, there’s been much consternation over this year’s polling of the presidential race. How did we end up with a close election in key swing states after months of surveys that suggested there could be a Democratic landslide?
It’s a familiar crisis: After the 2016 election, pollsters faced a chorus of rec
|
rimination about missing the mark and conducted a major analysis of what went wrong.
Charles Franklin, the director of Wisconsin’s best-known political survey, the Marquette University Law School Poll, helped compile that 2016 report. He’s been involved with political polling since 1980 and has been polling his swing state for more than a dozen years. This cycle, his polls missed the mark again — though not by as large a gap as many of his competitors (including the New York Times/Siena College polls).
I talked to Dr. Franklin about the crisis of confidence in polling, the challenge in identifying Trump supporters and why the surveys got it wrong, again. As usual, our conversation has been edited and condensed.
You and I spoke last year about what the polling got wrong in the Midwest in 2016. Well, here we are again, with another poll-defying outcome.
The last Times/Siena poll of Wisconsin, conducted just days before the election, gave Joe Biden an 11-point lead in the state. Your survey had Mr. Biden leading by five points. He won Wisconsin by less than a point. What happened?
I want to begin with the obvious, which is that I know about my data, but I only know what I know from public sources about everybody else’s.
Politics Across the United States
What we see in our data is that we have been getting the Democratic vote amazingly close. Almost all of the error in our 2016 poll came from a substantial understatement of Trump’s vote. It was clear that we were understating Trump’s vote in the suburbs, especially in the Milwaukee suburbs and to a lesser extent the Green Bay suburbs.
Flash forward to this past week. I was worried that we had Trump voters lurking that we didn’t find in 2016. So what we did this time is, for voters who said they were undecided or declined to say how they would vote, we used their favorable or unfavorable views of the candidates to allocate them to either a Biden or a Trump vote. If you were favorable to Biden but not favorable to Trump, we allocated that person as a Biden voter, and vice versa. (Three percent of respondents were still unallocated, most of whom were unfavorable to both.)
After doing that, we did a lot better this time than four years ago. We were off on the winner last time — we had Clinton up by six points and Trump won by 0.77 points. So a seven-point error for us last time. It’s a four-point error this time. That’s better.
We have the right winner but the same phenomena occurred — accurate on the Democrats, understating Trump.
That seems to be a trend in the polls again this year. Why did pollsters have so much trouble finding Trump supporters?
I don’t think this is the “shy Trump” voter in the way we’ve understood it, as people not wanting to admit they’re voting for him. Lots of effort has gone into finding evidence of that and it just doesn’t seem to exist.
I’m more inclined to think we’re seeing a phenomenon of some fairly small segment — 3 or 4 percent, maybe, of Trump supporters — who systematically decline to do surveys altogether. That would fit with the notion that some segment of his supporters are pretty anti-press, anti-polls and in a lot of ways anti-conventional political engagement. But they may also be people who are not, in fact, strongly identified with the Republican Party. My hypothesis going forward is to search for the evidence that there is this small but critical segment of the electorate.
I’m going to hold out one other possibility, which I don’t have the data for yet. And that is the possibility that there was a surge in Election Day turnout that we didn’t catch in the polling, given the partisan imbalance between early and Election Day voting.
So if Trump is no longer on the ballot, will polling become more accurate? Or has it simply become more difficult to survey Republicans? If that’s true, it would really complicate our ability to get a sense of the electorate.
The worry that we have is that survey nonresponse might become correlated with partisanship. One of the questions that I always get is: “I never pick up the phone if I don’t know the number. How can you possibly do surveys?” And my routine answer is that Republicans and Democrats alike hate telemarketing and scam phone calls. That has been the great blessing of the political polling industry. While our response rates may be lower, it has been an equal opportunity.
Over the last four years of the Trump presidency, we have not seen any trend of a falling Republican percentage of the electorate, which you would expect to see if Republicans were now systematically as group refusing to do interviews. So I don’t think this has spread to the broader Republican electorate. However, it’s certainly a worry, because if it should spread, it will make Republicans’ standing in the electorate look worse because we’re missing Republicans.
The Times conducted a large number of polls this cycle that had many of the same problems. We’re not blameless either. Is there a better way that media organizations should be using polling?
This is not sucking up, but I’m really impressed with the job The Times and CNN have done over the last couple of years. The thing that’s puzzling is that every serious polling operation looked for the hints that the polling problems of 2016 were still there. And it’s really worrisome that we failed to find those hints.
Alternatively, it may be that we were looking for hints of problems different from the ones we actually experienced. To quote a former defense secretary, it’s always the unknown unknowns rather than the known unknowns.
What I think will be very hard to convey to anybody outside the polling world is that this is a result despite widespread efforts to address the problems of 2016, not because of negligence and ignoring problems that we knew we had.
In a way that’s more disturbing. Despite trying to find sources of error, we failed to do it.
For the average consumer of polling, this looks like two huge mistakes in back-to-back presidential elections. Are you worried about the reputation of polling, especially in an environment where the president has politicized the polls?
Sure. How could you not be if you take this at all seriously?
Polling has had its bad times. The irony is that we had generally been doing better at election outcomes before 2016. You have to earn that trust back, and the only way you do that is to have the next election do better. And in 2018, by and large, we did do better.
But then you have an error in ’20 that undoes that credibility-building of 2018. I insist that the Marquette poll did better than most of the polls in the state. Relatively speaking, we did quite well, and we did improve over the prior performance.
But I don’t really expect the public in Wisconsin or elsewhere to take away a nuanced view from this. The obvious and not wrong impression is that the polling had a really bad year. That means that for the next four years at least, we’ll be talking just like we are today about what went wrong with polling.
I don’t have a happy ending to this story except, you know, wait for 2024 and let’s hope we do a lot better.
Drop us a line!
We want to hear from our readers. Have a question? We’ll try to answer it. Have a comment? We’re all ears. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
… Seriously
Read Sam Anderson on the delights of a very old snowball fight.
Thanks for reading. On Politics is your guide to the political news cycle, delivering clarity from the chaos.
On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.
Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
|
64. The 20 Best Gifts for Gamers.txt
|
By Wirecutter StaffUpdated November 9, 2023
Save your favorites
Use the bookmark icon to save picks and articles to your lists.
Two Microsoft Xbox Wireless Controllers sitting one in front of the other, one in light pink and blue, one in dark pink and blue
Photo: Michael Hession
FYI
We’ve fully revamped this guide for the holidays, adding a sea-diving adventure game, our favorite Xbox, and a handful of clever console accessories.
November 2023
Picking the right gift for the gaming enthusiast in your life requires navigating a minefield of preferences and past purchases, and finding high-quality, compatible accessories can be just as difficult. That’s why we put together this crowd-pleasing collection that includes practical gear for dedicated players, funky throwbacks for old-school arcade lovers, and a curated selection of our favorite games. In addition to top picks from our expert-informed guides, we’ve found a few unusual gifts that any gamer would love to receive.
Sign up for our newsletter
Get Wirecutter's independent reviews, expert advice, and intensively researched deals sent straight to your inbox.
For information about our privacy practices, including how to opt out of marketing emails, see our Privacy Policy. For general questions, contact us anytime.
Mario gets weird
A screenshot from the game Super Mario Bros. Wonder.
Image: Nintendo
Super Mario Bros. Wonder
The latest title offers classic Super Mario Bros. fun, with a lot of strange new worlds mixed in.
$60 from Amazon
$60 from Best Buy
Super Mario Bros. games have always been family-friendly and fun, but Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Nintendo Switch) takes things to an entirely new level. This time around, the whole squad journeys to the Flower Kingdom for classic Nintendo-style hijinks, with some wild transforming levels to boot, in the first brand-new side-scrolling Mario game in more than a decade. The result is the best 2D Mario game in 20 years, and one of the best games of 2023. If the gamer in your life owns a Nintendo Switch, this is a must-buy.
Lost in space
A screenshot from the game Starfield.
Image: Bethesda Game Studios
Starfield
Spaceships, aliens, and mysterious artifacts fill a galaxy of possibilities.
Buy from Bethesda
Starfield (PC, Xbox Series X|S) is a role-playing game that gives you a ship, a crew, and a thousand planets to explore as you seek to solve a reality-bending mystery in space. Starfield is a hybrid role-playing game and first-person shooter, and it sets you loose to shoot or talk your way through hundreds of hours of quests and missions that range from an archaeological-discovery quest to infiltration of a bloodthirsty society of space pirates. If the gamer you love enjoyed Skyrim and the Fallout series, they’ll love Starfield.
Modern Marvel masterpiece
A screenshot from Marvel's Spider-Man 2 video game.
Image: Marvel
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
The sequel to 2018’s critically acclaimed Spider-Man game stars both Peter Parker and Miles Morales as they work together to protect New York City.
$70 from Best Buy
$70 from PlayStation
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (PlayStation 5) is one of the best games of 2023, and it’s a must for anyone who enjoyed the first Marvel’s Spider-Man game or the Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales follow-up. It’s a single-player adventure that looks and feels great on the PS5, and it has some of the most satisfying combat and special abilities of any superhero game ever made.
Deep-sea diving adventure
A screenshot from the game Dave the Diver.
Image: MintRocket
Dave the Diver
In this title mixing pixel-based action, mini-games, and management-sim elements with a great sense of humor, Dave the Diver seeks to unravel the mysteries of the deep while establishing a sushi-restaurant legacy.
$20 from Steam
Dave the Diver (PC, Nintendo Switch), a game about scuba diving by day and managing a sushi restaurant by night, is addictive and approachable, and it doesn’t require a fancy gaming PC to play. It’s perfect for those who like cozy games or favor adventure games that don’t demand too much time or focus. It offers a fun yet non-gory underwater-combat system to catch the daily specials for the sushi menu, and its restaurant-simulation aspect will feel familiar to anyone who got deep into Diner Dash back in the day.
Immersive sound
The Razer BlackShark V2 gaming headset resting on its back.
Photo: Michael Hession
Razer BlackShark V2
Comfortable across a wide range of head sizes, this headset provides detailed, spacious sound that’s perfect for games, and it works on every modern platform and device.
$180 from Amazon
Gaming headsets are great for people who play multiplayer games and like to chat with friends. Our favorite gaming headset is the Razer BlackShark V2, which adjusts to fit most head sizes and shapes, offers crisp audio, and is compatible with nearly every console and device. It’s comfortable enough to wear for hours, and it has a detachable microphone that keeps the player’s voice sounding clear.
Tiny not tinny
The Creative Pebble Pro speaker set, round with a gold plated center.
Photo: Brent Butterworth
Creative Pebble Pro
These two tiny, spherical speakers are a huge upgrade from speakers built into a laptop—but don’t expect the same fullness and dynamic ability as you can get from our pricier picks. With Bluetooth, USB-C, and analog inputs, they’re great for playing PC games.
$57 from Amazon
The grapefruit-sized Creative Pebble Pro speakers might not shake your walls with bass, but they sound better than other speakers we tested under $100. They draw power from the same USB-C cable that you use to plug the speakers into a computer, or from a phone or computer via Bluetooth. For analog connections, they also have headphone and microphone jacks, as well as a standard headphone-sized 3.5 mm input. The speakers are small enough to fit on most desks, and, mercifully, their RGB lighting can be switched off.
Superior storage
Our pick for best portable SSD overall, the Samsung T7 Shield (1 TB), in white, in front of a purple background.
Photo: Michael Hession
Samsung T7 Shield (1 TB)
This portable SSD hits the sweet spot with a good mix of price, speed, and size, plus a little extra physical protection. It’s also small enough to hide behind a console.
$110 from Amazon
$110 from Best Buy
A 1 TB portable SSD like the Samsung T7 Shield can double or triple a game console’s storage space. Consoles such as the PlayStation 4 allow you to play games directly from the portable SSD, but even on newer consoles the T7 Shield is great for storing seldom-played games, eliminating the need to redownload them later. It’s a speedy drive for storing and saving games, plus its rubberized exterior allows it to easily survive drops from a shelf or a laptop bag.
Excellent Xbox (for less)
A side view of an Xbox Series S.
Photo: Arthur Gies
Microsoft Xbox Series S (512GB)
This smaller and lighter Xbox is capable of playing new-generation games. It’s a great value paired with a Game Pass Ultimate subscription, but it doesn’t have a disc drive.
$300 from Best Buy
$340 from Amazon
The Xbox Series S is quiet, compact, and the cheapest modern gaming machine around, but don’t let that fool you—this little box packs a punch, and it plays every modern Xbox game and hundreds of older titles as well. Just don’t try to put a disc in it. During the month of December, Xbox typically sells bundles including three months of Xbox Game Pass, a monthly game-library subscription service.
All-ages console
A nintendo switch with red joy cons that is turned on to the home menu screen, shown next to a single green nintendo joy con.
Photo: Andrew Cunningham
Nintendo Switch
The best portable device for playing fun, family-friendly video games is still just as good as the day it came out.
$300 from Best Buy
$300 from Amazon
For families with younger children, the Nintendo Switch is a no-brainer, and parents have a lot to enjoy here too with popular games such as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (and Breath of the Wild), and Super Mario Bros. Wonder. For most people, we recommend the Switch Lite, which is a handheld-only device, though for people looking to play Nintendo games on a TV, the base model with a dock is also a great choice. If your gift recipient would appreciate the absolute best handheld experience, the OLED Switch looks great, but you pay extra for that beautiful screen.
PC gaming on the go
A person playing a Asus ROG Ally Z1 Extreme while sitting on the floor.
Photo: Asus
Asus ROG Ally Extreme
This powerful PC-gaming handheld runs Xbox Game Pass without a hitch, unlocking a world of games.
$480 from Best Buy
The Asus ROG Ally Z1 Extreme is a gaming handheld that runs Windows 11, which means Steam, Epic, and the Blizzard launcher all work seamlessly—and so does Xbox Game Pass. We’ve played many of this year’s biggest games, including Diablo IV, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Starfield, with great results. Plus, plenty of readily accessible power options and performance tweaks can help your gift recipient get the best experience—even if the battery life isn’t amazing.
Games galore
A collage of video game covers.
Image: Microsoft
Xbox Game Pass
This monthly subscription service for Xbox offers tons of day-one releases and other amazing games.
$10 from Microsoft
(per month)
Why give someone a single game when you can give them access to hundreds of them (at least for a few months)? Xbox Game Pass has a huge library of amazing games; Starfield, Fallout, Halo, Forza Horizon, Prey, and hundreds more are already on the service, with big new titles added regularly. It’s a great option for Xbox owners or for people who are getting an Xbox as a gift.
Mobile-gaming controller
A person playing a video game using the Backbone One on their iPhone.
Photo: Backbone
Backbone One for iPhone
The Backbone One accessory turns an iPhone into a console, complete with joysticks, triggers, and buttons for an optimal mobile-gaming experience.
$100 from Best Buy
$100 from Amazon
$99 from Backbone
The Backbone One is a controller that wraps around an iPhone, turning it into a portable game console that’s as comfortable to hold as any PlayStation or Xbox controller. It’s a great upgrade for anyone who is always playing games on their phone. It features all the typical buttons that you can find on any modern controller, as well as buttons for recording gameplay and launching the free Backbone app, which offers a unified way to open all your mobile games. Find out what phone your loved one has before clicking the buy button: Backbone makes a Lightning-compatible controller for older iPhones and a USB-C version for iPhone 15 models and Android phones.
Heroic gaming mouse
The Razer Basilisk V3, our pick for the best gaming mouse, shown in black with pink light features.
Photo: Michael Murtaugh
Razer Basilisk V3
The Basilisk V3 is comfortable for most hand sizes and grip types, has plenty of buttons, and offers customizable RGB underglow lighting. But Razer’s Synapse 3 software doesn’t work on macOS.
$50 from Amazon
$70 from Best Buy
Offering fast response times, customizable buttons, and better precision, a gaming mouse is a great gift for anyone who spends a lot of time playing on a PC. We love the Razer Basilisk V3, and we recommend it in our guide to the best gaming mice because it’s comfortable for most hand sizes and grip styles, and it provides well-placed, responsive buttons. Your giftee can adjust its fancy-looking RGB lighting—on the underside, on the scroll wheel, and on the logo—to match in-game colors or customize the hues to their heart’s desire.
Custom controller
Two Xbox wireless controllers, blue (left) and pink (right), resting on a yellow surface.
Photo: Haley Perry
Xbox Design Lab
Microsoft’s controller is comfortable to hold and benefits from built-in Windows support—simply plug it in, and it works with just about any game that supports a controller. The Design Lab customization allows you to tweak all the colors in an easy-to-use interface.
Buy from Xbox
If you know someone who uses an Xbox controller for Xbox or PC gaming, you can tailor a controller to match the color scheme of their cherished sports team, their favorite video game, or even their desk setup through the Xbox Design Lab. You can customize almost every part of the controller’s appearance, with options for different colors, finishes, and patterns on its body and buttons. The website’s design tool is easy to use and a ton of fun, too.
Quality controller
Two Microsoft Xbox Wireless Controllers sitting one in front of the other, one in light pink and blue, one in dark pink and blue
Photo: Michael Hession
Microsoft Xbox Wireless Controller
Microsoft’s controller is comfortable to hold and benefits from built-in Windows support. But wireless play requires AA batteries or an add-on rechargeable battery pack.
$55 from Best Buy
Microsoft’s Xbox Wireless Controller is our favorite controller for PC gamers because it runs seamlessly with Windows computers—simply plug it in, and it works with just about any game that supports a controller. It’s also comfortable for a variety of hand sizes. This is even a great gift for someone who already owns and enjoys using one, because an extra controller always comes in handy when the required AA batteries run out of juice.
Versatile wireless keyboard
A top-down view of the SteelSeries Apex Pro TKL Wireless Keyboard against a purple background
Photo: Michael Hession
SteelSeries Apex Pro TKL Wireless (2023)
This beautiful gaming keyboard is equipped with premium features such as adjustable keystroke pressure and programmable sequences.
$223 from Amazon
$250 from Best Buy
Anyone who appreciates colorful lighting, clicky keyboard sounds, and fancy gaming features will geek out over the SteelSeries Apex Pro TKL Wireless. This gaming keyboard offers more customizable features than any other gaming keyboard we tested, and it comes with a built-in OLED display that your giftee can use to quickly adjust gaming settings or play fun little animations.
Arcade upgrade
Fangamer Flip Grip
Retrofit a Nintendo Switch vertically to play old-school games with this slide-on accessory.
$15 from Fangamer
Those who frequently play arcade games on their Switch—such as Pac-Man in Namco Museum or Donkey Kong from the Nintendo Switch Online library—will appreciate the ability to enjoy the classics the way they were intended for original arcade cabinets. Fangamer’s Flip Grip allows players to reorient their Switch tablet so that the screen is taller than it is wide, without sacrificing any space on the tablet’s display. It’s a simple accessory that slides right onto the Switch, so it’s easy for players to set up and hold. Not all games are compatible with the portrait-style orientation, but you can find a list of flippable games on the Does It Flip? website. A quick warning: The existing version does not work with Nintendo’s Switch OLED Model or Switch Lite, so make sure you know which Switch your loved one owns.
DIY console
A vintage game system along with its controller and cartridges on a TV stand.
A Raspberry Pi mini PC inside of a case made to look like a classic gaming console. Photo: Andrew Cunningham
Raspberry Pi 4 2GB
This tiny Linux computer works as an affordable starting point for building one’s own console.
$45 from CanaKit
Gaming consoles are expensive, so gamers on a budget often opt to build their own. Even if you don’t know the first thing about a DIY gamer’s wants and needs, the Raspberry Pi, a cheap computer that’s about the size of a deck of cards, is a great place to get started. With a little technical know-how and about an hour’s worth of time, your loved one can turn the Raspberry Pi into a capable little game console—it’s a project that’s perfect for tinkerers or anyone who doesn’t mind futzing about with different settings.
Tiny tools
A photo of the iFixit Mako Driver Kit.
Photo: Doug Mahoney
iFixit Mako Driver Kit
This iFixit kit has every bit you need for electronics repair, plus convenient features such as a spinning rear cap and a flexible extension.
$40 from Amazon
iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit
The fancier iFixit Toolkit has all the same useful bits as the base kit, plus extra tools such as spudgers, opening picks, and tweezers.
$75 from Amazon
$75 from iFixit
If you know a tinkerer who wants to build or fix their own gear, we recommend the iFixit Mako Driver Kit, which provides all the bits necessary for dealing with modern electronics. If you can spend a little more, the iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit packs in additional tools, such as spudgers and picks to open tricky cases. iFixit also has guides for repairing every major game console, as well as repair instructions for the infamous Switch Joy-Con controllers. Some projects are more complex than others, but one of the most useful is a battery swap for a controller (Switch Pro, DualShock 4, DualSense), which can extend the life of your giftee’s favorite controller so they don’t have to buy a new one.
We love finding gifts that are unusual, thoughtful, and well vetted. See even more gift ideas we recommend.
This article was edited by Arthur Gies and Caitlin McGarry.
Meet your guide
Wirecutter Staff
Mentioned above
Razer’s BlackShark V2 gaming headset has excellent audio quality, a decent mic, and a great price—and the wireless version costs just a little more.
The Best Gaming Headsets
The Pioneer DJ DM-50D-BT is the best-sounding pair of computer speakers we’ve heard in the $200 price range.
The Best Computer Speakers
If you need a fast, reliable way to move files between computers, the Samsung T7 Shield (1 TB) is the portable solid-state drive for you.
The Best Portable SSD
There are too many great video games to keep track of, but we’re here to help you find one or two we think you’ll love.
Diablo IV, Street Fighter 6, and More: The Video Games Wirecutter Is Playing in June 2023
After new rounds of gaming-mouse panel testing, we’ve selected a new runner-up and a new upgrade pick for players looking for the best wireless option.
The Best Gaming Mouse
Further reading
Wirecutter is the product recommendation service from The New York Times. Our journalists combine independent research with (occasionally) over-the-top testing so you can make quick and confident buying decisions. Whether it’s finding great products or discovering helpful advice, we’ll help you get it right (the first time). Subscribe now for unlimited access.
Dismiss
|
By Wirecutter StaffUpdated November 9, 2023
Save your favorites
Use the bookmark icon to save picks and articles to your lists.
Two Microsoft Xbox Wireless Controllers sitting one in front of the other, one in light pink and blue, one in dark pink and blue
Photo: Michael Hession
FYI
We’ve fully revamped this guide for the holidays, adding a sea-diving adventure game, our favorite Xbox, and a handful of clever console accessories.
November 2023
Picking the right gift for the gaming enthusiast in your life requires navigating a minefield
|
of preferences and past purchases, and finding high-quality, compatible accessories can be just as difficult. That’s why we put together this crowd-pleasing collection that includes practical gear for dedicated players, funky throwbacks for old-school arcade lovers, and a curated selection of our favorite games. In addition to top picks from our expert-informed guides, we’ve found a few unusual gifts that any gamer would love to receive.
Sign up for our newsletter
Get Wirecutter's independent reviews, expert advice, and intensively researched deals sent straight to your inbox.
For information about our privacy practices, including how to opt out of marketing emails, see our Privacy Policy. For general questions, contact us anytime.
Mario gets weird
A screenshot from the game Super Mario Bros. Wonder.
Image: Nintendo
Super Mario Bros. Wonder
The latest title offers classic Super Mario Bros. fun, with a lot of strange new worlds mixed in.
$60 from Amazon
$60 from Best Buy
Super Mario Bros. games have always been family-friendly and fun, but Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Nintendo Switch) takes things to an entirely new level. This time around, the whole squad journeys to the Flower Kingdom for classic Nintendo-style hijinks, with some wild transforming levels to boot, in the first brand-new side-scrolling Mario game in more than a decade. The result is the best 2D Mario game in 20 years, and one of the best games of 2023. If the gamer in your life owns a Nintendo Switch, this is a must-buy.
Lost in space
A screenshot from the game Starfield.
Image: Bethesda Game Studios
Starfield
Spaceships, aliens, and mysterious artifacts fill a galaxy of possibilities.
Buy from Bethesda
Starfield (PC, Xbox Series X|S) is a role-playing game that gives you a ship, a crew, and a thousand planets to explore as you seek to solve a reality-bending mystery in space. Starfield is a hybrid role-playing game and first-person shooter, and it sets you loose to shoot or talk your way through hundreds of hours of quests and missions that range from an archaeological-discovery quest to infiltration of a bloodthirsty society of space pirates. If the gamer you love enjoyed Skyrim and the Fallout series, they’ll love Starfield.
Modern Marvel masterpiece
A screenshot from Marvel's Spider-Man 2 video game.
Image: Marvel
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
The sequel to 2018’s critically acclaimed Spider-Man game stars both Peter Parker and Miles Morales as they work together to protect New York City.
$70 from Best Buy
$70 from PlayStation
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (PlayStation 5) is one of the best games of 2023, and it’s a must for anyone who enjoyed the first Marvel’s Spider-Man game or the Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales follow-up. It’s a single-player adventure that looks and feels great on the PS5, and it has some of the most satisfying combat and special abilities of any superhero game ever made.
Deep-sea diving adventure
A screenshot from the game Dave the Diver.
Image: MintRocket
Dave the Diver
In this title mixing pixel-based action, mini-games, and management-sim elements with a great sense of humor, Dave the Diver seeks to unravel the mysteries of the deep while establishing a sushi-restaurant legacy.
$20 from Steam
Dave the Diver (PC, Nintendo Switch), a game about scuba diving by day and managing a sushi restaurant by night, is addictive and approachable, and it doesn’t require a fancy gaming PC to play. It’s perfect for those who like cozy games or favor adventure games that don’t demand too much time or focus. It offers a fun yet non-gory underwater-combat system to catch the daily specials for the sushi menu, and its restaurant-simulation aspect will feel familiar to anyone who got deep into Diner Dash back in the day.
Immersive sound
The Razer BlackShark V2 gaming headset resting on its back.
Photo: Michael Hession
Razer BlackShark V2
Comfortable across a wide range of head sizes, this headset provides detailed, spacious sound that’s perfect for games, and it works on every modern platform and device.
$180 from Amazon
Gaming headsets are great for people who play multiplayer games and like to chat with friends. Our favorite gaming headset is the Razer BlackShark V2, which adjusts to fit most head sizes and shapes, offers crisp audio, and is compatible with nearly every console and device. It’s comfortable enough to wear for hours, and it has a detachable microphone that keeps the player’s voice sounding clear.
Tiny not tinny
The Creative Pebble Pro speaker set, round with a gold plated center.
Photo: Brent Butterworth
Creative Pebble Pro
These two tiny, spherical speakers are a huge upgrade from speakers built into a laptop—but don’t expect the same fullness and dynamic ability as you can get from our pricier picks. With Bluetooth, USB-C, and analog inputs, they’re great for playing PC games.
$57 from Amazon
The grapefruit-sized Creative Pebble Pro speakers might not shake your walls with bass, but they sound better than other speakers we tested under $100. They draw power from the same USB-C cable that you use to plug the speakers into a computer, or from a phone or computer via Bluetooth. For analog connections, they also have headphone and microphone jacks, as well as a standard headphone-sized 3.5 mm input. The speakers are small enough to fit on most desks, and, mercifully, their RGB lighting can be switched off.
Superior storage
Our pick for best portable SSD overall, the Samsung T7 Shield (1 TB), in white, in front of a purple background.
Photo: Michael Hession
Samsung T7 Shield (1 TB)
This portable SSD hits the sweet spot with a good mix of price, speed, and size, plus a little extra physical protection. It’s also small enough to hide behind a console.
$110 from Amazon
$110 from Best Buy
A 1 TB portable SSD like the Samsung T7 Shield can double or triple a game console’s storage space. Consoles such as the PlayStation 4 allow you to play games directly from the portable SSD, but even on newer consoles the T7 Shield is great for storing seldom-played games, eliminating the need to redownload them later. It’s a speedy drive for storing and saving games, plus its rubberized exterior allows it to easily survive drops from a shelf or a laptop bag.
Excellent Xbox (for less)
A side view of an Xbox Series S.
Photo: Arthur Gies
Microsoft Xbox Series S (512GB)
This smaller and lighter Xbox is capable of playing new-generation games. It’s a great value paired with a Game Pass Ultimate subscription, but it doesn’t have a disc drive.
$300 from Best Buy
$340 from Amazon
The Xbox Series S is quiet, compact, and the cheapest modern gaming machine around, but don’t let that fool you—this little box packs a punch, and it plays every modern Xbox game and hundreds of older titles as well. Just don’t try to put a disc in it. During the month of December, Xbox typically sells bundles including three months of Xbox Game Pass, a monthly game-library subscription service.
All-ages console
A nintendo switch with red joy cons that is turned on to the home menu screen, shown next to a single green nintendo joy con.
Photo: Andrew Cunningham
Nintendo Switch
The best portable device for playing fun, family-friendly video games is still just as good as the day it came out.
$300 from Best Buy
$300 from Amazon
For families with younger children, the Nintendo Switch is a no-brainer, and parents have a lot to enjoy here too with popular games such as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (and Breath of the Wild), and Super Mario Bros. Wonder. For most people, we recommend the Switch Lite, which is a handheld-only device, though for people looking to play Nintendo games on a TV, the base model with a dock is also a great choice. If your gift recipient would appreciate the absolute best handheld experience, the OLED Switch looks great, but you pay extra for that beautiful screen.
PC gaming on the go
A person playing a Asus ROG Ally Z1 Extreme while sitting on the floor.
Photo: Asus
Asus ROG Ally Extreme
This powerful PC-gaming handheld runs Xbox Game Pass without a hitch, unlocking a world of games.
$480 from Best Buy
The Asus ROG Ally Z1 Extreme is a gaming handheld that runs Windows 11, which means Steam, Epic, and the Blizzard launcher all work seamlessly—and so does Xbox Game Pass. We’ve played many of this year’s biggest games, including Diablo IV, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Starfield, with great results. Plus, plenty of readily accessible power options and performance tweaks can help your gift recipient get the best experience—even if the battery life isn’t amazing.
Games galore
A collage of video game covers.
Image: Microsoft
Xbox Game Pass
This monthly subscription service for Xbox offers tons of day-one releases and other amazing games.
$10 from Microsoft
(per month)
Why give someone a single game when you can give them access to hundreds of them (at least for a few months)? Xbox Game Pass has a huge library of amazing games; Starfield, Fallout, Halo, Forza Horizon, Prey, and hundreds more are already on the service, with big new titles added regularly. It’s a great option for Xbox owners or for people who are getting an Xbox as a gift.
Mobile-gaming controller
A person playing a video game using the Backbone One on their iPhone.
Photo: Backbone
Backbone One for iPhone
The Backbone One accessory turns an iPhone into a console, complete with joysticks, triggers, and buttons for an optimal mobile-gaming experience.
$100 from Best Buy
$100 from Amazon
$99 from Backbone
The Backbone One is a controller that wraps around an iPhone, turning it into a portable game console that’s as comfortable to hold as any PlayStation or Xbox controller. It’s a great upgrade for anyone who is always playing games on their phone. It features all the typical buttons that you can find on any modern controller, as well as buttons for recording gameplay and launching the free Backbone app, which offers a unified way to open all your mobile games. Find out what phone your loved one has before clicking the buy button: Backbone makes a Lightning-compatible controller for older iPhones and a USB-C version for iPhone 15 models and Android phones.
Heroic gaming mouse
The Razer Basilisk V3, our pick for the best gaming mouse, shown in black with pink light features.
Photo: Michael Murtaugh
Razer Basilisk V3
The Basilisk V3 is comfortable for most hand sizes and grip types, has plenty of buttons, and offers customizable RGB underglow lighting. But Razer’s Synapse 3 software doesn’t work on macOS.
$50 from Amazon
$70 from Best Buy
Offering fast response times, customizable buttons, and better precision, a gaming mouse is a great gift for anyone who spends a lot of time playing on a PC. We love the Razer Basilisk V3, and we recommend it in our guide to the best gaming mice because it’s comfortable for most hand sizes and grip styles, and it provides well-placed, responsive buttons. Your giftee can adjust its fancy-looking RGB lighting—on the underside, on the scroll wheel, and on the logo—to match in-game colors or customize the hues to their heart’s desire.
Custom controller
Two Xbox wireless controllers, blue (left) and pink (right), resting on a yellow surface.
Photo: Haley Perry
Xbox Design Lab
Microsoft’s controller is comfortable to hold and benefits from built-in Windows support—simply plug it in, and it works with just about any game that supports a controller. The Design Lab customization allows you to tweak all the colors in an easy-to-use interface.
Buy from Xbox
If you know someone who uses an Xbox controller for Xbox or PC gaming, you can tailor a controller to match the color scheme of their cherished sports team, their favorite video game, or even their desk setup through the Xbox Design Lab. You can customize almost every part of the controller’s appearance, with options for different colors, finishes, and patterns on its body and buttons. The website’s design tool is easy to use and a ton of fun, too.
Quality controller
Two Microsoft Xbox Wireless Controllers sitting one in front of the other, one in light pink and blue, one in dark pink and blue
Photo: Michael Hession
Microsoft Xbox Wireless Controller
Microsoft’s controller is comfortable to hold and benefits from built-in Windows support. But wireless play requires AA batteries or an add-on rechargeable battery pack.
$55 from Best Buy
Microsoft’s Xbox Wireless Controller is our favorite controller for PC gamers because it runs seamlessly with Windows computers—simply plug it in, and it works with just about any game that supports a controller. It’s also comfortable for a variety of hand sizes. This is even a great gift for someone who already owns and enjoys using one, because an extra controller always comes in handy when the required AA batteries run out of juice.
