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Credit...Christopher Capozziello for The New York TimesNov. 14, 2018The nations hospitals have been merging at a rapid pace for a decade, forming powerful organizations that influence nearly every health care decision consumers make.The hospitals have argued that consolidation benefits consumers with cheaper prices from coordinated services and other savings.But an analysis conducted for The New York Times shows the opposite to be true in many cases. The mergers have essentially banished competition and raised prices for hospital admissions in most cases, according to an examination of 25 metropolitan areas with the highest rate of consolidation from 2010 through 2013, a peak period for mergers.The analysis showed that the price of an average hospital stay soared, with prices in most areas going up between 11 percent and 54 percent in the years afterward, according to researchers from the Nicholas C. Petris Center at the University of California, Berkeley.The new research confirms growing skepticism among consumer health groups and lawmakers about the enormous clout of the hospital groups. While most political attention has focused on increased drug prices and the Affordable Care Act, state and federal officials are beginning to look more closely at how hospital mergers are affecting spiraling health care costs.During the Obama years, the mergers received nearly universal approval from antitrust agencies, with the Federal Trade Commission moving to block only a small fraction of deals. State officials generally looked the other way.President Trump issued an executive order last year calling for more competition, saying his administration would focus on limiting excessive consolidation throughout the health care system. In September, Congress asked the Medicare advisory board to study the trend.But not only have big consolidations continued, the behemoths have further cemented their reach in some regions of the country by gobbling up major doctors and surgeons practices.You have to watch for these systems throwing their weight around, said Xavier Becerra, the California attorney general whose office has sued Sutter Health, a sprawling system in the northern part of the state. We are looking for cases where consolidation does nothing for efficiency and leads to distortions of the market.Ted Doolittle, who heads Connecticuts Office of the Healthcare Advocate, has fielded angry complaints from residents, but he sees few options available to officials. A lot of this is too little and too late, he said.Finding new paths for growthThe latest giant hospital consolidations continue to stir concerns. Dignity Health and Catholic Health Initiatives, two large chains, are expected to become one of the nations largest groups with 139 hospitals in 28 states by the end of the year. And two of Texas biggest systems, Baylor Scott & White Health and Memorial Hermann Health System, recently announced plans to combine.The New Haven area has witnessed the most significant decline in competition. Yale New Haven Health, one of the largest hospital groups in Connecticut, took over the only competing hospital in the city and has also aggressively expanded along the states coast. The group recently added another hospital to its collection, merging Milford with its Bridgeport location.Although the price of a hospital admission in the New Haven-Milford area was already three times higher than in other parts of the state, prices surged by 25 percent from 2012 to 2014, compared with 7 percent elsewhere in the state, according to the Petris Center.In the national analysis, a third of the metropolitan areas experienced increases in the cost of hospital stays of at least 25 percent from 2012 to 2014, from roughly $12,000 to at least $15,000.Prices rise even more steeply when these large hospital systems buy doctors groups, according to Richard Scheffler, director of the Petris Center.Its much more powerful when they already have a very large market share, said Mr. Scheffler, who recently published a study on the issue in Health Affairs. The impact is just enormous.Thousands of Connecticut residents were stranded without a local hospital last year when another big hospital group, Hartford HealthCare, battled the states biggest health insurer over how much it would charge for patient care.ImageCredit...Christopher Capozziello for The New York TimesIts six hospitals are clustered around the state capital and are the only resort for residents in broad swaths of the eastern part of the state. This month, it announced plans to add a seventh hospital to its network.These systems are empire-building, theres no question, said Jill Zorn, a senior policy officer for the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, which seeks to improve access for residents. But to whose benefit?Numerous studies by economists and others have underscored how hospital consolidation is driving up the cost of medical care. Within the academic community, there is near unanimity, said Zack Cooper, a health economist at Yale University who is among a group of researchers that has looked at how dominant hospitals affect prices.Some hospitals need a saviorThe emergence of a one-hospital town is inevitable in many places, and the Parkersburg, W.Va., area is no exception. St. Josephs merged with neighboring Camden-Clark Memorial in 2011, and then they were consumed by what is now the states largest health system.Weve got it down to a single campus, said Albert L. Wright Jr., the chief executive of West Virginia University Health System. Parkersburg is not big enough to support two hospitals.Residents can get most care locally but they go to Morgantown, where the academic medical center is situated, for complex conditions. Weve elevated the level of care, Mr. Wright said.But private insurers are paying more. In the Parkersburg-Vienna area, the overall price of a hospital stay increased 54 percent from 2012 to 2014, after the mergers. That is compared with 10 percent elsewhere in the state, according to the Petris Center.Large systems get paid better by some of the insurers, Mr. Wright said.Flailing hospitals often have little choice but to be acquired or go out of business, and a larger system can offer badly needed capital and management skills. They can fix a hospital and benefit the community, said Torrey McClary, a lawyer who specializes in mergers at King & Spalding.When Yale New Haven Health took over the Hospital of Saint Raphael, a Catholic hospital six blocks away from its New Haven location, Saint Raphael was in danger of going under. Over the last six years, the system has invested more than $200 million in capital improvements at Saint Raphael, said its president Richard DAquila, including modernizing everything behind the walls.Because it converted Saint Raphael into what is essentially a second 555-bed campus for its academic medical center, Yale New Haven Health defends the higher rates it charges private insurers as appropriate for a top-tier medical institution. Its community hospitals negotiate prices individually with insurers.Our focus is not on getting bigger, Mr. DAquila said. He said Saint Raphael, which was half empty when it was taken over, is now seeing record numbers of patients.Systems also say they are trying to improve the care for smaller communities. Were actively trying to move care toward places that are accessible, Hartfords chief executive, Elliot Joseph, said.Patients wind up paying moreBut patients rarely reap the rewards of lower insurance premiums or out-of-pocket expenses when mergers occur.Hartford executives talk about reducing the total cost of care in the same breath that they discuss the need to charge insurers more. The math for us is how we move the care out of the hospitals while maintaining our financial stability, Mr. Joseph said.To defend higher rates, many hospitals cite low reimbursements from government sources, particularly Medicaid, and highlight their role as a safety net. Were left with no choice, Mr. DAquila said.Others, like Hartford, negotiate prices as a single entity, forcing health insurers to include all of their hospitals in a network or risk losing access in areas where there are no alternatives.Hartford has taken over so many hospitals and practices that, with the Anthem dispute, we felt we had no choices at all, Sharry Goldman, a Storrs, Conn., resident, told state lawmakers. Although Hartford and Anthem Blue Cross, the insurer, eventually reached an agreement, Connecticut passed a law this year requiring hospitals and insurers to extend previous contracts for two months to protect consumers when the parties are at an impasse.While patients may pay more for a well-known brand, like Yale, it is not clear that the higher price tags lead to better care, said Francois de Brantes, a health care executive who once worked at General Electric, which is headquartered in the state.ImageCredit...Christopher Capozziello for The New York TimesWe have more lower-rated hospitals in Connecticut than in other New England states, he said, pointing to an analysis he did at the time of the Anthem-Hartford dispute.What happens when mergers are opposedIn the Albany, Ga., area, where the Berkeley researchers found a rare decline in hospital prices, the Federal Trade Commission had unsuccessfully attempted to block HCA, the for-profit hospital chain, from selling its hospital to its only local competitor in 2011. But the merger took place, and the F.T.C. reached a settlement with the parties involved.While Berkeley researchers foundarea prices dropped, another study by two former F.T.C. employees, Christopher Garmon and Laura Kmitch, found that certain hospital quality measures declined. The merger highlights the problems that can occur when competition is reduced, the authors said.The hospital group, Phoebe Putney Health System, dismissed the findings. Phoebe has made great strides in enhancing the quality of health care available to the people of southwest Georgia, Dawn Benson, Phoebes general counsel, said in a statement.To foster competition, Lee County is planning a new 60-bed hospital within the Albany area.In some cases, state regulators have opposed actions they consider illegal and anti-competitive. In Washington, state officials accused CHI Franciscan Health, based in Tacoma, of using its ties to two doctors practices to raise prices and decrease competition on the Kitsap Peninsula, according to a lawsuit filed last year.The regulators argue that CHI wanted to wield its newfound clout by shifting some operations and imaging from less expensive outpatient settings to hospitals where they could charge more.I am all for taking advantage of hospital-based pricing, if we think it is doable in the market and the market can support it, a CHI executive is quoted as saying in the lawsuit. It would be great to drop a couple of million more to our bottom line.CHI Franciscan said the attorney generals allegations were misguided and unfounded.In California, Mr. Becerra, the state attorney general, brought a lawsuit against Sutter in March, claiming that its actions led to significantly higher prices in Northern California.Sutter says it adopted methods encouraged by the federal health care law, by combining hospital services with care delivered outside the hospital to better meet patients needs.But Mr. de Brantes, the health care executive in Connecticut, and others wonder why many mergers were allowed in the first place. The puzzling part for many of us in the state is why anyone would allow these oligopolies to form, he said. | Health |