Versatile wireless keyboard
A top-down view of the SteelSeries Apex Pro TKL Wireless Keyboard against a purple background
Photo: Michael Hession
SteelSeries Apex Pro TKL Wireless (2023)
This beautiful gaming keyboard is equipped with premium features such as adjustable keystroke pressure and programmable sequences.
$223 from Amazon
$250 from Best Buy
Anyone who appreciates colorful lighting, clicky keyboard sounds, and fancy gaming features will geek out over the SteelSeries Apex Pro TKL Wireless. This gaming keyboard offers more customizable features than any other gaming keyboard we tested, and it comes with a built-in OLED display that your giftee can use to quickly adjust gaming settings or play fun little animations.
Arcade upgrade
Fangamer Flip Grip
Retrofit a Nintendo Switch vertically to play old-school games with this slide-on accessory.
$15 from Fangamer
Those who frequently play arcade games on their Switch—such as Pac-Man in Namco Museum or Donkey Kong from the Nintendo Switch Online library—will appreciate the ability to enjoy the classics the way they were intended for original arcade cabinets. Fangamer’s Flip Grip allows players to reorient their Switch tablet so that the screen is taller than it is wide, without sacrificing any space on the tablet’s display. It’s a simple accessory that slides right onto the Switch, so it’s easy for players to set up and hold. Not all games are compatible with the portrait-style orientation, but you can find a list of flippable games on the Does It Flip? website. A quick warning: The existing version does not work with Nintendo’s Switch OLED Model or Switch Lite, so make sure you know which Switch your loved one owns.
DIY console
A vintage game system along with its controller and cartridges on a TV stand.
A Raspberry Pi mini PC inside of a case made to look like a classic gaming console. Photo: Andrew Cunningham
Raspberry Pi 4 2GB
This tiny Linux computer works as an affordable starting point for building one’s own console.
$45 from CanaKit
Gaming consoles are expensive, so gamers on a budget often opt to build their own. Even if you don’t know the first thing about a DIY gamer’s wants and needs, the Raspberry Pi, a cheap computer that’s about the size of a deck of cards, is a great place to get started. With a little technical know-how and about an hour’s worth of time, your loved one can turn the Raspberry Pi into a capable little game console—it’s a project that’s perfect for tinkerers or anyone who doesn’t mind futzing about with different settings.
Tiny tools
A photo of the iFixit Mako Driver Kit.
Photo: Doug Mahoney
iFixit Mako Driver Kit
This iFixit kit has every bit you need for electronics repair, plus convenient features such as a spinning rear cap and a flexible extension.
$40 from Amazon
iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit
The fancier iFixit Toolkit has all the same useful bits as the base kit, plus extra tools such as spudgers, opening picks, and tweezers.
$75 from Amazon
$75 from iFixit
If you know a tinkerer who wants to build or fix their own gear, we recommend the iFixit Mako Driver Kit, which provides all the bits necessary for dealing with modern electronics. If you can spend a little more, the iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit packs in additional tools, such as spudgers and picks to open tricky cases. iFixit also has guides for repairing every major game console, as well as repair instructions for the infamous Switch Joy-Con controllers. Some projects are more complex than others, but one of the most useful is a battery swap for a controller (Switch Pro, DualShock 4, DualSense), which can extend the life of your giftee’s favorite controller so they don’t have to buy a new one.
We love finding gifts that are unusual, thoughtful, and well vetted. See even more gift ideas we recommend.
This article was edited by Arthur Gies and Caitlin McGarry.
Meet your guide
Wirecutter Staff
Mentioned above
Razer’s BlackShark V2 gaming headset has excellent audio quality, a decent mic, and a great price—and the wireless version costs just a little more.
The Best Gaming Headsets
The Pioneer DJ DM-50D-BT is the best-sounding pair of computer speakers we’ve heard in the $200 price range.
The Best Computer Speakers
If you need a fast, reliable way to move files between computers, the Samsung T7 Shield (1 TB) is the portable solid-state drive for you.
The Best Portable SSD
There are too many great video games to keep track of, but we’re here to help you find one or two we think you’ll love.
Diablo IV, Street Fighter 6, and More: The Video Games Wirecutter Is Playing in June 2023
After new
|
83. An Intramural Republican Fight Breaks Out Over the C.I.A. Director’s Fate.txt
|
By Julian E. Barnes
Nov. 11, 2020
WASHINGTON — Internal Republican divisions over the fate of Gina Haspel’s tenure as C.I.A. director have come tumbling into view as some Senate leaders showed support while President Trump’s allies pushed for her ouster, in part over the agency’s role in disseminating the whistle-blower complaint that prompted impeachment, according to current and former administration officials.
For weeks, Mr. Trump has been mulling whether to fire Ms. Haspel, the agency’s first female director. Despite Mr. Trump’s refusal to accept his election loss, people close to him understand that his time in office is limited and the window to remove her is dwindling.
Some officials and presidential allies believe that Ms. Haspel failed to do enough to stop the whistle-blower’s complaints about Mr. Trump’s July 2019 call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, which prompted impeachment, from moving forward. Others have also grown frustrated with her opposition to declassifying documents related to Russia’s 2016 election interference.
White House aides are divided over Ms. Haspel’s removal. Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel, opposes it, though other officials are pushing for her dismissal, the officials said. Allies of the president have had “a real issue of trust” with Ms. Haspel for more than a year, a senior administration official said.
The C.I.A. declined to comment.
Though Ms. Haspel had no direct role in the impeachment inquiry, it was prompted by a C.I.A. officer who made an anonymous and indirect complaint to the agency’s general counsel, then filed a whistle-blower complaint to the inspector general of the intelligence community.
A Guide to the Various Trump Investigations
Confused about the inquiries and legal cases involving former President Donald Trump? We’re here to help.
Mr. Trump has acted against people he has perceived as aiding the impeachment inquiry. After the Senate acquitted the president this year, he fired Gordon D. Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union who testified in the inquiry, and Michael K. Atkinson, the inspector general who investigated the whistle-blower complaint. The White House also effectively blocked the promotion of Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, the National Security Council aide who was the primary witness in the impeachment hearing, leading to his retirement.
White House officials who favor Ms. Haspel’s ouster believe she has been insubordinate to John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, and boxed in the White House on the debate over whether to declassify Russia documents by sharing her concerns with Congress, the senior official said.
Ms. Haspel’s congressional allies noted that she is a cabinet official and has a responsibility to answer questions from lawmakers conducting oversight of the intelligence agencies.
Tensions over Ms. Haspel’s fate intensified this week after Mr. Trump ordered a string of firings at the Pentagon that began with the ouster of Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper on Monday and continued on Tuesday with the removal of other key Pentagon officials, including the head of intelligence and the leader of the influential policy apparatus. The White House then installed loyalists in top defense posts.
Top Republicans came subtly to Ms. Haspel’s defense on Tuesday. Senator Mitch McConnell invited her for a conspicuous meeting in his office.
That prompted Arthur Schwartz, an informal adviser to Donald Trump Jr., to accuse top Republicans of trying to manipulate Mr. Trump into keeping Ms. Haspel, who Mr. Schwartz said “undermines Trump and subverts his agenda at every turn.” Making reference to Ms. Haspel’s previous clandestine work overseas managing C.I.A. informants, Mr. Schwartz said Republicans “are getting played by a master case officer.”
Senator John Cornyn of Texas responded on Twitter, saying intelligence should not be partisan and is “about preserving impartial, nonpartisan information necessary to inform policy makers.”
That invited a response from Donald Trump Jr., who asked whether the senators had discussed Ms. Haspel with members of the administration. “Or,” he concluded in an apparent swipe at Ms. Haspel, “are you just taking a trained liar’s word for it on everything?”
Some of Mr. Trump’s allies believe the Russia documents they wanted declassified include information that will undermine established facts about the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. But others are skeptical the documents will change the understanding of what happened in 2016. Outside investigators who reviewed intelligence gathered at the time for a bipartisan Senate report released this year backed the conclusion that Russia favored Mr. Trump in that election.
No decision on whether to declassify the documents has been made. But the ultimate authority to declassify them does not rest with Ms. Haspel. Mr. Ratcliffe or Mr. Trump could ultimately decide to release them, with or without Ms. Haspel’s blessing.
|
By Julian E. Barnes
Nov. 11, 2020
WASHINGTON — Internal Republican divisions over the fate of Gina Haspel’s tenure as C.I.A. director have come tumbling into view as some Senate leaders showed support while President Trump’s allies pushed for her ouster, in part over the agency’s role in disseminating the whistle-blower complaint that prompted impeachment, according to current and former administration officials.
For weeks, Mr. Trump has been mulling whether to fire Ms. Haspel, the agency’s first female director. Despite Mr. Trump’s refusal to accept his
|
election loss, people close to him understand that his time in office is limited and the window to remove her is dwindling.
Some officials and presidential allies believe that Ms. Haspel failed to do enough to stop the whistle-blower’s complaints about Mr. Trump’s July 2019 call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, which prompted impeachment, from moving forward. Others have also grown frustrated with her opposition to declassifying documents related to Russia’s 2016 election interference.
White House aides are divided over Ms. Haspel’s removal. Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel, opposes it, though other officials are pushing for her dismissal, the officials said. Allies of the president have had “a real issue of trust” with Ms. Haspel for more than a year, a senior administration official said.
The C.I.A. declined to comment.
Though Ms. Haspel had no direct role in the impeachment inquiry, it was prompted by a C.I.A. officer who made an anonymous and indirect complaint to the agency’s general counsel, then filed a whistle-blower complaint to the inspector general of the intelligence community.
A Guide to the Various Trump Investigations
Confused about the inquiries and legal cases involving former President Donald Trump? We’re here to help.
Mr. Trump has acted against people he has perceived as aiding the impeachment inquiry. After the Senate acquitted the president this year, he fired Gordon D. Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union who testified in the inquiry, and Michael K. Atkinson, the inspector general who investigated the whistle-blower complaint. The White House also effectively blocked the promotion of Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, the National Security Council aide who was the primary witness in the impeachment hearing, leading to his retirement.
White House officials who favor Ms. Haspel’s ouster believe she has been insubordinate to John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, and boxed in the White House on the debate over whether to declassify Russia documents by sharing her concerns with Congress, the senior official said.
Ms. Haspel’s congressional allies noted that she is a cabinet official and has a responsibility to answer questions from lawmakers conducting oversight of the intelligence agencies.
Tensions over Ms. Haspel’s fate intensified this week after Mr. Trump ordered a string of firings at the Pentagon that began with the ouster of Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper on Monday and continued on Tuesday with the removal of other key Pentagon officials, including the head of intelligence and the leader of the influential policy apparatus. The White House then installed loyalists in top defense posts.
Top Republicans came subtly to Ms. Haspel’s defense on Tuesday. Senator Mitch McConnell invited her for a conspicuous meeting in his office.
That prompted Arthur Schwartz, an informal adviser to Donald Trump Jr., to accuse top Republicans of trying to manipulate Mr. Trump into keeping Ms. Haspel, who Mr. Schwartz said “undermines Trump and subverts his agenda at every turn.” Making reference to Ms. Haspel’s previous clandestine work overseas managing C.I.A. informants, Mr. Schwartz said Republicans “are getting played by a master case officer.”
Senator John Cornyn of Texas responded on Twitter, saying intelligence should not be partisan and is “about preserving impartial, nonpartisan information necessary to inform policy makers.”
That invited a response from Donald Trump Jr., who asked whether the senators had discussed Ms. Haspel with members of the administration. “Or,” he concluded in an apparent swipe at Ms. Haspel, “are you just taking a trained liar’s word for it on everything?”
Some of Mr. Trump’s allies believe the Russia documents they wanted declassified include information that will undermine established facts about the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. But others are skeptical the documents will change the understanding of what happened in 2016. Outside investigators who reviewed intelligence gathered at the time for a bipartisan Senate report released this year backed the conclusion that Russia favored Mr. Trump in that election.
No decision on whether to declassify the documents has been made. But the ultimate authority to declassify them does not rest with Ms. Haspel. Mr. Ratcliffe or Mr. Trump could ultimately decide to release them, with or without Ms. Haspel’s blessing.
|
5. John Outterbridge, Who Turned Castoffs Into Sculpture, Dies at 87.txt
|
By Jori Finkel
Jan. 1, 2021
LOS ANGELES — John Outterbridge, a Los Angeles cultural leader and artist who made powerful sculptures from what is usually dismissed as junk or castoffs — a means of exploring loaded social issues as well as celebrating a history of African-American resourcefulness — died here on Nov. 12. He was 87.
His daughter, Tami Outterbridge, confirmed the death. No cause was given.
Mr. Outterbridge managed to balance his artmaking with his work as an arts educator and administrator. In 1969 he became director of the Compton Communicative Arts Academy, an old ice-skating rink converted into a community arts center. His influence extended to the building itself, where he embedded the harp of an old piano in a wall so that visitors could play the strings as they entered the space.
“It was a magical place,” said the artist Mark Steven Greenfield, who described Mr. Outterbridge as “a poet-philosopher or contemporary griot,” referring to the West African storytellers and history-keepers. “There was always something going on in there — it could be a musical performance, a drum circle or a children art’s workshop.”
From 1975 to 1992, Mr. Outterbridge was director of the Watts Towers Arts Center, an arts education and exhibition space inspired by the soaring towers that the folk art hero Simon Rodia built by hand and decorated with found glass, pottery shards and more.
His own artworks were likewise resourceful, often incorporating leftover wood, fabric scraps or rusted metal. Many of his materials came from junkyards in Pasadena, not far from his home in Altadena.
“John was a terrific artist, innovative and exceptional with materials,” the artist Betye Saar wrote in an email, describing how she first met him in the 1970s at the Black-owned Brockman Gallery in Los Angeles. Scholars now place him alongside Ms. Saar and Noah Purifoy as a leading practitioner in the 1960s and ’70s of this often raggedy, pieced-together mixed-medium sort of sculpture known as assemblage.
How The Times decides who gets an obituary. There is no formula, scoring system or checklist in determining the news value of a life. We investigate, research and ask around before settling on our subjects. If you know of someone who might be a candidate for a Times obituary, please suggest it here.
Learn more about our process.
“In castoffs there are profound treasures,” Mr. Outterbridge told the critic Shana Nys Dambrot in an interview on the website of the California public television station KCET in 2016. “That’s what soul food is about. Chitterlings and pig feet are all about the notion that, as a people, we’ve taken the scraps, the castoffs, and made them into something so tasty that one can’t help but suck right down to the bones.”
John Wilfred Outterbridge was born to John Ivery and Olivia Northern Outterbridge on March 12, 1933, in Greenville, N.C. He was the second of eight children and is survived by four siblings: Freddie, Marvin and Robert Outterbridge and Jackie Outterbridge Parks.
He liked to say that his parents were the first artists he knew. His mother played piano, made drawings and wrote poetry, while his father scraped together a living by hauling and scavenging junk, which he often stored in the family’s backyard. John’s uncle Buddy was “a concert pianist with no concert stage” because he was Black, Mr. Outterbridge told the historian Richard Cándida Smith in 1989 for an oral history project at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The family home was covered with paintings by the children — even some window shades were hand-painted. And he was surrounded by the beauty of homemade things: his grandmother’s soap bars, stacked like buildings; wood floors bleached bone-white by all the lye; tall poles outside decorated with gourds that rattled and scared away the birds.
He enrolled at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in 1951 but left after a year to join the Army, to take advantage of the G.I. Bill. He trained as a munitions specialist and was stationed in southern Germany for two years during the Korean War.
Even his military years proved creative. He made small paintings of sights foreign to him, like villages with old cathedrals and cemeteries. During a barracks inspection one day his commanding office was rummaging through Mr. Outterbridge’s locker when a stash of paintings fell out. The officer confronted him: Where did you get these paintings?
“I did these,” Mr. Outterbridge said, having to repeat it several times before he was believed.
The officer, who collected art, was impressed. He created a studio space for Mr. Outterbridge and gave him commissions to decorate officers’ clubs.
After his military service, Mr. Outterbridge attended the American Academy of Art in Chicago, joining a community of artists and musicians. He made paintings, some with surreal touches, and drove a bus for the Chicago Transit Authority. He met Beverly Marie McKissick at a choir practice at St. Anthelm Catholic Church, and they married in 1960. (They divorced 30 years later.)
In 1963 the couple moved to Los Angeles, where Mr. Outterbridge worked in a production studio that served designers. One of his odder jobs was painting an abstract canvas for the actress Jayne Mansfield to match the colors of her home décor.
Mr. Outterbridge taught art classes at local colleges and became an art handler and instructor at the Pasadena Art Museum, where he installed dozens of Andy Warhol’s Soup Can paintings and befriended the sculptor Mark di Suvero. When Mr. di Suvero left the country in 1967, he left his tools with Mr. Outterbridge.
Mr. Outterbridge credited these tools, including electric shears for cutting metal, with helping him complete his “Containment” series. For these sculptures he covered wooden armatures with pieces of sheet metal to create the illusion of bulk and weight, sometimes incorporating straps, buckles or ties that evoke notions of physical restraint or slavery. Created in the wake of the 1965 Watts riots, the work was immediately read as a portrait of racial oppression.
The series debuted in 1969 at the Brockman Gallery, which showcased groundbreaking Black artists — including Ms. Saar, Mr. Purifoy, Judson Powell, David Hammons and John T. Riddle Jr. — who had largely been overlooked by mainstream galleries and who also worked with found objects.
For his next major body of work, the “Rag Man” series (1970-78), Mr. Outterbridge began manipulating painted canvases, free from their usual wooden supports, as a sculptural medium, stretching them into shapes and sewing them into pouches or bundles. The works ranged from abstract to political; “Jive Ass Bird,” for one, from 1971, featured a bloated image of the American flag.
For his “Ethnic Heritage” series, started in the 1970s, Mr. Outterbridge fashioned dolls — both full-bodied and disfigured — from metal, wood, red clay, rag, human hair and more. The idea had come from watching his young daughter at play, but he also drew on ancestral African imagery and used adornments like shells and beads to create figures he called tribal members or elders.
Mr. Outterbridge returned to rags again in 2011, when new interest in his work began growing after it was included in a regionwide, Getty-funded initiative to explore Los Angeles’s history as an art capital. His art appeared in seven of these exhibitions, including the Hammer Museum’s survey “Art and Black Los Angeles,” covering 1960 to 1980, and a show of his new work at the exhibition space LAXART. Called “The Rag Factory,” it was his first solo show in Los Angeles in 15 years.
The central work in the solo show consisted of brightly colored rags tied together into long strands that extended nearly floor to ceiling like columns — the most disposable and lightweight of materials made quasi-architectural. Other versions of the work appeared at the Studio Museum in Harlem and at Tilton Gallery in New York, Mr. Outterbridge’s main gallery since 2006.
Asked about rags by curators and writers, he shared his memories. Sometimes he talked about the clothes his mother had sewn, or the fabric necklaces that his grandmother had stitched, with pouches for medicinal herbs. Or he recalled the rag collectors he had seen in Chicago, with their colored bundles.
“It was very exciting to hear the ragmen move in and out of the alleys calling up for rags,” he told Mr. Cándida Smith. One South Side ragman did particularly lively musical call-outs in the morning accompanied by a conga player.
His rags are layered with such personal and cultural history. They have stories to tell.
|
By Jori Finkel
Jan. 1, 2021
LOS ANGELES — John Outterbridge, a Los Angeles cultural leader and artist who made powerful sculptures from what is usually dismissed as junk or castoffs — a means of exploring loaded social issues as well as celebrating a history of African-American resourcefulness — died here on Nov. 12. He was 87.
His daughter, Tami Outterbridge, confirmed the death. No cause was given.
Mr. Outterbridge managed to balance his artmaking with his work as an arts educator and administrator. In
|
1969 he became director of the Compton Communicative Arts Academy, an old ice-skating rink converted into a community arts center. His influence extended to the building itself, where he embedded the harp of an old piano in a wall so that visitors could play the strings as they entered the space.
“It was a magical place,” said the artist Mark Steven Greenfield, who described Mr. Outterbridge as “a poet-philosopher or contemporary griot,” referring to the West African storytellers and history-keepers. “There was always something going on in there — it could be a musical performance, a drum circle or a children art’s workshop.”
From 1975 to 1992, Mr. Outterbridge was director of the Watts Towers Arts Center, an arts education and exhibition space inspired by the soaring towers that the folk art hero Simon Rodia built by hand and decorated with found glass, pottery shards and more.
His own artworks were likewise resourceful, often incorporating leftover wood, fabric scraps or rusted metal. Many of his materials came from junkyards in Pasadena, not far from his home in Altadena.
“John was a terrific artist, innovative and exceptional with materials,” the artist Betye Saar wrote in an email, describing how she first met him in the 1970s at the Black-owned Brockman Gallery in Los Angeles. Scholars now place him alongside Ms. Saar and Noah Purifoy as a leading practitioner in the 1960s and ’70s of this often raggedy, pieced-together mixed-medium sort of sculpture known as assemblage.
How The Times decides who gets an obituary. There is no formula, scoring system or checklist in determining the news value of a life. We investigate, research and ask around before settling on our subjects. If you know of someone who might be a candidate for a Times obituary, please suggest it here.
Learn more about our process.
“In castoffs there are profound treasures,” Mr. Outterbridge told the critic Shana Nys Dambrot in an interview on the website of the California public television station KCET in 2016. “That’s what soul food is about. Chitterlings and pig feet are all about the notion that, as a people, we’ve taken the scraps, the castoffs, and made them into something so tasty that one can’t help but suck right down to the bones.”
John Wilfred Outterbridge was born to John Ivery and Olivia Northern Outterbridge on March 12, 1933, in Greenville, N.C. He was the second of eight children and is survived by four siblings: Freddie, Marvin and Robert Outterbridge and Jackie Outterbridge Parks.
He liked to say that his parents were the first artists he knew. His mother played piano, made drawings and wrote poetry, while his father scraped together a living by hauling and scavenging junk, which he often stored in the family’s backyard. John’s uncle Buddy was “a concert pianist with no concert stage” because he was Black, Mr. Outterbridge told the historian Richard Cándida Smith in 1989 for an oral history project at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The family home was covered with paintings by the children — even some window shades were hand-painted. And he was surrounded by the beauty of homemade things: his grandmother’s soap bars, stacked like buildings; wood floors bleached bone-white by all the lye; tall poles outside decorated with gourds that rattled and scared away the birds.
He enrolled at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in 1951 but left after a year to join the Army, to take advantage of the G.I. Bill. He trained as a munitions specialist and was stationed in southern Germany for two years during the Korean War.
Even his military years proved creative. He made small paintings of sights foreign to him, like villages with old cathedrals and cemeteries. During a barracks inspection one day his commanding office was rummaging through Mr. Outterbridge’s locker when a stash of paintings fell out. The officer confronted him: Where did you get these paintings?
“I did these,” Mr. Outterbridge said, having to repeat it several times before he was believed.
The officer, who collected art, was impressed. He created a studio space for Mr. Outterbridge and gave him commissions to decorate officers’ clubs.
After his military service, Mr. Outterbridge attended the American Academy of Art in Chicago, joining a community of artists and musicians. He made paintings, some with surreal touches, and drove a bus for the Chicago Transit Authority. He met Beverly Marie McKissick at a choir practice at St. Anthelm Catholic Church, and they married in 1960. (They divorced 30 years later.)
In 1963 the couple moved to Los Angeles, where Mr. Outterbridge worked in a production studio that served designers. One of his odder jobs was painting an abstract canvas for the actress Jayne Mansfield to match the colors of her home décor.
Mr. Outterbridge taught art classes at local colleges and became an art handler and instructor at the Pasadena Art Museum, where he installed dozens of Andy Warhol’s Soup Can paintings and befriended the sculptor Mark di Suvero. When Mr. di Suvero left the country in 1967, he left his tools with Mr. Outterbridge.
Mr. Outterbridge credited these tools, including electric shears for cutting metal, with helping him complete his “Containment” series. For these sculptures he covered wooden armatures with pieces of sheet metal to create the illusion of bulk and weight, sometimes incorporating straps, buckles or ties that evoke notions of physical restraint or slavery. Created in the wake of the 1965 Watts riots, the work was immediately read as a portrait of racial oppression.
The series debuted in 1969 at the Brockman Gallery, which showcased groundbreaking Black artists — including Ms. Saar, Mr. Purifoy, Judson Powell, David Hammons and John T. Riddle Jr. — who had largely been overlooked by mainstream galleries and who also worked with found objects.
For his next major body of work, the “Rag Man” series (1970-78), Mr. Outterbridge began manipulating painted canvases, free from their usual wooden supports, as a sculptural medium, stretching them into shapes and sewing them into pouches or bundles. The works ranged from abstract to political; “Jive Ass Bird,” for one, from 1971, featured a bloated image of the American flag.
For his “Ethnic Heritage” series, started in the 1970s, Mr. Outterbridge fashioned dolls — both full-bodied and disfigured — from metal, wood, red clay, rag, human hair and more. The idea had come from watching his young daughter at play, but he also drew on ancestral African imagery and used adornments like shells and beads to create figures he called tribal members or elders.
Mr. Outterbridge returned to rags again in 2011, when new interest in his work began growing after it was included in a regionwide, Getty-funded initiative to explore Los Angeles’s history as an art capital. His art appeared in seven of these exhibitions, including the Hammer Museum’s survey “Art and Black Los Angeles,” covering 1960 to 1980, and a show of his new work at the exhibition space LAXART. Called “The Rag Factory,” it was his first solo show in Los Angeles in 15 years.
The central work in the solo show consisted of brightly colored rags tied together into long strands that extended nearly floor to ceiling like columns — the most disposable and lightweight of materials made quasi-architectural. Other versions of the work appeared at the Studio Museum in Harlem and at Tilton Gallery in New York, Mr. Outterbridge’s main gallery since 2006.
Asked about rags by curators and writers, he shared his memories. Sometimes he talked about the clothes his mother had sewn, or the fabric necklaces that his grandmother had stitched, with pouches for medicinal herbs. Or he recalled the rag collectors he had seen in Chicago, with their colored bundles.
“It was very exciting to hear the ragmen move in and out of the alleys calling up for rags,” he told Mr. Cándida Smith. One South Side ragman did particularly lively musical call-outs in the morning accompanied by a conga player.
His rags are layered with such personal and cultural history. They have stories to tell.
|
45. New Yorkers Who Fled the Virus Are Returning Home, Warily.txt
|
By Steven Kurutz
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 8, 2021
They fled east to Long Island, west to New Jersey and Pennsylvania, north across New England and south to Florida, seeking freedom of movement and safe shelter anywhere the virus wasn’t yet raging like an out-of-control fire. Between March 1 and May 1, as the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic hit New York, about 5 percent of the population, or 420,000 New Yorkers, left the city, according to cellphone data analyzed by The New York Times.
Who fled and who didn’t mostly divided along race and class lines. In wealthy, predominantly white neighborhoods like the Upper East Side, SoHo and Brooklyn Heights, the residential population dropped by 40 percent or more, while blocks with median household incomes of $90,000 or less saw little movement.
But New York exerts a gravitational pull on its residents, rich or poor. For many who left, it was the longest period they had ever been away from their homes in the city. And while confusion reigned in those early days (and does still), time and distance conferred perspective.
Shaken from their pre-pandemic routines, those who fled found themselves re-examining their urban lives. Did they still want to live in New York? Evidently, a good number did not. Many discovered, or rediscovered, activities like baking, gardening and padding around a home bigger than two rooms. All who left faced shaming on social media. If you weren’t holed up in your apartment listening to the sirens wail outside, you weren’t a real New Yorker.
Ten months on, many of the displaced have since returned to the city — though how many is hard to quantify, and some may leave again as case numbers and hospitalizations spike. Since their experiences echo those of a lot of people in this unsettling, up-in-the-air time we find ourselves, it seemed worthwhile to talk to some of them. To find out where they went, what life was like there and what, upon reflection, they learned about their homes, their domestic lives and their feelings toward New York.
The Leaving
Many wealthy New Yorkers retreated to cushy vacation homes in communities like the Hamptons and Palm Beach, but many had more modest experiences. They left behind cramped apartments to stay with family or friends in the suburbs or rented Airbnbs, absurdly cheap early in the pandemic because of plummeting travel.
Choosing to Be Displaced
9 Photos
View Slide Show ›
Laura Moss for The New York Times
Bryan Mealer was living with his wife, Ann Marie Healy, and their three young children on the Upper West Side, near Union Theological Seminary, where the former journalist is a seminary student. “We had this small apartment,” he said. “We didn’t want us all in there like scorpions in a jar.”
After he saw the lines at the grocery store, Mr. Mealer went into “dad-survival mode,” he said, loading the family minivan. “I packed all the food we had. I packed all the medicine. I grabbed the fireproof box with our passports. We drove through New Jersey and I bought one of those things for the roof that you can put more crap in.”
Purva Bedi, an actor, stayed put the first month of the pandemic. On March 20, her mother died, possibly from Covid-19, and she wanted to stay close to her father, who also lives in the city. Then Ms. Bedi, who shares a three-bedroom in Harlem with her husband, David Stoler, and their two children, accepted a weekend invitation to her sister-in-law’s house near Albany.
“It was an intervention,” Ms. Bedi said. “When we arrived, David’s sister said, ‘We have a secret agenda.’ She wanted us to stay there for two weeks, quarantine and move in with my mother- and father-in-law, in Troy.”
Molly Chanoff had access to a family beach house on the Jersey Shore, a space vastly larger than the 450-square-foot apartment that she owns and shares with her 4-year-old daughter in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. She mentioned the beach house to neighbors down the block — a husband, a wife and their two children. The wife’s sister is a doctor in Seattle so she had the scoop on the virus.
“They were, like, ‘We need to get out of here!’” Ms. Chanoff, a performer with LAVA, an acrobatic dance troupe, recalled. “Ten hours later, we rented a car and packed up. We thought, we’ll be gone for two weeks, max.”
It was the closing of the schools that caused Leah Vickers, an attorney who also lives in Prospect Heights, to leave town. She and her husband, Ethan Hartman, were parenting two children under 5 years old while both working full-time from home and “we were just getting crushed,” Ms. Vickers said.
Her parents still live in the home where she grew up, a big Victorian in Sea Cliff, on Long Island. It beat quarantining inside a 700-square-foot, toy-filled two-bedroom.
For others, there was a randomness to where they ended up, as if they had drawn a location to ride out the crisis from a hat.
On the weekend of March 13, just as Mayor Bill de Blasio was flirting with a stay-at-home order, Viviana Spiers and her husband, Rich, who live in Hell’s Kitchen, decided to celebrate their youngest son’s 6th birthday in Atlantic City, a destination they chose because, as Ms. Spiers put it, “the hotels were dirt cheap.”
All weekend, “Rich and I were stressed out about what we’re going to do,” said Ms. Spiers, who works for a Manhattan-based venture capital firm as an office manager. “Should we go back to New York City? It seemed so bad. At the end of the weekend, we just kept driving.”
They ended up in Lynchburg, Va., for no other reason than it was on the way to Houston, where Ms. Spiers had family. Compared to New York, Lynchburg felt laid-back and relatively virus free. They rented an Airbnb, took their two sons to Dollar General for toys, settled in.
Mr. Spiers moved to America from his native England, and spent years as a self-employed music agent and concert promoter, before the virus torpedoed his business. The pandemic seemed to bring out the rambler. “Possessions and such don’t mean anything to me,” he said. “It’s that tour mentality where you just leave with a grocery bag. Just move.”
Settling In
Mr. Mealer, the seminary student, drove his wife and children 1,700 miles to Texas, where he grew up and where the family had lived before New York, only to find upon arrival that they had nowhere to stay. His parents lived in Texas, but what if he unwittingly gave them the virus? The same concern extended to friends. Eventually, the family found a rental house well outside Austin.
“There was a little land behind the house. We had no neighbors. We weren’t seeing anybody,” Mr. Mealer said. “That was our little sanctuary. We stayed out there for two months.”
Out in the hill country, Mr. Mealer had spotty internet and no cable. After years of constantly working and traveling as a journalist, and then studying all weekend in seminary, “it forced me to slow down and be with my kids,” he said. He went on nature walks with his three children, sat around a fire pit at night, reconnected. By summer, the family had changed locations again — driving north to Minnesota, where his wife’s father was suffering from dementia. His father-in-law died while they were there.
For Mr. Mealer, the upheaval and loss clarified his priorities. “I wore the same clothes for five months,” he said. “For the kids, we ended up cutting their pants into shorts as it got warmer. You realize none of that stuff is important. Our health is important.”
Many who fled similarly lived out of a suitcase for months like nomads, and felt newly unburdened. It was extreme Marie Kondo: clothes, books, furniture, houseplants, photos and other mementos — everything they owned — abandoned in some parallel reality back in the city.
“All my life, I’ve had this feeling of, ‘If there was a fire, what would I grab?’” Ms. Bedi, the actor who moved in with her in-laws, said. “That list has become very short. What do you really need? Each other.”
Audrey Rose Smith and her husband, Vicente Munoz, had left their apartment in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, in mid-March, packing some weekend bags to visit a friend’s house in Connecticut.
“We went on a whim: Things were beginning to feel a bit scary and we wanted to get out of the city for a few days,” Ms. Smith said. “The irony is, we didn’t come back.”
A sales assistant at David Zwirner Gallery, Ms. Smith enjoys fashion and dressing, but in quarantine, she wore the same Carhartt pants to the point where they became heavily tarnished, something a shopkeeper commented on when she was out one day.
“She was like, ‘I love your pants. How did you create that ombre effect?’” Ms. Smith said. “I was totally stunned.”
She added: “There’s something freeing about having nothing to get dressed for, when you’re not dressing in a performative way as you do in New York.”
Clothes were the only possessions Ms. Chanoff missed while staying at her family’s beach house. Wearing colorful, bright, unusual pieces had become “a part of my identity,” she said. But as a single mother, she also found herself living as a family of six for four months.