Personal Tech|Get a Wi-Fi Tablet on a Cellular Network https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/08/technology/personaltech/get-a-wi-fi-tablet-on-a-cellular-network.htmlTECH TIPEven if your iPad or Android tablet does not have its own cellular chip, you might be able to borrow a data connection from your phone.June 8, 2018Q. Since I connect to the internet with my phone using my data plan, I wonder if I could do the same with a tablet or laptop? Is it possible to get online with cellular data rather than Wi-Fi while on a tablet?A. Using a cellular-data connection to get your tablet on the internet is certainly possible, but you may have to make an investment in additional fees or hardware. Since you already have a data plan for your phone, contacting with your current wireless carrier to inquire about sharing your phones internet connection with your tablet is a logical first step.With the right plan, the tablet can link up over a Wi-Fi connection broadcast by the phone; this is also referred to as using a personal or mobile hot spot. You may also be able to tether the tablet to the phone over a USB or Bluetooth connection to share the network signal. Most laptops can also use tethered or hot spot connections.ImageCredit...The New York TimesMany wireless carriers including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless offer hot spot-and-tethering options for their mobile customers. If these options are not already included with your current service plan, you will need to pay extra. Sharing your phones connection with other devices can rapidly eat through a data plan and drain its battery more quickly than with normal use, so keep those factors in mind when considering your hot spot or tethering needs.In addition to contacting your carrier about the service, you also need to set up your phone to share its connection. Apples site has instructions for using the Personal Hotspot feature on its iOS devices. Google, LG, Motorola and Samsung are among the Android phone makers with setup guides on their own sites. If you often need a portable personal network for your tablet and dont want to use your phones data allowance, you can buy a separate mobile hot spot and service plan. These pocket hot spot devices connect to a cellular data network and provide Wi-Fi access for tablets, laptops and phones. Wirecutter, a product review site owned by The New York Times, now recommends the Verizon Jetpack Mifi 7730L as its pick for the best mobile Wi-Fi hot spot.When it comes time to upgrade the tablet, another option is to pay a little more up front for a model that can use both cellular and Wi-Fi network connections. You might need an additional data plan if your current service does not have data-sharing options, but you have fewer gadgets to wrangle when getting the tablet online. Personal Tech invites questions about computer-based technology to [email protected]. This column will answer questions of general interest, but letters cannot be answered individually. | Tech |
Credit...Andrew Sullivan for The New York TimesDec. 20, 2015Paul Tudor Jones II, the hedge-fund billionaire, has a plan to reduce income inequality. He wants to rate companies on their probity, not their profits.The wealth gap, thats the single most important issue in this country, he said in September while unveiling Just Capital, a nonprofit organization that he created with Deepak Chopra, the spiritual self-help author and wellness entrepreneur who taught Mr. Jones how to meditate.Just Capital will rank corporations on how well, or justly, they treat employees, society and the environment. The idea is to laud companies that offer better pay, happier workplaces and greater transparency and perhaps shame others to follow suit.This kind of moral index, Mr. Jones said, could not only impact investors, it could impact consumers, it might impact the way companies hire, the way people go and work with companies; it will impact boardrooms, everything.The project began, improbably enough, in 2011 in the chic Manhattan design store ABC Carpet and Home when Mr. Chopra was whisked away from his salon in a friends chauffeured car to an Occupy Wall Street rally.Today, with a presidential election looming and calls for the wealthy to pay more in taxes coming not only from populist politicians but also from billionaires like Warren E. Buffett, even members of the top 1 percent of the 1 percent are passionately inveighing against the wealth gap.The middle-class guy whos making the $50,000 a year realizes, Im being taken advantage of, warned Carl Icahn, a corporate raider turned activist investor, in a video titled Danger Ahead that he released in late September.While there has not exactly been a groundswell among the wealthy to significantly raise their own taxes, Mr. Icahn and Mr. Buffett are among several of Americas prominent top earners who have endorsed changing the tax loophole that treats a large portion of private-equity and hedge-fund managers income known as carried interest as more lightly taxed capital gains and require it to be taxed as regular salary. In a statement responding to questions for this article, Mr. Jones said his strong opinion was that carried interest should be taxed as ordinary income.Billionaires see a backlash coming, said Sam Wilkin, an economist and author of Wealth Secrets of the One Percent. Mr. Jones has experienced it firsthand. In March, the Hedge Clippers, a coalition of labor groups and community activists, marched on his Greenwich, Conn., estate to protest the influence of hedge-fund managers.At the same time, some of Americas wealthiest are responding with an unprecedented flood of money into politics, largely supporting Republican candidates who have pledged to cut taxes. A New York Times investigation documented in October how 158 families were responsible for almost half the money raised in the current presidential race. People from the finance industry lead the list.This year Mr. Jones said in a TED talk that traditionally there are three ways to change income inequality: By revolution, higher taxes or wars. His alternative is Just Capital.Mr. Jones argues that income inequality is being driven by what he calls shareholder hegemony, the principle that companies first and foremost should satisfy investors. The solution is for companies to make social responsibility as important as profits and share price.Mr. Jones, who declined to be interviewed, has a net worth Forbes estimates at $4.7 billion and was one of the few hedge-fund managers who foresaw the 1987 market crash. He is known for founding the Robin Hood Foundation, a charitable organization started in 1988 that raised $101 million last year for anti-poverty programs in New York.Just Capitals mission fits into an existing trend. Socially responsible investing, the favoring of companies that demonstrate environmental and social awareness, is a growing movement, driven in large part by the economic ascendance of millennials and women. As of this month, Morningstar said about 2 percent of the mutual funds it tracked were tagged socially conscious. Such funds typically perform on par or a little better than conventional funds, said Jon Hale, director of manager research at Morningstar.Not all economists agree with Mr. Joness notion that monitoring corporate behavior would narrow the distance between the very rich and the rest. Mr. Wilkin, the economist, argued that inequity was driven not just by bloated executive compensation or the single-minded pursuit of profit, but also by what he called a two-tier economy in which some industries, like technology, finance and health care, soared ahead and left the rest behind. Just Capital, he said, was wishful thinking that there is a market solution to income inequality that doesnt involve increasing taxes.ImageCredit...Eduardo Munoz/ReutersThere are many nonprofits that seek to address income inequality. Mr. Jones and Mr. Chopra bring a waft of New Age spirituality to theirs. The Just Capital board includes Arianna Huffington, a founder of The Huffington Post, and several wealthy business leaders who also are directors of the Chopra Foundation.Mr. Chopra, in an interview, described his friend as being on a path of self-discovery. This is an evolution for him.It all started with meditation. In early October 2011, Dylan Ratigan, an MSNBC anchor who later left to become what he described as a sustainability entrepreneur, was on his way to a private meditation session at Mr. Chopras salon in ABC Carpet and Home just as the Occupy Wall Street protests were getting started in Zuccotti Park. On an impulse, Mr. Ratigan told his teacher that he had a car waiting downstairs and asked Mr. Chopra to go with him to the park.When they arrived, Mr. Ratigan asked the protesters to let Mr. Chopra speak. Some of them fiercely objected to letting a celebrity jump the line, but Mr. Ratigan prevailed, and Mr. Chopra led the crowd in a meditative prayer that, as he put it, quieted the angry rhetoric. That fall, he became a featured guest at several Occupy events and was so struck by the perceived injustice fueling the protests that he told a friend: We need to do something about this.The idea for Just Capital emerged from a seminar Mr. Chopra held at Columbia Business School called Just Capital and Cause-Driven Marketing. A student suggested creating an index of companies based on their value to society, not quarterly profits. Mr. Chopra took the idea to Mr. Jones, whom he had met through Mr. Joness wife, Sonia, a yoga and wellness enthusiast.Mr. Chopra, who wears crystal-studded eyeglass frames, blends spiritual and commercial success with celebrity hobnobbing he does workshops with Oprah Winfrey and made a recording of love poetry with Madonna. Hes very good at the diplomacy of wealth and power, Mr. Ratigan said.Mr. Chopra said that, so far, he had not received skeptical responses to the Just Capital idea, but he conceded that the jury had been small and self-selected.Mr. Jones set up the foundation in 2013, hired a staff and underwrote a survey of 43,000 Americans to determine what people most valued in a company. The No. 1 factor was pay and benefits. (At No. 10 was creating jobs in the United States.) Next year Just Capital plans to publish a ranking of the top 1,000 publicly traded companies based on a scale derived from the survey. Americans want a seat at the table, Mr. Jones said at the September presentation.There are many research firms, including MSCI and Sustainalytics, that examine companies for social responsibility, although their data is mostly reserved for clients and subscribers. Just Capital plans to make its ratings public at no charge.Because Just Capital will examine only publicly traded corporations, Mr. Joness hedge fund and thousands of others like it will be exempt from scrutiny. At the Just Capital presentation, Mr. Jones said he checked to make sure his own company, Tudor Investment Corporation, was in line with Just Capitals principles.Tudor Investment employs about 400 people, according to a spokesman, Patrick Clifford. Its traders, of course, make well above a living wage.At first, the wages of gardeners, dishwashers and janitors at Tudor were not included in the review because they are employed by subcontractors, not Tudor directly. When managers examined the salaries, however, they found that the firm had 16 subcontracted workers who were paid $10.50 an hour.It was literally eye-opening and embarrassing at the same time, Mr. Jones said. He said he raised their hourly rate to $15.For comparison, in Fairfield County, where Tudor is based, janitors who belong to Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union make $14.10 an hour, not including benefits, and $20.49 an hour with benefits factored in. According to the M.I.T. living wage calculator, the living wage for a single worker in the county is $12.78 an hour and for an adult with one child it is $27.72.Last spring, Mr. Jones leased an office and bought a $71 million house in Palm Beach, Fla., in a state with no income tax. He also said he increased the percentage of profit the company donates to charity to 4 percent a year from 1 percent. According to CECP, an organization that monitors corporate giving trends, the industry median last year was 1 percent.At the conference this year announcing Just Capital, a guest asked him if he was the best messenger to preach corporate altruism, given that shareholder hegemony helped make him wealthy. Mr. Jones had a ready reply. He had been rethinking the capitalist dream, he said, ever since hearing about the giving pledge, a promise made by Bill Gates, Mr. Buffett and others to give away much of their wealth.Whats the purpose of accumulating all this money when Im just going to give it back to the people I conceivably took it from? Mr. Jones said. | Business |
Credit...Pawan Kumar/ReutersMarch 18, 2017NEW DELHI Indias governing party on Saturday appointed a firebrand Hindu cleric to lead the countrys most populous state, a turning point for a government that has, until now, steered clear of openly embracing far-right Hindu causes.The choice of Yogi Adityanath who has been repeatedly accused of stirring anti-Muslim sentiments to lead Uttar Pradesh, came as a shock to many political observers here, who have become accustomed to the carefully moderated public positions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in line with his projected image as a pro-development leader and global statesman.Mr. Adityanath has openly called for India to be enshrined as a Hindu rashtra, or Hindu nation, and supports the rebuilding of a temple to the Hindu god Ram, also known as Rama, on the site of a razed 16th-century mosque, a project that was halted after it incited bloody religious riots in the 1990s.With the appointment, Mr. Modi is unveiling a vision of benign majoritarianism, said Shekhar Gupta, a longtime editor and political talk show host. That means its a Hindu country, thats the fact, and well be nice to you if you behave yourself.For Mr. Modi, the appointment represents a final rejection of Nehruvian socialism, which almost gave the minorities a slightly exalted status, said Mr. Gupta, referring to Jawaharlal Nehru, Indias first prime minister and independence leader.Mr. Adityanath, who is often seen wearing the saffron robes of a Hindu priest, told followers he would focus on Mr. Modis economic agenda.I am confident that the state will march on the path of development, he said, in comments carried by The Press Trust of India.India is 80 percent Hindu, 14 percent Muslim and 2.3 percent Christian, according to the 2011 census.Mr. Adityanaths appointment comes on the heels of Mr. Modis greatest political victory since 2014. A week ago, his Bharatiya Janata Party won a landslide victory in Uttar Pradesh, which has a population of more than 200 million and was seen as a gauge of Mr. Modis chances of winning a second five-year term in 2019.The selection of a hard-line Hindu chief minister suggests that the party credits right-wing activists for swinging the vote, said Milan Vaishnav, a senior fellow in the South Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.The only conclusion one can draw is that he feels the base is mobilized and that they helped deliver this, and that there would be pushback if they did not get something in return, Mr. Vaishnav said. He added that he was baffled by the choice, which shifts attention away from the pro-growth, development agenda that has been at the center of Mr. Modis political movement.I think its a regressive choice, and a lost opportunity for the prime minister, he said. This is a huge mandate, a huge victory. But there is going to be a backlash if he doesnt figure out the jobs question. Thats issue No. 1.Party loyalists praised the decision. Some members made the case that Mr. Adityanaths selection did not represent a departure from Mr. Modis 2014 pledge to focus on the economy and create jobs.Others openly celebrated the advent of a more muscular Hindu agenda.Justice to all, appeasement to none, said Sudhanshu Mittal, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader, in comments to NDTV, a cable news station.Appeasement, in this context, is typically understood to mean policies favoring the rights of Indian Muslims.As a devout Hindu sannyasi, or someone who has renounced worldly things, he will guarantee that the state doesnt discriminate, and justice for all, said Tarun Vijay, a former B.J.P. member of Parliament. He added that as chief minister, Mr. Adityanath may make jihadi intolerant Muslims learn an alphabet of humanity and accepting differences as an Indian.Mr. Adityanath, 44, was born Ajay Mohan Bisht, and studied mathematics before joining the priesthood. He rose to prominence as part of the campaign to rebuild the Ram temple, and has repeatedly been charged with fanning religious tensions.In 2007, he spent 15 days in jail on charges of inciting riots, The Hindustan Times reported. He was booked again later in the year, when riots broke out after he made a speech. He is still facing trial in the two cases, the newspaper reported.Mr. Adityanath was a forceful defender of the Hindu mob who lynched Muhammad Ikhlaq, a Muslim man suspected of slaughtering a cow, and argued that Mr. Ikhlaqs family should be prosecuted for possessing the meat. When some Indians complained that they should not be required perform a sun salutation as part of International Yoga Day celebrations, saying it was a religious act, he recommended that those who were offended should drown themselves in the sea.He won his parliamentary seat in 1998, and was re-elected four times.He has particularly strong support among Hindu priests and seers, who urged the B.J.P. to name him chief minister, saying it would clear the way for the construction of the Ram temple. | World |
March 21, 2017KANDAHAR, Afghanistan At least four and possibly as many as 14 members of a militia belonging to the Afghan intelligence agency were killed in a suicide car bombing at their base in the southern province of Helmand, Afghan officials said on Tuesday.The attack late Monday was in Gereshk district, just outside the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, which has been largely besieged by Taliban forces for more than a year.Bashir Ahmad Shakir, the head of the security committee on the Helmand provincial council, said the bomber on Monday had rammed his car, a Toyota Corolla, into the base compound on the main road leading to Lashkar Gah.The suicide bomber had selected a vehicle that closely resembled another Corolla that the militia had been using, timing his attack when the bases car was away.As a result of the powerful explosion, 14 have been killed, and six others have suffered serious injuries, Mr. Shakir said.Omar Zwak, a spokesman for the governor of Helmand, disputed the number of casualties. He said that four people had been killed and seven wounded, but he conceded that the casualties could rise, as the explosion had collapsed structures on the base.The dire situation in Helmand has drawn new attention to the American-led NATO mission in Afghanistan. About 300 American Marines are expected to return to the province this spring.The deployment has great significance for the corps, which suffered many casualties during its long fight in the province, ending with the withdrawal of most NATO combat troops in 2014. They will be replacing an advisory mission of American forces already in Helmand to help the Afghans hold the line.On Sunday, three United States Army soldiers were wounded about 45 miles away, in Washir district, when an Afghan commando guarding a tower opened fire.Capt. Bill Salvin of the Navy, a military spokesman, said an investigation was underway to determine the cause of the shooting. He said that the injuries of the three soldiers were not believed to be life-threatening and that the men had been airlifted to Germany for treatment.Afghan military officials with the 215 Maiwand Corps, to which the commando belonged, said that the shooting was a mistake and not an insider attack. Such green on blue attacks were so rampant a few years ago that they threatened the future of the American training mission for Afghan forces.The soldier who mistakenly shot was loyal and brave and has fought successfully against the enemy, said Shakil Ahmad, a spokesman for the Afghan corps.He said that the commando, from the northern province of Balkh, had been guarding the tower when he fired accidentally and that there had been no dispute before the episode. He was wounded when American soldiers returned fire and died at a hospital.In northern Afghanistan, fighting between different factions of a police force relented at least temporarily on Tuesday, after the arrest of a police commander accused of killing the son of another, according to Karim Yurush, the spokesman for the Faryab provincial police force.Mr. Yurush said that Ahmad Shah Malang, who leads the Faryab polices antiterrorism department, had been arrested by Afghan National Army soldiers and taken to Mazar-i-Sharif and was to be transferred to Kabul for a criminal investigation of the case.The commander whose son he is accused of killing, Nizam Qaisari, accused the government of putting Mr. Malang in a guesthouse rather than in a prison.In addition to Mr. Qaisaris son, four police officers were killed during fighting between the two commanders followers.I dont know what kind of government is this; a high-ranking police commander is murdering a university student and then he is resting in Governor Attas guesthouse, Mr. Qaisari said by telephone, referring to Atta Muhammad Noor, the powerful governor of Balkh Province. | World |
Feb. 17, 201413 LOUISVILLE at 10 CINCINNATISaturday, Noon Eastern, CBSCincinnati (23-3, 12-1 American Athletic Conference) could put itself in a commanding position to win the regular-season conference championship with a victory against Louisville (21-4, 10-2). The Cardinals, who have won four straight since losing to Cincinnati, 69-66, on Jan. 30, need a win to separate themselves from the pack, which includes Southern Methodist (20-6, 9-4), Connecticut (20-5, 8-4) and Memphis (19-6, 8-4).TEXAS TECH at OKLAHOMA STATESaturday, 1:30 p.m. Eastern, ESPN FullCourtNormally, a game between teams with losing conference records would not be worth watching. But this will be Marcus Smarts return from a three-game suspension for pushing a fan in a 65-61 loss at Texas Tech (13-12, 5-7 Big 12) on Feb. 8. And because karma would not have it any other way, the Red Raiders are the opponents for the Cowboys (16-9, 4-8).1 SYRACUSE at 8 DUKESaturday, 7 p.m. Eastern, ESPNIt is a challenging week for the Blue Devils (20-5, 9-3 Atlantic Coast Conference), who travel to Chapel Hill to play North Carolina (17-7, 7-4) on Thursday to make up a game postponed because of a winter storm, before hosting Syracuse (25-0, 12-0). The Orange are still undefeated, pulling out last-minute victories over Pittsburgh, 58-56, and North Carolina State, 56-55, last week. Duke, the best 3-point shooting team in the A.C.C. at 41 percent through Sunday, will need to be on target to compete against Syracuses vaunted 2-3 zone.19 TEXAS at 7 KANSASSaturday, 7:30 p.m. Eastern, ESPN-UThe Longhorns (20-5, 9-3 Big 12) face a difficult stretch that has major implications for the regular-season conference title. Texas plays at No. 11 Iowa State (19-5, 7-5) on Tuesday before traveling to Allen Fieldhouse to play the Jayhawks (19-6, 10-2). Texas handed Kansas its first conference loss of the season, 81-69, on Feb. 1. Kansas hopes to have the freshman center Joel Embiid back in the lineup after he missed Saturdays 95-65 rout of Texas Christian. Embiid, who has emerged this season as a potential No. 1 pick in the N.B.A. draft, has battled knee and back injuries.9 MICHIGAN STATE at 15 MICHIGANSunday, Noon Eastern, CBSIn this game between the top teams in the Big 10, the Spartans (21-5, 10-3) will try to avenge their 80-75 loss to the Wolverines (18-7, 10-3) on Jan. 25. Both teams lost on Sunday, and Michigan State faces a potentially difficult stretch. The Spartans, who were upset at home by Nebraska, 60-51, still have to play at Purdue (15-10, 5-7) on Thursday before their rematch with the Wolverines. Michigan will have a week to stew over its 75-62 loss to No. 21 Wisconsin on Sunday. | Sports |
Dec. 7, 2015HOUSTON Crude oil prices slid a further 5 percent on Monday to fall to their lowest levels since the 2009 global recession, pummeled by the fading chance that Saudi Arabia would cut production to halt the commoditys yearlong slide.In only 16 months global oil prices have collapsed from over $110 a barrel to less than half that, and the oil industry in the United States and around the world is reeling from its worst crisis since the late 1990s. On Monday, the American benchmark broke the $38-a-barrel mark, a price that makes drilling and completing wells a losing proposition in almost all oil fields around the country.Oil stocks were sent tumbling, along with the rest of the market, as the price plunge put additional pressure on their finances. Kinder Morgan, the pipeline giant, said on Friday that it was reviewing its dividend. Shares of independent oil companies like Apache and ConocoPhillips fell by more than 3 percent on Monday.Its another damaging blow to the U.S. oil industry, said Steven H. Pruett, president and chief executive of Elevation Resources, a Texas oil company. The rig count will continue to decline, the production decline will accelerate and capital spending plans will be curtailed further, as will employment.A variety of factors is behind the price drop, analysts say, including the surge in American and Iraqi oil production in recent years and a slowing in demand growth from China and other developing countries.But it was the decision by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, led by Saudi Arabia and a few Persian Gulf allies, in November 2014 not to cut production to shore up prices as it often had in the past, that sent prices into a collapse.Last week, traders and oil executives held scant hopes that maybe Saudi Arabia would listen to the urgings of several OPEC nations like Venezuela, Iran, Ecuador and Algeria to cut production, and that maybe Russia and some other non-OPEC producers would join in the effort. But those hopes were dashed on Friday when OPEC refused to tinker with its output, which is now at near-record levels.The refusal to cut