“The commune life as a single mom is awesome,” Ms. Chanoff said. “I had help with daily tasks. I could take a bath.”
The Spiers also found life outside New York more tolerable than they had once imagined it. “Before this pandemic, I was the type of person where after three days, I need to get back to New York, to be with straightforward people,” Mr. Spiers said.
But, he and his wife reasoned, pandemic New York, with the Broadway theaters and music venues shuttered and the streets lifeless, wasn’t really New York. What were they missing?
After a month in Lynchburg, they did the previously unimaginable — they began house hunting, and not long after, closed on a house. They held onto their apartment in Hell’s Kitchen and planned to travel between Lynchburg and Manhattan by Amtrak.
“We made sure we got a house with a basement apartment that we can rent out,” Mr. Spiers said. And, he reasoned, they weren’t straying too far: “Virginia feels like you’re halfway in — you’re not pushing it. As New Yorkers, this is the furthest south you can go.”
Feelings of guilt and a vague sense that by leaving, they had abandoned the city in its time of need, seemed to nag at the displaced.
Mr. Mealer: “I felt really helpless being there in Texas.”
Ms. Spiers: “I’d speak to friends who were still there and think, ‘If I consider myself a New Yorker, I should be there contributing to the local shops. I need to go back.’”
Re-entry
Out on Long Island, Ms. Vickers, the Brooklyn attorney, got a taste of the suburban life she had left behind. Her children walked the same nature paths and shoreline as she had. The family had space to stretch out. Ms. Vickers’ uncle in Florida died of Covid-19 and her aunt was in the I.C.U. for several weeks, and so she felt deep gratitude for her parents, their house and the comfort it provided.
Ms. Vickers found herself scrolling through Zillow listings, imagining an alternate life in small-town America. But, “We really did miss the energy and diversity of the city,” she said. The end of summer and reopening of the schools, however tentative, seemed to her a good time to go back.
Others returned in September as well.
For Ms. Bedi, re-entry was deeply strange and “like walking off a cliff,” she said. “We were holding the trauma of what April felt like in September.”
She added: “To walk into one’s own home after five months away, it was a feeling I’ve never had before. That’s my bed, and it’s been empty for five months. My home felt foreign, yet completely intimate and my home.”
In July, Mr. Mealer returned to an apartment “preserved in amber.” There were dead flowers in a vase on the kitchen table. The fridge calendar listing the family’s appointments was still turned to March. Mr. Mealer kept it as a reminder of all they had been through. “This calendar is life before Covid,” he thought. “This is how much life has changed.”
One big change was the family’s address: They moved to New Jersey.
Before, Mr. Mealer said, he and his wife used to have tortured conversations about where they should live, anguishing over what was the best place. The pandemic removed such angst.
“We rented a house sight unseen,” in Montclair, he said. “The first week we were, like, ‘We’re going to buy plots in the cemetery in New Jersey and never leave this place.’ It’s not important to us where we live — it’s fine.”
For Ms. Smith and Mr. Munoz, who came back to Brooklyn in September, the time away only reaffirmed their identity as New Yorkers. While Ms. Smith felt liberated at times by being away from her things and everyday life, Mr. Munoz, a visual artist and designer, missed their apartment and the objects in it, including a chair he’d designed shortly before the pandemic. The prototype arrived at his apartment while he was away, and throughout the quarantine, the chair was a reminder of his creative life back in the city.
“It was missing the sunlight of the apartment, missing the aesthetic and objects that we created in the home,” Mr. Munoz said. “The idea of a city, of a congregation of like-minded people, that was stronger for me than the solitude of taking as many hikes as you want.”
Returning to her old life, Ms. Vickers was at first overwhelmed: “I was, like, ‘There’s stuff everywhere. Are we hoarders? We need to change this all up.’ Within a week, we adjusted to the fact that that was not going to happen.”
She described the scene on a recent weekday afternoon: “Right now, my 5-year-old is in her bedroom doing remote schooling, our nanny is at the kitchen table with our 2-year-old, my husband is in our bedroom where we work two feet from each other and I’m pacing around the apartment trying not to interrupt what everyone else is doing,” she said, adding, happily, “It’s chaos.”
As the months rolled on, the Spiers had no regrets about impulse-buying a house in an unfamiliar community 400 miles from the city. With the second (or is it third?) wave hitting New York, causing cases numbers to surge and lockdowns to return, they felt vindicated in their decision to have an escape hatch.
“The most valuable thing for me is mental well-being,” Mr. Spiers said. “This will be our permanent plan B.”
When Ms. Chanoff came back to her tiny one-bedroom, in September, she had all the anxieties about getting or transmitting the virus, but she also had concerns particular to her, and to New York real estate. She had spent three months in a beach house that slept 16 comfortably.
“I was scared of feeling claustrophobic after being around these wide open, beautiful spaces,” she said.
But a New Yorker’s living space, she discovered anew, extends into the neighborhood. “It felt like Prospect Park was everybody’s backyard,” Ms. Chanoff said. “People were outside. It was alive in a way that felt really special.”
She had moments when she thought about giving up on the city, like many of the displaced. But in the end, Ms. Chanoff said, “I feel committed to being here. I’m tickled that my daughter is a Brooklyn girl.”
For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.
|
By Steven Kurutz
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 8, 2021
They fled east to Long Island, west to New Jersey and Pennsylvania, north across New England and south to Florida, seeking freedom of movement and safe shelter anywhere the virus wasn’t yet raging like an out-of-control fire. Between March 1 and May 1, as the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic hit New York, about 5 percent of the population, or 420,000 New Yorkers, left the city, according to cellphone data analyzed
|
by The New York Times.
Who fled and who didn’t mostly divided along race and class lines. In wealthy, predominantly white neighborhoods like the Upper East Side, SoHo and Brooklyn Heights, the residential population dropped by 40 percent or more, while blocks with median household incomes of $90,000 or less saw little movement.
But New York exerts a gravitational pull on its residents, rich or poor. For many who left, it was the longest period they had ever been away from their homes in the city. And while confusion reigned in those early days (and does still), time and distance conferred perspective.
Shaken from their pre-pandemic routines, those who fled found themselves re-examining their urban lives. Did they still want to live in New York? Evidently, a good number did not. Many discovered, or rediscovered, activities like baking, gardening and padding around a home bigger than two rooms. All who left faced shaming on social media. If you weren’t holed up in your apartment listening to the sirens wail outside, you weren’t a real New Yorker.
Ten months on, many of the displaced have since returned to the city — though how many is hard to quantify, and some may leave again as case numbers and hospitalizations spike. Since their experiences echo those of a lot of people in this unsettling, up-in-the-air time we find ourselves, it seemed worthwhile to talk to some of them. To find out where they went, what life was like there and what, upon reflection, they learned about their homes, their domestic lives and their feelings toward New York.
The Leaving
Many wealthy New Yorkers retreated to cushy vacation homes in communities like the Hamptons and Palm Beach, but many had more modest experiences. They left behind cramped apartments to stay with family or friends in the suburbs or rented Airbnbs, absurdly cheap early in the pandemic because of plummeting travel.
Choosing to Be Displaced
9 Photos
View Slide Show ›
Laura Moss for The New York Times
Bryan Mealer was living with his wife, Ann Marie Healy, and their three young children on the Upper West Side, near Union Theological Seminary, where the former journalist is a seminary student. “We had this small apartment,” he said. “We didn’t want us all in there like scorpions in a jar.”
After he saw the lines at the grocery store, Mr. Mealer went into “dad-survival mode,” he said, loading the family minivan. “I packed all the food we had. I packed all the medicine. I grabbed the fireproof box with our passports. We drove through New Jersey and I bought one of those things for the roof that you can put more crap in.”
Purva Bedi, an actor, stayed put the first month of the pandemic. On March 20, her mother died, possibly from Covid-19, and she wanted to stay close to her father, who also lives in the city. Then Ms. Bedi, who shares a three-bedroom in Harlem with her husband, David Stoler, and their two children, accepted a weekend invitation to her sister-in-law’s house near Albany.
“It was an intervention,” Ms. Bedi said. “When we arrived, David’s sister said, ‘We have a secret agenda.’ She wanted us to stay there for two weeks, quarantine and move in with my mother- and father-in-law, in Troy.”
Molly Chanoff had access to a family beach house on the Jersey Shore, a space vastly larger than the 450-square-foot apartment that she owns and shares with her 4-year-old daughter in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. She mentioned the beach house to neighbors down the block — a husband, a wife and their two children. The wife’s sister is a doctor in Seattle so she had the scoop on the virus.
“They were, like, ‘We need to get out of here!’” Ms. Chanoff, a performer with LAVA, an acrobatic dance troupe, recalled. “Ten hours later, we rented a car and packed up. We thought, we’ll be gone for two weeks, max.”
It was the closing of the schools that caused Leah Vickers, an attorney who also lives in Prospect Heights, to leave town. She and her husband, Ethan Hartman, were parenting two children under 5 years old while both working full-time from home and “we were just getting crushed,” Ms. Vickers said.
Her parents still live in the home where she grew up, a big Victorian in Sea Cliff, on Long Island. It beat quarantining inside a 700-square-foot, toy-filled two-bedroom.
For others, there was a randomness to where they ended up, as if they had drawn a location to ride out the crisis from a hat.
On the weekend of March 13, just as Mayor Bill de Blasio was flirting with a stay-at-home order, Viviana Spiers and her husband, Rich, who live in Hell’s Kitchen, decided to celebrate their youngest son’s 6th birthday in Atlantic City, a destination they chose because, as Ms. Spiers put it, “the hotels were dirt cheap.”
All weekend, “Rich and I were stressed out about what we’re going to do,” said Ms. Spiers, who works for a Manhattan-based venture capital firm as an office manager. “Should we go back to New York City? It seemed so bad. At the end of the weekend, we just kept driving.”
They ended up in Lynchburg, Va., for no other reason than it was on the way to Houston, where Ms. Spiers had family. Compared to New York, Lynchburg felt laid-back and relatively virus free. They rented an Airbnb, took their two sons to Dollar General for toys, settled in.
Mr. Spiers moved to America from his native England, and spent years as a self-employed music agent and concert promoter, before the virus torpedoed his business. The pandemic seemed to bring out the rambler. “Possessions and such don’t mean anything to me,” he said. “It’s that tour mentality where you just leave with a grocery bag. Just move.”
Settling In
Mr. Mealer, the seminary student, drove his wife and children 1,700 miles to Texas, where he grew up and where the family had lived before New York, only to find upon arrival that they had nowhere to stay. His parents lived in Texas, but what if he unwittingly gave them the virus? The same concern extended to friends. Eventually, the family found a rental house well outside Austin.
“There was a little land behind the house. We had no neighbors. We weren’t seeing anybody,” Mr. Mealer said. “That was our little sanctuary. We stayed out there for two months.”
Out in the hill country, Mr. Mealer had spotty internet and no cable. After years of constantly working and traveling as a journalist, and then studying all weekend in seminary, “it forced me to slow down and be with my kids,” he said. He went on nature walks with his three children, sat around a fire pit at night, reconnected. By summer, the family had changed locations again — driving north to Minnesota, where his wife’s father was suffering from dementia. His father-in-law died while they were there.
For Mr. Mealer, the upheaval and loss clarified his priorities. “I wore the same clothes for five months,” he said. “For the kids, we ended up cutting their pants into shorts as it got warmer. You realize none of that stuff is important. Our health is important.”
Many who fled similarly lived out of a suitcase for months like nomads, and felt newly unburdened. It was extreme Marie Kondo: clothes, books, furniture, houseplants, photos and other mementos — everything they owned — abandoned in some parallel reality back in the city.
“All my life, I’ve had this feeling of, ‘If there was a fire, what would I grab?’” Ms. Bedi, the actor who moved in with her in-laws, said. “That list has become very short. What do you really need? Each other.”
Audrey Rose Smith and her husband, Vicente Munoz, had left their apartment in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, in mid-March, packing some weekend bags to visit a friend’s house in Connecticut.
“We went on a whim: Things were beginning to feel a bit scary and we wanted to get out of the city for a few days,” Ms. Smith said. “The irony is, we didn’t come back.”
A sales assistant at David Zwirner Gallery, Ms. Smith enjoys fashion and dressing, but in quarantine, she wore the same Carhartt pants to the point where they became heavily tarnished, something a shopkeeper commented on when she was out one day.
“She was like, ‘I love your pants. How did you create that ombre effect?’” Ms. Smith said. “I was totally stunned.”
She added: “There’s something freeing about having nothing to get dressed for, when you’re not dressing in a performative way as you do in New York.”
Clothes were the only possessions Ms. Chanoff missed while staying at her family’s beach house. Wearing colorful, bright, unusual pieces had become “a part of my identity,” she said. But as a single mother, she also found herself living as a family of six for four months.
“The commune life as a single mom is awesome,” Ms. Chanoff said. “I had help with daily tasks. I could take a bath.”
The Spiers also found life outside New York more tolerable than they had once imagined it. “Before this pandemic, I was the type of person where after three days, I need to get back to New York, to be with straightforward people,” Mr. Spiers said.
But, he and his wife reasoned, pandemic New York, with the Broadway theaters and music venues shuttered and the streets lifeless, wasn’t really New York. What were they missing?
After a month in Lynchburg, they did the previously unimaginable — they began house hunting, and not long after, closed on a house. They held onto their apartment in Hell’s Kitchen and planned to travel between Lynchburg and Manhattan by Amtrak.
“We made sure we got a house with a basement apartment that we can rent out,” Mr. Spiers said. And, he reasoned, they weren’t straying too far: “Virginia feels like you’re halfway in — you’re not pushing it. As New Yorkers, this is the furthest south you can go.”
Feelings of guilt and a vague sense that by leaving, they had abandoned the city in its time of need, seemed to nag at the displaced.
Mr. Mealer: “I felt really helpless being there in Texas.”
Ms. Spiers: “I’d speak to friends who were still there and think, ‘If I consider myself a New Yorker, I should be there contributing to the local shops. I need to go back.’”
Re-entry
Out on Long Island, Ms. Vickers, the Brooklyn attorney, got a taste of the suburban life she had left behind. Her children walked the same nature paths and shoreline as she had. The family had space to stretch out. Ms. Vickers’ uncle in Florida died of Covid-19 and her aunt was in the I.C.U. for several weeks, and so she felt deep gratitude for her parents, their house and the comfort it provided.
Ms. Vickers found herself scrolling through Zillow listings, imagining an alternate life in small-town America. But, “We really did miss the energy and diversity of the city,” she said. The end of summer and reopening of the schools, however tentative, seemed to her a good time to go back.
Others returned in September as well.
For Ms. Bedi, re-entry was deeply strange and “like walking off a cliff,” she said. “We were holding the trauma of what April felt like in September.”
She added: “To walk into one’s own home after five months away, it was a feeling I’ve never had before. That’s my bed, and it’s been empty for five months. My home felt foreign, yet completely intimate and my home.”
In July, Mr. Mealer returned to an apartment “preserved in amber.” There were dead flowers in a vase on the kitchen table. The fridge calendar listing the family’s appointments was still turned to March. Mr. Mealer kept it as a reminder of all they had been through. “This calendar is life before Covid,” he thought. “This is how much life has changed.”
One big change was the family’s address: They moved to New Jersey.
Before, Mr. Mealer said, he and his wife used to have tortured conversations about where they should live, anguishing over what was the best place. The pandemic removed such angst.
“We rented a house sight unseen,” in Montclair, he said. “The first week we were, like, ‘We’re going to buy plots in the cemetery in New Jersey and never leave this place.’ It’s not important to us where we live — it’s fine.”
For Ms. Smith and Mr. Munoz, who came back to Brooklyn in September, the time away only reaffirmed their identity as New Yorkers. While Ms. Smith felt liberated at times by being away from her things and everyday life, Mr. Munoz, a visual artist and designer, missed their apartment and the objects in it, including a chair he’d designed shortly before the pandemic. The prototype arrived at his apartment while he was away, and throughout the quarantine, the chair was a reminder of his creative life back in the city.
“It was missing the sunlight of the apartment, missing the aesthetic and objects that we created in the home,” Mr. Munoz said. “The idea of a city, of a congregation of like-minded people, that was stronger for me than the solitude of taking as many hikes as you want.”
Returning to her old life, Ms. Vickers was at first overwhelmed: “I was, like, ‘There’s stuff everywhere. Are we hoarders? We need to change this all up.’ Within a week, we adjusted to the fact that that was not going to happen.”
She described the scene on a recent weekday afternoon: “Right now, my 5-year-old is in her bedroom doing remote schooling, our nanny is at the kitchen table with our 2-year-old, my husband is in our bedroom where we work two feet from each other and I’m pacing around the apartment trying not to interrupt what everyone else is doing,” she said, adding, happily, “It’s chaos.”
As the months rolled on, the Spiers had no regrets about impulse-buying a house in an unfamiliar community 400 miles from the city. With the second (or is it third?) wave hitting New York, causing cases numbers to surge and lockdowns to return, they felt vindicated in their decision to have an escape hatch.
“The most valuable thing for me is mental well-being,” Mr. Spiers said. “This will be our permanent plan B.”
When Ms. Chanoff came back to her tiny one-bedroom, in September, she had all the anxieties about getting or transmitting the virus, but she also had concerns particular to her, and to New York real estate. She had spent three months in a beach house that slept 16 comfortably.
“I was scared of feeling claustrophobic after being around these wide open, beautiful spaces,” she said.
But a New Yorker’s living space, she discovered anew, extends into the neighborhood. “It felt like Prospect Park was everybody’s backyard,” Ms. Chanoff said. “People were outside. It was alive in a way that felt really special.”
She had moments when she thought about giving up on the city, like many of the displaced. But in the end, Ms. Chanoff said, “I feel committed to being here. I’m tickled that my daughter is a Brooklyn girl.”
For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.
|
27. ‘Because of You Guys, I’m Stuck in My Room’.txt
|
By Kristin Lin
Devora Greenspon, 88, spent most of April, May and June confined to her room after residents at her long-term care facility in Toronto tested positive for the coronavirus. She couldn’t see her family and had very little human contact at all. A former special education teacher, she told me she found the isolation and loneliness of lockdown “so heartbreaking.”
She said she gets frustrated when she hears about young people flouting social distancing rules. “I think, ‘Because of you guys, I’m stuck in my room. I would like to put you in my room for a week and see how you like it.’”
Residents of nursing homes and senior living communities were vulnerable to some of the earliest Covid-19 outbreaks. They will now be among the first groups to receive vaccines. What has life been like in between? Though we couldn’t visit Ms. Greenspon’s room, we wanted to offer readers a window into nursing homes. So we asked older Americans — as well as their caregivers and family members — to write about what their lives have been like during the pandemic.
Many reflected on the trade-offs they’ve navigated, trying to stay safe while facing the challenges of long-term isolation. A selection of their stories, edited for clarity and length, follows.
M. Anne Schmitz, writing about her mother, G. Louise Schmitz, 84, Portland, Ore.
My mom isn’t able to write or read after suffering from two strokes. In addition to early-stage dementia, she has expressive aphasia, which means she has difficulty talking. In early November, we received an email from her residential care facility saying that four staff members had tested positive. Mom tested negative. But soon after, she called telling me her next-door neighbor was sick with the virus. I started planning how I could remove my mom from the facility.
Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
The next morning, my mom called again and said, after a lot of word salad, “He’s gone.” I asked, “What do you mean, your neighbor?”
She said, clear as a bell, “He died.”
We waited until 4 p.m. for another test result, also negative, and I got her soon after. She had two bags packed and was practically running out the door — away from the boredom, loneliness, scary and confusing events, unknown staff members with covered faces.
We learned later that another neighbor, whom she knew well, also died that day. She heard this news, slumped in her chair, shielded her eyes and was quiet for about 20 minutes. I made a quesadilla for dinner, and by the time it was ready, she was stirring. She quietly dug into dinner and started talking, in her own poststroke words, about her friend.
I understood, “He was wonderful. God love him.”
Jack Cumming, 84, Carlsbad, Calif.
My wife and I live in a senior housing complex with a skilled nursing facility on the premises. Our lives are centered on the facility where we live. We are old, and so are our neighbors. Many are deep into those transitions that lead to life’s ending.
Two cultures dwell side by side in most senior care facilities. One is the staff members’ culture. They are there to do a job, often one that others would never want. They are dedicated and come to work in the face of danger, after which they go home to their families. The residents dwell in a different culture. They never leave. They have few contacts. Both cultures vary widely from one community to another, but the contrast between staff freedom and resident confinement is common. People who live in care facilities trade freedom for security.
Most difficult have been bans on visits. You may wonder whether residents just passively accept these imposed restrictions. Many do, but many don’t. It’s the same as in the general population. Walking the streets, we encounter many unmasked strangers. Are they contagious? Perhaps. They seem oblivious. Similarly, many residents ignore the rules and sneak out (“elopement” in the industry) to visit with family or friends.
Beverly Zeroogian, writing about Dorothy S., Newtown, Conn.
Dorothy lived in the nursing home where I worked for over five years. She had advanced dementia and was no longer able to walk or talk. But every day her husband, daughter and son arrived at about 12:30 to take her to the dining room for lunch. Her husband would sit on one side holding her hand. Her daughter would feed her pureed food, and her son would help Marianne and Joan, two other residents who also had challenges with feeding themselves. They were all like a family.
When Covid-19 hit, all family visits were halted. Dorothy was OK at first, already accustomed to the staff feeding her twice a day. But after a while, I think it hit her. Her family was gone. We could not tell her why or where they were. We could not reassure her, although we tried.
Dorothy slowly went downhill, and in July, she died. She is the collateral damage, the many who decline simply from the isolation and loss of routine, but most important, from the loss of the people who love them. She was one of many here, and she deserves a voice.
Debra L. Eder, writing about her mother, Ruth Eder, 92, Eatontown, N.J.
My 92-year-old mother, Ruth Eder, survived the coronavirus in a long-term care facility in New Jersey. Since recovering, she has left her room only a handful of times in the past nine months. Mom feels grateful she’s in a safe place. The same stalwart staff members have cared for her throughout the pandemic. But that doesn’t prevent her from griping — her sense of humor intact.
“You don’t know what it’s like to be in here,” she told me. “How does it feel to be wandering around in the room all day? How does it feel to be 92 and still a bitch? You don’t know what it’s like — except for being a bitch.”
Mom is showered weekly. Her uncut hair falls to her shoulders, clipped back with a child’s barrette. “I look like that Supreme Court justice,” she told me, referring to Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Mom’s days follow a routine, but it’s not clockwork: Breakfast. Get dressed. Hot chocolate. Sit in the wheelchair. Organize her tray table, bedstand. Lunch. Read.
Or, as she put it, “Waiting and waiting until things improve and I can get out of this room.”
Shari Casey, writing about her mother, Joan Slocum, 85, Woodstock, Vt.
My mother does not know that she has dementia. She does not understand why some days she does not know where she is. The isolation of the pandemic has made her dementia much worse much faster. The phone is her only stimulation most days. It is a lonely existence. She does her best to cope.
Dreams and reality sometimes blur because of the lack of stimulation. She has been adamant that she won the lottery; various cats and dogs come and snuggle with her in her bed; she has been kept awake all night having tea with a handsome Arabian prince.
My mother is fortunate that she is in an assisted-living facility that cares. It adheres to the guidelines. Unfortunately, the very rules that keep its residents physically protected do not support their emotional health. There are no easy answers.
Ruth Anderson, 81, Daly City, Calif.
We have never gone through a time like this. It is hard to go through our days, learn of hospitals full. I’ve lived in a long-term care facility for a year and a half. Life is different. I know and pray help is on the way. We must be strong and help all we can at this time. I am not able to sleep well. My mind is on the run. I am a strong lady. But for now, all we can do is wait, follow all the instructions and hope we all will pull through to be strong and have our life back. I am alone in this big world. Sometimes I wish it all would go away. But for now, I pray for all and hope life will get better for all of us.
Carol Mead, 87, Louisville, Ky.
I am counting all the days my husband Don and I have sheltered in place in our home on the campus of a retirement community since March 21. I know we’ll still be counting in 2021. But how have we survived since March? Two newspapers and a local one that has a great cartoon to start off our day. I’ve always written letters and notes, and am reaching out to many more long-lost friends and relatives. Our daily companions have become Nicolle Wallace, Rachel Maddow and Judy Woodruff on TV. And who would have thought I’d look forward to our daily 45-minute walks in our beautiful world? Seeing real, masked people, even if we can’t recognize or hear them, and of course, dogs and birds and all of nature can be the high point of our day. But oh, how we are looking forward to and counting the days until sometime in the new year when we can see our children and families and friends — unmasked, close up and sharing hugs, meals and good times again!
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
|
By Kristin Lin
Devora Greenspon, 88, spent most of April, May and June confined to her room after residents at her long-term care facility in Toronto tested positive for the coronavirus. She couldn’t see her family and had very little human contact at all. A former special education teacher, she told me she found the isolation and loneliness of lockdown “so heartbreaking.”
She said she gets frustrated when she hears about young people flouting social distancing rules. “I think, ‘Because of you guys, I’m stuck in my room. I would like to put you in my room for a week and see how
|
you like it.’”
Residents of nursing homes and senior living communities were vulnerable to some of the earliest Covid-19 outbreaks. They will now be among the first groups to receive vaccines. What has life been like in between? Though we couldn’t visit Ms. Greenspon’s room, we wanted to offer readers a window into nursing homes. So we asked older Americans — as well as their caregivers and family members — to write about what their lives have been like during the pandemic.
Many reflected on the trade-offs they’ve navigated, trying to stay safe while facing the challenges of long-term isolation. A selection of their stories, edited for clarity and length, follows.
M. Anne Schmitz, writing about her mother, G. Louise Schmitz, 84, Portland, Ore.
My mom isn’t able to write or read after suffering from two strokes. In addition to early-stage dementia, she has expressive aphasia, which means she has difficulty talking. In early November, we received an email from her residential care facility saying that four staff members had tested positive. Mom tested negative. But soon after, she called telling me her next-door neighbor was sick with the virus. I started planning how I could remove my mom from the facility.
Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
The next morning, my mom called again and said, after a lot of word salad, “He’s gone.” I asked, “What do you mean, your neighbor?”
She said, clear as a bell, “He died.”
We waited until 4 p.m. for another test result, also negative, and I got her soon after. She had two bags packed and was practically running out the door — away from the boredom, loneliness, scary and confusing events, unknown staff members with covered faces.
We learned later that another neighbor, whom she knew well, also died that day. She heard this news, slumped in her chair, shielded her eyes and was quiet for about 20 minutes. I made a quesadilla for dinner, and by the time it was ready, she was stirring. She quietly dug into dinner and started talking, in her own poststroke words, about her friend.
I understood, “He was wonderful. God love him.”
Jack Cumming, 84, Carlsbad, Calif.
My wife and I live in a senior housing complex with a skilled nursing facility on the premises. Our lives are centered on the facility where we live. We are old, and so are our neighbors. Many are deep into those transitions that lead to life’s ending.
Two cultures dwell side by side in most senior care facilities. One is the staff members’ culture. They are there to do a job, often one that others would never want. They are dedicated and come to work in the face of danger, after which they go home to their families. The residents dwell in a different culture. They never leave. They have few contacts. Both cultures vary widely from one community to another, but the contrast between staff freedom and resident confinement is common. People who live in care facilities trade freedom for security.
Most difficult have been bans on visits. You may wonder whether residents just passively accept these imposed restrictions. Many do, but many don’t. It’s the same as in the general population. Walking the streets, we encounter many unmasked strangers. Are they contagious? Perhaps. They seem oblivious. Similarly, many residents ignore the rules and sneak out (“elopement” in the industry) to visit with family or friends.
Beverly Zeroogian, writing about Dorothy S., Newtown, Conn.
Dorothy lived in the nursing home where I worked for over five years. She had advanced dementia and was no longer able to walk or talk. But every day her husband, daughter and son arrived at about 12:30 to take her to the dining room for lunch. Her husband would sit on one side holding her hand. Her daughter would feed her pureed food, and her son would help Marianne and Joan, two other residents who also had challenges with feeding themselves. They were all like a family.
When Covid-19 hit, all family visits were halted. Dorothy was OK at first, already accustomed to the staff feeding her twice a day. But after a while, I think it hit her. Her family was gone. We could not tell her why or where they were. We could not reassure her, although we tried.
Dorothy slowly went downhill, and in July, she died. She is the collateral damage, the many who decline simply from the isolation and loss of routine, but most important, from the loss of the people who love them. She was one of many here, and she deserves a voice.
Debra L. Eder, writing about her mother, Ruth Eder, 92, Eatontown, N.J.
My 92-year-old mother, Ruth Eder, survived the coronavirus in a long-term care facility in New Jersey. Since recovering, she has left her room only a handful of times in the past nine months. Mom feels grateful she’s in a safe place. The same stalwart staff members have cared for her throughout the pandemic. But that doesn’t prevent her from griping — her sense of humor intact.
“You don’t know what it’s like to be in here,” she told me. “How does it feel to be wandering around in the room all day? How does it feel to be 92 and still a bitch? You don’t know what it’s like — except for being a bitch.”
Mom is showered weekly. Her uncut hair falls to her shoulders, clipped back with a child’s barrette. “I look like that Supreme Court justice,” she told me, referring to Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Mom’s days follow a routine, but it’s not clockwork: Breakfast. Get dressed. Hot chocolate. Sit in the wheelchair. Organize her tray table, bedstand. Lunch. Read.
Or, as she put it, “Waiting and waiting until things improve and I can get out of this room.”
Shari Casey, writing about her mother, Joan Slocum, 85, Woodstock, Vt.
My mother does not know that she has dementia. She does not understand why some days she does not know where she is. The isolation of the pandemic has made her dementia much worse much faster. The phone is her only stimulation most days. It is a lonely existence. She does her best to cope.
Dreams and reality sometimes blur because of the lack of stimulation. She has been adamant that she won the lottery; various cats and dogs come and snuggle with her in her bed; she has been kept awake all night having tea with a handsome Arabian prince.
My mother is fortunate that she is in an assisted-living facility that cares. It adheres to the guidelines. Unfortunately, the very rules that keep its residents physically protected do not support their emotional health. There are no easy answers.
Ruth Anderson, 81, Daly City, Calif.
We have never gone through a time like this. It is hard to go through our days, learn of hospitals full. I’ve lived in a long-term care facility for a year and a half. Life is different. I know and pray help is on the way. We must be strong and help all we can at this time. I am not able to sleep well. My mind is on the run. I am a strong lady. But for now, all we can do is wait, follow all the instructions and hope we all will pull through to be strong and have our life back. I am alone in this big world. Sometimes I wish it all would go away. But for now, I pray for all and hope life will get better for all of us.
Carol Mead, 87, Louisville, Ky.
I am counting all the days my husband Don and I have sheltered in place in our home on the campus of a retirement community since March 21. I know we’ll still be counting in 2021. But how have we survived since March? Two newspapers and a local one that has a great cartoon to start off our day. I’ve always written letters and notes, and am reaching out to many more long-lost friends and relatives. Our daily companions have become Nicolle Wallace, Rachel Maddow and Judy Woodruff on TV. And who would have thought I’d look forward to our daily 45-minute walks in our beautiful world? Seeing real, masked people, even if we can’t recognize or hear them, and of course, dogs and birds and all of nature can be the high point of our day. But oh, how we are looking forward to and counting the days until sometime in the new year when we can see our children and families and friends — unmasked, close up and sharing hugs, meals and good times again!
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
|
92. PlayStation 5: The Next Step in Sony’s Rebound.txt
|
By Seth Schiesel
Not that long ago, a typical American household might have been full of Sony devices. There was probably a Walkman or a Discman lying around, not to mention Sony boomboxes, VCRs, stereos, televisions and a list that went on and on.
These days, most household Sony collections have been whittled to a single product: a PlayStation gaming console.
As it prepares to start selling its fifth major game console in 25 years on Thursday, Sony has largely become the PlayStation company. Just as the $160 billion video game industry has outstripped film and music in the global market, the business that Sony started in the 1990s is now its biggest, most profitable division.
Sony bore major responsibility for popularizing entertainment technologies, from the transistor radio to the color television to the cassette tape to the compact disc. Yet the company then squandered opportunities in digital music, smartphones and televisions, leaving PlayStation its most important and powerful link to everyday consumers.
“We’ve had a tough time,” Kenichiro Yoshida, Sony’s chairman and chief executive, said in an interview last week. But the gaming business, he said, has helped the company regain its footing.
Mr. Yoshida helped begin a wrenching transformation of Sony’s culture and business model about six years ago when he became chief financial officer. He cut costs, took huge write-downs in the smartphone division and got out of PCs and mass-market televisions.
Sony’s shares are up more than elevenfold since 2012, profits have risen, and the company is still one of Japan’s largest, with about 110,000 employees and a market value around $108 billion.
“Entertainment, led by gaming, is Sony’s new face, the company’s new growth driver,” said Kota Ezawa, a Citigroup analyst in Tokyo. “There has been a clear statement and direct change in direction by Ken Yoshida to move Sony from a traditional electronics business of selling boxes to a business selling entertainment.”
Over the first half of Sony’s current fiscal year, the gaming division generated more than 27 percent of the company’s revenue and about 42 percent of its operating income. Sony’s electronics business, by contrast, accounted for 20 percent of revenue and only 8 percent of operating income.
After gaming and electronics, the company’s largest segments are its image-sensor business — which sells advanced camera chips to companies including Apple and Huawei — and financial services, which include a significant Japanese insurance provider. Sony’s music and Hollywood divisions are its smallest, but have remained relatively profitable in recent years.
“The way that PlayStation has risen above consumer electronics and become the core business of Sony really reflects the shift in how people are engaging in the modern world,” said Damian Thong, a Macquarie analyst in Tokyo. “Many Japanese conglomerates have struggled with this.”
The new PlayStation 5 has been reviewed favorably in the face of formidable competition from a new generation of Xbox game machines introduced Tuesday by Microsoft.
The companies are pursuing different strategies. While Microsoft has attracted more than 15 million users to its Netflix-like game subscription service, Sony is relying on a more traditional retail sales model and the popularity of exclusive new games like Demon’s Souls and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales.
Mr. Ezawa, the Citigroup analyst, estimated that Sony might initially lose as much as $100 on each $500 PS5 it sells, though the loss is expected to shrink as manufacturing efficiency improves.
That’s normal in the top-end console business. Sony and Microsoft each appear to initially sell their gaming hardware at a loss and make profits down the road by selling game software and extracting licensing fees from independent publishers. Piers Harding-Rolls, an analyst at Ampere Analysis, forecasts that Sony will sell five million PS5s this year while Microsoft will move 3.9 million new Xboxes.
Sony attributes much of its success over the last console generation to the popularity of its exclusive game franchises, including stalwarts like God of War (more than 51 million copies sold) and newcomers like Ghost of Tsushima, with more than five million copies sold since its debut in July.
Neither Mr. Yoshida nor Jim Ryan, the British man who runs the global PlayStation business, grew up in the company’s content operations. Mr. Yoshida ran Sony’s unglamorous Japanese internet service provider for many years while Mr. Ryan built PlayStation’s operational ground game around the world — a major component of the brand’s success.
After working at Ford Motor and the software company Oracle, Mr. Ryan joined Sony in 1994 just as it was preparing to introduce the original PlayStation in Europe.
“My initial assignment was to set up the PlayStation infrastructure in continental Europe, where there was nothing, literally nothing,” Mr. Ryan said in an interview last week. “Like going down to the Ikea in Frankfurt to buy very cheap desks for the PlayStation office there and trying to figure out if we had enough money to pay for someone to come assemble them or if we had to do it ourselves.”
Back then, the major competing consoles came from family-friendly toy companies like Nintendo and Sega. Even before commissioning a spooky PlayStation commercial from the director David Lynch, Sony brought the first contemporary adult sensibility to mainstream gaming.
“Putting video game consoles in the chill-out rooms in the coolest London nightclubs was totally unheard-of, inconceivable back in those days,” Mr. Ryan said. “We used influencers before the word had even been invented.”
Mark Cerny, Sony’s architect for the PS5 and an adviser to the company for decades, said in an interview last week that the involvement of Sony Music executives in the birth of PlayStation was important. It instilled a respect within the game division’s culture for the creative process and was a precursor of the company’s shift toward entertainment.
The second PlayStation, released in 2000, was a hit (and remains the world’s best-selling game console) propelled by Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto III and Sony’s expansion into new geographic markets.
The PlayStation 4, released in 2013, dominated the competition, selling more than twice as many units as Microsoft’s Xbox One. That victory gave Sony the financial breathing room it needed to mount a revival and perhaps become a beacon for the broader Japanese electronics industry.
Mr. Yoshida has described the PlayStation business and its focus on hard-core gamers as “something of a niche.” That’s because Sony has little presence in either PC or mobile gaming, which together make up about three-quarters of the global game business.
But “niches can be very profitable, and that’s what Sony is focused on,” said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Creative Strategies. “They’re not trying to compete with Microsoft and Xbox across the board.”
Even as the PlayStation business thrived in recent years, Mr. Yoshida and the chief executive who preceded him, Kazuo Hirai (a previous leader of PlayStation), subjected Sony to a painful reckoning. In 2014, Sony sold its PC business, refocused its TV business on luxury models and began to reduce costs in other parts of the company, including layoffs.
Wall Street analysts said Mr. Yoshida had made clear his intention to manage the company around financial efficiency rather than other metrics like revenue growth or market share.
Mr. Yoshida acknowledged that any company’s survival ultimately depended on making money, but he said Sony’s true goal, revealed even through video games, went beyond the bottom line.
“Increasing profit is not our purpose,” he said. “Our purpose as a company is to fill the world with emotions through creativity and technology. Profit is a target. Target is different than purpose.”
|
By Seth Schiesel
Not that long ago, a typical American household might have been full of Sony devices. There was probably a Walkman or a Discman lying around, not to mention Sony boomboxes, VCRs, stereos, televisions and a list that went on and on.
These days, most household Sony collections have been whittled to a single product: a PlayStation gaming console.
As it prepares to start selling its fifth major game console in 25 years on Thursday, Sony has largely become the PlayStation company. Just as the $160 billion video game industry has outstripped film
|
and music in the global market, the business that Sony started in the 1990s is now its biggest, most profitable division.
Sony bore major responsibility for popularizing entertainment technologies, from the transistor radio to the color television to the cassette tape to the compact disc. Yet the company then squandered opportunities in digital music, smartphones and televisions, leaving PlayStation its most important and powerful link to everyday consumers.
“We’ve had a tough time,” Kenichiro Yoshida, Sony’s chairman and chief executive, said in an interview last week. But the gaming business, he said, has helped the company regain its footing.
Mr. Yoshida helped begin a wrenching transformation of Sony’s culture and business model about six years ago when he became chief financial officer. He cut costs, took huge write-downs in the smartphone division and got out of PCs and mass-market televisions.
Sony’s shares are up more than elevenfold since 2012, profits have risen, and the company is still one of Japan’s largest, with about 110,000 employees and a market value around $108 billion.
“Entertainment, led by gaming, is Sony’s new face, the company’s new growth driver,” said Kota Ezawa, a Citigroup analyst in Tokyo. “There has been a clear statement and direct change in direction by Ken Yoshida to move Sony from a traditional electronics business of selling boxes to a business selling entertainment.”
Over the first half of Sony’s current fiscal year, the gaming division generated more than 27 percent of the company’s revenue and about 42 percent of its operating income. Sony’s electronics business, by contrast, accounted for 20 percent of revenue and only 8 percent of operating income.
After gaming and electronics, the company’s largest segments are its image-sensor business — which sells advanced camera chips to companies including Apple and Huawei — and financial services, which include a significant Japanese insurance provider. Sony’s music and Hollywood divisions are its smallest, but have remained relatively profitable in recent years.
“The way that PlayStation has risen above consumer electronics and become the core business of Sony really reflects the shift in how people are engaging in the modern world,” said Damian Thong, a Macquarie analyst in Tokyo. “Many Japanese conglomerates have struggled with this.”
The new PlayStation 5 has been reviewed favorably in the face of formidable competition from a new generation of Xbox game machines introduced Tuesday by Microsoft.
The companies are pursuing different strategies. While Microsoft has attracted more than 15 million users to its Netflix-like game subscription service, Sony is relying on a more traditional retail sales model and the popularity of exclusive new games like Demon’s Souls and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales.
Mr. Ezawa, the Citigroup analyst, estimated that Sony might initially lose as much as $100 on each $500 PS5 it sells, though the loss is expected to shrink as manufacturing efficiency improves.
That’s normal in the top-end console business. Sony and Microsoft each appear to initially sell their gaming hardware at a loss and make profits down the road by selling game software and extracting licensing fees from independent publishers. Piers Harding-Rolls, an analyst at Ampere Analysis, forecasts that Sony will sell five million PS5s this year while Microsoft will move 3.9 million new Xboxes.
Sony attributes much of its success over the last console generation to the popularity of its exclusive game franchises, including stalwarts like God of War (more than 51 million copies sold) and newcomers like Ghost of Tsushima, with more than five million copies sold since its debut in July.
Neither Mr. Yoshida nor Jim Ryan, the British man who runs the global PlayStation business, grew up in the company’s content operations. Mr. Yoshida ran Sony’s unglamorous Japanese internet service provider for many years while Mr. Ryan built PlayStation’s operational ground game around the world — a major component of the brand’s success.
After working at Ford Motor and the software company Oracle, Mr. Ryan joined Sony in 1994 just as it was preparing to introduce the original PlayStation in Europe.
“My initial assignment was to set up the PlayStation infrastructure in continental Europe, where there was nothing, literally nothing,” Mr. Ryan said in an interview last week. “Like going down to the Ikea in Frankfurt to buy very cheap desks for the PlayStation office there and trying to figure out if we had enough money to pay for someone to come assemble them or if we had to do it ourselves.”
Back then, the major competing consoles came from family-friendly toy companies like Nintendo and Sega. Even before commissioning a spooky PlayStation commercial from the director David Lynch, Sony brought the first contemporary adult sensibility to mainstream gaming.
“Putting video game consoles in the chill-out rooms in the coolest London nightclubs was totally unheard-of, inconceivable back in those days,” Mr. Ryan said. “We used influencers before the word had even been invented.”
Mark Cerny, Sony’s architect for the PS5 and an adviser to the company for decades, said in an interview last week that the involvement of Sony Music executives in the birth of PlayStation was important. It instilled a respect within the game division’s culture for the creative process and was a precursor of the company’s shift toward entertainment.
The second PlayStation, released in 2000, was a hit (and remains the world’s best-selling game console) propelled by Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto III and Sony’s expansion into new geographic markets.
The PlayStation 4, released in 2013, dominated the competition, selling more than twice as many units as Microsoft’s Xbox One. That victory gave Sony the financial breathing room it needed to mount a revival and perhaps become a beacon for the broader Japanese electronics industry.
Mr. Yoshida has described the PlayStation business and its focus on hard-core gamers as “something of a niche.” That’s because Sony has little presence in either PC or mobile gaming, which together make up about three-quarters of the global game business.
But “niches can be very profitable, and that’s what Sony is focused on,” said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Creative Strategies. “They’re not trying to compete with Microsoft and Xbox across the board.”
Even as the PlayStation business thrived in recent years, Mr. Yoshida and the chief executive who preceded him, Kazuo Hirai (a previous leader of PlayStation), subjected Sony to a painful reckoning. In 2014, Sony sold its PC business, refocused its TV business on luxury models and began to reduce costs in other parts of the company, including layoffs.
Wall Street analysts said Mr. Yoshida had made clear his intention to manage the company around financial efficiency rather than other metrics like revenue growth or market share.
Mr. Yoshida acknowledged that any company’s survival ultimately depended on making money, but he said Sony’s true goal, revealed even through video games, went beyond the bottom line.
“Increasing profit is not our purpose,” he said. “Our purpose as a company is to fill the world with emotions through creativity and technology. Profit is a target. Target is different than purpose.”
|
32. The U.S. enters 2021 playing catch-up with its vaccine distribution, prompting sharp words from Mitt Romney..txt
|
By Rebecca Robbins, Frances Robles and Tim Arango
The United States begins the new year far behind schedule in its coronavirus vaccine rollout, having distributed shots to a mere fraction of the 20 million it had hoped to reach by this time, even as the nation hit a grim new milestone on New Year’s Eve: 20 million cases since the start of the pandemic.
In a statement uploaded to his website on Friday, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah said it was “as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable” that “comprehensive vaccination plans have not been developed at the federal level and sent to the states as models.”
The statement is the strongest criticism to date of the Trump administration’s handling of the vaccine rollout from a Republican senator.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 2.8 million people have received their first dose, though that number may be somewhat low because of lags in reporting. Federal officials say they do not fully understand the cause of the delays and have denied that they are to blame. Officials behind Operation Warp Speed, the federal effort to fast-track vaccines, have said that their job is to ensure that vaccines are made available and get shipped out to the states. The states are then expected to carry the baton.
Mr. Romney called it “unrealistic to assume” that already overtaxed health care workers could take on the responsibility of vaccinating the nation, and criticized the plan to have CVS and Walgreens to carry out mass inoculations.
“They don’t have excess personnel available to inoculate millions of Americans,” Mr. Romney continued. “Nor are they equipped to deal with the rare but serious reactions which may occur.”
Mr. Romney offered several loose ideas, such as training every otherwise unoccupied medical professional, retired or active, to administer vaccines and establishing a schedule based on a patient’s priority category and birth date.
“I have experience organizing a major logistical event but nothing on the scale of what is called for today,” Mr. Romney added. “Nor do I have any relevant medical or public health experience. But I know that when something isn’t working, you need to acknowledge reality and develop a plan — particularly when hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake.”
Health officials and hospital leaders throughout the country have pointed to several factors for lags in the vaccination campaign.
People have been off work and clinics have had reduced hours during the holidays. States have held back doses to be given out to their nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, an effort that is just gearing up and expected to take several months. Across the country, just 8 percent of the doses distributed for use in these facilities have been administered, with two million yet to be given.
The rollout has been marked not only by delays, but by confusion, blunders and worse.
In one case, 42 people in West Virginia who were scheduled to receive the coronavirus vaccine on Wednesday were instead mistakenly injected with an experimental monoclonal antibody treatment.
In another, a pharmacist at a Wisconsin hospital was arrested for allegedly removing hundreds of vaccine doses from refrigeration, intentionally spoiling them. No motive has yet been specified, but officials said that the pharmacist knew that the his action would mean that people who received the ruined doses would think they were protected when they weren’t.
The United States is not alone in stumbling to distribute vaccines. President Emmanuel Macron of France faces growing criticism for the sluggishness of France’s rollout. Fewer than 200 people have received doses there since Sunday, when the European Union officially began its campaign to distribute shots to its 410 million citizens. Germany has inoculated nearly 80,000 over the same period.
By contrast, the pace of Israel’s vaccination program is far outstripping the rest of the world. Nearly 10 percent of Israel’s population has received the first of two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine after the program began there on Dec. 20.
|
By Rebecca Robbins, Frances Robles and Tim Arango
The United States begins the new year far behind schedule in its coronavirus vaccine rollout, having distributed shots to a mere fraction of the 20 million it had hoped to reach by this time, even as the nation hit a grim new milestone on New Year’s Eve: 20 million cases since the start of the pandemic.
In a statement uploaded to his website on Friday, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah said it was “as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable” that “comprehensive vaccination plans have not been developed at the federal level and sent to the states as
|
models.”
The statement is the strongest criticism to date of the Trump administration’s handling of the vaccine rollout from a Republican senator.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 2.8 million people have received their first dose, though that number may be somewhat low because of lags in reporting. Federal officials say they do not fully understand the cause of the delays and have denied that they are to blame. Officials behind Operation Warp Speed, the federal effort to fast-track vaccines, have said that their job is to ensure that vaccines are made available and get shipped out to the states. The states are then expected to carry the baton.
Mr. Romney called it “unrealistic to assume” that already overtaxed health care workers could take on the responsibility of vaccinating the nation, and criticized the plan to have CVS and Walgreens to carry out mass inoculations.
“They don’t have excess personnel available to inoculate millions of Americans,” Mr. Romney continued. “Nor are they equipped to deal with the rare but serious reactions which may occur.”
Mr. Romney offered several loose ideas, such as training every otherwise unoccupied medical professional, retired or active, to administer vaccines and establishing a schedule based on a patient’s priority category and birth date.
“I have experience organizing a major logistical event but nothing on the scale of what is called for today,” Mr. Romney added. “Nor do I have any relevant medical or public health experience. But I know that when something isn’t working, you need to acknowledge reality and develop a plan — particularly when hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake.”
Health officials and hospital leaders throughout the country have pointed to several factors for lags in the vaccination campaign.
People have been off work and clinics have had reduced hours during the holidays. States have held back doses to be given out to their nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, an effort that is just gearing up and expected to take several months. Across the country, just 8 percent of the doses distributed for use in these facilities have been administered, with two million yet to be given.
The rollout has been marked not only by delays, but by confusion, blunders and worse.
In one case, 42 people in West Virginia who were scheduled to receive the coronavirus vaccine on Wednesday were instead mistakenly injected with an experimental monoclonal antibody treatment.
In another, a pharmacist at a Wisconsin hospital was arrested for allegedly removing hundreds of vaccine doses from refrigeration, intentionally spoiling them. No motive has yet been specified, but officials said that the pharmacist knew that the his action would mean that people who received the ruined doses would think they were protected when they weren’t.
The United States is not alone in stumbling to distribute vaccines. President Emmanuel Macron of France faces growing criticism for the sluggishness of France’s rollout. Fewer than 200 people have received doses there since Sunday, when the European Union officially began its campaign to distribute shots to its 410 million citizens. Germany has inoculated nearly 80,000 over the same period.
By contrast, the pace of Israel’s vaccination program is far outstripping the rest of the world. Nearly 10 percent of Israel’s population has received the first of two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine after the program began there on Dec. 20.
|
72. When Trump Vandalizes Our Country.txt
|
By Nicholas Kristof
Opinion Columnist
As it became clear that she would lose the 2016 election and news organizations called the race for Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton spoke to her supporters.
“We must accept this result,” she declared. “Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.”
She did not boast that she had won 2.9 million more votes than Trump. She did not file lawsuits to try to reverse thin margins. And she did not offer evidence-free allegations of voter fraud — as Trump did, even though he had won. Rather, she buttressed the norm in American electoral politics of the loser acknowledging the winner.
This norm is as traditional as it is wrenching for the losers. In conceding the presidential race in 1952 and sharing how he felt, Adlai Stevenson recalled what Lincoln supposedly said after losing an election: “He said he felt like a little boy who had stubbed his toe in the dark. He was too old to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh.” Still, Stevenson resolutely called on his backers to support Dwight Eisenhower in the presidency.
In 2000, after the Supreme Court effectively ended Al Gore’s quest for the presidency, Gore likewise admitted his heartache but urged voters: “I call on all Americans — I particularly urge all who stood with us — to unite behind our next president.”
Trump might study the particularly eloquent speech by John McCain as he conceded to Barack Obama in 2008. McCain said: “I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together.”
Nicholas Kristof’s Newsletter Get a behind-the-scenes look at Nick’s gritty journalism as he travels around the United States and the world. Get it sent to your inbox.
President Trump’s pattern instead has been to scrape the wounds opened during campaigns, for he has been a sore loser as well as a sore winner. In 2016, when Trump lost the Iowa caucuses, he claimed that “Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he stole it.”
Today Trump is not simply saying that we should wait for every vote to be counted in the 2020 election. Rather, he is fabricating election fraud and falsely claiming that he won, sowing doubts within his base about American democracy itself. A Politico/Morning Consult poll found that 70 percent of Republicans don’t believe the election was free and fair.
Republican officials have, with some noble exceptions, joined Trump in this dangerous charade, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asserting — perhaps jokingly — that “there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.”
The blunt truth is that there is zero evidence of widespread fraud or impropriety, and in any case, the average statewide recount over 20 years has resulted in a shift of just 430 votes. There is no realistic chance for recounts to shift enough votes for Trump to win a second term.
Yet Trump is denying reality and impeding a lawful transition in ways that diminish the United States before the world, that make our country less governable and that risk inciting violence. This is presidential vandalism.
Can America heal?
The most likely course ahead, I believe, is that reality will gradually take hold: Trump’s litigation will fail, voting results will be certified and the Trump administration will grumpily accept the inevitable and cooperate with a transition.
But I may be wrong. If Republicans egg Trump on, rather than try to rein him in, might he try to block the transition in ways that would be comparable to an attempted coup d’état?
Sean Wilentz, the historian, told my colleague Thomas B. Edsall that if Trump were to deny the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election, “It would be an act of disloyalty unsurpassed in American history except by the Southern secession in 1860-61.”
One impediment to healing is that we now all have our own news ecosystems to feed our selection bias, reinforce our prejudices and dial up our outrage. In recent days I’ve been tuning to the conservative outlet One America News, and it’s the simplest way to travel to another planet: On that planet, Democrats are engaging in massive election fraud and trying to steal the election. If you live on that planet, with Facebook feeds that reinforce that fiction, you’re not inclined to sing “Kumbaya.”
Yet we have to try to heal and reassert norms of civility that are the lubricant that make democracy work. Biden has modeled those norms in his outreach to Trump voters, in empathizing with their disappointment, in quoting the Bible in his call for Americans to unite and heal. But it will take all of us, on both sides of this divide, to join him.
Republicans scoff that Democrats, after delegitimizing Trump for four years, now preach harmony. I take their point. But for the most part Democrats protested that Trump was a bad president, not that he wasn’t president at all. It is possible, imperfectly, to uphold norms both of acknowledging losses and of pushing accountability.
The day after the 2016 election I wrote a column saying that “having lost, we owe it to our nation to grit our teeth and give President-elect Trump a chance.” I now invite Republicans, having lost, to grit their teeth and give President-elect Biden a chance.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
|
By Nicholas Kristof
Opinion Columnist
As it became clear that she would lose the 2016 election and news organizations called the race for Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton spoke to her supporters.
“We must accept this result,” she declared. “Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.”
She did not boast that she had won 2.9 million more votes than Trump. She did not file lawsuits to try to reverse thin margins. And she did not offer evidence-free allegations of voter fraud — as Trump did, even though he had won. Rather
|
, she buttressed the norm in American electoral politics of the loser acknowledging the winner.
This norm is as traditional as it is wrenching for the losers. In conceding the presidential race in 1952 and sharing how he felt, Adlai Stevenson recalled what Lincoln supposedly said after losing an election: “He said he felt like a little boy who had stubbed his toe in the dark. He was too old to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh.” Still, Stevenson resolutely called on his backers to support Dwight Eisenhower in the presidency.
In 2000, after the Supreme Court effectively ended Al Gore’s quest for the presidency, Gore likewise admitted his heartache but urged voters: “I call on all Americans — I particularly urge all who stood with us — to unite behind our next president.”
Trump might study the particularly eloquent speech by John McCain as he conceded to Barack Obama in 2008. McCain said: “I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together.”
Nicholas Kristof’s Newsletter Get a behind-the-scenes look at Nick’s gritty journalism as he travels around the United States and the world. Get it sent to your inbox.
President Trump’s pattern instead has been to scrape the wounds opened during campaigns, for he has been a sore loser as well as a sore winner. In 2016, when Trump lost the Iowa caucuses, he claimed that “Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he stole it.”
Today Trump is not simply saying that we should wait for every vote to be counted in the 2020 election. Rather, he is fabricating election fraud and falsely claiming that he won, sowing doubts within his base about American democracy itself. A Politico/Morning Consult poll found that 70 percent of Republicans don’t believe the election was free and fair.
Republican officials have, with some noble exceptions, joined Trump in this dangerous charade, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asserting — perhaps jokingly — that “there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.”
The blunt truth is that there is zero evidence of widespread fraud or impropriety, and in any case, the average statewide recount over 20 years has resulted in a shift of just 430 votes. There is no realistic chance for recounts to shift enough votes for Trump to win a second term.
Yet Trump is denying reality and impeding a lawful transition in ways that diminish the United States before the world, that make our country less governable and that risk inciting violence. This is presidential vandalism.
Can America heal?
The most likely course ahead, I believe, is that reality will gradually take hold: Trump’s litigation will fail, voting results will be certified and the Trump administration will grumpily accept the inevitable and cooperate with a transition.
But I may be wrong. If Republicans egg Trump on, rather than try to rein him in, might he try to block the transition in ways that would be comparable to an attempted coup d’état?
Sean Wilentz, the historian, told my colleague Thomas B. Edsall that if Trump were to deny the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election, “It would be an act of disloyalty unsurpassed in American history except by the Southern secession in 1860-61.”
One impediment to healing is that we now all have our own news ecosystems to feed our selection bias, reinforce our prejudices and dial up our outrage. In recent days I’ve been tuning to the conservative outlet One America News, and it’s the simplest way to travel to another planet: On that planet, Democrats are engaging in massive election fraud and trying to steal the election. If you live on that planet, with Facebook feeds that reinforce that fiction, you’re not inclined to sing “Kumbaya.”
Yet we have to try to heal and reassert norms of civility that are the lubricant that make democracy work. Biden has modeled those norms in his outreach to Trump voters, in empathizing with their disappointment, in quoting the Bible in his call for Americans to unite and heal. But it will take all of us, on both sides of this divide, to join him.
Republicans scoff that Democrats, after delegitimizing Trump for four years, now preach harmony. I take their point. But for the most part Democrats protested that Trump was a bad president, not that he wasn’t president at all. It is possible, imperfectly, to uphold norms both of acknowledging losses and of pushing accountability.
The day after the 2016 election I wrote a column saying that “having lost, we owe it to our nation to grit our teeth and give President-elect Trump a chance.” I now invite Republicans, having lost, to grit their teeth and give President-elect Biden a chance.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
|
100. Ken Paxton Fought Trump’s Legal Wars From Texas. Now He’s in Trouble..txt
|
By David Montgomery and Manny Fernandez
Published Nov. 11, 2020Updated Dec. 10, 2020
AUSTIN, Texas — After his home and offices were raided by federal agents last year, a wealthy real estate investor in Austin got some help from a friend — who happened to be one of the most powerful officials in Texas.
The investor, Nate Paul, was convinced that the F.B.I. and other agencies had acted unlawfully. Normally, such accusations by the targets of federal investigations would be met with skepticism, but Mr. Paul contacted Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, a longtime friend whose re-election in 2018 he had supported with a $25,000 donation.
Mr. Paxton not only arranged a meeting with the local district attorney’s office, he also appointed a special prosecutor to look into Mr. Paul’s allegations about law enforcement.
The attorney general’s intervention on behalf of his friend caused an uproar in the state’s top law enforcement office, which escalated last week with a new revelation: Mr. Paxton had recommended a potential employee to Mr. Paul — a woman who later was described as a friend of Mr. Paxton — and she was subsequently hired at Mr. Paul’s company as a project manager, according to a newly released deposition in a court case.
The latest allegations, coming on top of his indictment in 2015 for securities fraud, have created a political crisis for Mr. Paxton, who during nearly six years as the state’s top lawyer had weathered multiple investigations with few political repercussions.
Mr. Paxton, who turns 58 next month, has been the attack dog of Texas Republicans’ aggressive conservative agenda, taking on high-profile legal battles that made him popular with the Trump administration — leading the effort waged by Republican-led states to overturn the Affordable Care Act, defending the state’s ban on sanctuary cities, challenging an Obama-era program that shielded young immigrants from deportation and making it harder to vote by mail during the coronavirus pandemic.
His support of conservative legal causes earned him the respect of many Texas Republicans, voters and President Trump, all of whom helped him pull off an extraordinary feat — carrying out his duties as the state’s top law enforcement officer and even winning re-election while under criminal indictment. His wife, Angela Paxton, became a political force of her own and won a seat in the State Senate in 2018.
“Ken, you have my full endorsement and Angela, your wife, has my full endorsement,” Mr. Trump told a crowd in May 2018 at the National Rifle Association’s annual convention in Dallas.
But the latest revelations about Mr. Paxton’s relationship with Mr. Paul have put him in new political peril, and under new legal scrutiny.
More on Texas
In what amounted to a mass rebellion last month, seven of Mr. Paxton’s top aides accused him in a whistle-blower-style letter of committing bribery, abuse of office and other “potential criminal offenses.” Those high-ranking lawyers, whose complaints stemmed from Mr. Paxton’s dealings with Mr. Paul, have since resigned, been fired or put on leave.
Mr. Paxton has defended his handling of the situation and accused his aides of impeding the investigation. After he was indicted in the securities fraud case in 2015, Mr. Paxton called it a political witch hunt, and he has continued to fight the charges. He has also denounced the latest allegations, saying they came from “rogue employees.”
But Republican allies have distanced themselves, and some have publicly questioned whether he should resign. At least one fellow Texas Republican, Representative Chip Roy, who is a former aide to Mr. Paxton, called on him to step down, joining numerous Democrats and others who have done so, including the editorial board of The Dallas Morning News. Among those who have taken an interest in the case are Kent A. Schaffer and Brian Wice, special prosecutors who were appointed by a judge in 2015 to prosecute Mr. Paxton in the ongoing securities fraud case.
“Our oath as special prosecutors requires us to fully and fairly investigate the recent allegations of criminal wrongdoing leveled against the attorney general by members of his command staff,” Mr. Schaffer and Mr. Wice said in a statement.
Current and former prosecutors said Mr. Paxton’s involvement in Mr. Paul’s case and his appointment of a special prosecutor raised legal and ethical concerns.
Mr. Paul, 33, and the real estate investment firm that he founded, World Class Holdings, were among the largest owners of real estate in Austin, with an empire that included the 3M Company’s former corporate campus. Law enforcement officials have declined to discuss why they raided Mr. Paul’s home and offices last year. Mr. Paul’s lawyer has alleged that investigators broke the law by tampering with government records, among other things, when they obtained a search warrant and conducted the raid.
After the search, Mr. Paxton personally approached the Travis County District Attorney’s Office to arrange a meeting between Mr. Paul and local prosecutors to discuss his complaints about the raids, according to Margaret Moore, the district attorney, who said Mr. Paxton also attended the meeting. Because one of the agencies Mr. Paul was complaining about was the state’s Department of Public Safety, the prosecutors said the only appropriate agency to review it was the attorney general’s office.
Mr. Paxton appointed a special prosecutor to investigate his friend’s allegations.
Not long after the whistle-blower complaint, Mr. Paxton’s office closed the investigation — but by then, many people were asking why it had been opened to begin with.
“Why is it, simply because somebody is complaining about the F.B.I., that the attorney general is opening an investigation?” said Kenneth Magidson, who served as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas from 2011 to 2017. “He has used the office of the attorney general to help his friend.”
Mr. Paxton told The New York Times in a statement that the latest controversy was created by members of his staff who had opposed his decisions without having all the facts and who made “their disagreement noisy and public” in an attempt to undermine the integrity of the office. “To be clear: I have never been motivated by a desire to protect a political donor or to abuse this office, nor will I ever,” he said.
Mr. Paxton has said his involvement in the case began after Travis County prosecutors referred Mr. Paul’s accusations to him in June.
“When the Travis County district attorney referred the F.B.I.’s search and seizure of a private citizen’s residence and property to my office for further investigation, I was deeply concerned by many of the things that I saw,” he said. “Given the facts and the district attorney’s office’s belief that further investigation was warranted, I believed that an independent investigation, through the hiring of outside counsel, was the proper course of action.”
But Mr. Paxton has failed to explain the origin of the Austin prosecutors’ referral: the meeting he initiated with them in May that kick-started the entire process.
The district attorney, Ms. Moore, a Democrat, told the attorney general in a recent letter that the referral of the case was not an indication that an investigation was warranted and that she had “serious concerns about the integrity of your investigation and the propriety of your conducting it.”
Mr. Paul’s lawyer, Michael J. Wynne, has accused Mr. Paxton’s aides of making false statements about his client and trying to bully him into dropping his complaint against the law enforcement agencies. Their actions, he said in a letter to Mr. Paxton, “severely harmed and disadvantaged a Texas citizen and his family of their constitutional rights and their right to privacy.”
The special prosecutor hired by Mr. Paxton to pursue the matter, Brandon R. Cammack, 34, a Houston defense lawyer, served for only five weeks. But he managed to obtain nearly 40 grand jury subpoenas targeting, among others, a credit union to which Mr. Paul had been in default.
Mr. Cammack defended his actions in interviews before the investigation was shut down. “I was hired to do a job and investigate some things,” he said.
Mr. Paul first met Mr. Paxton several years ago, he said in a sworn deposition that was part of a lawsuit filed against his companies by an Austin nonprofit group, the Roy F. and Joann Cole Mitte Foundation, which originated in a dispute over financial records during a real estate partnership. Asked whether he considered Mr. Paxton a friend, Mr. Paul replied, “I consider the relationship, you know, positive.”
Lawyers for the foundation said Mr. Paxton’s office had intervened on Mr. Paul’s behalf in their lawsuit, delaying the proceedings and pressuring them to settle. The attorney general’s office later backed out of the case. Mr. Wynne disputed that the intervention in the lawsuit benefited Mr. Paul. And Mr. Paxton said in the statement that he had a legal duty “to consider and address all lawsuits affecting charitable corporations.”
If the intrigue has interrupted Mr. Paxton’s work, it has been hard to tell from the outside. Since his aides’ accusations became public early last month, he and his office have gone to court frequently to, among other things, defend early-voting restrictions and to stop El Paso County officials from imposing a lockdown amid a surge in coronavirus cases.
On Tuesday, Mr. Paxton sat in a conference room in Austin and attended a Supreme Court hearing remotely on one of his marquee cases — a Texas-led attempt to strike down the Affordable Care Act.
Mr. Paxton, who was born in Minot, N.D., served in both the State House and State Senate before becoming attorney general in 2015. Like his predecessor Gov. Greg Abbott, he relished being the attorney general of Texas in the Obama era, boasting that he filed eight lawsuits against the federal government in his first year in office.
For decades, Republicans and Democrats have used the office as a political steppingstone — Senator John Cornyn, for example, was a former attorney general. Mr. Paxton seemed poised to follow suit and build momentum to run for higher office.
But the new allegations have upended all of that — and left the attorney general’s office in turmoil.
“I don’t think any of the controversies that he has navigated over the past four or five years compares to the seriousness of these accusations,” said Luke Macias, a San Antonio political consultant who represents Republican state lawmakers.
“Ken Paxton at one point definitely thought he had a shot at the governor’s mansion,” he said. “I don’t think anyone in his orbit or in the greater Texas politics community sees that as even a minute possibility.”
|
By David Montgomery and Manny Fernandez
Published Nov. 11, 2020Updated Dec. 10, 2020
AUSTIN, Texas — After his home and offices were raided by federal agents last year, a wealthy real estate investor in Austin got some help from a friend — who happened to be one of the most powerful officials in Texas.
The investor, Nate Paul, was convinced that the F.B.I. and other agencies had acted unlawfully. Normally, such accusations by the targets of federal investigations would be met with skepticism, but Mr. Paul contacted Ken Paxton,
|
the Texas attorney general, a longtime friend whose re-election in 2018 he had supported with a $25,000 donation.