production left American oil executives expressing concern about the future of the industry.They can continue to decimate our industry and it will take years to come back, said Steve J. McCoy, director of business development for Latshaw Drilling, a drilling contractor based in Oklahoma. They are doing their best to keep America from being energy self-sufficient or to have the ability to export.The Saudis actions are having the effect of forcing companies to reduce their shale production in the United States, which though expensive, has nearly doubled American oil output in recent years. The shale revolution, a relatively recent phenomenon, also threatens to increase production in many other countries that can eventually drill into their own hard rocks.Several smaller American companies with higher debt loads have missed bond payments or been forced into bankruptcy. Domestic production has so far declined modestly because producers have been able to drill more efficiently and because their service companies have been forced to lower their prices, although output is expected to drop faster in 2016.In the meantime, offshore oil production in the Gulf of Mexico continues to rebound from the 2010 BP oil spill and the federal drilling moratorium that followed.An estimated 250,000 oil and gas workers have lost their jobs over the last year worldwide. In Texas, the biggest American producer, at least 50,000 jobs have been lost.OPEC officials said that before they made any decision about future production cuts, they wanted to see the impact on global markets of new barrels from Iran expected to be as many as 500,000 a day by the second half of 2016 as Tehran complies with the recent nuclear deal. They also suggested that Saudi Arabia might be willing to cut as long as other major producers were willing to do the same.Many oil analysts have compared the Saudi strategy to a game of chicken to see which large producers would blink first. But the strategy holds risks for Saudi Arabia, which relies on oil for 85 percent of its exports and much of its government financing.Though the Saudis continue to have hefty reserves, the International Monetary Fund has warned that they could run out of cash in five years because of the reduced revenues and high social spending they rely on to keep domestic peace.We believe that the current OPEC strategy (non-strategy) leaves a significant portion of the cartel at risk for crisis in 2016, according to a recent RBC Capital Markets report. Venezuela may even be the first to reach such an inflection point. | Business |
Charles Barkley 3 Greatest Athletes Ever? MJ, Brady and ... EXCLUSIVE 1/24/2018 TMZSports.com Charles Barkley says it's impossible to pick between Michael Jordan and Tom Brady when it comes to the Greatest Of All Time ... but says there's a THIRD name that belongs in the conversation. Sir Chuck was at LAX ... where he also heaped some praise on LeBron James for hitting 30k career points and Kobe Bryant for getting an Oscar nod. By the way, neither of those guys are the 3rd G.O.A.T. Barkley referenced earlier. So, who's the mystery superstar? Here's a hint ... he once had a cartoon with MJ and Bo Jackson. | Entertainment |
Feb. 18, 2014TAMPA, Fla. Just before he left Los Angeles for Tampa a few days ago, Brendan Ryan, the Yankees backup shortstop, made sure to go to Staples Center to watch his favorite team, the Los Angeles Clippers. He felt the need to go, he said, because the three previous times he had seen the Clippers this season, their star point guard, Chris Paul, did not play because of injury.So Ryan knows the disappointment of fans unable to see their favorite player from time to time, instead being forced to watch an understudy. In Los Angeles, that understudy was Darren Collison.Here in Tampa, and later in New York and in baseball cities across the country this summer, it will be Ryan playing the role of the understudy to Derek Jeter, although no one knows how often or exactly when. What Ryan does know, and accepts, is that most fans will not be eager to see him play. There may even be some boos when his name is announced before the game.Its not going to be a standing ovation every time, Ryan said Tuesday. But thats O.K.Ryan said that when he first heard the news Feb. 12 that Jeter planned to retire after the season, it was a confusing moment. Oh, man, is this good news or bad news? he said. I still dont know how to process that, from a selfish standpoint.Obviously, he wants what is best for the team, and an in-form Jeter is good for the Yankees. But Ryan is also a competitor, trained to play baseball at the highest level indeed, he is one of the best defensive shortstops in the game and he has the pride and competitive drive to be an everyday player.But if all goes well for Jeter and the Yankees, Ryan will play sparingly, when Jeter needs a day off or is used as the designated hitter. The Yankees could use Ryan as a defensive replacement late in games if they have a lead, but General Manager Brian Cashman said Tuesday that the idea had not been discussed.The Yankees acquired Ryan, 31, from the Seattle Mariners on Sept. 10 the day before they announced that Jeter would be shut down for the rest of the season for a player to be named. After the season, Ryan was re-signed to a two-year, $4 million contract to back up Jeter.There is no illusion that he can supply the offense that a healthy Jeter can. Ryans career batting average of .237 and on-base percentage of .299 make him an offensive liability. But his defense is uncanny, worth the price of a ticket some days. Ryan was asked what he would do as a fan if he bought tickets and made a special trip to see Jeter play, only to see Brendan Ryan show up at shortstop.I would be so stoked, he said with a big laugh. Id get there for pregame and everything.It was at that point that he made the comparison to Collison and Paul. Ryan said that even if he wanted to see Paul, he never booed Collison. And he said the understudy did an admirable job for the Clippers, and Ryan enjoyed watching him play. But he did make sure to go back and watch Paul when he had the chance.INSIDE PITCHJacoby Ellsbury arrived at camp Tuesday and said that it felt good to be a Yankee and that he was healthy. He was given the locker that Kevin Youkilis, another former Boston player, had last year, but he did not repeat Youkiliss infamous comment last year that he would always be a fan of the Red Sox. | Sports |
Science|How to Watch the Geminids Meteor Shower 2019 This Weekendhttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/13/science/geminids-meteor-shower-2019.htmlCredit...Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesDec. 13, 2019All 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 youre lucky you might be able to catch a glimpse.The next shower you might be able to see is the Geminids. Active from Dec. 4 to Dec. 17, the show peaks around Friday night into Saturday morning, or Dec. 13-14.The Geminids, along with the Quadrantids that peaked in January, are believed 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.[Sign up to get reminders for space and astronomy events on your calendar.]Where meteor showers come fromIf you spot a meteor shower, what youre usually seeing is an icy comets leftovers that crash into Earths 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. A general rule of thumb with meteor showers: You are never watching the Earth cross into remnants from a comets 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.Thats because it takes time for debris from a comets orbit to drift into a position where it intersects with Earths orbit, according to Bill Cooke, an astronomer with NASAs Meteoroid Environment Office.How to watchThe 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 Earths 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 moonlight and the weather can obscure the shows. But if that happens, there are usually meteor livestreams like the ones hosted by NASA and by Slooh.The International Meteor Organization lists a variety of meteor showers that can be seen in 2019. Or you can find more information about some of the showers this year that are most likely to be visible below: | science |
N.B.A.|Knicks Hope Bucks Loss Was Hiccuphttps://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/05/sports/basketball/knicks-hope-bucks-loss-was-hiccup.htmlFeb. 4, 2014GREENBURGH, N.Y. Given the way their season has unfolded, it seemed almost safe to assume that the Knicks, after winning four of their previous five games, would somehow find a way to lose to theworst team in the N.B.A.It happened Monday night against the Milwaukee Bucks, and the Knicks returned to practice Tuesday hoping it was an aberration amid strong recent play.Theres a lot of little things that we just didnt get done that we got to clean up, said Coach Mike Woodson, whose task will not be any easier Wednesday night when the Knicks (19-29) face the Portland Trail Blazers (34-14) at Madison Square Garden. If we do that, I know well put ourselves in position to win games. But its the little things right now that are beating us.One of those little things though not so little, really continues to be perimeter defense. The Bucks, whose 101-98 victory left them 30 games below .500, went 11 of 18 from 3-point range, and Brandon Knights step-back 3-pointer over Raymond Felton provided the winning margin with 2.3 seconds left. Woodson said he thought Felton had given Knight too much space.But again, when I reviewed the tape, it never should have gotten to that point, said Woodson, who cited as an example the nine free throws that the Knicks missed.Felton circumvented reporters after the game, and a team spokesman said he was unavailable for interviews after Tuesdays practice.One player who did speak was Amare Stoudemire, who expressed frustration with his limited role.After missing seven games with a sprained left ankle, Stoudemire returned to play four minutes Saturday in a loss to the Miami Heat. Against the Bucks, he collected 7 points and 4 rebounds in 17 minutes.From a doctors standpoint, there hasnt been limitations since the first week of the season, so we cant keep saying there are limitations, he said. Its a coachs decision at the end of the day. I feel great and Im ready to play, but its up to him if he wants to play me or not.Asked if he had pressed Woodson for more playing time, Stoudemire said: Yeah, I mean, I talk to Coach all the time about it. He knows Im ready. He knows how hard I train in the weight room and also on the basketball court. He added, Im ready to play. | Sports |
The Week AheadDec. 27, 2015Trade, Housing and Consumer ConfidenceThree new reports will land Tuesday morning, indicating how the United States economy performed in the final months of 2015. At 8:30 a.m., the Census Bureau will report the latest data on the trade balance in November, with economists expecting a slight widening in the trade deficit.Although exports are rising, led by demand for aircraft from overseas buyers, imports are forecast to rise more, a trend likely to continue because of the strong dollar. At 9 a.m., the Standard & Poors/Case-Shiller survey of home prices will most likely show that average prices in October were up 5.5 percent from a year ago, in line with the overall trend for 2015. Although existing-home sales unexpectedly dropped in November, according to another report released last week, most economists think that was a temporary dip that was related to new government regulations.Finally, at 10 a.m., the Conference Board is expected to release its reading on consumer confidence in December. Economists are looking for the index to rise to 93.8, up from 90.4 in November, lifted by stronger hiring and falling gasoline prices. Nelson D. SchwartzNew Unemployment Claims The Labor Department is scheduled on Thursday to release data on new claims for unemployment insurance for the week ending Dec. 26. The job market has been fairly strong this year, with the unemployment rate at 5 percent, and experts expect the number to be line with the four-week moving average of 272,500, a healthy level in terms of the long-term trend for new claims. Nelson D. SchwartzMarkets Wrap Up for 2015 Financial markets on Thursday will end a volatile year of trading in the United States that was dominated by concerns about the Chinese economy and the future policy decisions of the Federal Reserve.The benchmark Standard & Poors 500-stock index is on track to close the year at about the same place that it began, despite many significant moves at the end of the summer. This has been the worst year for American stocks since 2011, when the major indexes ended the year largely unchanged. Bond