Mr. Paxton not only arranged a meeting with the local district attorney’s office, he also appointed a special prosecutor to look into Mr. Paul’s allegations about law enforcement.
The attorney general’s intervention on behalf of his friend caused an uproar in the state’s top law enforcement office, which escalated last week with a new revelation: Mr. Paxton had recommended a potential employee to Mr. Paul — a woman who later was described as a friend of Mr. Paxton — and she was subsequently hired at Mr. Paul’s company as a project manager, according to a newly released deposition in a court case.
The latest allegations, coming on top of his indictment in 2015 for securities fraud, have created a political crisis for Mr. Paxton, who during nearly six years as the state’s top lawyer had weathered multiple investigations with few political repercussions.
Mr. Paxton, who turns 58 next month, has been the attack dog of Texas Republicans’ aggressive conservative agenda, taking on high-profile legal battles that made him popular with the Trump administration — leading the effort waged by Republican-led states to overturn the Affordable Care Act, defending the state’s ban on sanctuary cities, challenging an Obama-era program that shielded young immigrants from deportation and making it harder to vote by mail during the coronavirus pandemic.
His support of conservative legal causes earned him the respect of many Texas Republicans, voters and President Trump, all of whom helped him pull off an extraordinary feat — carrying out his duties as the state’s top law enforcement officer and even winning re-election while under criminal indictment. His wife, Angela Paxton, became a political force of her own and won a seat in the State Senate in 2018.
“Ken, you have my full endorsement and Angela, your wife, has my full endorsement,” Mr. Trump told a crowd in May 2018 at the National Rifle Association’s annual convention in Dallas.
But the latest revelations about Mr. Paxton’s relationship with Mr. Paul have put him in new political peril, and under new legal scrutiny.
More on Texas
In what amounted to a mass rebellion last month, seven of Mr. Paxton’s top aides accused him in a whistle-blower-style letter of committing bribery, abuse of office and other “potential criminal offenses.” Those high-ranking lawyers, whose complaints stemmed from Mr. Paxton’s dealings with Mr. Paul, have since resigned, been fired or put on leave.
Mr. Paxton has defended his handling of the situation and accused his aides of impeding the investigation. After he was indicted in the securities fraud case in 2015, Mr. Paxton called it a political witch hunt, and he has continued to fight the charges. He has also denounced the latest allegations, saying they came from “rogue employees.”
But Republican allies have distanced themselves, and some have publicly questioned whether he should resign. At least one fellow Texas Republican, Representative Chip Roy, who is a former aide to Mr. Paxton, called on him to step down, joining numerous Democrats and others who have done so, including the editorial board of The Dallas Morning News. Among those who have taken an interest in the case are Kent A. Schaffer and Brian Wice, special prosecutors who were appointed by a judge in 2015 to prosecute Mr. Paxton in the ongoing securities fraud case.
“Our oath as special prosecutors requires us to fully and fairly investigate the recent allegations of criminal wrongdoing leveled against the attorney general by members of his command staff,” Mr. Schaffer and Mr. Wice said in a statement.
Current and former prosecutors said Mr. Paxton’s involvement in Mr. Paul’s case and his appointment of a special prosecutor raised legal and ethical concerns.
Mr. Paul, 33, and the real estate investment firm that he founded, World Class Holdings, were among the largest owners of real estate in Austin, with an empire that included the 3M Company’s former corporate campus. Law enforcement officials have declined to discuss why they raided Mr. Paul’s home and offices last year. Mr. Paul’s lawyer has alleged that investigators broke the law by tampering with government records, among other things, when they obtained a search warrant and conducted the raid.
After the search, Mr. Paxton personally approached the Travis County District Attorney’s Office to arrange a meeting between Mr. Paul and local prosecutors to discuss his complaints about the raids, according to Margaret Moore, the district attorney, who said Mr. Paxton also attended the meeting. Because one of the agencies Mr. Paul was complaining about was the state’s Department of Public Safety, the prosecutors said the only appropriate agency to review it was the attorney general’s office.
Mr. Paxton appointed a special prosecutor to investigate his friend’s allegations.
Not long after the whistle-blower complaint, Mr. Paxton’s office closed the investigation — but by then, many people were asking why it had been opened to begin with.
“Why is it, simply because somebody is complaining about the F.B.I., that the attorney general is opening an investigation?” said Kenneth Magidson, who served as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas from 2011 to 2017. “He has used the office of the attorney general to help his friend.”
Mr. Paxton told The New York Times in a statement that the latest controversy was created by members of his staff who had opposed his decisions without having all the facts and who made “their disagreement noisy and public” in an attempt to undermine the integrity of the office. “To be clear: I have never been motivated by a desire to protect a political donor or to abuse this office, nor will I ever,” he said.
Mr. Paxton has said his involvement in the case began after Travis County prosecutors referred Mr. Paul’s accusations to him in June.
“When the Travis County district attorney referred the F.B.I.’s search and seizure of a private citizen’s residence and property to my office for further investigation, I was deeply concerned by many of the things that I saw,” he said. “Given the facts and the district attorney’s office’s belief that further investigation was warranted, I believed that an independent investigation, through the hiring of outside counsel, was the proper course of action.”
But Mr. Paxton has failed to explain the origin of the Austin prosecutors’ referral: the meeting he initiated with them in May that kick-started the entire process.
The district attorney, Ms. Moore, a Democrat, told the attorney general in a recent letter that the referral of the case was not an indication that an investigation was warranted and that she had “serious concerns about the integrity of your investigation and the propriety of your conducting it.”
Mr. Paul’s lawyer, Michael J. Wynne, has accused Mr. Paxton’s aides of making false statements about his client and trying to bully him into dropping his complaint against the law enforcement agencies. Their actions, he said in a letter to Mr. Paxton, “severely harmed and disadvantaged a Texas citizen and his family of their constitutional rights and their right to privacy.”
The special prosecutor hired by Mr. Paxton to pursue the matter, Brandon R. Cammack, 34, a Houston defense lawyer, served for only five weeks. But he managed to obtain nearly 40 grand jury subpoenas targeting, among others, a credit union to which Mr. Paul had been in default.
Mr. Cammack defended his actions in interviews before the investigation was shut down. “I was hired to do a job and investigate some things,” he said.
Mr. Paul first met Mr. Paxton several years ago, he said in a sworn deposition that was part of a lawsuit filed against his companies by an Austin nonprofit group, the Roy F. and Joann Cole Mitte Foundation, which originated in a dispute over financial records during a real estate partnership. Asked whether he considered Mr. Paxton a friend, Mr. Paul replied, “I consider the relationship, you know, positive.”
Lawyers for the foundation said Mr. Paxton’s office had intervened on Mr. Paul’s behalf in their lawsuit, delaying the proceedings and pressuring them to settle. The attorney general’s office later backed out of the case. Mr. Wynne disputed that the intervention in the lawsuit benefited Mr. Paul. And Mr. Paxton said in the statement that he had a legal duty “to consider and address all lawsuits affecting charitable corporations.”
If the intrigue has interrupted Mr. Paxton’s work, it has been hard to tell from the outside. Since his aides’ accusations became public early last month, he and his office have gone to court frequently to, among other things, defend early-voting restrictions and to stop El Paso County officials from imposing a lockdown amid a surge in coronavirus cases.
On Tuesday, Mr. Paxton sat in a conference room in Austin and attended a Supreme Court hearing remotely on one of his marquee cases — a Texas-led attempt to strike down the Affordable Care Act.
Mr. Paxton, who was born in Minot, N.D., served in both the State House and State Senate before becoming attorney general in 2015. Like his predecessor Gov. Greg Abbott, he relished being the attorney general of Texas in the Obama era, boasting that he filed eight lawsuits against the federal government in his first year in office.
For decades, Republicans and Democrats have used the office as a political steppingstone — Senator John Cornyn, for example, was a former attorney general. Mr. Paxton seemed poised to follow suit and build momentum to run for higher office.
But the new allegations have upended all of that — and left the attorney general’s office in turmoil.
“I don’t think any of the controversies that he has navigated over the past four or five years compares to the seriousness of these accusations,” said Luke Macias, a San Antonio political consultant who represents Republican state lawmakers.
“Ken Paxton at one point definitely thought he had a shot at the governor’s mansion,” he said. “I don’t think anyone in his orbit or in the greater Texas politics community sees that as even a minute possibility.”
|
7. New Year’s Lawbreakers: 3 N.Y.C. Parties With Hundreds Are Broken Up.txt
|
By Michael Wilson
Jan. 1, 2021
New York City, a place synonymous with the glitter and noise of New Year’s Eve, marked the close of a most unpredictable and upside-down of years in quiet deference to its dangers. In sending off a year so many would like to forget, New Yorkers spent a night that will instead be remembered, for its communal rejection of the usual fanfare.
Not everyone stayed home. Sheriff’s deputies watchful for large indoor gatherings raided three buildings across the city, including a Queens karaoke club with 300 patrons. The deputies were suspicious after conducting a stakeout on an emergency exit door. It was as if all eyes were very much not on Times Square, the center of the party for more than a century but practically deserted on Thursday evening.
The low-key rollout of one of the city’s busiest nights came amid new infection numbers that underscored the threats of in-person gatherings. There were 176 deaths statewide from Covid-19 on Friday. The city’s seven-day positivity rate was 9.4 percent; throughout the state, the daily positivity rate was 7.5 percent.
The sobering numbers did not keep everyone socially distant. But there seem to have been few enough large parties that the secret ones were easier to find.
Deputies with the New York City Sheriff’s Office, watching an emergency exit to a building in Maspeth, Queens, early Friday morning, saw a worker let a steady stream of people come inside. The deputies raided the building and found close to 300 people in a karaoke club, drinking and singing, largely unmasked, said Sheriff Joseph Fucito.
More on Covid-19
“Three floors of people with these small rooms,” Sheriff Fucito said Friday. “And each one of these rooms was packed with people.”
On Prince Street in SoHo, deputies found an illegal club on the sixth floor serving liquor and Champagne to about 145 dancing guests, a setting Sheriff Fucito described as “overcrowded.” And in Sunset Park in Brooklyn, responding to noise complaints, they broke up a party at Stars Hall, where some 80 people were drinking and smoking hookah, the sheriff said.
In each incident, multiple people were charged with some combination of violating orders against indoor gatherings, operating illegal bars and other offenses.
But the muted celebration in Times Square largely set the mood for the city.
Jennifer Lopez performed for an intimate crowd; only a few dozen frontline health care workers were allowed as invited guests. Mayor Bill de Blasio stood nearby. His shuffling dance to “Theme From ‘New York, New York,’” with his wife, Chirlane McCray, was recorded and uploaded to social media, where it was met with the outrage that greets most of his daily interactions.
Democrats and Republicans alike criticized the mayor, including Meghan McCain, a host on “The View,” who blasted Mr. de Blasio on Twitter for “having your own private party in Times Square,” calling it “the most tone deaf thing I may have ever seen a mayor do.”
Yet others who were in attendance found the evening deeply moving. Dr. Zaki Azam, a second-year internal medicine resident at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, was among the guests, with his sister, a pharmacist, and his father, a civil engineer for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Dr. Azam, who lives in Jericho, N.Y., had never visited Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
“Honestly, if 2020 brought us anything, it was the togetherness of family, so it was really nice to end 2020 with family and to begin 2021 with family,” said Dr. Azam, whose grandfather died after contracting Covid-19 last year.
“I don’t think any of us are going to miss 2020,” he said.
In New Jersey, where 5,541 new coronavirus cases and 119 additional Covid-19 deaths were recorded on Friday, it was the year of alternative celebrations, including large-scale drive-through light shows and private fireworks displays.
In Newark, where the police have been aggressively enforcing strict curfew rules designed to curb a second wave of the virus, the police did not issue a single violation Thursday night for celebrations that exceeded crowd limits, according to Anthony Ambrose, the public safety director.
One industry did report brisk sales: fireworks. Anthony LoBianco, the owner of Intergalactic Fireworks stores in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, said sales are up about 20 to 25 percent since before the pandemic.
“A lot of families,” he said. “A ‘We want to surprise the kids,’ kind of thing.”
Tracey Tully, Brian M. Rosenthal and Emma G. Fitzsimmons contributed reporting.
|
By Michael Wilson
Jan. 1, 2021
New York City, a place synonymous with the glitter and noise of New Year’s Eve, marked the close of a most unpredictable and upside-down of years in quiet deference to its dangers. In sending off a year so many would like to forget, New Yorkers spent a night that will instead be remembered, for its communal rejection of the usual fanfare.
Not everyone stayed home. Sheriff’s deputies watchful for large indoor gatherings raided three buildings across the city, including a Queens karaoke club with 300 patrons. The deputies were suspicious after conducting
|
a stakeout on an emergency exit door. It was as if all eyes were very much not on Times Square, the center of the party for more than a century but practically deserted on Thursday evening.
The low-key rollout of one of the city’s busiest nights came amid new infection numbers that underscored the threats of in-person gatherings. There were 176 deaths statewide from Covid-19 on Friday. The city’s seven-day positivity rate was 9.4 percent; throughout the state, the daily positivity rate was 7.5 percent.
The sobering numbers did not keep everyone socially distant. But there seem to have been few enough large parties that the secret ones were easier to find.
Deputies with the New York City Sheriff’s Office, watching an emergency exit to a building in Maspeth, Queens, early Friday morning, saw a worker let a steady stream of people come inside. The deputies raided the building and found close to 300 people in a karaoke club, drinking and singing, largely unmasked, said Sheriff Joseph Fucito.
More on Covid-19
“Three floors of people with these small rooms,” Sheriff Fucito said Friday. “And each one of these rooms was packed with people.”
On Prince Street in SoHo, deputies found an illegal club on the sixth floor serving liquor and Champagne to about 145 dancing guests, a setting Sheriff Fucito described as “overcrowded.” And in Sunset Park in Brooklyn, responding to noise complaints, they broke up a party at Stars Hall, where some 80 people were drinking and smoking hookah, the sheriff said.
In each incident, multiple people were charged with some combination of violating orders against indoor gatherings, operating illegal bars and other offenses.
But the muted celebration in Times Square largely set the mood for the city.
Jennifer Lopez performed for an intimate crowd; only a few dozen frontline health care workers were allowed as invited guests. Mayor Bill de Blasio stood nearby. His shuffling dance to “Theme From ‘New York, New York,’” with his wife, Chirlane McCray, was recorded and uploaded to social media, where it was met with the outrage that greets most of his daily interactions.
Democrats and Republicans alike criticized the mayor, including Meghan McCain, a host on “The View,” who blasted Mr. de Blasio on Twitter for “having your own private party in Times Square,” calling it “the most tone deaf thing I may have ever seen a mayor do.”
Yet others who were in attendance found the evening deeply moving. Dr. Zaki Azam, a second-year internal medicine resident at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, was among the guests, with his sister, a pharmacist, and his father, a civil engineer for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Dr. Azam, who lives in Jericho, N.Y., had never visited Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
“Honestly, if 2020 brought us anything, it was the togetherness of family, so it was really nice to end 2020 with family and to begin 2021 with family,” said Dr. Azam, whose grandfather died after contracting Covid-19 last year.
“I don’t think any of us are going to miss 2020,” he said.
In New Jersey, where 5,541 new coronavirus cases and 119 additional Covid-19 deaths were recorded on Friday, it was the year of alternative celebrations, including large-scale drive-through light shows and private fireworks displays.
In Newark, where the police have been aggressively enforcing strict curfew rules designed to curb a second wave of the virus, the police did not issue a single violation Thursday night for celebrations that exceeded crowd limits, according to Anthony Ambrose, the public safety director.
One industry did report brisk sales: fireworks. Anthony LoBianco, the owner of Intergalactic Fireworks stores in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, said sales are up about 20 to 25 percent since before the pandemic.
“A lot of families,” he said. “A ‘We want to surprise the kids,’ kind of thing.”
Tracey Tully, Brian M. Rosenthal and Emma G. Fitzsimmons contributed reporting.
|
95. Doug Emhoff, Harris’s husband, will leave his law firm..txt
|
By Michael D. Shear
WILMINGTON, Del. — Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, has decided to permanently leave his law firm in the next several weeks as his wife prepares to assume the nation’s second-highest office on Jan. 20, a Biden transition team official said on Wednesday.
It is not clear what Mr. Emhoff will do as the country’s first husband of a vice president. The transition official, who declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly about Mr. Emhoff’s employment, said he was working with the rest of the transition team to support President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s agenda.
Mr. Emhoff has served for more than a decade as a corporate lawyer representing large companies, including the pharmaceutical giant Merck and Dolarian Capital, an arms dealer, in a case related to the sale of weapons in Afghanistan.
His ties to DLA Piper, a firm he joined in 2017 that has an active lobbying practice in Washington, might have become an issue for Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris, who have pledged to impose strict ethics limitations on people who serve in their administration.
Mr. Emhoff took a leave of absence from his firm when Ms. Harris joined Mr. Biden as his running mate. The transition official said on Wednesday that Mr. Emhoff would sever all ties with DLA Piper before the inauguration.
Ms. Harris and Mr. Emhoff will move into the vice president’s residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, not far from the White House. During the time that Mr. Biden’s wife, Jill, served as second lady, she continued to work as a professor at Northern Virginia Community College.
|
By Michael D. Shear
WILMINGTON, Del. — Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, has decided to permanently leave his law firm in the next several weeks as his wife prepares to assume the nation’s second-highest office on Jan. 20, a Biden transition team official said on Wednesday.
It is not clear what Mr. Emhoff will do as the country’s first husband of a vice president. The transition official, who declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly about Mr. Emhoff’s employment, said he was working with the rest of the
|
transition team to support President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s agenda.
Mr. Emhoff has served for more than a decade as a corporate lawyer representing large companies, including the pharmaceutical giant Merck and Dolarian Capital, an arms dealer, in a case related to the sale of weapons in Afghanistan.
His ties to DLA Piper, a firm he joined in 2017 that has an active lobbying practice in Washington, might have become an issue for Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris, who have pledged to impose strict ethics limitations on people who serve in their administration.
Mr. Emhoff took a leave of absence from his firm when Ms. Harris joined Mr. Biden as his running mate. The transition official said on Wednesday that Mr. Emhoff would sever all ties with DLA Piper before the inauguration.
Ms. Harris and Mr. Emhoff will move into the vice president’s residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, not far from the White House. During the time that Mr. Biden’s wife, Jill, served as second lady, she continued to work as a professor at Northern Virginia Community College.
|
78. Austria’s Leader Seeks Crackdown on Islamist Terrorism After Attack.txt
|
By Melissa Eddy
Published Nov. 11, 2020Updated Oct. 9, 2021
BERLIN — Austria would allow courts to extend the sentences of convicted terrorists and it would establish a new criminal offense for people who “create the breeding ground” for terrorism, as part of a package of legislative proposals announced a week after an Islamic State sympathizer killed four people in Vienna.
Chancellor Sebastian Kurz announced the tough new proposals on Wednesday after meeting with his cabinet in the Austrian capital, Vienna, a day after he held talks with President Emmanuel Macron of France and other European Union leaders to coordinate efforts across the bloc to crack down on Islamist terrorism.
“We will do everything to protect the population,” Mr. Kurz said. The legislative package will be put before Parliament for approval before the end of the year.
France and Austria have both been attacked recently: Last week in Vienna, a 20-year-old previously sentenced to prison for trying to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State fatally shot four people. In France last month, a Tunisian man fatally stabbed three people in Nice, and an 18-year-old Chechen refugee beheaded a teacher in the Paris suburbs.
Unlike Mr. Macron, whose government launched a broad crackdown in response to the attacks, leading to widespread hostility against France in the Muslim world, Mr. Kurz, a conservative, had initially responded with conciliatory words that sought to defuse tensions. He stressed that “extremists and terrorists” — not “all those belonging to a religion” — should be the target of Austrians’ anger.
More on France
But on Wednesday, Mr. Kurz insisted that it was not enough to mourn the two men and two women who were killed in the heart of Vienna’s old city on Nov. 2 and help the 22 others who were injured. He said the authorities needed wider-reaching abilities to prevent terrorists from carrying out attacks and root out those who support them.
Among his proposals: Allowing courts to continue imprisoning people who have completed sentences for belonging to a terrorist organization, if judges determine those people are still radical and could pose a threat. Those released from prison would continue to be monitored electronically.
“Especially those who have already served a prison sentence can pose a massive threat to our security, as was dramatically demonstrated by the attack last week,” Mr. Kurz said, referring to the young man who had been released early from prison after completing a “de-radicalization” program, but went on to plan and carry out the attack in Vienna.
“This is a major intervention, but in my view a necessary step to minimize the threat risk,” Mr. Kurz said.
Additionally, any dual nationals found guilty of supporting terrorism will have their Austrian citizenship revoked. The Vienna attacker was a citizen of both Austria and North Macedonia.
While the law is aimed at stopping Islamist terrorists, it would also apply to other extremists, including neo-Nazis, said Werner Kogler, the vice chancellor and a member of the Greens party.
Austria would also create a new criminal offense that would allow the authorities to move against individuals who are not active members of a terrorist organization, but who “create the breeding ground for them,” the chancellor said.
The measure would make it easier for the authorities to close places of worship and introduce a register allowing them to track imams preaching hate or extremism.
Other measures include tightening existing laws on symbols and associations to include those linked to terrorist groups, and allowing the authorities to halt the financial flow to terrorist groups.
Susanne Raab, Austria’s minister for culture, said the measures were aimed at those who are opposed to “our values” and want “to divide our society,” not at Islam as a religion or the many Muslims who practice it peacefully.
“This clear separation between extremist Islamism and the religion is very important,” she said.
|
By Melissa Eddy
Published Nov. 11, 2020Updated Oct. 9, 2021
BERLIN — Austria would allow courts to extend the sentences of convicted terrorists and it would establish a new criminal offense for people who “create the breeding ground” for terrorism, as part of a package of legislative proposals announced a week after an Islamic State sympathizer killed four people in Vienna.
Chancellor Sebastian Kurz announced the tough new proposals on Wednesday after meeting with his cabinet in the Austrian capital, Vienna, a day after he held talks with President Emmanuel Macron of France and other European Union leaders to coordinate
|
efforts across the bloc to crack down on Islamist terrorism.
“We will do everything to protect the population,” Mr. Kurz said. The legislative package will be put before Parliament for approval before the end of the year.
France and Austria have both been attacked recently: Last week in Vienna, a 20-year-old previously sentenced to prison for trying to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State fatally shot four people. In France last month, a Tunisian man fatally stabbed three people in Nice, and an 18-year-old Chechen refugee beheaded a teacher in the Paris suburbs.
Unlike Mr. Macron, whose government launched a broad crackdown in response to the attacks, leading to widespread hostility against France in the Muslim world, Mr. Kurz, a conservative, had initially responded with conciliatory words that sought to defuse tensions. He stressed that “extremists and terrorists” — not “all those belonging to a religion” — should be the target of Austrians’ anger.
More on France
But on Wednesday, Mr. Kurz insisted that it was not enough to mourn the two men and two women who were killed in the heart of Vienna’s old city on Nov. 2 and help the 22 others who were injured. He said the authorities needed wider-reaching abilities to prevent terrorists from carrying out attacks and root out those who support them.
Among his proposals: Allowing courts to continue imprisoning people who have completed sentences for belonging to a terrorist organization, if judges determine those people are still radical and could pose a threat. Those released from prison would continue to be monitored electronically.
“Especially those who have already served a prison sentence can pose a massive threat to our security, as was dramatically demonstrated by the attack last week,” Mr. Kurz said, referring to the young man who had been released early from prison after completing a “de-radicalization” program, but went on to plan and carry out the attack in Vienna.
“This is a major intervention, but in my view a necessary step to minimize the threat risk,” Mr. Kurz said.
Additionally, any dual nationals found guilty of supporting terrorism will have their Austrian citizenship revoked. The Vienna attacker was a citizen of both Austria and North Macedonia.
While the law is aimed at stopping Islamist terrorists, it would also apply to other extremists, including neo-Nazis, said Werner Kogler, the vice chancellor and a member of the Greens party.
Austria would also create a new criminal offense that would allow the authorities to move against individuals who are not active members of a terrorist organization, but who “create the breeding ground for them,” the chancellor said.
The measure would make it easier for the authorities to close places of worship and introduce a register allowing them to track imams preaching hate or extremism.
Other measures include tightening existing laws on symbols and associations to include those linked to terrorist groups, and allowing the authorities to halt the financial flow to terrorist groups.
Susanne Raab, Austria’s minister for culture, said the measures were aimed at those who are opposed to “our values” and want “to divide our society,” not at Islam as a religion or the many Muslims who practice it peacefully.
“This clear separation between extremist Islamism and the religion is very important,” she said.
|
69. How the Dream of Hong Kong Democracy Was Dimmed.txt
|
By Austin Ramzy
Published Nov. 11, 2020Updated Nov. 30, 2020
阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版
HONG KONG — Hong Kong’s pro-democracy lawmakers said Wednesday they would resign en masse to protest Beijing’s growing control over the local legislature, one of the last remaining centers of dissent in the Chinese city.
The 15 resignations were set off by a decision earlier in the day out of Beijing that forced the removal of four opposition lawmakers in Hong Kong.
The lawmakers’ departure comes amid Beijing’s intensifying efforts to silence Hong Kong’s political opposition and to curb a vast protest movement.
Here’s a look at key moments in the long showdown between pro-democratic forces and the Beijing-backed authorities who have chipped away at Hong Kong’s special status as a bastion for free speech and independent courts.
Extradition bill incites enormous protests.
In May 2019, Hong Kong lawmakers scuffled over a bill that would allow extraditions to mainland China, where courts are controlled by the ruling Communist Party. That was followed by huge street protests, with organizers estimating that one million people marched on June 9, 2019, in a city of about 7.5 million.
Three days later, the police fired tear gas at protesters who had blocked a major highway outside the Legislative Council, Hong Kong’s legislature. The heavy-handed response prompted another June march that organizers said drew nearly two million people.
More on Hong Kong
On July 21, after protesters vandalized Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong, a mob attacked a group of protesters in a train station. Dozens were injured, including journalists and a pro-democracy legislator. The appearance of police inaction that night would fuel widespread anger toward the Hong Kong police force and suspicion that officers were unwilling to protect antigovernment protesters.
In the months that followed, street clashes became routine between the police and black-clad protesters, who targeted symbols of authority, including local police stations and the city’s vaunted subway system.
Some protesters began carrying makeshift weapons, attacking opponents on the streets and vandalizing businesses seen as supporting the police and the government. A slogan from the “Hunger Games” films — “If we burn, you burn with us” — became a call to arms.
With Beijing’s support, the Hong Kong authorities began a no-compromise campaign of crowd suppression and arrests of demonstrators and pro-democracy activists.
A bill withdrawn, escalating violence and an election win.
Even as the arrests intensified, the protest movement claimed a major success: In September 2019, Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, withdrew the extradition bill.
The concession did not end the protests, though, and some began getting more intense. Confrontations on college campuses in mid-November began resembling medieval sieges, with students fortifying their campuses against police charges and sometimes even shooting arrows out toward riot police. The police continued their harsh tactics, using tear gas, batons, water cannons and rubber bullets.
But if Beijing officials were betting that the increase in violence would turn local opinion against the protest movement, they were wrong.
The movement earned a stunning victory in late November as pro-democracy candidates captured most of the seats in local elections for district councils. It was a vivid expression of defiance toward and anger with Beijing and their allies in Hong Kong’s leadership.
The pandemic strikes, and elections are put off.
After the pro-democracy movement’s election wins, a lull in protests set in for several weeks. Then, on New Year’s Day, demonstrators returned to the streets in full force in a protest that started peacefully but descended into violent clashes with the police.
But even as they marched, many protesters were expressing more trepidation than righteous anger. Mainland and Hong Kong officials had made clear they would not back down, and Hong Kong’s economy was showing signs of intense strain from the disruption.
The tone was already shifting, and then the coronavirus pandemic struck. As the new virus began spreading around the world, social-distancing rules and the imperative to stay home took even more steam out of the protest movement.
The Hong Kong government said the pandemic meant the legislative election scheduled for September would need to be postponed by a year. The opposition cried foul and said the government was afraid that establishment candidates would be defeated.
National security law imposed.
After a year of protests, and opposition election victories, Beijing had had enough.
In late June this year, the mainland government imposed an ominously vague and far-reaching national security bill on Hong Kong that targeted dissent and protest. Calls for Hong Kong to be independent were made illegal, and sabotaging transportation infrastructure, which became increasingly common during the protests, was designated as terrorism. A national security office was set up, and China’s state security apparatus, which had previously worked covertly in Hong Kong, was allowed to operate in public.
More than two dozen people have since been arrested under the new law. Most prominent among them was Jimmy Lai, founder of the city’s biggest pro-democracy newspaper, Apple Daily.
This week, Beijing officials went even further, granting the Hong Kong government broad powers to remove lawmakers from office who do not show clear loyalty to China.
Within minutes, Hong Kong officials removed the four lawmakers, prompting the other 15 members of the pro-democracy bloc to resign in protest. Their departures will leave the political opposition without a voice in the Hong Kong legislature, which had stood as a symbol of the “one country, two systems” framework intended to keep Hong Kong semiautonomous until 2047.
|
By Austin Ramzy
Published Nov. 11, 2020Updated Nov. 30, 2020
阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版
HONG KONG — Hong Kong’s pro-democracy lawmakers said Wednesday they would resign en masse to protest Beijing’s growing control over the local legislature, one of the last remaining centers of dissent in the Chinese city.
The 15 resignations were set off by a decision earlier in the day out of Beijing that forced the removal of four opposition lawmakers in Hong Kong.
The lawmakers
|
’ departure comes amid Beijing’s intensifying efforts to silence Hong Kong’s political opposition and to curb a vast protest movement.
Here’s a look at key moments in the long showdown between pro-democratic forces and the Beijing-backed authorities who have chipped away at Hong Kong’s special status as a bastion for free speech and independent courts.
Extradition bill incites enormous protests.
In May 2019, Hong Kong lawmakers scuffled over a bill that would allow extraditions to mainland China, where courts are controlled by the ruling Communist Party. That was followed by huge street protests, with organizers estimating that one million people marched on June 9, 2019, in a city of about 7.5 million.
Three days later, the police fired tear gas at protesters who had blocked a major highway outside the Legislative Council, Hong Kong’s legislature. The heavy-handed response prompted another June march that organizers said drew nearly two million people.
More on Hong Kong
On July 21, after protesters vandalized Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong, a mob attacked a group of protesters in a train station. Dozens were injured, including journalists and a pro-democracy legislator. The appearance of police inaction that night would fuel widespread anger toward the Hong Kong police force and suspicion that officers were unwilling to protect antigovernment protesters.
In the months that followed, street clashes became routine between the police and black-clad protesters, who targeted symbols of authority, including local police stations and the city’s vaunted subway system.
Some protesters began carrying makeshift weapons, attacking opponents on the streets and vandalizing businesses seen as supporting the police and the government. A slogan from the “Hunger Games” films — “If we burn, you burn with us” — became a call to arms.
With Beijing’s support, the Hong Kong authorities began a no-compromise campaign of crowd suppression and arrests of demonstrators and pro-democracy activists.
A bill withdrawn, escalating violence and an election win.
Even as the arrests intensified, the protest movement claimed a major success: In September 2019, Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, withdrew the extradition bill.
The concession did not end the protests, though, and some began getting more intense. Confrontations on college campuses in mid-November began resembling medieval sieges, with students fortifying their campuses against police charges and sometimes even shooting arrows out toward riot police. The police continued their harsh tactics, using tear gas, batons, water cannons and rubber bullets.
But if Beijing officials were betting that the increase in violence would turn local opinion against the protest movement, they were wrong.
The movement earned a stunning victory in late November as pro-democracy candidates captured most of the seats in local elections for district councils. It was a vivid expression of defiance toward and anger with Beijing and their allies in Hong Kong’s leadership.
The pandemic strikes, and elections are put off.
After the pro-democracy movement’s election wins, a lull in protests set in for several weeks. Then, on New Year’s Day, demonstrators returned to the streets in full force in a protest that started peacefully but descended into violent clashes with the police.
But even as they marched, many protesters were expressing more trepidation than righteous anger. Mainland and Hong Kong officials had made clear they would not back down, and Hong Kong’s economy was showing signs of intense strain from the disruption.
The tone was already shifting, and then the coronavirus pandemic struck. As the new virus began spreading around the world, social-distancing rules and the imperative to stay home took even more steam out of the protest movement.
The Hong Kong government said the pandemic meant the legislative election scheduled for September would need to be postponed by a year. The opposition cried foul and said the government was afraid that establishment candidates would be defeated.
National security law imposed.
After a year of protests, and opposition election victories, Beijing had had enough.
In late June this year, the mainland government imposed an ominously vague and far-reaching national security bill on Hong Kong that targeted dissent and protest. Calls for Hong Kong to be independent were made illegal, and sabotaging transportation infrastructure, which became increasingly common during the protests, was designated as terrorism. A national security office was set up, and China’s state security apparatus, which had previously worked covertly in Hong Kong, was allowed to operate in public.
More than two dozen people have since been arrested under the new law. Most prominent among them was Jimmy Lai, founder of the city’s biggest pro-democracy newspaper, Apple Daily.
This week, Beijing officials went even further, granting the Hong Kong government broad powers to remove lawmakers from office who do not show clear loyalty to China.