investors also struggled this year, as they prepared for the Feds decision, which came this month, to raise interest rates for the first time since 2006.European stocks were set to end a disappointing 2015 not far from where they started the year, after a spring rally fizzled on anxieties about the direction of the Federal Reserves interest-rate policy and concerns about global growth.In London, the FTSE 100 index was poised to start the last trading week of 2015 nearly 5 percent lower for the year. Dollar-based investors in Europe would have lost money as the falling British pound and euro weighed on the value of their returns. And in Asia, Chinas main Shanghai share index had a year to forget: A record rally ended in June with a sharp retreat. Despite a failed government attempt to prop up prices, stocks are down around 30 percent from their peak, even though they are still up about 12 percent this year. Nathaniel Popper, David Jolly and Neil GoughPuerto Rico Payments DueFinancially challenged Puerto Rico faces another deadline, on Jan. 1, for payments on some of its $72 billion of debt. This time the payments amount to about $902 million, according to the Center for a New Economy, a nonpartisan research institute in San Juan. About a third of that is for general obligation bonds, which are constitutionally guaranteed in Puerto Rico, a United States commonwealth.It would be unlawful for Puerto Rico to skip such a payment outside of bankruptcy proceedings. Puerto Rico is barred from Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection, which would otherwise give it some flexibility to restructure its debts. So far, the island has managed to stay current on most of its obligations. But officials say they are running out of cash, and it is not clear that Puerto Rico will have enough money to pay what it owes on Jan. 1. The House of Representatives is expected to hold a hearing on Jan. 5 about the islands financial problems. Jane BornemeierManufacturing in ChinaThe slowdown in Chinas huge manufacturing sector is expected to have continued throughout December. On Friday, the result of an official purchasing managers index, one of the earliest monthly glimpses at the state of the economy, is expected by economists to show a reading of 49.8.A reading above 50 indicates rising output, while one below 50 signals a contraction. For China, a reading below 50 would represent the fifth month in a row of falling manufacturing output the longest such streak since the survey began in 2010. The results of a private-sector survey carried out by Markit, a financial data compiler, are due to be released on Jan. 4 and are expected to show that Chinas manufacturing sector lost steam for a 10th month in a row. Neil Gough | Business |
California voters head to the polls on Tuesday. Our photographers have fanned out across the state to capture the scene. June 5, 2018ImageCredit...Ryan Christopher Jones for The New York TimesImageCredit...Hilary Swift for The New York TimesImageCredit...Hilary Swift for The New York TimesImageCredit...Rozette Rago for The New York TimesImageCredit...Melissa Lyttle for The New York TimesImageCredit...Ryan Christopher Jones for The New York TimesImageCredit...Rozette Rago for The New York TimesImageCredit...Hilary Swift for The New York TimesImageCredit...Hilary Swift for The New York TimesImageCredit...Josh Haner/The New York TimesImageCredit...Melissa Lyttle for The New York TimesImageCredit...Ryan Christopher Jones for The New York TimesImageCredit...Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesImageCredit...Andrew Cullen for The New York TimesImageCredit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times ImageCredit...Kayla Reefer for The New York TimesImageCredit...Josh Haner/The New York TimesImageCredit...Andrew Cullen for The New York TimesImageCredit...Kayla Reefer for The New York TimesImageCredit...Hilary Swift for The New York TimesImageCredit...Josh Haner/The New York TimesImageCredit...Ryan Christopher Jones for The New York Times | Politics |
Credit...Ulet Ifansasti/Getty ImagesNov. 8, 2018JAKARTA The final moments of Lion Air Flight 610 as it hurtled soon after dawn from a calm Indonesian sky into the waters of the Java Sea would have been terrifying but swift.The single-aisle Boeing aircraft, assembled in Washington State and delivered to Lion Air less than three months ago, appears to have plummeted nose-first into the water, its advanced jet engines racing the plane toward the waves at as much as 400 m.p.h. in less than a minute. The aircraft slammed into the sea with such force that some metal fittings aboard were reduced to powder, and the aircrafts flight data recorder tore loose from its armored box, propelled into the muddy seabed.As American and Indonesian investigators puzzle through clues of what went wrong, they are focusing not on a single lapse but on a cascade of troubling issues that ended with the deaths of all 189 people on board.That is nearly always the case in plane crashes, in which disaster can rarely be pinned on one factor. While investigators have not yet concluded what caused Flight 610 to plunge into the sea, they know that in the days before the crash the plane had experienced repeated problems in some of the same systems that could have led the aircraft to go into a nose dive.Questions about those problems and how they were handled constitute a sobering reminder of the trust we display each time we strap on seatbelts and take to the skies in a metal tube.On Oct. 29, on a morning with little wind, what appears to have been a perfect storm of problems ranging from repeated data errors emanating from aircraft instruments to an airline with a distressing safety record may have left the planes young pilot with an insurmountable challenge.On Wednesday, the Federal Aviation Administration of the United States warned that erroneous data processed in the new, best-selling Max 8 jet could cause the plane to abruptly nose-dive. Investigators examining Flight 610 are trying to determine if that is what happened.Boeing this week issued a global bulletin advising pilots to follow its operations manual in such cases. But to do so, experts said, would have required Flight 610s captain, Bhavye Suneja, a 31-year-old Indian citizen, and his co-pilot, Harvino, a 41-year-old Indonesian, to have made decisions in seconds at a moment of near-certain panic.They would have had to recognize that a problem with the readings on the cockpit display was causing the sudden descent. Then, according to the F.A.A., they would have had to grab physical control of the plane.That would not have been a simple matter of pushing a button. Instead, pilots said, Captain Suneja could have braced his feet on the dashboard and yanked the yoke, or control wheel, back with all his strength. Or he could have undertaken a four-step process to shut off power to electric motors in the aircrafts tail that were wrongly causing the planes nose to pitch downward.All this would have needed to have happened within seconds or the aircraft would be at serious risk of entering a death dive.To expect someone at a moment of high pressure to do everything exactly right is really tough, said Alvin Lie, an Indonesian aviation expert and the countrys ombudsman. Thats why you dont want to ever put a pilot in that situation if theres anything you can do to stop it.Crowded SkiesEven as ever more people take to the air, flying has never been safer. Last year was the safest in the history of commercial air travel. On average, only one out of every 16 million flights results in a deadly accident, according to the Aviation Safety Network. Nearly a decade has passed since a fatal crash by an American carrier.Yet as the evidence accumulates, it appears that the fate of Flight 610 may illustrate how a chain of individual events, particularly with highly automated planes, can lead to fatal consequences.The crash also points to a growing problem in aviation indirectly caused by the advent of low-cost airlines and an explosive growth in the number of people who can afford to fly. While Boeing and its European rival, Airbus, are producing planes as fast as they can, the number of experienced pilots, aircraft engineers, mechanics and even air safety regulators has lagged.The problem is, the less-desirable airlines are the ones with the least resources that are scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of human resources, said Martin Craigs, the chairman of Aerospace Forum Asia, an industry advocacy group in Hong Kong.Lion Airs story began nearly 20 years ago, when an Indonesian travel agent and his brother established it as a carrier that would offer cheap flights between the islands scattered across the countrys densely populated archipelago.Even as the politically connected company, which owns several airlines, fueled its aggressive expansion with borrowing from banks and government credit agencies, it also racked up at least 15 major safety lapses. Pilots complained that they were overworked and underpaid, and some who challenged the company on contract issues are now in jail.More troubling, pilots said that the culture at the airline neglected safety. One pilot who refused to fly a pair of planes that he considered unsafe was eventually sidelined by Lion Air and settled his case in court years later.A former investigator for Indonesias National Transportation Safety Committee said that Lion Air repeatedly ignored orders to ground planes for safety issues. Pilots and former safety regulators said that Lion Air flight and maintenance crews regularly filled out two log books, one real and one fake, to hide malfeasance.ImageCredit...Ed Wray/Getty ImagesEdward Sirait, the general affairs director of Lion Air, said in an interview that the airline considered safety, along with business expansion, its top priorities. He disputed the existence of fake pilot logs.They are pilots, he said. They are professional.Mr. Sirait also said that he had no information about what may have caused the Flight 610 crash. I am not an engineer, he said.Many aviation experts are skeptical of the company. Lions corporate culture is against safety, said Mr. Lie, the ombudsman. If they can fly the plane, they will, rather than ground it and figure out what the problem is.During the two days before Flight 610 began its final journey, there were repeated indications that pilots were being fed faulty data perhaps from instruments measuring the speed and a key angle of the plane that would have compromised their ability to fly safely.Engineers tried to address the issue in at least three airports, Indonesian investigators said.After the planes penultimate flight, for instance, technicians recorded in a maintenance log that they had fixed the pitot tubes, external probes on the airplane that measure relative airspeed. Earlier that day, on the resort island of Bali, engineers swapped out a sensor that measures the angle at which oncoming wind crosses the plane.Called the angle of attack sensor, this instrument tells the pilot if the nose of the plane is too high, which could cause the aircraft to stall. In the Max 8, if the data indicates the nose is too high, the aircrafts systems will automatically pull the nose down.If the sensor data is wrong, the system could cause the plane to dive.It is not yet certain if the airspeed sensors and angle of attack sensors malfunctioned on the final flight, or if the computers that process the information coming from the sensors malfunctioned.It is only with further analysis of data on the planes so-called black boxes, of which only one has been found, that the cause will be determined.Still, experts say they are surprised that a plane with known problems was cleared for takeoff again and again. Some say they are aghast, wondering why Lion Air was so cavalier.I cannot believe the plane was allowed to fly, Ruth Simatupang, a former air safety investigator, said of Flight 610s final takeoff. It goes against all standard operating procedures.ImageCredit...Ed Wray/Getty ImagesThe Last FlightBefore dawn, as the tropical air in Jakarta still hung with moisture, Captain Suneja most likely would have engaged in a ritual familiar to any pilot, walking around the plane that he was to take into the air. He had 6,000 flight hours under his belt, a testament to his diligence during the seven years he had worked for Lion Air.One of the many mysteries of Flight 610 is why Captain Suneja agreed to fly a plane that maintenance logs should have indicated had two days of airspeed problems one just a few hours before he was to take off for the small city of Pangkal Pinang, on a tiny, tin-mining island in the Java Sea.We want to know why the pilot said yes, said Ony Soerjo Wibowo, an Indonesian air safety investigator looking into the case. Maybe me, I would not say yes.Could Captain Suneja have felt pressure from a go-go airline to fly a questionable aircraft? Did he not see the maintenance logs that enumerated the problems? Or did he simply not realize that these issues were so serious? Planes experience anomalies all the time. That is why maintenance crews are always on hand and play such a vital role.At 6:21, long after the first Muslim prayer had reverberated across Indonesia, Captain Suneja took off from Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. Within a couple of minutes, the flight crew radioed Jakarta air-traffic control and requested permission to return, which was immediately granted.Captain Suneja did not issue a mayday distress call. Nor did he turn back for the capital. Instead, the plane banked sharply left and embarked on a roller coaster trajectory that would have surely terrified the passengers.In the days following last weeks crash, Lion Air was involved in at least two other missteps a planes wing clipped a pole, and a flight from Malaysia suffered a hydraulic failure upon arrival in Jakarta, according to aviation officials.The Final SecondsWhen the 11th minute of Flight 610 began, the plane was still in nearly level flight at an altitude of about 5,000 feet. By the end of that minute, it had shattered into a kaleidoscope of pieces in the water, after hurtling earthward nose-first at perhaps 400 miles per hour, according to measurements from the Flightradar24 online data service.What caused the aircraft to tip downward so sharply in that final minute is the greatest enigma. Over the past two days, investigators have been looking into whether it was a maintenance failure or a possible shortcoming in the Boeing 737 Max 8 that could affect other fleets operating the popular jet. Investigators also are exploring the possibility that the pilots were not adequately trained in how the plane differed from earlier models.Older versions of the Boeing 737 have a reputation among pilots for being easy to adjust the angle of the planes nose should a problem arise, said John Cox, the former executive air safety chairman of the Air Line Pilots Association in the United States and now chief executive of Safety Operating Systems, a consulting firm.ImageCredit...Ulet Ifansasti/Getty ImagesBut in the new version, Boeing introduced an emergency system that automatically corrects the nose angle to prevent the plane from stalling. In its safety bulletin, Boeing said the system could push the nose down for a full 10 seconds without the pilots authorization.Boeings new system was intended to safeguard against what some studies have suggested is the most frequent cause of plane crashes a stall.But if the data fed into the system was inaccurate which investigators are looking into it could have theoretically caused the plane to pitch forward, presenting even the most experienced pilots with a difficult situation, said Peter Marosszeky, a longtime aircraft engineer and former senior executive at Qantas, the Australian air carrier.Training is everything in these situations, and experience is crucial, he said.Qantas learned that in 2008 on an Airbus, which has a similar system.After receiving incorrect readings that appeared to indicate a false stall, an Airbus traveling from Singapore to Perth, Australia, violently plunged twice in automated nose-dives. Dozens of passengers and crew who were not wearing seatbelts were flung about and some broke bones.In the cockpit, the captain, a former United States Navy fighter pilot, fought the plane into submission and finally managed an emergency landing at a remote airstrip in northwestern Australia.It was like a computer gone mad, and the pilots were battling it, said Geoffrey Thomas, the Australian editor in chief of AirlineRatings.com. He said the skill of the flight crew saved the day.The pilots of Lion Air Flight 610 seem to have encountered a malfunction as well, but with a different ending.The recommended response issued by Boeing and the F.A.A. this week would not be a pilots natural reaction. The flight crew is instructed to switch off the electricity powering stabilizers in the tail of the aircraft that are propelling the downward pitch of the nose.But without specific training on this anomaly, what pilot would think to turn off part of the plane? When flight crews learn how to helm a new model of aircraft, they typically study the differences between older and newer models. Aviation experts worry that pilots at hard-driving carriers like Lion Air may not be given adequate time for such training.In addition, differences between models sometimes manifest themselves only after months or years of operation. The Boeing Max 8 went into service just last year. Even though Captain Suneja was an experienced aviator for his age, he would not have had time to fully familiarize himself with the latest version of Boeings workhorse jet.And with only seconds to wrestle the plane out of its fatal plunge, he never got that chance. | World |
Older people who received smallpox vaccinations may yet have some immunity, researchers say. Healthy children and adults generally do not become severely ill.Credit...Lukas Barth/ReutersMay 26, 2022For a world weary of fighting the coronavirus, the monkeypox outbreak poses a key question: Am I at risk?The answer is reassuring. Most children and adults with healthy immune systems are likely to dodge severe illness, experts said in interviews. But there are two high-risk groups.One comprises infants younger than six months. But they are not yet affected by the current outbreak. And many older adults, the group most likely to succumb to the monkeypox virus, are at least somewhat protected by decades-old smallpox vaccinations, studies suggest.Vaccinated older adults may become infected but are likely to escape with only mild symptoms.The bottom line is that even those that were vaccinated many decades before maintain a very, very high level of antibodies and the ability to neutralize the virus, said Dr. Luigi Ferrucci, scientific director of the National Institute on Aging.Even if they were vaccinated 50 years ago, that protection should still be there, he said.In the United States, routine immunization for smallpox ceased in 1972. The military continued its vaccination program until 1991 as a precaution against a bioterrorism attack.Questions about the smallpox vaccines durability rose after an anthrax attack in 2001, said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the Biden administrations top adviser on infectious diseases. It was reasonable to assume that most vaccinated people were still protected, he said, but durability of protection varies from person to person.We cant guarantee that a person who was vaccinated against smallpox is still going to be protected against monkeypox, Dr. Fauci said.The monkeypox outbreak has grown to include about 260 confirmed cases and scores more under investigation in 21 countries.In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is tracking nine cases in seven states, not all of which have a history of travel to countries where monkeypox is endemic. That suggests that there may already be some level of community transmission, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the agencys director, told reporters on Thursday.Dr. Walensky said that 74 laboratories in 46 states have access to a test that can detect monkeypox, and together they can screen up to 7,000 samples a week. The agency is working to expand that capacity, she said, adding: Weve been preparing for this type of outbreak for decades.ImageCredit...FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesMonkeypox infection begins with respiratory symptoms but blooms into a distinct rash, first in the mouth, then the palms of the hand and soles of the feet, and gradually the rest of the body. The rash eventually becomes raised, growing into pus-filled blisters.Each pustule contains live virus, and a ruptured blister can contaminate bed linens and other items, putting close contacts at risk. Infected people should also be very careful about rubbing their eyes because the virus can destroy sight.Before Jenner had developed the smallpox vaccine, the number one cause of blindness in the world was smallpox, said Mark Slifka, an immunologist at Oregon Health and Science University. Infected people are contagious until the pustules scab over and slough off, he said.Dr. Slifka and other experts emphasized that while monkeypox can be severe and even fatal, the current outbreak is unlikely to swell into a large epidemic.Were lucky to have vaccines and therapeutics things that can mitigate all that, said Anne Rimoin, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has studied monkeypox in Africa. We do have the ability to stop this virus.Monkeypox takes up to 12 days to cause symptoms, giving doctors a window of at least five days after exposure to vaccinate and forestall disease. (The approach, called post-exposure prophylaxis, is not an option for Covid patients because the coronavirus can start to ravage the body just a couple days after exposure.)The monkeypox virus does not spread in the absence of symptoms. Careful surveillance, isolation of infected people, contact tracing and quarantine of contacts should contain the outbreak, Dr. Rimoin said.A majority of those infected currently are men under 50, and many identify as gay or bisexual, which may reflect the outbreaks possible origins at a Gay Pride event in the Canary Islands. (The outbreak could just as easily have started among heterosexual people at a large event, experts said.)The risk of exposure is not limited to any one particular group, Dr. Walensky said on Thursday. Our priority is to help everyone make informed decisions to protect their health and the health of their community, and that starts with building awareness guided by science, not by stigma.No deaths have been reported. But experts are particularly concerned about close contacts who are children, older adults or who have weak immune systems for other reasons.There are conflicting opinions on how long immunity from a smallpox vaccination lasts.The C.D.C. recommends boosters of smallpox vaccines every three years but only for persons at risk of occupation exposure, David Daigle, a spokesman for the agency, said in a statement.Until we know more, we will be using available vaccine stocks for people whove had close contact with known cases, and people at highest risk for exposure through their jobs, like health care workers treating monkeypox patients, he said.The United States and several European countries have begun immunizing close contacts of infected patients, an approach called ring vaccination.Many of the most vulnerable groups may already be protected. In one study, Dr. Slifka and his colleagues drew blood from 306 vaccinated volunteers, some of whom had been immunized decades earlier, including one who had been immunized 75 years before. Most of them maintained high levels of antibodies to smallpox.In another study, Dr. Slifka and his colleagues showed that antibodies produced by even a single dose of the smallpox vaccine decline very slowly in the body, dropping to half after about 92 years.Dr. Ferrucci and his colleagues at the N.I.H., as well as other teams, have also found that antibody levels persist for decades after vaccination. Some studies have found that other branches of the immune system also wane slowly, but antibodies produced from smallpox vaccination may be enough on their own to protect against monkeypox.If smallpox were to start spreading, it would make sense to immunize anyone who is exposed because of its high mortality rate, regardless of a previous vaccination, said Gigi Gronvall, a biosecurity expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.We wouldnt want to take the chance that somebody was left unprotected, she said.But that is not necessary now, she added: This is monkeypox.Laboratory evidence of antibodies does not prove that smallpox vaccination can protect against monkeypox. But answering that question would require that study participants be deliberately infected with smallpox or a related virus, an obviously unethical experiment.For the same reason, newer smallpox vaccines and drugs have been tested only in animals.ImageCredit...Cdc/Via ReutersStill, one way to study the vaccines effectiveness in people is to gather evidence during an outbreak. Dr. Slifkas team did just that in 2003, when dozens of Americans became infected with monkeypox after being exposed to infected prairie dogs.The researchers flew into Milwaukee and