Within minutes, Hong Kong officials removed the four lawmakers, prompting the other 15 members of the pro-democracy bloc to resign in protest. Their departures will leave the political opposition without a voice in the Hong Kong legislature, which had stood as a symbol of the “one country, two systems” framework intended to keep Hong Kong semiautonomous until 2047.
|
6. 32 More Countries Have Found the New Covid-19 Variant First Seen in Britain.txt
|
By contrast, the pace of Israel’s vaccination program is far outstripping the rest of the world. Nearly 10 percent of Israel’s population has received the first of two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine after the program began there on Dec. 20.
— Rebecca Robbins, Frances Robles and Tim Arango
An inoculation ends with a marriage proposal for a South Dakota nurse.
When Eric Vanderlee, a registered nurse from Canton, S.D., went to administer the Covid-19 vaccine to his boyfriend, Robby Vargas-Cortes, an E.M.S. supervisor, he was met with a welcome surprise waiting up Robby’s left sleeve — an engagement ring.
Mr. Vargas-Cortes, who had taped an engagement ring to the top of his left arm, proposed to Mr. Vanderlee on Dec. 23 and received an emotional, “Yes,” before receiving the Covid-19 vaccine from his now fiancé.
The proposal, which was captured on video and has received more than 4,000 likes on Facebook, was met with glee from Mr. Vanderlee’s co-workers, who seemed just as surprised he did.
“It’s been kind of a crazy year, and you know it’s been a fun ride to have you in my life,” Mr. Vargas-Cortes, 31, said as he proposed.
Mr. Vanderlee, 26, said in an interview that the proposal caught him completely off-guard.
The couple, who have been together for almost five years, said they often joked about getting engaged, but amid the pandemic, it became hard to think about planning a surprise. But then Mr. Vanderlee asked to help administer the vaccines, and, Mr. Vargas-Cortes said he thought to himself, “Well, what better opportunity?”
Their engagement offered a bright spot in a rather dim year. Back in November, Mr. Vanderlee’s grandfather died from complications of Covid-19, becoming one of over 347,000 Covid-19-related deaths in the U.S. since the start of the pandemic, according to a New York Times database.
“He was the healthiest guy,” Mr. Vanderlee said. “He had no issues, and all of a sudden he was gone.”
The couple said they’ve been humbled by the amount of “outpouring of love and support” they’ve received online from their engagement.
“This just brought a new wave of joy,” Mr. Vanderlee said.
— Allyson Waller
N.Y.C. sheriff’s deputies break up secret New Year’s Eve parties across the city.
In sending off a year so many would like to forget, New Yorkers spent a night that will most likely be remembered for its communal rejection of the usual fanfare. But some could not resist the lure of a big night out.
Sheriff’s deputies watchful for large indoor gatherings raided three buildings across the city, including a Queens karaoke club with 300 patrons. It was as if all eyes were very much not on Times Square, the center of the party for more than a century but practically deserted on Thursday evening.
The attempts at revelry came amid new infection numbers: 176 deaths statewide from Covid-19 on Friday, according to a New York Times database. Nearly one in 10 people in the city tested over the past week were positive. Throughout the state, the positive test rate on average over the last seven days was 7.2 percent.
But there seemed to have been few enough large parties on New Year’s Eve that the secret ones were easier to find.
Deputies with the New York City Sheriff’s Office, watching an emergency exit to a building in Maspeth, Queens, early Friday morning, saw a worker let in a steady stream of people to sing at a karaoke club.
“Three floors of people with these small rooms,” Sheriff Joseph Fucito said Friday. “And each one of these rooms was packed with people.”
On Prince Street in SoHo, deputies found an illegal club on the sixth floor serving liquor and champagne to about 145 dancing guests. And in Sunset Park in Brooklyn, they broke up a party at Stars Hall, where some 80 people were drinking and smoking hookah, the sheriff said.
It was the muted celebration in Times Square that largely set the mood for the city though.
Jennifer Lopez performed for an intimate crowd; only a few dozen frontline health care workers were allowed as invited guests. Mayor Bill de Blasio stood nearby. His shuffling dance to “New York, New York,” with his wife, Chirlane McCray, was recorded and uploaded to social media, where it was met with the outrage that greets most of his daily interactions.
— Michael Wilson
France couldn’t stop the New Year’s parties. One rave drew 2,500 people who fought off the police.
Faced with a resurgence of Covid-19 infections, French authorities pulled out all the stops to ensure that France would step into 2021 in safety. An existing nationwide overnight curfew was enforced on New Years’s Eve by some 130,000 police officers; all public celebrations were banned and the government advised to limit private gatherings to six people.
That did not prevent some 2,500 partygoers from attending an illegal New Year rave near the city of Rennes, in northwestern France.
A statement from local authorities said that many of the revelers were still on the site of the illegal party on Friday morning and that police had failed to stop it. Paramedics were deployed around the site to distribute gel and masks in a bid to limit the risks of coronavirus contaminations and prosecutors announced that they opened an investigation into the illegal organization of the event.
Police officers tried to prevent the rave “but faced fierce hostility from many partygoers,” the statement read, adding that stones and bottles were thrown at them and that a police car was set on fire.
The rave near Rennes, and some other large-scale illegal parties throughout France that were broken up by the police, sparked concern about the spread of the coronavirus, as the country still suffers from the second wave of the pandemic.
With more than 2.6 million confirmed cases of coronavirus — the highest number of cases in Europe — and some 65,000 deaths, France has paid a heavy toll to the pandemic.
On Thursday, health authorities announced that a first case of a new coronavirus variant linked to South Africa had been reported in France, while the seven-day average of new daily infections cases has surpassed 13,000 — more than double the government’s daily target of 5,000 new infections to ease restrictions.
To fight back a rise in infections in parts of the country, French authorities on Friday announced that it would bring forward by two hours the nighttime curfew in 15 of France’s 101 departments, or administrative divisions. The curfew will be at 6 p.m. rather than 8 p.m., starting on Saturday.
With hospitals still struggling to cope with the second wave of the pandemic and while authorities fear that end-of-year holiday gatherings will result in a rebound of Covid-19 infections, the French government is under pressure to act.
In a note submitted to the government on Dec. 23 and made public on Tuesday, France’s scientific council — a government advisory body for the Covid-19 crisis — recommended to act swiftly in the face of a “possible” resumption of the pandemic that could soon be “out of control.”
The French government has for the moment ruled out a return to a full lockdown, despite pressure from some local authorities, but Olivier Véran, France’s health minister, warned that a relaxation of the restrictions that have forced bars, restaurants, museums and theaters to close is likely to be delayed.
“At this stage, and depending on the evolution in the coming days, it seems hardly conceivable to lift all the restrictions,” Mr. Véran said.
— Constant Méheut
Embracing the theme of 2020, many U.S. revelers kept their New Year’s gatherings small.
In the grip of a pandemic that has disrupted lives and the economy, many Americans eschewed the customary trappings of New Year’s Eve festivities for subdued observances, much as they have spent much of 2020 — away from loved ones, in virtual settings or alone.
Forget the soirees of previous years, the prix fixe dinner seatings, open bars and streets crowded with revelers: Times Square was empty, a jarring image of how so much has changed since the last ball drop.
As 2021 approached, there were dozens of voices — not hundreds of thousands — counting down the final 10 seconds of the year. Confetti still rained down, but the multicolored strips landed primarily on the pavement rather than people’s shoulders. Instead of a steady rumble of cheers and screams, there were infrequent cries of happiness amid the booms of fireworks.
But none of that ruined the palpable excitement of those present.
Alexis Hurley of Hell’s Kitchen grew emotional on a nearby street as midnight approached. “This has honestly been the worst year of my life and a lot of my friends’ lives,” Ms. Hurley said. “It’s just this relief and hope that things will get better.”
In another Manhattan — Manhattan Beach, Calif. — Kara Maeda and her two roommates said they were content to spend a low-key night at home, drinking White Claw and eating sushi. They said the past year had changed their priorities.
“This year,” Ms. Maeda said, “we really slowed down and think about what really matters.”
And in Denver, Alison Stine, a novelist and journalist who moved from Ohio in August, helped organize a Zoom call to celebrate the 10th birthday of her son, Henry.
“It’s been really hard moving in a pandemic, especially for him to make friends,” Ms. Stine said. “It’s really hard to meet new people over the computer.”
Ms. Stine, 42, said her son wore a funny hat and played the video game Among Us with his friends. They planned to light sparklers later. “That’s what we have right now,” she said, “these small moments.”
Things looked a lot different elsewhere, too. Airports were about three-quarters less busy than on New Year’s Eve last year, and the Transportation Safety Administration counted fewer than a million people passing through its checkpoints for the first time since Christmas Day.
Thousands usually flock to Las Vegas for New Year’s Eve. This year, casinos and restaurants were still open with limited capacity, but some fireworks shows were canceled. Tickets for a downtown event — featuring a light show and a zip line — that had been planned for about 14,000 people were refunded this week after consultation with health officials. Only those staying in certain nearby hotels were allowed access.
The transit authority in Chicago is known to offer free rides on New Year’s Eve — but it didn’t this year, when restaurants and bars were ordered to close by 11 p.m. Despite the cold, one house party opted to go drive-in style outside with masks and social distancing.
— Neil Vigdor, Troy Closson and Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio
New York’s vaccination campaign gets off to a sluggish start as case numbers continue to surge.
Across New York City, the coronavirus has continued its winter surge, with a daily average of nearly 4,000 cases and about 40 deaths for the last week. Yet the rollout of vaccinations that was meant to restore a semblance of normalcy has gotten off to a slow start.
More than 340,000 doses of the vaccine have been delivered to the city, but for now their distribution does not resemble the sort of mass mobilization many imagined. And public health experts say that there is urgent need to speed up the pace of vaccinations in New York, given the possibility that officials may soon detect the more contagious variant of the virus first identified in Britain and now known to be in three U.S. states and dozens of countries around the world.
In the first 17 days of the vaccination rollout, about 88,140 people across the city’s five boroughs received the first of two doses, the equivalent of only about 1 percent of the city’s population. Those vaccinated thus far have overwhelmingly been hospital employees, residents and workers at nursing homes, and the staff at certain health clinics. The city has yet to open any large vaccination sites.
On Thursday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city still aimed to administer doses to one million people by the end of January. He has suggested that the state is acting as a bottleneck by not authorizing the city to open up vaccinations to larger categories of people.
“If we’re given the authorization, we can move very quickly,” Mr. de Blasio said. “We need the state guidance in terms of the categories of people, and the more that expands, the faster we can go.”
Dr. Ronald Scott Braithwaite, a professor at N.Y.U. Grossman School of Medicine who has been modeling New York City’s epidemic and is an adviser to the city, said his team’s analysis suggested that once 10 to 20 percent of the city was vaccinated, the number of new cases would begin to drop — so long as social distancing and mask wearing remained constant and the new variant did not find a foothold in New York. But achieving that goal is still a long way off.
“If the new variant replaces the existing variant and we don’t vaccinate quickly, the second wave will start cresting again and will crest really high, and that’s something to take really seriously,” Dr. Braithwaite said.
— Joseph Goldstein
|
By contrast, the pace of Israel’s vaccination program is far outstripping the rest of the world. Nearly 10 percent of Israel’s population has received the first of two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine after the program began there on Dec. 20.
— Rebecca Robbins, Frances Robles and Tim Arango
An inoculation ends with a marriage proposal for a South Dakota nurse.
When Eric Vanderlee, a registered nurse from Canton, S.D., went to administer the Covid-19 vaccine to his boyfriend, Robby Vargas-Cortes, an E.M.S. supervisor, he was met with
|
a welcome surprise waiting up Robby’s left sleeve — an engagement ring.
Mr. Vargas-Cortes, who had taped an engagement ring to the top of his left arm, proposed to Mr. Vanderlee on Dec. 23 and received an emotional, “Yes,” before receiving the Covid-19 vaccine from his now fiancé.
The proposal, which was captured on video and has received more than 4,000 likes on Facebook, was met with glee from Mr. Vanderlee’s co-workers, who seemed just as surprised he did.
“It’s been kind of a crazy year, and you know it’s been a fun ride to have you in my life,” Mr. Vargas-Cortes, 31, said as he proposed.
Mr. Vanderlee, 26, said in an interview that the proposal caught him completely off-guard.
The couple, who have been together for almost five years, said they often joked about getting engaged, but amid the pandemic, it became hard to think about planning a surprise. But then Mr. Vanderlee asked to help administer the vaccines, and, Mr. Vargas-Cortes said he thought to himself, “Well, what better opportunity?”
Their engagement offered a bright spot in a rather dim year. Back in November, Mr. Vanderlee’s grandfather died from complications of Covid-19, becoming one of over 347,000 Covid-19-related deaths in the U.S. since the start of the pandemic, according to a New York Times database.
“He was the healthiest guy,” Mr. Vanderlee said. “He had no issues, and all of a sudden he was gone.”
The couple said they’ve been humbled by the amount of “outpouring of love and support” they’ve received online from their engagement.
“This just brought a new wave of joy,” Mr. Vanderlee said.
— Allyson Waller
N.Y.C. sheriff’s deputies break up secret New Year’s Eve parties across the city.
In sending off a year so many would like to forget, New Yorkers spent a night that will most likely be remembered for its communal rejection of the usual fanfare. But some could not resist the lure of a big night out.
Sheriff’s deputies watchful for large indoor gatherings raided three buildings across the city, including a Queens karaoke club with 300 patrons. It was as if all eyes were very much not on Times Square, the center of the party for more than a century but practically deserted on Thursday evening.
The attempts at revelry came amid new infection numbers: 176 deaths statewide from Covid-19 on Friday, according to a New York Times database. Nearly one in 10 people in the city tested over the past week were positive. Throughout the state, the positive test rate on average over the last seven days was 7.2 percent.
But there seemed to have been few enough large parties on New Year’s Eve that the secret ones were easier to find.
Deputies with the New York City Sheriff’s Office, watching an emergency exit to a building in Maspeth, Queens, early Friday morning, saw a worker let in a steady stream of people to sing at a karaoke club.
“Three floors of people with these small rooms,” Sheriff Joseph Fucito said Friday. “And each one of these rooms was packed with people.”
On Prince Street in SoHo, deputies found an illegal club on the sixth floor serving liquor and champagne to about 145 dancing guests. And in Sunset Park in Brooklyn, they broke up a party at Stars Hall, where some 80 people were drinking and smoking hookah, the sheriff said.
It was the muted celebration in Times Square that largely set the mood for the city though.
Jennifer Lopez performed for an intimate crowd; only a few dozen frontline health care workers were allowed as invited guests. Mayor Bill de Blasio stood nearby. His shuffling dance to “New York, New York,” with his wife, Chirlane McCray, was recorded and uploaded to social media, where it was met with the outrage that greets most of his daily interactions.
— Michael Wilson
France couldn’t stop the New Year’s parties. One rave drew 2,500 people who fought off the police.
Faced with a resurgence of Covid-19 infections, French authorities pulled out all the stops to ensure that France would step into 2021 in safety. An existing nationwide overnight curfew was enforced on New Years’s Eve by some 130,000 police officers; all public celebrations were banned and the government advised to limit private gatherings to six people.
That did not prevent some 2,500 partygoers from attending an illegal New Year rave near the city of Rennes, in northwestern France.
A statement from local authorities said that many of the revelers were still on the site of the illegal party on Friday morning and that police had failed to stop it. Paramedics were deployed around the site to distribute gel and masks in a bid to limit the risks of coronavirus contaminations and prosecutors announced that they opened an investigation into the illegal organization of the event.
Police officers tried to prevent the rave “but faced fierce hostility from many partygoers,” the statement read, adding that stones and bottles were thrown at them and that a police car was set on fire.
The rave near Rennes, and some other large-scale illegal parties throughout France that were broken up by the police, sparked concern about the spread of the coronavirus, as the country still suffers from the second wave of the pandemic.
With more than 2.6 million confirmed cases of coronavirus — the highest number of cases in Europe — and some 65,000 deaths, France has paid a heavy toll to the pandemic.
On Thursday, health authorities announced that a first case of a new coronavirus variant linked to South Africa had been reported in France, while the seven-day average of new daily infections cases has surpassed 13,000 — more than double the government’s daily target of 5,000 new infections to ease restrictions.
To fight back a rise in infections in parts of the country, French authorities on Friday announced that it would bring forward by two hours the nighttime curfew in 15 of France’s 101 departments, or administrative divisions. The curfew will be at 6 p.m. rather than 8 p.m., starting on Saturday.
With hospitals still struggling to cope with the second wave of the pandemic and while authorities fear that end-of-year holiday gatherings will result in a rebound of Covid-19 infections, the French government is under pressure to act.
In a note submitted to the government on Dec. 23 and made public on Tuesday, France’s scientific council — a government advisory body for the Covid-19 crisis — recommended to act swiftly in the face of a “possible” resumption of the pandemic that could soon be “out of control.”
The French government has for the moment ruled out a return to a full lockdown, despite pressure from some local authorities, but Olivier Véran, France’s health minister, warned that a relaxation of the restrictions that have forced bars, restaurants, museums and theaters to close is likely to be delayed.
“At this stage, and depending on the evolution in the coming days, it seems hardly conceivable to lift all the restrictions,” Mr. Véran said.
— Constant Méheut
Embracing the theme of 2020, many U.S. revelers kept their New Year’s gatherings small.
In the grip of a pandemic that has disrupted lives and the economy, many Americans eschewed the customary trappings of New Year’s Eve festivities for subdued observances, much as they have spent much of 2020 — away from loved ones, in virtual settings or alone.
Forget the soirees of previous years, the prix fixe dinner seatings, open bars and streets crowded with revelers: Times Square was empty, a jarring image of how so much has changed since the last ball drop.
As 2021 approached, there were dozens of voices — not hundreds of thousands — counting down the final 10 seconds of the year. Confetti still rained down, but the multicolored strips landed primarily on the pavement rather than people’s shoulders. Instead of a steady rumble of cheers and screams, there were infrequent cries of happiness amid the booms of fireworks.
But none of that ruined the palpable excitement of those present.
Alexis Hurley of Hell’s Kitchen grew emotional on a nearby street as midnight approached. “This has honestly been the worst year of my life and a lot of my friends’ lives,” Ms. Hurley said. “It’s just this relief and hope that things will get better.”
In another Manhattan — Manhattan Beach, Calif. — Kara Maeda and her two roommates said they were content to spend a low-key night at home, drinking White Claw and eating sushi. They said the past year had changed their priorities.
“This year,” Ms. Maeda said, “we really slowed down and think about what really matters.”
And in Denver, Alison Stine, a novelist and journalist who moved from Ohio in August, helped organize a Zoom call to celebrate the 10th birthday of her son, Henry.
“It’s been really hard moving in a pandemic, especially for him to make friends,” Ms. Stine said. “It’s really hard to meet new people over the computer.”
Ms. Stine, 42, said her son wore a funny hat and played the video game Among Us with his friends. They planned to light sparklers later. “That’s what we have right now,” she said, “these small moments.”
Things looked a lot different elsewhere, too. Airports were about three-quarters less busy than on New Year’s Eve last year, and the Transportation Safety Administration counted fewer than a million people passing through its checkpoints for the first time since Christmas Day.
Thousands usually flock to Las Vegas for New Year’s Eve. This year, casinos and restaurants were still open with limited capacity, but some fireworks shows were canceled. Tickets for a downtown event — featuring a light show and a zip line — that had been planned for about 14,000 people were refunded this week after consultation with health officials. Only those staying in certain nearby hotels were allowed access.
The transit authority in Chicago is known to offer free rides on New Year’s Eve — but it didn’t this year, when restaurants and bars were ordered to close by 11 p.m. Despite the cold, one house party opted to go drive-in style outside with masks and social distancing.
— Neil Vigdor, Troy Closson and Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio
New York’s vaccination campaign gets off to a sluggish start as case numbers continue to surge.
Across New York City, the coronavirus has continued its winter surge, with a daily average of nearly 4,000 cases and about 40 deaths for the last week. Yet the rollout of vaccinations that was meant to restore a semblance of normalcy has gotten off to a slow start.
More than 340,000 doses of the vaccine have been delivered to the city, but for now their distribution does not resemble the sort of mass mobilization many imagined. And public health experts say that there is urgent need to speed up the pace of vaccinations in New York, given the possibility that officials may soon detect the more contagious variant of the virus first identified in Britain and now known to be in three U.S. states and dozens of countries around the world.
In the first 17 days of the vaccination rollout, about 88,140 people across the city’s five boroughs received the first of two doses, the equivalent of only about 1 percent of the city’s population. Those vaccinated thus far have overwhelmingly been hospital employees, residents and workers at nursing homes, and the staff at certain health clinics. The city has yet to open any large vaccination sites.
On Thursday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city still aimed to administer doses to one million people by the end of January. He has suggested that the state is acting as a bottleneck by not authorizing the city to open up vaccinations to larger categories of people.
“If we’re given the authorization, we can move very quickly,” Mr. de Blasio said. “We need the state guidance in terms of the categories of people, and the more that expands, the faster we can go.”
Dr. Ronald Scott Braithwaite, a professor at N.Y.U. Grossman School of Medicine who has been modeling New York City’s epidemic and is an adviser to the city, said his team’s analysis suggested that once 10 to 20 percent of the city was vaccinated, the number of new cases would begin to drop — so long as social distancing and mask wearing remained constant and the new variant did not find a foothold in New York. But achieving that goal is still a long way off.
“If the new variant replaces the existing variant and we don’t vaccinate quickly, the second wave will start cresting again and will crest really high, and that’s something to take really seriously,” Dr. Braithwaite said.
— Joseph Goldstein
|
96. ‘Am I My Brother’s Keeper?’.txt
|
By Deb Amlen
Nov. 11, 2020
THURSDAY PUZZLE — Huzzah! My favorite day of the puzzle week is here, and Kristian House offers us a crossword with a theme that doubles for a good laugh.
As always, that’s a hint, but not a spoiler.
Tricky Clues
15A. In this puzzle, the “parts of circles” are friend circles in France, so the answer is the French AMIS.
16A. To ELIDE is to leave off a sound, so when you “Say nothin’” you are eliding by leaving off the terminal g.
25A. I like SKA as much as the next person, yet I hadn’t heard of Sublime. Here they are:
44A. Hi, kids! The singer EYDIE Gorme performed mostly as a duo with her husband, Steve Lawrence.
52A. I loved seeing the debut of RANDOS, short for “random people” in the puzzle.
64A. This “Stamp collector?” is not a philatelist, it’s a VISA.
7D. I love the song “SIR DUKE,” which is a tribute to the jazz master Duke Ellington.
9D. Tricky! “Skinny” does not refer to one’s girth in this puzzle. It describes something having to do with the skin, and the answer is DERMAL.
25D. “Noted lines?” refers to the lines of a musical STAFF, which contain notes, unless the composer hasn’t started yet.
57D. “IT IS what IT IS” is a common phrase. It was recently used in a dismissive way to refer to the many people dying of Covid-19, and I wish this had been clued differently. I’m not against the statement itself, but it just feels tone deaf to clue it this way, this soon. After all, it could have been clued as -ITIS, as in the medical suffix.
58D. Helpful hint: Never try to fill a gallon container one TBSP. at a time. You’ll be there all day.
Today’s Theme
Mr. House takes four phrases and substitutes part of them for a sound-alike doubled letter.
This, in its own way, is a rebus, said Crosswords editor Will Shortz via email. Normally, we think of a rebus puzzle as one that has a symbol or group of letters squeezed into one square, but rebuses exist in other forms.
For example, “FAREDCE” is a rebus. Can you solve it? Click on the word below to see the answer.
FAREDCE
RED IN THE FACE
In Mr. House’s puzzle, we are asked to double certain letters in each theme phrase and then use the literal resulting sound to complete it. At 61A, for example, which was Mr. House’s seed entry, the clue is “Famous question first asked around 1600,” and the answer, as written, is BBORNOTBB. What does that mean?
Let’s see if we can tease it apart a bit. I think we can all agree that the middle consists of the words OR NOT, but we still have those two B’s on either end.
Wait! Two B! What if the answer was read as “2 B OR NOT 2 B”? That, my friends, is the question (sorry). And the answer is Hamlet’s plaintive “TO BE OR NOT TO BE?”
Constructor Notes
The Tipping Point
Almost finished solving but need a bit more help? We’ve got you covered.
Warning: There be spoilers ahead, but subscribers can take a peek at the answer key.
Trying to get back to the puzzle page? Right here.
Your thoughts?
|
By Deb Amlen
Nov. 11, 2020
THURSDAY PUZZLE — Huzzah! My favorite day of the puzzle week is here, and Kristian House offers us a crossword with a theme that doubles for a good laugh.
As always, that’s a hint, but not a spoiler.
Tricky Clues
15A. In this puzzle, the “parts of circles” are friend circles in France, so the answer is the French AMIS.
16A. To ELIDE is to leave off a sound, so when you “Say nothin’
|
” you are eliding by leaving off the terminal g.
25A. I like SKA as much as the next person, yet I hadn’t heard of Sublime. Here they are:
44A. Hi, kids! The singer EYDIE Gorme performed mostly as a duo with her husband, Steve Lawrence.
52A. I loved seeing the debut of RANDOS, short for “random people” in the puzzle.
64A. This “Stamp collector?” is not a philatelist, it’s a VISA.
7D. I love the song “SIR DUKE,” which is a tribute to the jazz master Duke Ellington.
9D. Tricky! “Skinny” does not refer to one’s girth in this puzzle. It describes something having to do with the skin, and the answer is DERMAL.
25D. “Noted lines?” refers to the lines of a musical STAFF, which contain notes, unless the composer hasn’t started yet.
57D. “IT IS what IT IS” is a common phrase. It was recently used in a dismissive way to refer to the many people dying of Covid-19, and I wish this had been clued differently. I’m not against the statement itself, but it just feels tone deaf to clue it this way, this soon. After all, it could have been clued as -ITIS, as in the medical suffix.
58D. Helpful hint: Never try to fill a gallon container one TBSP. at a time. You’ll be there all day.
Today’s Theme
Mr. House takes four phrases and substitutes part of them for a sound-alike doubled letter.
This, in its own way, is a rebus, said Crosswords editor Will Shortz via email. Normally, we think of a rebus puzzle as one that has a symbol or group of letters squeezed into one square, but rebuses exist in other forms.
For example, “FAREDCE” is a rebus. Can you solve it? Click on the word below to see the answer.
FAREDCE
RED IN THE FACE
In Mr. House’s puzzle, we are asked to double certain letters in each theme phrase and then use the literal resulting sound to complete it. At 61A, for example, which was Mr. House’s seed entry, the clue is “Famous question first asked around 1600,” and the answer, as written, is BBORNOTBB. What does that mean?
Let’s see if we can tease it apart a bit. I think we can all agree that the middle consists of the words OR NOT, but we still have those two B’s on either end.
Wait! Two B! What if the answer was read as “2 B OR NOT 2 B”? That, my friends, is the question (sorry). And the answer is Hamlet’s plaintive “TO BE OR NOT TO BE?”
Constructor Notes
The Tipping Point
Almost finished solving but need a bit more help? We’ve got you covered.
Warning: There be spoilers ahead, but subscribers can take a peek at the answer key.
Trying to get back to the puzzle page? Right here.
Your thoughts?
|
51. A Top Equestrian Paralyzed in an Accident Sees Hope in a Coming Treatment.txt
|
By Juliet Macur
Jan. 1, 2021
The New York Times Sports department is revisiting the subjects of some compelling articles from the last year or so. Here is our April report on Kevin Babington’s efforts to continue working in the equestrian world after a show-jumping accident left him paralyzed from the chest down.
The anniversary of his spinal cord injury came and went in August, and Kevin Babington, the Irish Olympian show jumper who is one of the top coaches in equestrian sports, refused to feel sorry for himself.
He had work to do. Lots of work. His daily, intense exercise sessions leave him exhausted, but strengthening his body has a specific purpose.
In the summer of 2019, he was paralyzed from the chest down after being flung from his horse, Shorapur, at the Hampton Classic, a prestigious horse show in Bridgehampton, N.Y. He hit the ground headfirst, severely bruising his spinal cord. But Babington, 52, believes he will not only walk again but will climb atop a horse to ride as well. One of the main things he has learned over the last 16 months is to have patience.
Millimeter by millimeter, his body is healing, he said last month, and he can see that in the advances he has made.
Babington, a beloved Grand Prix rider who finished fourth at the 2004 Olympics for Ireland, can now lift his right arm and almost touch his mouth with it. He can move several fingers and toes, and just this week started moving his left thumb. He can sometimes feel sensation in his abdominal muscles. The sharp-as-a-blade body spasms are not as unbearably painful as they were in the spring. He rarely takes his pain medications these days, and his head is as clear as ever because of that.
From his wheelchair next to the riding ring, he continues to coach on a limited basis. He can project his voice well enough to talk to riders without either party relying on headsets, though he still prefers using them and, because of the pandemic, he also conducts lessons on video calls.
Late last month, he began trying to use a hand control to move and steer his motorized wheelchair. An upcoming renovation to Babington’s home on his horse farm in Loxahatchee, Fla., will give him the space to access the whole house. And the space to get out of it: An automatic front door will mean freedom for him to go alone to visit the barn, now filled with horses whose trainers have leased the stalls.
“We can maybe get them to focus on the exit first,” Babington said of the house contractors, before laughing. “So that way, I can run away and get a bit of my independence back.”
He has kept his sense of humor.
What gives Babington the greatest hope for recovery is his participation in a clinical trial involving stem cells at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. He said he couldn’t wait to see how he would respond to the treatment, which will begin in about five months. Last year, a man paralyzed from the neck down in a surfing accident walked again after the treatment. Babington dreams that he too could be a miracle patient.
“It’s something to look forward to,” he said. “I’ve always tried to take things in stride, and I think I’ve handled the stress well. I definitely am feeling stronger all the time.”
His wife, Dianna Babington, marvels at his ability to push himself past normal limits. He has the resolve of an Olympian, she said.
An example: Among the specialized equipment that fills their living room is an apparatus known as a standing frame, which moves Kevin into an upright position and holds him there. He endures each grueling session in the standing frame without complaint, sometimes for more than an hour. His wife hopes to add a machine that simulates a person riding a horse, feet in the stirrups and all, when Kevin is ready for it. Soon, she said, hopefully soon.
The hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from people in the show-jumping world have been put to good use, Dianna Babington said. Her husband would never have come this far in his recovery without the physical therapy those donations made possible. They both are grateful.
But the pandemic has put a stop to most of the public fund-raisers for Babington’s foundation, Dianna Babington said, and it has become a constant source of worry during an already trying time. Babington still cannot cough on his own, without pressure applied to his chest to help clear his airway, so contracting Covid-19 could be especially dangerous for him.
“We’re just going to keep trying to get him better,” said Dianna Babington, who continues to work as a trainer and to promote inflatable safety vests for riders. “Whatever that means, we’re going to keep fighting.”
Kevin Babington has also taken comfort and pride in watching his daughters’ show-jumping competitions on the internet.
Gwyneth, a high school senior with several college scholarship offers to compete in show-jumping, competed in her first Grand Prix event over the summer. She rode Mark Q, her father’s favorite horse.
“I wish I could’ve been there,” Kevin Babington said. “But I was there with her, in a way.”
With the Tokyo Olympics this summer, he watches and analyzes many Grand Prix shows online, for pleasure but also for business. He is one of the selectors for the Irish show-jumping team, and staying involved in the top level of the sport has helped keep his spirits high.
Babington is lucky in many ways, he said, and he takes time to reflect on that every day.
“I have so much to be thankful for,” he said.
|
By Juliet Macur
Jan. 1, 2021
The New York Times Sports department is revisiting the subjects of some compelling articles from the last year or so. Here is our April report on Kevin Babington’s efforts to continue working in the equestrian world after a show-jumping accident left him paralyzed from the chest down.
The anniversary of his spinal cord injury came and went in August, and Kevin Babington, the Irish Olympian show jumper who is one of the top coaches in equestrian sports, refused to feel sorry for himself.
He had work to do. Lots of work
|
. His daily, intense exercise sessions leave him exhausted, but strengthening his body has a specific purpose.
In the summer of 2019, he was paralyzed from the chest down after being flung from his horse, Shorapur, at the Hampton Classic, a prestigious horse show in Bridgehampton, N.Y. He hit the ground headfirst, severely bruising his spinal cord. But Babington, 52, believes he will not only walk again but will climb atop a horse to ride as well. One of the main things he has learned over the last 16 months is to have patience.
Millimeter by millimeter, his body is healing, he said last month, and he can see that in the advances he has made.
Babington, a beloved Grand Prix rider who finished fourth at the 2004 Olympics for Ireland, can now lift his right arm and almost touch his mouth with it. He can move several fingers and toes, and just this week started moving his left thumb. He can sometimes feel sensation in his abdominal muscles. The sharp-as-a-blade body spasms are not as unbearably painful as they were in the spring. He rarely takes his pain medications these days, and his head is as clear as ever because of that.
From his wheelchair next to the riding ring, he continues to coach on a limited basis. He can project his voice well enough to talk to riders without either party relying on headsets, though he still prefers using them and, because of the pandemic, he also conducts lessons on video calls.
Late last month, he began trying to use a hand control to move and steer his motorized wheelchair. An upcoming renovation to Babington’s home on his horse farm in Loxahatchee, Fla., will give him the space to access the whole house. And the space to get out of it: An automatic front door will mean freedom for him to go alone to visit the barn, now filled with horses whose trainers have leased the stalls.
“We can maybe get them to focus on the exit first,” Babington said of the house contractors, before laughing. “So that way, I can run away and get a bit of my independence back.”
He has kept his sense of humor.
What gives Babington the greatest hope for recovery is his participation in a clinical trial involving stem cells at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. He said he couldn’t wait to see how he would respond to the treatment, which will begin in about five months. Last year, a man paralyzed from the neck down in a surfing accident walked again after the treatment. Babington dreams that he too could be a miracle patient.