drew blood from 28 people who had been exposed to the infected prairie dogs. Of the eight people who had previously been vaccinated, five developed an average of three pus-filled blisters, compared with an average of 33 in those who were unvaccinated.The other three vaccinated individuals had no symptoms at all. They didnt even know they had been infected, Dr. Slifka said.Another study of that outbreak found that in a family of three, the previously vaccinated father developed just two monkeypox lesions compared with 200 in the unvaccinated mother. Their unvaccinated 6-year-old daughter had about 90 lesions and was in a coma for 12 days.Questions about the durability of vaccine protection against monkeypox have taken on particular significance as the number of cases worldwide has risen. Monkeypox re-emerged among people in Nigeria in 2017, and there have since been about 200 confirmed cases and 500 suspected cases.The Democratic Republic of Congo has recorded 58 deaths and nearly 1,300 suspected cases since the beginning of this year.People in African villages used to contract monkeypox from animals while hunting but rarely infected others. Its only very recently, like, just the last few years, when we started to see this, Dr. Rimoin said of bigger outbreaks.The eradication of smallpox, while one of the greatest achievements in public health, has left populations vulnerable to the virus and to its cousins.Diminishing immunity, coupled with a rise in population and increased proximity to wild animals, may result in more frequent monkeypox outbreaks, Dr. Rimoin and her colleagues warned in 2010.Unrestrained outbreaks, particularly among immunocompromised people, would give the virus more opportunity to acquire mutations that make it more resilient in people and in animals.If monkeypox were to establish itself in a wildlife reservoir outside of Africa, the public health setback would be enormous, Dr. Rimoin said. That, I think, is a legitimate concern. | Health |
Asia Pacific|Husband of Freed Pakistani Christian Woman Pleads for Asylumhttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/04/world/asia/pakistan-asia-bibi-asylum.htmlCredit...T Mughal/EPA, via ShutterstockNov. 4, 2018ISLAMABAD, Pakistan The husband of a Pakistani Christian woman acquitted after spending eight years on death row on blasphemy charges has appealed to President Trump for refuge, citing danger to the familys lives.Ashiq Masih, the husband of Asia Bibi, whose case has outraged Christians worldwide and been a source of division within Pakistan, also appealed to Britain and Canada for assistance.The appeal came as the police said they had arrested more than 150 people on charges of arson, vandalism and violence during the protests that erupted after Ms. Bibis acquittal. A senior police officer, Nayab Haider, said on Sunday that officers were using video to identify others involved in committing assaults, torching property and vehicles, and blocking highways, The Associated Press said.The Islamist party Tehreek-e-Labaik blocked major roads in Pakistans biggest cities for three days, calling for the killing of the Supreme Court judges who acquitted Ms. Bibi on Wednesday, and terming Prime Minister Imran Khan and the countrys army chief enemies of Islam.Tehreek-e-Labaik called off the protests late Friday after striking a deal with the government that could see the authorities moving to put Ms. Bibi on an exit control list barring her from leaving the country and opening a review of the verdict.I am requesting the president of the United States, Donald Trump, to help us exit from Pakistan, Mr. Masih said in a video recorded by the British Pakistani Christian Association and seen by Reuters.I also request the prime minister of the United Kingdom to help us, he said. I also request the prime minister of Canada. He also requested help on behalf of his brother Joseph Nadeem, who has assisted with Ms. Bibis case.The United States Embassy and the high commissions of Britain and Canada in Islamabad did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the video.On Saturday, Ms. Bibis lawyer, Saiful Mulook, told Reuters that he had left Pakistan, fearing for his life and the safety of his family.Ms. Bibi was convicted of blasphemy in 2010 after being accused of making derogatory remarks about Islam when neighbors objected to her drinking water from their glass because she was not Muslim. She has denied having committed any offense.Her case caught the attention of Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab Province. He was assassinated by his bodyguard in 2011, after waging a public campaign to save Ms. Bibis life and to change the blasphemy laws a move that angered his bodyguard. Tehreek-e-Labaik was founded out of a movement to support Mr. Taseers assassin, who was hanged in 2016.The federal minister for minorities, Shahbaz Bhatti, was also killed after calling for Ms. Bibis release.Ms. Bibis location is unknown, but Tehreek-e-Labaik has warned the authorities not to take her out of the country.There will be a war if they send Asia out of country, the partys leader, Khadim Hussain Rizvi, said after the deal with the government was reached.Islamist parties have characterized Ms. Bibis release as Pakistans government caving into Western demands. | World |
Credit...Ed Wray/Getty ImagesNov. 6, 2018JAKARTA, Indonesia A brand-new Boeing Max 8 jet that crashed into the Java Sea last week had problems with its airspeed indicator during its final four flights, Indonesian investigators said on Monday.Analyzing the contents of a flight data recorder that was recovered from the seabed on Thursday, members of Indonesias National Transportation Safety Committee, which is leading the investigation into the crash of Lion Air Flight 610, found that inaccurate airspeed readings continued for three days, despite the plane having been repeatedly cleared for takeoff.The Max 8, the latest model of Boeings workhorse 737, entered commercial fleets only last year. The plane that crashed a week ago was delivered to Lion Air, one of the worlds fastest-growing low-cost carriers, in August.We think this is an issue that is important because there are more than 200 Max planes around the world, said Capt. Nurcahyo Utomo, the transportation safety committees lead accident investigator.While there have been no indications that the Max 8 has a systemic problem with airspeed readings, the models newness means any potential problem may not yet have manifested itself in other carriers fleets.Beyond a potential hardware problem whether with computerized sensors or with instruments that measure airspeed investigators are also looking at how the plane was repeatedly approved for flights when it had experienced a consistent problem.We will investigate further what caused the damage and what repair had been done, Captain Nurcahyo said.Lion Air has a troubling record of at least 15 major safety lapses, but until last week the carrier, Indonesias largest, had not had a fatal incident since 2004. The Indonesian Transportation Ministry is conducting a special audit into the low-cost airlines operations and safety standards.ImageCredit...Ulet Ifansasti/Getty ImagesIt is not clear whether unreliable airspeed readings caused the crash of Lion Air Flight 610. But inconsistent airspeed readings can feed incorrect data to automated systems, complicating takeoffs and bewildering flight crews, especially when the plane is flying over water, where it is harder to gauge how fast a jet is going by looking out the window.While pilots should receive multiple airspeed readings from probes, known as pitot tubes, mounted to the outside of the plane, they must figure out which reading is wrong and adjust accordingly.Previous crashes, like that of Air France Flight 447 in 2009 over the Atlantic Ocean, have been traced to an initial problem with incorrect airspeed readings catalyzing a fatal chain of events exacerbated by pilot confusion.Lion Air Flight 610 took off from Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, on Oct. 29, bound for the small city of Pangkal Pinang. Less than 15 minutes later, after an erratic, up-and-down flight path, the Max 8 plummeted into the sea with 189 people on board.The plane hit the water so fast that it fragmented, investigators said. Divers have found no intact bodies.By examining the maintenance log of the planes penultimate flight from the day before the crash, aviation experts had already discovered that the single-aisle jet had problems with unreliable airspeed readings.But confirmation of exactly what precipitated last weeks crash will come only with the further inspection of the so-called black boxes, the devices that record a planes movements and data. The flight data recorder that was recovered last Thursday measured the planes speed, altitude, temperature, flight control and cockpit steering, among other indicators.Soerjanto Tjahjojo, the chief of the transportation safety committee, said on Monday that the device contained 69 hours of information from 19 flights. Nearly 1,800 parameters were recorded in the black box, he said.A second black box, which recorded cockpit conversations, has not yet been found, but Indonesian Navy divers have heard faint pings emanating from an underwater beacon attached to the flight recorder. | World |
Fair GameCredit...Jacquelyn Martin/Associated PressDec. 4, 2015After seven years of keeping United States interest rates at rock bottom, the Federal Reserve has signaled that Dec. 16 could be D-Day for a long-awaited increase. That was the message Janet L. Yellen, chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, conveyed in two public presentations last week.With a 0.25 percent rise in the Feds main tool for influencing interest rates a near certainty, investors are already beginning to focus on rate increases that may lie ahead. Will they be gradual, as Ms. Yellen has suggested? Or will economic developments push the Fed to be more aggressive?Answering these questions requires a crystal ball, which no one has. But they are worth exploring, given the market dislocations that can occur when policy moves take investors by surprise.Ms. Yellen alluded to this challenge both in her speech on Wednesday and in congressional testimony on Thursday. Waiting too long to raise rates, she said, could force the Fed to tighten policy relatively abruptly and risk disrupting financial markets and perhaps even inadvertently push the economy into recession.A slow and gradual approach to rate increases is what the Fed has telegraphed and is very much what investors expect and desire. But this may not be what they get.Thats the view of Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. Investors who think the Feds rate increases will be modest and come over a prolonged period may be incorrectly assessing three elements of the economy, he contends. These errors could be fostering a more negative outlook about economic growth than is justified, reinforcing the view that rate increases will be few and far between.The first mistake investors are making relates to their excessive fears about the slowdown in domestic manufacturing and the oil industry. While these downturns are genuine and painful and the spending drop in these arenas have been huge their negative impact over all is limited, Mr. Shepherdson said.The entire manufacturing sector generates 12 percent of the nations gross domestic product, but the oil sector and related manufacturing accounts for less than 5 percent.Moreover, the beneficiaries of this collapse far outnumber its victims. Whats happened over the last 13 months is a giant transfer of resources from oil producers to consumers, Mr. Shepherdson said. Consumers are much more important to the U.S. economy, and the very things that have hurt manufacturing and oil have given consumers a great boost.The second assumption that investors may be wrong about involves inflation and their belief that a stronger dollar will keep it in check in the United States. Such a situation would help put a lid on rate increases.A rising dollar certainly makes imported goods less expensive for American buyers. But only 15 percent of the core Consumer Price Index is dollar-sensitive, Mr. Shepherdson said.Rents make up 41 percent of the index, for example, while 34 percent consists of services, including medical costs, leisure and education. Expenditures on some of these items especially rents and health care are rising faster than other prices.Wage increases pose another wild card on inflation, Mr. Shepherdson said. Labor compensation has grown only modestly in recent years, Ms. Yellen pointed out in her speech, at annual rates of 2 to 2.5 percent. Now that may