“It’s something to look forward to,” he said. “I’ve always tried to take things in stride, and I think I’ve handled the stress well. I definitely am feeling stronger all the time.”
His wife, Dianna Babington, marvels at his ability to push himself past normal limits. He has the resolve of an Olympian, she said.
An example: Among the specialized equipment that fills their living room is an apparatus known as a standing frame, which moves Kevin into an upright position and holds him there. He endures each grueling session in the standing frame without complaint, sometimes for more than an hour. His wife hopes to add a machine that simulates a person riding a horse, feet in the stirrups and all, when Kevin is ready for it. Soon, she said, hopefully soon.
The hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from people in the show-jumping world have been put to good use, Dianna Babington said. Her husband would never have come this far in his recovery without the physical therapy those donations made possible. They both are grateful.
But the pandemic has put a stop to most of the public fund-raisers for Babington’s foundation, Dianna Babington said, and it has become a constant source of worry during an already trying time. Babington still cannot cough on his own, without pressure applied to his chest to help clear his airway, so contracting Covid-19 could be especially dangerous for him.
“We’re just going to keep trying to get him better,” said Dianna Babington, who continues to work as a trainer and to promote inflatable safety vests for riders. “Whatever that means, we’re going to keep fighting.”
Kevin Babington has also taken comfort and pride in watching his daughters’ show-jumping competitions on the internet.
Gwyneth, a high school senior with several college scholarship offers to compete in show-jumping, competed in her first Grand Prix event over the summer. She rode Mark Q, her father’s favorite horse.
“I wish I could’ve been there,” Kevin Babington said. “But I was there with her, in a way.”
With the Tokyo Olympics this summer, he watches and analyzes many Grand Prix shows online, for pleasure but also for business. He is one of the selectors for the Irish show-jumping team, and staying involved in the top level of the sport has helped keep his spirits high.
Babington is lucky in many ways, he said, and he takes time to reflect on that every day.
“I have so much to be thankful for,” he said.
|
63. How Trump Tried, but Largely Failed, to Derail America’s Top Climate Report.txt
|
By Christopher Flavelle
Jan. 1, 2021
The National Climate Assessment, America’s premier contribution to climate knowledge, stands out for many reasons: Hundreds of scientists across the federal government and academia join forces to compile the best insights available on climate change. The results, released just twice a decade or so, shape years of government decisions.
Now, as the clock runs down on President Trump’s time in office, the climate assessment has gained a new distinction: It is one of the few major U.S. climate initiatives that his administration tried, yet largely failed, to undermine.
How the Trump White House attempted to put its mark on the report, and why those efforts stumbled, demonstrates the resilience of federal climate science despite the administration’s haphazard efforts to impede it. This article is based on interviews with nearly a dozen current and former government officials and others familiar with the process.
In November, the administration removed the person responsible for the next edition of the report and replaced him with someone who has downplayed climate science, though at this point it seems to be too little, too late. But the efforts started back in 2018, when officials pushed out a top official and leaned on scientists to soften their conclusions — the scientists refused — and then later tried to bury the report, which didn’t work either.
“Thank God they didn’t know how to run a government,” said Thomas Armstrong, who during the Obama administration led the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which produces the assessment. “It could have been a lot worse.”
What makes the failure to impede the climate assessment remarkable is that Mr. Trump has made it a top priority to undercut efforts to address climate change. And on most fronts, he succeeded, reversing scores of environmental rules, relaxing restrictions on air pollution and opening new land to oil and gas drilling.
The national assessment enjoys unique prominence, pulling together the work of scientists across the federal government. The law requires a new one every four years.
For Mr. Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, the assessment posed a particular challenge. Trying to politicize or dismiss climate science is one thing when the warnings come from Democrats or academics. But this report comes from his administration’s very own agencies.
The first evidence of this tension came in the summer of 2018, as federal scientists were finishing the fourth National Climate Assessment. The report warned that climate change would endanger public safety and economic growth. And it said that cutting emissions “can substantially reduce climate-related risks,” in contradiction of the Trump administration’s efforts to reverse such cuts.
Stuart Levenbach, a political appointee who was then chief of staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the assessment, pushed the scientists preparing the document to tone down the findings in their report summary, according to people involved in the discussions.
The Biden Administration’s Environmental Agenda
Dr. Levenbach, who is now a senior adviser at the White House National Economic Council, said in a statement that he simply wanted the summary to be more clear about the assumptions it relied upon about future emissions.
The career staff refused to make those changes. That refusal came at a cost: Virginia Burkett, a climate scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey who was chairwoman of the Global Change Research Program, was forced out of her role. Still, the language in the report remained untouched.
The White House referred questions about Dr. Burkett to the Geological Survey. A spokeswoman there did not respond to a request for comment.
The administration then released the document on the day after Thanksgiving, in an apparent attempt to minimize attention. (A White House spokeswoman, who declined to be identified by name, said by email: “The day after Thanksgiving is a Federal work day, and it is not unusual for Federal business to be conducted on days surrounding Federal holidays.”)
That approach backfired: Many news organizations interpreted the timing as evidence of the report’s importance, giving it prominent coverage.
Having failed to either change or bury the report, Mr. Trump and his senior officials then tried dismissing it.
President Trump, asked about the assessment’s findings that global warming could devastate the economy, responded, “I don’t believe it.” His press secretary at the time, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said the assessment was “not based on facts.” Ryan Zinke, who was secretary of the interior at the time, said that its findings emphasized “the worst scenarios.”
Once the climate assessment had been issued, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, which oversees the Global Change Research Program, decided it was best to stop talking about it at all, according to people involved.
The office put a halt to any activities that might draw attention to the assessment. Additional reports, meant as periodic updates, stopped getting released. Plans for the authors to meet with local officials in places threatened by climate change and talk about their findings were shelved.
The White House spokeswoman called the descriptions of the White House actions “false.” She declined a request to make senior officials involved with the assessment available for an interview.
Urging staff not to talk about their work succeeded in keeping it off the radar of Mr. Trump and his senior officials, at least for a time. It helped that energy lobbyists were focused on the actions of other parts of government, whose regulations directly affected their businesses.
But the decision to avoid attention came at a cost, officials say, reducing the public’s awareness of the report’s findings and slowing the work on the next one.
Another White House decision would also help keep the climate assessment out of the news: The head of the science office, Kelvin Droegemeier, delayed the release of the next installment, to 2023 from 2022, according to people familiar with his decision.
The Global Change Research Program’s website now says the “anticipated delivery” for the next report is 2023. The White House spokeswoman said the final timeline hasn’t been set.
But that delay had a silver lining, said Jesse Keenan, a professor at Tulane University who edited two chapters for the previous assessment. Each report relies on the scientific research it draws on — and under the Trump administration, new climate research has slowed, Dr. Keenan said.
Delaying the release of the next assessment “is going to give us an opportunity to catch our breath and get some output in the next year” from federal scientists, he said.
Climate Fwd What on earth is going on? Get the latest news about climate change, plus tips on how you can help. Get it in your inbox.
This year, the White House turned its attention to the climate assessment again.
An important step in creating each new version is the call for authors, who shape the tone of the report. That notice, which typically also provides an outline of what topics will be covered, was delayed for months by the Trump administration, according to several people familiar with the decision. And when it was finally released in October, the language had been changed: Political appointees had removed information about the specific topics to be addressed.
Federal scientists worried the change signaled a plan to truncate the scope of the assessment — allowing the administration to meet the letter of the law, while avoiding topics that might run counter to what the White House wanted to hear.
The White House spokeswoman said “the organization of information into specific chapters remains a work in progress.”
Those worries increased in November, when the White House removed the head of the Global Change Research Program, Michael Kuperberg, a climate scientist from the Department of Energy. Dr. Kuperberg was replaced by David Legates, a Trump appointee at NOAA who previously worked closely with groups that deny climate change.
The Department of Energy did not respond to a request for comment.
A second NOAA political official, Ryan Maue, who has criticized climate scientists for what he has called unnecessarily dire predictions, was moved to a role in the White House that gave him authority over the climate program.
The appointments produced anxiety among scientists, who worried it represented an effort by the administration to learn from its failure to change the previous assessment, by installing loyalists who could shape the next edition.
The White House declined to make Dr. Legates or Dr. Maue available for an interview.
But several people familiar with the process say it may not be too late for some sort of Hail Mary pass by the Trump administration — for example, rushing to select authors who might downplay the science of climate change or try to present that science as uncertain. That would force the Biden administration to work around those authors or remove them, potentially stirring up a political fight.
But the more likely outcome, current and former officials say, is that the recent hires are another example of how the Trump administration’s agenda was hindered by its own shortcomings — the failure to understand how the programs it wanted to undercut actually work, or moving too late to make a difference.
The administration should have moved sooner to put its stamp on the climate assessment, said Judith Curry, a former chairwoman of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology who said she has been in contact with Dr. Maue and other officials.
“It just didn’t bubble up on the priority list,” Dr. Curry said. “Why they started doing this at the 11th hour, I honestly don’t know.”
John Holdren, who as science adviser to President Obama helped oversee the climate assessment process, said he believed the Biden administration would be able to get it back on track and push aside anyone trying to undermine it.
“Holdover climate wafflers from the Trump period, in any of the relevant agencies, will be removed,” Dr. Holdren said. “Or if that’s not possible, told to butt out.”
Christopher Flavelle focuses on how people, governments and industries try to cope with the effects of global warming. He received a 2018 National Press Foundation award for coverage of the federal government's struggles to deal with flooding. More about Christopher Flavelle
A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 2, 2021, Section A, Page 19 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Tried, but Failed, To Derail Climate Report That Steers Future Policies. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
Site Index
Site Information Navigation
|
By Christopher Flavelle
Jan. 1, 2021
The National Climate Assessment, America’s premier contribution to climate knowledge, stands out for many reasons: Hundreds of scientists across the federal government and academia join forces to compile the best insights available on climate change. The results, released just twice a decade or so, shape years of government decisions.
Now, as the clock runs down on President Trump’s time in office, the climate assessment has gained a new distinction: It is one of the few major U.S. climate initiatives that his administration tried, yet largely failed, to undermine.
How the Trump White House attempted
|
to put its mark on the report, and why those efforts stumbled, demonstrates the resilience of federal climate science despite the administration’s haphazard efforts to impede it. This article is based on interviews with nearly a dozen current and former government officials and others familiar with the process.
In November, the administration removed the person responsible for the next edition of the report and replaced him with someone who has downplayed climate science, though at this point it seems to be too little, too late. But the efforts started back in 2018, when officials pushed out a top official and leaned on scientists to soften their conclusions — the scientists refused — and then later tried to bury the report, which didn’t work either.
“Thank God they didn’t know how to run a government,” said Thomas Armstrong, who during the Obama administration led the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which produces the assessment. “It could have been a lot worse.”
What makes the failure to impede the climate assessment remarkable is that Mr. Trump has made it a top priority to undercut efforts to address climate change. And on most fronts, he succeeded, reversing scores of environmental rules, relaxing restrictions on air pollution and opening new land to oil and gas drilling.
The national assessment enjoys unique prominence, pulling together the work of scientists across the federal government. The law requires a new one every four years.
For Mr. Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, the assessment posed a particular challenge. Trying to politicize or dismiss climate science is one thing when the warnings come from Democrats or academics. But this report comes from his administration’s very own agencies.
The first evidence of this tension came in the summer of 2018, as federal scientists were finishing the fourth National Climate Assessment. The report warned that climate change would endanger public safety and economic growth. And it said that cutting emissions “can substantially reduce climate-related risks,” in contradiction of the Trump administration’s efforts to reverse such cuts.
Stuart Levenbach, a political appointee who was then chief of staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the assessment, pushed the scientists preparing the document to tone down the findings in their report summary, according to people involved in the discussions.
The Biden Administration’s Environmental Agenda
Dr. Levenbach, who is now a senior adviser at the White House National Economic Council, said in a statement that he simply wanted the summary to be more clear about the assumptions it relied upon about future emissions.
The career staff refused to make those changes. That refusal came at a cost: Virginia Burkett, a climate scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey who was chairwoman of the Global Change Research Program, was forced out of her role. Still, the language in the report remained untouched.
The White House referred questions about Dr. Burkett to the Geological Survey. A spokeswoman there did not respond to a request for comment.
The administration then released the document on the day after Thanksgiving, in an apparent attempt to minimize attention. (A White House spokeswoman, who declined to be identified by name, said by email: “The day after Thanksgiving is a Federal work day, and it is not unusual for Federal business to be conducted on days surrounding Federal holidays.”)
That approach backfired: Many news organizations interpreted the timing as evidence of the report’s importance, giving it prominent coverage.
Having failed to either change or bury the report, Mr. Trump and his senior officials then tried dismissing it.
President Trump, asked about the assessment’s findings that global warming could devastate the economy, responded, “I don’t believe it.” His press secretary at the time, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said the assessment was “not based on facts.” Ryan Zinke, who was secretary of the interior at the time, said that its findings emphasized “the worst scenarios.”
Once the climate assessment had been issued, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, which oversees the Global Change Research Program, decided it was best to stop talking about it at all, according to people involved.
The office put a halt to any activities that might draw attention to the assessment. Additional reports, meant as periodic updates, stopped getting released. Plans for the authors to meet with local officials in places threatened by climate change and talk about their findings were shelved.
The White House spokeswoman called the descriptions of the White House actions “false.” She declined a request to make senior officials involved with the assessment available for an interview.
Urging staff not to talk about their work succeeded in keeping it off the radar of Mr. Trump and his senior officials, at least for a time. It helped that energy lobbyists were focused on the actions of other parts of government, whose regulations directly affected their businesses.
But the decision to avoid attention came at a cost, officials say, reducing the public’s awareness of the report’s findings and slowing the work on the next one.
Another White House decision would also help keep the climate assessment out of the news: The head of the science office, Kelvin Droegemeier, delayed the release of the next installment, to 2023 from 2022, according to people familiar with his decision.
The Global Change Research Program’s website now says the “anticipated delivery” for the next report is 2023. The White House spokeswoman said the final timeline hasn’t been set.
But that delay had a silver lining, said Jesse Keenan, a professor at Tulane University who edited two chapters for the previous assessment. Each report relies on the scientific research it draws on — and under the Trump administration, new climate research has slowed, Dr. Keenan said.
Delaying the release of the next assessment “is going to give us an opportunity to catch our breath and get some output in the next year” from federal scientists, he said.
Climate Fwd What on earth is going on? Get the latest news about climate change, plus tips on how you can help. Get it in your inbox.
This year, the White House turned its attention to the climate assessment again.
An important step in creating each new version is the call for authors, who shape the tone of the report. That notice, which typically also provides an outline of what topics will be covered, was delayed for months by the Trump administration, according to several people familiar with the decision. And when it was finally released in October, the language had been changed: Political appointees had removed information about the specific topics to be addressed.
Federal scientists worried the change signaled a plan to truncate the scope of the assessment — allowing the administration to meet the letter of the law, while avoiding topics that might run counter to what the White House wanted to hear.
The White House spokeswoman said “the organization of information into specific chapters remains a work in progress.”
Those worries increased in November, when the White House removed the head of the Global Change Research Program, Michael Kuperberg, a climate scientist from the Department of Energy. Dr. Kuperberg was replaced by David Legates, a Trump appointee at NOAA who previously worked closely with groups that deny climate change.
The Department of Energy did not respond to a request for comment.
A second NOAA political official, Ryan Maue, who has criticized climate scientists for what he has called unnecessarily dire predictions, was moved to a role in the White House that gave him authority over the climate program.
The appointments produced anxiety among scientists, who worried it represented an effort by the administration to learn from its failure to change the previous assessment, by installing loyalists who could shape the next edition.
The White House declined to make Dr. Legates or Dr. Maue available for an interview.
But several people familiar with the process say it may not be too late for some sort of Hail Mary pass by the Trump administration — for example, rushing to select authors who might downplay the science of climate change or try to present that science as uncertain. That would force the Biden administration to work around those authors or remove them, potentially stirring up a political fight.
But the more likely outcome, current and former officials say, is that the recent hires are another example of how the Trump administration’s agenda was hindered by its own shortcomings — the failure to understand how the programs it wanted to undercut actually work, or moving too late to make a difference.
The administration should have moved sooner to put its stamp on the climate assessment, said Judith Curry, a former chairwoman of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology who said she has been in contact with Dr. Maue and other officials.
“It just didn’t bubble up on the priority list,” Dr. Curry said. “Why they started doing this at the 11th hour, I honestly don’t know.”
John Holdren, who as science adviser to President Obama helped oversee the climate assessment process, said he believed the Biden administration would be able to get it back on track and push aside anyone trying to undermine it.
“Holdover climate wafflers from the Trump period, in any of the relevant agencies, will be removed,” Dr. Holdren said. “Or if that’s not possible, told to butt out.”
Christopher Flavelle focuses on how people, governments and industries try to cope with the effects of global warming. He received a 2018 National Press Foundation award for coverage of the federal government's struggles to deal with flooding. More about Christopher Flavelle
A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 2, 2021, Section A, Page 19 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Tried, but Failed, To Derail Climate Report That Steers Future Policies. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
Site Index
Site Information Navigation
|
9. Joan Micklin Silver, Director of ‘Crossing Delancey,’ Dies at 85.txt
|
By Anita Gates
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 4, 2021
Joan Micklin Silver, the filmmaker whose first feature, “Hester Street,” expanded the marketplace for American independent film and broke barriers for women in directing, died on Thursday at her home in Manhattan. She was 85.
Her daughter Claudia Silver said the cause was vascular dementia.
Ms. Silver wrote and directed “Hester Street” (1975), the story of a young Jewish immigrant couple from Russia on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 1890s. It was a personal effort, a low-budget 34-day location shoot, that became a family project.
Studios said the story was too narrowly and historically ethnic. For one thing, much of the film, in black and white, was in Yiddish with English subtitles.
“Nobody wanted to release it,” Ms. Silver recalled in a visual history interview for the Directors Guild of America in 2005. “The only offer was to release it on 16 to the synagogue market,” she added, referring to 16-millimeter film.
Ms. Silver’s husband, Raphael D. Silver, a commercial real estate developer, stepped in to finance, produce and even distribute the film after selling it to some international markets while attending the Cannes Film Festival. “Hester Street” opened at the Plaza Theater in Manhattan in October 1975, then in theaters nationwide, and soon earned $5 million (about $25 million today), almost 14 times its $370,000 budget. (Ms. Silver sometimes cited an even lower budget figure: $320,000.)
Richard Eder of The New York Times praised the film’s “fine balance between realism and fable” and declared it “an unconditionally happy achievement.” Carol Kane, who was 21 during the filming, in 1973, was nominated for the best actress Oscar for her role as Gitl, the newly arrived wife who is, in the opinion of her husband (Steven Keats), humiliatingly slow to assimilate.
“Hester Street” made Ms. Silver’s reputation, but the next time she wanted to depict Jewish characters and culture, the same objections arose.
“Crossing Delancey” (1988) was a romantic comedy about a sophisticated, single New York bookstore employee (Amy Irving) who is constantly looking over her shoulder to be sure that she’s made a clean getaway from her Lower East Side roots.
With the help of her grandmother (played by the Yiddish theater star Reizl Bozyk) and a traditional matchmaker (Sylvia Miles), she meets a neighborhood pickle dealer (Peter Riegert) who has enough great qualities to make up for his being just another nice guy (her tastes ran more in the bad-boy direction).
The studios found this film “too ethnic” too — “a euphemism,” Ms. Silver told The Times, “for Jewish material that Hollywood executives distrust.”
Luckily, Ms. Irving’s husband at the time, the director Steven Spielberg, was fond of Jewish history himself. He suggested that she send the script to a neighbor of his in East Hampton, N.Y. — a top Warner Entertainment executive. The film grossed about $16 million worldwide (roughly $35 million today).
It is difficult to say which was Ms. Silver’s most vicious antagonist, anti-Semitism or misogyny.
“I had such blatantly sexist things said to me by studio executives when I started,” she recalled in an American Film Institute interview in 1979. She quoted one man’s memorable comment: “Feature films are very expensive to mount and distribute, and women directors are one more problem we don’t need.”
Joan Micklin was born on May 24, 1935, in Omaha. She was the second of three daughters of Maurice David Micklin, who operated a lumber company that he and his father had founded, and Doris (Shoshone) Micklin. Both her parents were born in Russia — like the protagonists in “Hester Street” — and came to the United States as children.
Joan grew up in Omaha, then went East, to Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, N.Y. She married Mr. Silver, known as Ray, in 1956, three weeks after graduation. He was the son of the celebrated Zionist rabbi Abba Hillel Silver.
For 11 years, the Silvers lived in Cleveland, his hometown, where she taught music and wrote for local theater. They moved to New York in 1967, putting her closer to film and theater contacts.
A chance meeting with Joan Ganz Cooney, the co-creator of Sesame Street, at a political fund-raiser led to her work with Linda Gottlieb at the Learning Corporation of America. Together they wrote and produced educational and documentary short films, including “The Immigrant Experience” (1972).
Ms. Silver had a love-hate relationship with movie studios. She was one of several writers hired and fired by Paramount to adapt Lois Gould’s novel “Such Good Friends” (1971). Her first mainstream screenplay was “Limbo,” written with Ms. Gottlieb, about the wives of prisoners of war in Vietnam. Universal Studios bought the property but rewrote it and hired a director whose vision was the polar opposite of Ms. Silver’s.
She was not going to let that happen with “Hester Street.” And she didn’t.
Ms. Silver’s second film, “Between the Lines” (1977), was an assimilation story of sorts as well. The young, politically progressive staff of an alternative newspaper is being taken over by a corporation, which has radically different priorities and values. That film, whose ensemble cast included Jeff Goldblum, John Heard and Lindsay Crouse, was also produced by the Silvers.
A poster for Ms. Silver’s 1977 movie about a progressive alternative newspaper being taken over by a corporation.
For her third film, an adaptation of Ann Beattie’s moody best seller “Chilly Scenes of Winter,” Ms. Silver worked with United Artists. The studio promptly changed the title to “Head Over Heels” (1979) and promoted the movie as a lighthearted romp. It starred Mr. Heard and Mary Beth Hurt as a lovesick civil servant and the married co-worker he worships a little too much.
After it bombed, the film’s young producers insisted on restoring the original title, giving it a new, less perky ending and having it re-released. This time it was received much more favorably.
Ms. Silver ventured into Off Broadway theater with mixed results. Mel Gussow of The Times did not care for “Maybe I’m Doing It Wrong” (1982), her revue with Randy Newman’s music. But when Ms. Silver and Julianne Boyd conceived and staged the musical revue “A … My Name Is Alice,” it had three runs in 1983 and 1984 and was pronounced “delightful” by Frank Rich of The Times. There were two sequels in the 1990s.
In the end, Ms. Silver directed seven feature films. The others, all comedies with relatively frothy subjects, were “Loverboy” (1989), about a handsome young pizza deliverer who offers extras to attractive older women; “Big Girls Don’t Cry … They Get Even” (1992), about divorced-and-remarried people thrown together again by a runaway teenage daughter; and “A Fish in the Bathtub” (1999), starring Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara as a couple with a pet carp.
Ms. Silver also directed more than a half-dozen television movies, beginning with “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” (1976), based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story. Her last was “Hunger Point” (2003), about a young woman’s eating disorder.
In addition to her daughter Claudia, Ms. Silver’s survivors include two other daughters, Dina and Marisa Silver; a sister, Renee; and five grandchildren. Mr. Silver died at 83 in 2013 after a skiing accident in Park City, Utah.
Looking back in the Directors Guild interview, Ms. Silver professed definite work preferences.
“The more I’m left alone, the better I do,” she said. “It isn’t that I think I’m smarter than anyone or anything like that. It’s just what whatever my instincts are, it’s better for me to be able to put those into play in my own work.”
In the same interview, she was asked about “Crossing Delancey” and confessed her favorite aspect of the experience: “I had final cut.”
Alex Traub contributed reporting.
|
By Anita Gates
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 4, 2021
Joan Micklin Silver, the filmmaker whose first feature, “Hester Street,” expanded the marketplace for American independent film and broke barriers for women in directing, died on Thursday at her home in Manhattan. She was 85.
Her daughter Claudia Silver said the cause was vascular dementia.
Ms. Silver wrote and directed “Hester Street” (1975), the story of a young Jewish immigrant couple from Russia on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 1890s.
|
It was a personal effort, a low-budget 34-day location shoot, that became a family project.
Studios said the story was too narrowly and historically ethnic. For one thing, much of the film, in black and white, was in Yiddish with English subtitles.
“Nobody wanted to release it,” Ms. Silver recalled in a visual history interview for the Directors Guild of America in 2005. “The only offer was to release it on 16 to the synagogue market,” she added, referring to 16-millimeter film.
Ms. Silver’s husband, Raphael D. Silver, a commercial real estate developer, stepped in to finance, produce and even distribute the film after selling it to some international markets while attending the Cannes Film Festival. “Hester Street” opened at the Plaza Theater in Manhattan in October 1975, then in theaters nationwide, and soon earned $5 million (about $25 million today), almost 14 times its $370,000 budget. (Ms. Silver sometimes cited an even lower budget figure: $320,000.)
Richard Eder of The New York Times praised the film’s “fine balance between realism and fable” and declared it “an unconditionally happy achievement.” Carol Kane, who was 21 during the filming, in 1973, was nominated for the best actress Oscar for her role as Gitl, the newly arrived wife who is, in the opinion of her husband (Steven Keats), humiliatingly slow to assimilate.
“Hester Street” made Ms. Silver’s reputation, but the next time she wanted to depict Jewish characters and culture, the same objections arose.
“Crossing Delancey” (1988) was a romantic comedy about a sophisticated, single New York bookstore employee (Amy Irving) who is constantly looking over her shoulder to be sure that she’s made a clean getaway from her Lower East Side roots.
With the help of her grandmother (played by the Yiddish theater star Reizl Bozyk) and a traditional matchmaker (Sylvia Miles), she meets a neighborhood pickle dealer (Peter Riegert) who has enough great qualities to make up for his being just another nice guy (her tastes ran more in the bad-boy direction).
The studios found this film “too ethnic” too — “a euphemism,” Ms. Silver told The Times, “for Jewish material that Hollywood executives distrust.”
Luckily, Ms. Irving’s husband at the time, the director Steven Spielberg, was fond of Jewish history himself. He suggested that she send the script to a neighbor of his in East Hampton, N.Y. — a top Warner Entertainment executive. The film grossed about $16 million worldwide (roughly $35 million today).
It is difficult to say which was Ms. Silver’s most vicious antagonist, anti-Semitism or misogyny.
“I had such blatantly sexist things said to me by studio executives when I started,” she recalled in an American Film Institute interview in 1979. She quoted one man’s memorable comment: “Feature films are very expensive to mount and distribute, and women directors are one more problem we don’t need.”
Joan Micklin was born on May 24, 1935, in Omaha. She was the second of three daughters of Maurice David Micklin, who operated a lumber company that he and his father had founded, and Doris (Shoshone) Micklin. Both her parents were born in Russia — like the protagonists in “Hester Street” — and came to the United States as children.
Joan grew up in Omaha, then went East, to Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, N.Y. She married Mr. Silver, known as Ray, in 1956, three weeks after graduation. He was the son of the celebrated Zionist rabbi Abba Hillel Silver.
For 11 years, the Silvers lived in Cleveland, his hometown, where she taught music and wrote for local theater. They moved to New York in 1967, putting her closer to film and theater contacts.
A chance meeting with Joan Ganz Cooney, the co-creator of Sesame Street, at a political fund-raiser led to her work with Linda Gottlieb at the Learning Corporation of America. Together they wrote and produced educational and documentary short films, including “The Immigrant Experience” (1972).
Ms. Silver had a love-hate relationship with movie studios. She was one of several writers hired and fired by Paramount to adapt Lois Gould’s novel “Such Good Friends” (1971). Her first mainstream screenplay was “Limbo,” written with Ms. Gottlieb, about the wives of prisoners of war in Vietnam. Universal Studios bought the property but rewrote it and hired a director whose vision was the polar opposite of Ms. Silver’s.
She was not going to let that happen with “Hester Street.” And she didn’t.
Ms. Silver’s second film, “Between the Lines” (1977), was an assimilation story of sorts as well. The young, politically progressive staff of an alternative newspaper is being taken over by a corporation, which has radically different priorities and values. That film, whose ensemble cast included Jeff Goldblum, John Heard and Lindsay Crouse, was also produced by the Silvers.
A poster for Ms. Silver’s 1977 movie about a progressive alternative newspaper being taken over by a corporation.
For her third film, an adaptation of Ann Beattie’s moody best seller “Chilly Scenes of Winter,” Ms. Silver worked with United Artists. The studio promptly changed the title to “Head Over Heels” (1979) and promoted the movie as a lighthearted romp. It starred Mr. Heard and Mary Beth Hurt as a lovesick civil servant and the married co-worker he worships a little too much.
After it bombed, the film’s young producers insisted on restoring the original title, giving it a new, less perky ending and having it re-released. This time it was received much more favorably.
Ms. Silver ventured into Off Broadway theater with mixed results. Mel Gussow of The Times did not care for “Maybe I’m Doing It Wrong” (1982), her revue with Randy Newman’s music. But when Ms. Silver and Julianne Boyd conceived and staged the musical revue “A … My Name Is Alice,” it had three runs in 1983 and 1984 and was pronounced “delightful” by Frank Rich of The Times. There were two sequels in the 1990s.
In the end, Ms. Silver directed seven feature films. The others, all comedies with relatively frothy subjects, were “Loverboy” (1989), about a handsome young pizza deliverer who offers extras to attractive older women; “Big Girls Don’t Cry … They Get Even” (1992), about divorced-and-remarried people thrown together again by a runaway teenage daughter; and “A Fish in the Bathtub” (1999), starring Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara as a couple with a pet carp.
Ms. Silver also directed more than a half-dozen television movies, beginning with “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” (1976), based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story. Her last was “Hunger Point” (2003), about a young woman’s eating disorder.
In addition to her daughter Claudia, Ms. Silver’s survivors include two other daughters, Dina and Marisa Silver; a sister, Renee; and five grandchildren. Mr. Silver died at 83 in 2013 after a skiing accident in Park City, Utah.
Looking back in the Directors Guild interview, Ms. Silver professed definite work preferences.
“The more I’m left alone, the better I do,” she said. “It isn’t that I think I’m smarter than anyone or anything like that. It’s just what whatever my instincts are, it’s better for me to be able to put those into play in my own work.”
In the same interview, she was asked about “Crossing Delancey” and confessed her favorite aspect of the experience: “I had final cut.”
Alex Traub contributed reporting.
|
17. U.K.txt
|
By Christina Morales
Jan. 1, 2021
Britain on Friday became the latest country to transform its measures on sanitary products by abolishing the so-called tampon tax, no longer classifying the products as nonessential and eliminating extra costs that many have criticized as sexist.
The tax, a 5 percent value-added rate on sanitary products such as tampons and pads, is the minimum required for members of the European Union, which classifies those goods as nonessential.
“I’m proud that we are today delivering on our promise to scrap the tampon tax,” Chancellor Rishi Sunak of the Exchequer said in a statement. “Sanitary products are essential so it’s right that we do not charge VAT.”
With Britain’s split from the European Union this week, the tax was abolished, the government said.
Facing public pressure in 2016 after a Change.org petition for abolishing the tax gained more than 300,000 supporters, David Cameron, who was then prime minister, in turn pressured the E.U.
The E.U. said it would give its members the option to remove the tax, but that plan never came to fruition.
Many women’s rights activists have denounced the government for characterizing the abolishment of the tax as a positive outcome of Brexit. Some said that Brexit served as a distraction for the cause and that the tax could have been eliminated through the E.U.
“It’s been a long road to reach this point, but at last, the sexist tax that saw sanitary products classed as nonessential, luxury items can be consigned to the history books,” Felicia Willow, the chief executive of Fawcett Society, a charity that supports gender equality and women’s rights, said in a statement.
The abolishment of the tax is part of a wider government initiative to end “period poverty” and make period products accessible to anyone regardless of financial constraints.
Research released in May from Plan International U.K., a children’s charity, found that three in 10 girls ages 14 to 21 struggled to afford or get access to sanitary products during the coronavirus lockdown.
In 2015, the government established the Tampon Tax Fund, which allocated 47 million pounds raised from the tax on period products to charities working with vulnerable women and girls.
In January 2019, Gemma Abbott, the director of the British nonprofit Free Periods, said the group had started a campaign threatening the government with legal action, saying a lack of access to menstrual products affected a child’s educational experience.
Two months later, the government changed course, she said.
Since last year, the British government’s initiative to make period products more accessible has also included putting free sanitary products in schools, colleges and hospitals.
Ms. Abbott said she and Free Periods were trying to hold the government accountable for the initiative, especially about funding it and getting more schools and colleges to sign up.
Over the last few years, governments around the world have revised measures on sanitary products.
In November, Scotland became the first country to make period products available for free. Last year, Germany officially changed its stance on menstrual products by declaring them essential, and reducing their tax rate after they had long been classified as “luxury goods.”
Australia, which also once considered the products a “luxury,” and Canada, India and Malaysia have also abolished the tax.
In the United States, 10 states since 2016 have eliminated the tax: California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Utah and Washington, said Jennifer Weiss-Wolf of the organization Period Equity.
Women’s activists were overjoyed at the news in Britain on Friday. But some said there was still work to be done, including supporting other international petitions and getting free period products placed in public buildings across Britain, similar to what Scotland has done.
“We’ve seen that going on in Scotland, and we’ve seen how the Scottish government’s actions have influenced the U.K.,” Ms. Abbott said. “We’re hopeful it’ll drive change.”
The battle to abolish the tax started in 2014 with a petition by Laura Coryton, and included Ms. Coryton hand-delivering her petition to a government office in 2016, she said in an interview on Friday.
The petition led to public pressure and showed how influential online campaigning can be.
“It’s really, really hard for a government to ignore that many people,” Ms. Coryton, 27, of London, said. “I never thought it would be successful because it’s about taxation and menstruation, not very popular topics.”
On Friday morning, Change.org U.K. tweeted, “People power works.”
|
By Christina Morales
Jan. 1, 2021
Britain on Friday became the latest country to transform its measures on sanitary products by abolishing the so-called tampon tax, no longer classifying the products as nonessential and eliminating extra costs that many have criticized as sexist.
The tax, a 5 percent value-added rate on sanitary products such as tampons and pads, is the minimum required for members of the European Union, which classifies those goods as nonessential.
“I’m proud that we are today delivering on our promise to scrap the tampon tax,” Chancellor Rishi Sunak of the
|
Exchequer said in a statement. “Sanitary products are essential so it’s right that we do not charge VAT.”
With Britain’s split from the European Union this week, the tax was abolished, the government said.
Facing public pressure in 2016 after a Change.org petition for abolishing the tax gained more than 300,000 supporters, David Cameron, who was then prime minister, in turn pressured the E.U.
The E.U. said it would give its members the option to remove the tax, but that plan never came to fruition.
Many women’s rights activists have denounced the government for characterizing the abolishment of the tax as a positive outcome of Brexit. Some said that Brexit served as a distraction for the cause and that the tax could have been eliminated through the E.U.
“It’s been a long road to reach this point, but at last, the sexist tax that saw sanitary products classed as nonessential, luxury items can be consigned to the history books,” Felicia Willow, the chief executive of Fawcett Society, a charity that supports gender equality and women’s rights, said in a statement.
The abolishment of the tax is part of a wider government initiative to end “period poverty” and make period products accessible to anyone regardless of financial constraints.
Research released in May from Plan International U.K., a children’s charity, found that three in 10 girls ages 14 to 21 struggled to afford or get access to sanitary products during the coronavirus lockdown.
In 2015, the government established the Tampon Tax Fund, which allocated 47 million pounds raised from the tax on period products to charities working with vulnerable women and girls.
In January 2019, Gemma Abbott, the director of the British nonprofit Free Periods, said the group had started a campaign threatening the government with legal action, saying a lack of access to menstrual products affected a child’s educational experience.
Two months later, the government changed course, she said.
Since last year, the British government’s initiative to make period products more accessible has also included putting free sanitary products in schools, colleges and hospitals.
Ms. Abbott said she and Free Periods were trying to hold the government accountable for the initiative, especially about funding it and getting more schools and colleges to sign up.
Over the last few years, governments around the world have revised measures on sanitary products.
In November, Scotland became the first country to make period products available for free. Last year, Germany officially changed its stance on menstrual products by declaring them essential, and reducing their tax rate after they had long been classified as “luxury goods.”
Australia, which also once considered the products a “luxury,” and Canada, India and Malaysia have also abolished the tax.
In the United States, 10 states since 2016 have eliminated the tax: California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Utah and Washington, said Jennifer Weiss-Wolf of the organization Period Equity.
Women’s activists were overjoyed at the news in Britain on Friday. But some said there was still work to be done, including supporting other international petitions and getting free period products placed in public buildings across Britain, similar to what Scotland has done.
“We’ve seen that going on in Scotland, and we’ve seen how the Scottish government’s actions have influenced the U.K.,” Ms. Abbott said. “We’re hopeful it’ll drive change.”
The battle to abolish the tax started in 2014 with a petition by Laura Coryton, and included Ms. Coryton hand-delivering her petition to a government office in 2016, she said in an interview on Friday.
The petition led to public pressure and showed how influential online campaigning can be.
“It’s really, really hard for a government to ignore that many people,” Ms. Coryton, 27, of London, said. “I never thought it would be successful because it’s about taxation and menstruation, not very popular topics.”
On Friday morning, Change.org U.K. tweeted, “People power works.”
|
57. How a Zen Buddhist Monk and Hospital Chaplain Spends His Sundays.txt
|
By Ted Alcorn
Jan. 1, 2021
Even for someone accustomed to facing death, like Seigan Ed Glassing, who serves on the palliative care team at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, 2020 was a brutal year.
Ordained as a monk at Dai Bosatsu Zendo, a monastery in the Catskills, Mr. Glassing also studied in Japan and helped direct a temple in New York City, where he met his husband, Andrew Lagomarsino. But restless with a life that felt cloistered, he found reconnection as an interfaith chaplain. Now he ministers to the grieving and dying “of all faiths, no faiths, and everything in between.”
The tables turned on him in late February when his husband fell ill and began losing weight. The couple worried that Andrew had Covid-19 but upon finally seeking care, they learned he had leukemia. His health deteriorated quickly, and he died in April. For several weeks his body lay alongside casualties of the pandemic in a refrigerated truck outside the hospital.
Mr. Glassing, 55, who is still absorbing the loss, feels a deep connection to the many who suffered so much this past year. In his one-bedroom apartment at the northern tip of Manhattan, where he lives with a cat named Momo, he devotes Sundays to self-care.
“There is no other way except to walk into that landscape of sadness, and loss, and grief, and to be an ally to yourself.”
CAT, COFFEE Between 5 and 6 in the morning Momo will wake me up. He will start putting his nose on my eyelids. If that doesn’t work, he’ll pounce on me or walk all over my body. So I let him do that for about 10-15 minutes, and then I do wake up. I feed him and then I make some coffee for myself.
ALTAR I have a seasonal affective disorder light, and I sit underneath that for a half-hour and I do my practice. I have an altar table, and I put the light next to me and I light a stick of incense. I put water offerings in seven bowls. And then I sit and do my chanting, and then I meditate.
CHURCH I have a banana shake in the morning — after the meditation, because if I eat before that, I fall asleep. Not good to meditate on a full stomach. Then at 7, I listen to On Being with Krista Tippett. She used to be a chaplain. I love her way of talking and the absolute wisdom of these folks that she’s got on. It’s my church, so to speak.
TRAINING From 8 until 9, I play with Momo. We trained him to give paw and to spin around and to stand up on his two hind legs. And now, although he’s a very stubborn cat, he’s working on the two-card monte trick. I put two cups, I put a little treat under the cup, move the cup around, and he’s got to choose which one the treat is underneath. He should be on YouTube.
SACRED PAINTING Then I’ll start doing my Tibetan thangka painting. It’s sacred artwork — it’s not just portraying an image. You are evoking through prayers and meditation, so the energy is actually imbued in this work of art. One painting can take a couple of months. The very last thing that you paint on that Buddha is the eyes. And when you paint the eyes, through a special ceremony, they open: It’s alive. It’s meditative painting, so I can lose myself for those three or four hours.
FIGURE DRAWING At 2, I have a figure drawing class. It’s a Zoom. I started in April, right after Andrew died. Seeing a beautiful human being, and to paint them or to draw them, it’s very intimate. And it’s LGBTQ-based. So, these are my tribe, these are my people.
NARNIA Then I usually go out for a walk in Inwood Hill Park. What I love most is there are, mysteriously, these turn-of-the-century gas lights that have been abandoned. The whole place looks like Narnia! Andrew and I used to walk in this park all the time together, so for me it’s like I’m walking with his ghost.
TV DINNER Around 6 I’ll start to make dinner. I’m a vegetarian. I will do vegetables and some kind of lentil pasta. I love Japanese pumpkins and cauliflower. Oh my God, roasted brussels sprouts. But I always combine it with tofu or tempeh or some of those fake sausages. I will put on a “Queer Eye,” usually, and I’ll watch as I eat.
CHECK-IN I have Habitica — it’s a gaming, get-things-done app. It helps me drink more water, sit down and meditate, all the things I ask myself to do every single day. Did I say thank you to someone? Did I receive thanks from someone and not push it away? Did I receive and give a compliment to someone? Put it on there! Do it! So, I take my vitamins and check off my Habitica stuff.
CLOSE THE DAY I fill up my aromatherapy dispenser; I use spruce and cinnamon bark. Then I close my altar down, which means I pour my offering bowls of water into a jar, and I put it into my plants. And I close the day with a chant for the night deity to watch over me and my loved ones. I usually say good night to Andrew. Then I get into bed and Momo comes in and snuggles and I shut the light out and we go to bed together.
|
By Ted Alcorn
Jan. 1, 2021
Even for someone accustomed to facing death, like Seigan Ed Glassing, who serves on the palliative care team at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, 2020 was a brutal year.
Ordained as a monk at Dai Bosatsu Zendo, a monastery in the Catskills, Mr. Glassing also studied in Japan and helped direct a temple in New York City, where he met his husband, Andrew Lagomarsino. But restless with a life that felt cloistered, he found reconnection as an interfaith chaplain
|
. Now he ministers to the grieving and dying “of all faiths, no faiths, and everything in between.”
The tables turned on him in late February when his husband fell ill and began losing weight. The couple worried that Andrew had Covid-19 but upon finally seeking care, they learned he had leukemia. His health deteriorated quickly, and he died in April. For several weeks his body lay alongside casualties of the pandemic in a refrigerated truck outside the hospital.
Mr. Glassing, 55, who is still absorbing the loss, feels a deep connection to the many who suffered so much this past year. In his one-bedroom apartment at the northern tip of Manhattan, where he lives with a cat named Momo, he devotes Sundays to self-care.
“There is no other way except to walk into that landscape of sadness, and loss, and grief, and to be an ally to yourself.”
CAT, COFFEE Between 5 and 6 in the morning Momo will wake me up. He will start putting his nose on my eyelids. If that doesn’t work, he’ll pounce on me or walk all over my body. So I let him do that for about 10-15 minutes, and then I do wake up. I feed him and then I make some coffee for myself.
ALTAR I have a seasonal affective disorder light, and I sit underneath that for a half-hour and I do my practice. I have an altar table, and I put the light next to me and I light a stick of incense. I put water offerings in seven bowls. And then I sit and do my chanting, and then I meditate.
CHURCH I have a banana shake in the morning — after the meditation, because if I eat before that, I fall asleep. Not good to meditate on a full stomach. Then at 7, I listen to On Being with Krista Tippett. She used to be a chaplain. I love her way of talking and the absolute wisdom of these folks that she’s got on. It’s my church, so to speak.
TRAINING From 8 until 9, I play with Momo. We trained him to give paw and to spin around and to stand up on his two hind legs. And now, although he’s a very stubborn cat, he’s working on the two-card monte trick. I put two cups, I put a little treat under the cup, move the cup around, and he’s got to choose which one the treat is underneath. He should be on YouTube.
SACRED PAINTING Then I’ll start doing my Tibetan thangka painting. It’s sacred artwork — it’s not just portraying an image. You are evoking through prayers and meditation, so the energy is actually imbued in this work of art. One painting can take a couple of months. The very last thing that you paint on that Buddha is the eyes. And when you paint the eyes, through a special ceremony, they open: It’s alive. It’s meditative painting, so I can lose myself for those three or four hours.
FIGURE DRAWING At 2, I have a figure drawing class. It’s a Zoom. I started in April, right after Andrew died. Seeing a beautiful human being, and to paint them or to draw them, it’s very intimate. And it’s LGBTQ-based. So, these are my tribe, these are my people.
NARNIA Then I usually go out for a walk in Inwood Hill Park. What I love most is there are, mysteriously, these turn-of-the-century gas lights that have been abandoned. The whole place looks like Narnia! Andrew and I used to walk in this park all the time together, so for me it’s like I’m walking with his ghost.
TV DINNER Around 6 I’ll start to make dinner. I’m a vegetarian. I will do vegetables and some kind of lentil pasta. I love Japanese pumpkins and cauliflower. Oh my God, roasted brussels sprouts. But I always combine it with tofu or tempeh or some of those fake sausages. I will put on a “Queer Eye,” usually, and I’ll watch as I eat.
CHECK-IN I have Habitica — it’s a gaming, get-things-done app. It helps me drink more water, sit down and meditate, all the things I ask myself to do every single day. Did I say thank you to someone? Did I receive thanks from someone and not push it away? Did I receive and give a compliment to someone? Put it on there! Do it! So, I take my vitamins and check off my Habitica stuff.
CLOSE THE DAY I fill up my aromatherapy dispenser; I use spruce and cinnamon bark. Then I close my altar down, which means I pour my offering bowls of water into a jar, and I put it into my plants. And I close the day with a chant for the night deity to watch over me and my loved ones. I usually say good night to Andrew. Then I get into bed and Momo comes in and snuggles and I shut the light out and we go to bed together.
|
39. Virginia Judge Won’t Try Black Man in Courtroom Lined With White Portraits.txt
|
By Derrick Bryson Taylor
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 2, 2021
When a Black man appears in a Virginia courtroom this month to stand trial on charges of eluding the police, assaulting an officer and other crimes, he will face a scene that defendants in that room have not experienced in decades: The portraits of white judges will no longer line the walls.
A judge late last month ordered the removal of the portraits ahead of Terrance Shipp Jr.’s Jan. 4 trial, ruling that the presence of the artwork, depicting judges who served in Fairfax County, could have suggested that the legal system is biased. The judge, David Bernhard of the Fairfax Circuit Court, wrote in his Dec. 20 opinion that the court was concerned the portraits might “serve as unintended but implicit symbols that suggest the courtroom may be a place historically administered by whites for whites,” and that others are thus of lesser standing. “The display of portraits of judges in courtrooms of the Fairfax Courthouse is based on a non-racial principle, yet yields a racial result,” he said.
The order was in response to a motion filed by Bryan Kennedy, a lawyer for Mr. Shipp. The idea, Mr. Kennedy said, came from both his client and a murder case in Louisa, Va., where a judge in September ordered a life-size portrait of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee removed from a circuit courtroom at the defendant’s request.
The decision underscores a year in which Virginia and the rest of the United States grappled with both implicit biases and overt images of white supremacy, leading to Confederate monuments and other symbols of racism being removed from public spaces.
It is not, however, the first time Judge Bernhard has made such a decision: The judge, who sought asylum to come to the United States from El Salvador in the 1970s, has not permitted portraits in his assigned courtroom since taking the bench in 2017. But because of the coronavirus pandemic, he and the other judges in the Fairfax County courthouse are working out of the building’s three largest courtrooms to allow for social distancing, and it is in one of those that Mr. Shipp will stand trial.
The paintings hanging in the Fairfax Circuit Court are similar to those found in courtrooms and other government offices around the country, and often show retired judges who have served in that county’s history and sometimes stretching as far back as the Confederacy.
Judges in Fairfax County have been weeding out other portraits for at least the past five years, Mr. Kennedy said. As new judges have taken the bench, they have removed portraits “of people that were clearly Confederates or slave owners,” he said, adding that the remaining portraits mostly represented judges from the modern era.
Of the 47 portraits left across the Fairfax Circuit Court, 45 show white judges, including a handful of white women. There are portraits of two of the only three Black judges to have served on the Fairfax Circuit Court bench: Judge Marcus D. Williams, the court’s first Black judge, who served from 1990 to his retirement in 2012, and Judge Gerald Bruce Lee, who served from 1992 and until 1998, when he became a Federal District Court judge. The third Black judge, Dontaè L. Bugg, was elected in 2019.
Among the portraits is one of Judge Harry L. Carrico of the Supreme Court of Virginia, who in 1966 wrote the court’s opinion in Loving v. Commonwealth, which upheld Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage. The law was overturned a year later.
Judge Bernhard noted that the portraits provide no context about their subjects and appear only as a “sea of portraits of white judges” to most members of the public, including juries. “The prevalence of portraits of white judges,” he said, “while not emblematic of racism on the part of the presiding judges, certainly highlights that until the more recent historical past, African Americans were not extended an encouraging hand to stand as judicial candidates.”
While the exact courtroom of Mr. Shipp’s upcoming trial was not yet known, Judge Bernhard’s decision will affect whatever space he occupies. “It’s more about the appearance of fairness now, than the actual monuments,” Mr. Kennedy said.
A lawyer for the prosecution did not return a request for comment, but Judge Bernhard said in his opinion that the prosecution did not oppose him granting the motion.
The chairman of the Fairfax County GOP objected to the decision.
“Judge Bernhard seems to have embraced this reductive, racialist view of his fellow man,” the chairman, Steve Knotts, said in a statement to The Washington Post. “We’d all do well to remember that, whether we are Black or White, Christian or Jewish, immigrant or native-born, we are all equally human. As a culture, we must reject all divisive ideologies and, instead, unambiguously affirm our shared humanity.”
Deborah Archer, a professor of law at New York University, said she had not previously heard of a judge taking such actions and emphasized that the ruling would not, on its own, ensure a Black defendant was going to get a fair trial.
Professor Archer said Judge Bernhard’s ruling was part of a larger conversation about inclusion and the ways in which systems in America can perpetuate inequality and send messages about who belongs in a space and who doesn’t.
Sherry Soanes, a lawyer and a former law clerk in the Fairfax Circuit Court, called Judge Bernhard’s decision a “no-brainer,” adding that the move was a “step in the right direction.”
While Ms. Soanes said she hoped the decision would lead other judges to take action, she was also emphatic that it wasn’t “putting racism in the closet.”
“It’s a step to thinking about how is racism at play,” she said. “That is the question that I want judges across Virginia and across the country to ask themselves.”
Not everyone supports Judge Bernhard’s decision, said Vernida Chaney, a criminal defense lawyer who has appeared before Judge Bernhard in Fairfax Circuit Court. But progress in the way courts view race and implicit bias is being made across Virginia.
“This is not a museum, it is a place where we go to have justice rendered,” Ms. Chaney said.
Public statues and other commemorations have been the subject of much debate in recent years and became the target of renewed protests against racism and police violence across the United States after the killing of George Floyd in police custody in May.
Virginia, in particular, has been grappling with images of white supremacy this year.
A Confederate statue in Charlottesville, Va., near the site of a violent white supremacist rally in 2017, was removed in September after 111 years. In Richmond, near the state Capitol, one by one the Confederate statues along the city’s Monument Avenue were taken down. Another statue of Lee in Richmond has been ordered removed and has in the meantime become the site of an unlikely community space.
At the U.S. Capitol, Speaker Nancy Pelosi in June ordered portraits of four speakers who served the Confederacy to be removed, and last month a statue of Lee was also removed from the building and placed in storage in a museum in Richmond.
|
By Derrick Bryson Taylor
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 2, 2021
When a Black man appears in a Virginia courtroom this month to stand trial on charges of eluding the police, assaulting an officer and other crimes, he will face a scene that defendants in that room have not experienced in decades: The portraits of white judges will no longer line the walls.
A judge late last month ordered the removal of the portraits ahead of Terrance Shipp Jr.’s Jan. 4 trial, ruling that the presence of the artwork, depicting judges who served in Fair
|
fax County, could have suggested that the legal system is biased. The judge, David Bernhard of the Fairfax Circuit Court, wrote in his Dec. 20 opinion that the court was concerned the portraits might “serve as unintended but implicit symbols that suggest the courtroom may be a place historically administered by whites for whites,” and that others are thus of lesser standing. “The display of portraits of judges in courtrooms of the Fairfax Courthouse is based on a non-racial principle, yet yields a racial result,” he said.
The order was in response to a motion filed by Bryan Kennedy, a lawyer for Mr. Shipp. The idea, Mr. Kennedy said, came from both his client and a murder case in Louisa, Va., where a judge in September ordered a life-size portrait of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee removed from a circuit courtroom at the defendant’s request.
The decision underscores a year in which Virginia and the rest of the United States grappled with both implicit biases and overt images of white supremacy, leading to Confederate monuments and other symbols of racism being removed from public spaces.
It is not, however, the first time Judge Bernhard has made such a decision: The judge, who sought asylum to come to the United States from El Salvador in the 1970s, has not permitted portraits in his assigned courtroom since taking the bench in 2017. But because of the coronavirus pandemic, he and the other judges in the Fairfax County courthouse are working out of the building’s three largest courtrooms to allow for social distancing, and it is in one of those that Mr. Shipp will stand trial.
The paintings hanging in the Fairfax Circuit Court are similar to those found in courtrooms and other government offices around the country, and often show retired judges who have served in that county’s history and sometimes stretching as far back as the Confederacy.
Judges in Fairfax County have been weeding out other portraits for at least the past five years, Mr. Kennedy said. As new judges have taken the bench, they have removed portraits “of people that were clearly Confederates or slave owners,” he said, adding that the remaining portraits mostly represented judges from the modern era.
Of the 47 portraits left across the Fairfax Circuit Court, 45 show white judges, including a handful of white women. There are portraits of two of the only three Black judges to have served on the Fairfax Circuit Court bench: Judge Marcus D. Williams, the court’s first Black judge, who served from 1990 to his retirement in 2012, and Judge Gerald Bruce Lee, who served from 1992 and until 1998, when he became a Federal District Court judge. The third Black judge, Dontaè L. Bugg, was elected in 2019.
Among the portraits is one of Judge Harry L. Carrico of the Supreme Court of Virginia, who in 1966 wrote the court’s opinion in Loving v. Commonwealth, which upheld Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage. The law was overturned a year later.
Judge Bernhard noted that the portraits provide no context about their subjects and appear only as a “sea of portraits of white judges” to most members of the public, including juries. “The prevalence of portraits of white judges,” he said, “while not emblematic of racism on the part of the presiding judges, certainly highlights that until the more recent historical past, African Americans were not extended an encouraging hand to stand as judicial candidates.”
While the exact courtroom of Mr. Shipp’s upcoming trial was not yet known, Judge Bernhard’s decision will affect whatever space he occupies. “It’s more about the appearance of fairness now, than the actual monuments,” Mr. Kennedy said.
A lawyer for the prosecution did not return a request for comment, but Judge Bernhard said in his opinion that the prosecution did not oppose him granting the motion.
The chairman of the Fairfax County GOP objected to the decision.
“Judge Bernhard seems to have embraced this reductive, racialist view of his fellow man,” the chairman, Steve Knotts, said in a statement to The Washington Post. “We’d all do well to remember that, whether we are Black or White, Christian or Jewish, immigrant or native-born, we are all equally human. As a culture, we must reject all divisive ideologies and, instead, unambiguously affirm our shared humanity.”
Deborah Archer, a professor of law at New York University, said she had not previously heard of a judge taking such actions and emphasized that the ruling would not, on its own, ensure a Black defendant was going to get a fair trial.
Professor Archer said Judge Bernhard’s ruling was part of a larger conversation about inclusion and the ways in which systems in America can perpetuate inequality and send messages about who belongs in a space and who doesn’t.
Sherry Soanes, a lawyer and a former law clerk in the Fairfax Circuit Court, called Judge Bernhard’s decision a “no-brainer,” adding that the move was a “step in the right direction.”
While Ms. Soanes said she hoped the decision would lead other judges to take action, she was also emphatic that it wasn’t “putting racism in the closet.”
“It’s a step to thinking about how is racism at play,” she said. “That is the question that I want judges across Virginia and across the country to ask themselves.”
Not everyone supports Judge Bernhard’s decision, said Vernida Chaney, a criminal defense lawyer who has appeared before Judge Bernhard in Fairfax Circuit Court. But progress in the way courts view race and implicit bias is being made across Virginia.
“This is not a museum, it is a place where we go to have justice rendered,” Ms. Chaney said.
Public statues and other commemorations have been the subject of much debate in recent years and became the target of renewed protests against racism and police violence across the United States after the killing of George Floyd in police custody in May.
Virginia, in particular, has been grappling with images of white supremacy this year.
A Confederate statue in Charlottesville, Va., near the site of a violent white supremacist rally in 2017, was removed in September after 111 years. In Richmond, near the state Capitol, one by one the Confederate statues along the city’s Monument Avenue were taken down. Another statue of Lee in Richmond has been ordered removed and has in the meantime become the site of an unlikely community space.
At the U.S. Capitol, Speaker Nancy Pelosi in June ordered portraits of four speakers who served the Confederacy to be removed, and last month a statue of Lee was also removed from the building and placed in storage in a museum in Richmond.
|
47. Confessions of a Virtual Reality Gym Rat.txt
|
By Kevin Roose
Jan. 1, 2021
This year has created a lot of reluctant converts. Months ago, in less dire circumstances, we swore we’d never do any number of strange-sounding things: attend Zoom weddings, embrace ring lights, feed a sourdough starter. And yet here we are, making do.
Which is how I ended up spending the last few months using — and getting mildly addicted to — a virtual reality fitness app called Supernatural.
Fitness and V.R. might seem like an unlikely pair. And I was skeptical at first. (Isn’t the entire point of V.R. that you can explore far-flung places and bend the laws of physics without leaving your sofa?)
But when I heard that people were working out in V.R., I decided to try it. I was missing the gym, my go-to YouTube workouts were getting stale, and a Peloton seemed destined to end up as an expensive coat rack. So I got out my Oculus Quest, downloaded Supernatural and got to work.
There are several V.R. fitness apps on the market, but Supernatural is the flashiest and most advanced of the bunch. It costs $19 a month after the first month, making it more like a budget gym membership than a piece of workout equipment. But it delivers for the price. It has become my primary form of exercise, and it has helped me stay sane and active even while we’re cooped up at home.
Supernatural, which was developed by the V.R. studio Within, works a bit like Beat Saber, a popular V.R. game. As with Beat Saber, you play by hitting a series of objects as they fly toward you in time with music. Supernatural’s black and white orbs tell you which hand to hit them with, and flying triangles force you to squat and lunge to get out of their way. At the end of each workout, you’re given a score, with points for accuracy and power.
To answer the first question everyone asks: Yes, it’s a real workout. Most Supernatural sessions are 10 to 20 minutes long and are labeled light, moderate or hard. (They’re not kidding about the hard: An extra-long post-Thanksgiving workout left me so sore I could barely stand up the next day.) I end most of my workouts drenched in sweat — a hazard when you’re working with pricey electronics, and a common enough experience that Supernatural users can order a free silicone sweat guard to attach to their headsets.
I’m generally skeptical that V.R. is going to be a popular, mass-market technology. Most people seem to prefer their entertainment in two dimensions, and I’ve never found that V.R. games and social apps live up to the hype. But V.R. fitness does.
The best thing about Supernatural is the coaches who lead each workout. They’re cut from the same peppy, affirming cloth as SoulCycle and Peloton instructors, and they make it possible to briefly forget that you’re working out alone in your house rather than in a crowded studio. Another plus is that every Supernatural workout takes place in some impossibly beautiful landscape — I’ve batted orbs inside an Ethiopian volcano, next to a placid mountain lake in Patagonia and on top of the Great Wall of China. As a bonus, the company has paid dearly to license Top 40 hits, so users can work out to Lizzo and Kendrick Lamar instead of the bargain-bin dance music you find on other workout apps.
Unlike Peloton and its imitators, Supernatural has no live element. Classes are recorded, and though you can compare your stats with your friends on a leader board, you can’t compete with them in real time. The company recently added guided meditations to its offerings, and it says it’s planning to add more types of classes and community features.
Supernatural was built before the pandemic but has hit its stride during the last few months, as more people look for at-home gym alternatives. (The company wouldn’t say exactly how many subscribers it had, but Chris Milk, Within’s chief executive, told me it was in the five figures.) The official Supernatural Facebook page is full of avid fans, including many who don’t fit the stereotypical image of a V.R.-obsessed gamer.
Mr. Milk, who has produced virtual reality content for The New York Times Magazine, said the difference between Supernatural and other kinds of at-home fitness is that it feels like a game rather than exercise.
“The fundamental flaw of most fitness systems is that, at your core, you’re doing something that is not fun, whether it’s pedaling on a stationary bike or running on a treadmill,” he said. “We use the tool of V.R. to transport you beyond the walls of your apartment and give you an activity that is intrinsically fun to do.”
One downside of Supernatural, beyond the monthly subscription cost, is that it’s compatible only with the Oculus Quest and Quest 2 headsets at the moment. Those headsets are not cheap (base-level models of the Oculus Quest 2 start at $299), and they’ve been in low supply this year. Another downside for the privacy-conscious: Oculus is owned by Facebook, which recently sparked a furor in V.R. world by requiring Oculus users to log in using their Facebook accounts.
The other drawback of Supernatural is that — how to put this delicately? — you look like a huge dork doing it. I feel this pain more acutely than most. I don’t have a room in my house that is big and unobstructed enough to swing my arms safely, so I often work out outside on my patio. My wife has learned to tolerate it, but I pity my neighbors, who have no doubt noticed the strange, sweaty man furiously squatting, lunging and waving his arms while Skrillex blares from the box on his head.
But if you can ignore the funny looks, you might want to give V.R. workouts a try. They’re cheaper than a Peloton, more fun than a YouTube workout and healthier than binge-watching “The Crown.” Even if it doesn’t quite scratch the gym itch, it’s a good-enough alternative until a vaccine makes it safe to heavy-breathe in public again.
|
By Kevin Roose
Jan. 1, 2021
This year has created a lot of reluctant converts. Months ago, in less dire circumstances, we swore we’d never do any number of strange-sounding things: attend Zoom weddings, embrace ring lights, feed a sourdough starter. And yet here we are, making do.
Which is how I ended up spending the last few months using — and getting mildly addicted to — a virtual reality fitness app called Supernatural.
Fitness and V.R. might seem like an unlikely pair. And I was skeptical at first. (Isn’t the
|
entire point of V.R. that you can explore far-flung places and bend the laws of physics without leaving your sofa?)
But when I heard that people were working out in V.R., I decided to try it. I was missing the gym, my go-to YouTube workouts were getting stale, and a Peloton seemed destined to end up as an expensive coat rack. So I got out my Oculus Quest, downloaded Supernatural and got to work.
There are several V.R. fitness apps on the market, but Supernatural is the flashiest and most advanced of the bunch. It costs $19 a month after the first month, making it more like a budget gym membership than a piece of workout equipment. But it delivers for the price. It has become my primary form of exercise, and it has helped me stay sane and active even while we’re cooped up at home.
Supernatural, which was developed by the V.R. studio Within, works a bit like Beat Saber, a popular V.R. game. As with Beat Saber, you play by hitting a series of objects as they fly toward you in time with music. Supernatural’s black and white orbs tell you which hand to hit them with, and flying triangles force you to squat and lunge to get out of their way. At the end of each workout, you’re given a score, with points for accuracy and power.
To answer the first question everyone asks: Yes, it’s a real workout. Most Supernatural sessions are 10 to 20 minutes long and are labeled light, moderate or hard. (They’re not kidding about the hard: An extra-long post-Thanksgiving workout left me so sore I could barely stand up the next day.) I end most of my workouts drenched in sweat — a hazard when you’re working with pricey electronics, and a common enough experience that Supernatural users can order a free silicone sweat guard to attach to their headsets.
I’m generally skeptical that V.R. is going to be a popular, mass-market technology. Most people seem to prefer their entertainment in two dimensions, and I’ve never found that V.R. games and social apps live up to the hype. But V.R. fitness does.
The best thing about Supernatural is the coaches who lead each workout. They’re cut from the same peppy, affirming cloth as SoulCycle and Peloton instructors, and they make it possible to briefly forget that you’re working out alone in your house rather than in a crowded studio. Another plus is that every Supernatural workout takes place in some impossibly beautiful landscape — I’ve batted orbs inside an Ethiopian volcano, next to a placid mountain lake in Patagonia and on top of the Great Wall of China. As a bonus, the company has paid dearly to license Top 40 hits, so users can work out to Lizzo and Kendrick Lamar instead of the bargain-bin dance music you find on other workout apps.
Unlike Peloton and its imitators, Supernatural has no live element. Classes are recorded, and though you can compare your stats with your friends on a leader board, you can’t compete with them in real time. The company recently added guided meditations to its offerings, and it says it’s planning to add more types of classes and community features.
Supernatural was built before the pandemic but has hit its stride during the last few months, as more people look for at-home gym alternatives. (The company wouldn’t say exactly how many subscribers it had, but Chris Milk, Within’s chief executive, told me it was in the five figures.) The official Supernatural Facebook page is full of avid fans, including many who don’t fit the stereotypical image of a V.R.-obsessed gamer.
Mr. Milk, who has produced virtual reality content for The New York Times Magazine, said the difference between Supernatural and other kinds of at-home fitness is that it feels like a game rather than exercise.
“The fundamental flaw of most fitness systems is that, at your core, you’re doing something that is not fun, whether it’s pedaling on a stationary bike or running on a treadmill,” he said. “We use the tool of V.R. to transport you beyond the walls of your apartment and give you an activity that is intrinsically fun to do.”
One downside of Supernatural, beyond the monthly subscription cost, is that it’s compatible only with the Oculus Quest and Quest 2 headsets at the moment. Those headsets are not cheap (base-level models of the Oculus Quest 2 start at $299), and they’ve been in low supply this year. Another downside for the privacy-conscious: Oculus is owned by Facebook, which recently sparked a furor in V.R. world by requiring Oculus users to log in using their Facebook accounts.
The other drawback of Supernatural is that — how to put this delicately? — you look like a huge dork doing it. I feel this pain more acutely than most. I don’t have a room in my house that is big and unobstructed enough to swing my arms safely, so I often work out outside on my patio. My wife has learned to tolerate it, but I pity my neighbors, who have no doubt noticed the strange, sweaty man furiously squatting, lunging and waving his arms while Skrillex blares from the box on his head.
But if you can ignore the funny looks, you might want to give V.R. workouts a try. They’re cheaper than a Peloton, more fun than a YouTube workout and healthier than binge-watching “The Crown.” Even if it doesn’t quite scratch the gym itch, it’s a good-enough alternative until a vaccine makes it safe to heavy-breathe in public again.
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.