be changing.We have seen a welcome pickup in the growth rate of average hourly earnings for all employees and of compensation per hour in the business sector, she said.If inflation heats up, it will represent a big shift. Core inflation is running at 1.25 percent for the 12 months that ended in October, the Fed said, well below its 2 percent inflation objective.Fridays healthy jobs report 211,000 workers hired in November, more than forecast showed only a modest increase in compensation last month, but it suggested that rising wages may become even more of a factor as the job market continues to tighten. If nominal wages accelerate, then the Feds fervently held belief in gradual rate increases will come under pressure, Mr. Shepherdson said.Finally, investors seem convinced that retail sales, a major economic bellwether, are in trouble. This may not be the case.Its true that growth in nominal retail sales, those measured in current dollars, is declining. But, Mr. Shepherdson said, if you look at retail sales in real terms, which are not adjusted for price changes, the growth is impressive. In the latter part of 2014, such sales were registering a 4 percent gain. Today, its trending at about 5.5 percent, suggesting that the American consumer is better off than many investors think.If Mr. Shepherdson is right, that means that tens of millions of Americans will be seeing substantial improvement in their own financial well-being. Thats worth celebrating, but it may unnerve many on Wall Street.Each economic data release has the potential to roil the market if it appears to counter the prevailing view of a more modest recovery. Investors who play down healthy trends in the economy are likely to be caught offsides if the Fed becomes more proactive.Right now, the market is forecasting only a 50-50 chance of a second rate increase by April. Mr. Shepherdson is predicting such a move in March, as unemployment continues to fall and wage gains pick up further.By raising rates, the Fed clearly signals its belief that the economy has recovered from the devastation of 2008. That, too, is great news. But the policy shift will also require investors to make a fairly significant attitude adjustment, so dont be surprised if the ride gets bumpy. | Business |
Canada LetterNov. 30, 2018ImageCredit...Ian Willms for The New York Times[Read: G.M. to Idle Plants and Cut Thousands of Jobs as Sales Slow]It swiftly became clear that the plant closure was one of those economic issues that governments have little control over, other than to mitigate their consequences.Both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada and Premier Doug Ford of Ontario have pledged to help the workers who will become jobless. But exactly what the federal government and provinces can or should do is unclear, and there are few obviously effective approaches at hand.[Want the Canada Letter in your inbox every week? Subscribe here.]In the past, early retirement was often a ready and sometimes welcome prospect to major layoffs in the auto sector. But the wave of layoffs that followed G.M.s bankruptcy a decade ago means a majority of workers at the company today are nowhere near retirement age, according to Unifor, the workers union.Retraining has already been raised. General Motors said on Thursday that it will set up a program with schools in Oshawa to turn assembly line workers into mechanics for car dealerships. But while there is certainly a shortage of qualified mechanics, it seems unlikely that dealerships will need more than 2,500 of them.I think we have to view with suspicion plans to retrain employees, because weve heard that story before, Scott Aquanno, a political scientist at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, who has studied previous G.M. layoffs, told me. The opportunities for high-paying jobs are slim.And while Oshawa, like many Canadian cities, is trying to turn itself into a hub for technology industries, Mr. Aquanno said even if that effort is successful, its unlikely to help many G.M. workers.Beyond retraining, Mr. Ford has asked Mr. Trudeau to extend federal jobless benefits by five weeks: a measure likely welcomed by workers, but well short of a solution.ImageCredit...Ian Willms for The New York TimesThe Oshawa shutdown doesnt necessarily mean that Canadas auto industry as a whole is doomed at least, not immediately. There was relatively little attention paid earlier this year when Toyota announced it would spend 1.4 billion Canadian dollars (including 200 million in government money) to add hybrid versions of its best-selling RAV4 compact sport vehicle to its factory in Woodstock, Ontario.But Toyotas Woodstock plant, which opened 10 years ago, is the last new car factory Canada has seen. Since then, all new plants from carmakers around the world intended mainly to serve the North American market have popped up in the United States or Mexico.ImageCredit...Ian Willms for The New York TimesThe closing of Oshawas plant, expected to happen roughly a year from now, will be a drag on the citys economy, and painful for the many people who work there. The challenge facing Mr. Ford and Mr. Trudeau until the closing is to make sure those people arent left behind.Award WinnersImageCredit...Ian Austen/The New York TimesEsi Edugyan, who lives in Victoria, recently won her second Giller Prize for her latest novel, Washington Black. This week, the editors at The Times Book Review declared it one of the 10 Best Books of 2018, describing it as a wondrous tale of exploration and discovery.[Read: The 10 Best Books of 2018]After you check out the full list, listen to this podcast by the editors discussing the books that made the cut.Also this week, Margaret Atwood announced shes penning a sequel to her award-winning novel, The Handmaids Tale an idea she had previously rejected.[Read: Margaret Atwood Will Write a Sequel to The Handmaids Tale]Trans CanadaThe scene was a bit strained on Friday when leaders gathered for a ceremonial signing of the trade deal to succeed Nafta.Birks, the jeweler thats been a staple of Canadian wedding registries for decades, has a high-profile royal customer.After seven months in airport limbo, a Syrian refugee has made it to Canada.Whistler, British Columbia, is home to a camp where women can improve their skiing without any danger of mansplaining.An idyllic setting in the Yukon became the scene of almost unspeakable horror this week after a fatal bear mauling.And our guide to Netflix in Canada for the month of December is refreshingly free of holiday tropes. | World |
Kylie Jenner Finally Shows Her Face with Sisters But That's ALL Ya Get!!! 1/22/2018 Pregnant Kylie Jenner finally showed her face for the first time in nearly 5 months ... 'cause mama-to-be's still gotta bring home the bacon. Kylie posed in bed with her sisters -- Kim, Khloe, Kendall, and Kourtney -- while rocking their Calvin Klein undies, but she was careful to NOT reveal what everyone's waiting to see. Obviously, the product shot was a scheduled advertisement, but while all the other sisters showed their lower halves ... Kylie hid her baby bump under a blanket, showing only her bra. Even pregnant Khloe only covered her belly with her hand. Sorry, Calvin ... mom boobs are all you get from KJ. For now. | Entertainment |
Australia|Amazon Lifts Ban on Australians Shipping From Its Main Sitehttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/world/australia/amazon-australia-access-website.htmlCredit...Joe Castro/European Pressphoto AgencyNov. 21, 2018SYDNEY, Australia Amazon will grant Australians access to products from its main website, walking back a decision made earlier this year that angered its customers in the country.The online retailer had announced that it would redirect Australians to a local website to comply with changes to Australian tax law. That law requires online retailers to impose a 10 percent goods and services tax on items sold and shipped from overseas.But customers complained that the move would raise prices and bar them from millions of products, some difficult to find otherwise. And it appears those concerns were heard.As a result of customer feedback, from 22 November Amazon customers will be able to ship eligible items from amazon.com to Australian delivery addresses, an Amazon spokeswoman said in a statement released early Thursday.After its initial decision to suspend exports to Australia, the company has focused on building the complex infrastructure needed to enable exports of low value goods to Australia and remain compliant with GST laws, the statement added in reference to the goods and services tax.The companys initial decision to bar Australians from gaining access to the main Amazon site drew criticism in June from Scott Morrison, the countrys current prime minister and then-treasurer.You dont get a special deal because youre a big company or a multinational, Mr. Morrison said when asked whether companies would be exempt from the tax. I think it is disappointing that Amazon has taken this out on consumers in Australia but that is their commercial position.Amazon launched in Australia quietly in December following months of speculation over its potential impact on the countrys retail sector. Local retailers, like neighborhood bookstores, raised concerns that the site would damage their businesses, and many welcomed the new tax on international imports, saying it would level the playing field.The reversal comes just before retailers hold their Black Friday sales the annual frenzy of heavy discounts, and granting Australians access to the main Amazon site will could prove a timely boon for the companys efforts to draw local customers.Analysts have predicted the retail giant will capture almost half of the American e-commerce market this year.But even with access to the Amazons main site, Australians will face some roadblocks. Third-party sellers on the site are still unable to ship to Australia, which was bloody frustrating, one customer complained on Twitter.Amazon will continue to work constructively with the government, to ensure a level playing field for all retailers and marketplaces, the Amazon spokeswoman said. | World |
VideotranscripttranscriptWere Stuck in the Middle: How Young Iranians Feel About U.S. SanctionsThe United States was the only country to leave the multilateral nuclear deal with Iran. The Trump administration quickly moved to snap back crippling sanctions on Iran. We spoke with the countrys top diplomat and young Iranians to see how these moves have affected their lives.Arash is one of the many Iranians I spoke with on Telegram to see how theyre dealing with U.S. sanctions. He says hes having trouble buying the bare essentials his family needs. The U.S. was the only country to leave the multilateral nuclear deal, and quickly moved to put pressure on Iran. We will be instituting the highest level of economic sanction. Economic pressure is nothing new for Iranians, but many say this is the most hopeless theyve ever felt. Many Iranians I spoke with seemed exhausted by this back-and-forth with the West and frustrated by the gridlock. One person was against the Iranian government altogether and saw Trumps exit from the nuclear deal as a blessing. And it could get worse: The U.S. imposed a second round of sanctions on Iran on Nov. 5. This round is focused on stopping the sales of Iranian oil and petrochemical products. It could be a big hit to Irans economy because oil generated $50 billion in revenue last year. Irans foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, isnt backing down despite sanctions and tough talk from the U.S. We have, in fact, survived in spite of the U.S. pressure for 40 years. If they try to put pressure on Iran, if they try to threaten Iran, Iranians respond very negatively to pressure and threats. And it will further strengthen the resolve of the Iranian people to resist. International companies started to cut ties with Iran after Trump left the nuclear agreement in May. In the face of U.S. sanctions, many companies got cold feet and got out of the Iranian market. But some countries, like India, China and Turkey, say they are committed to buying Iranian oil despite the threat of U.S. sanctions. And Zarif says the U.S. posturing impacts how Iranians want to interact with the West. Well, the Iranians have lost some hope in engagement. But the international community has failed. So, that has long-term consequences for Irans foreign policy behavior. For now, both countries are steadfast in their positions and people are continuing to be caught in the middle.The United States was the only country to leave the multilateral nuclear deal with Iran. The Trump administration quickly moved to snap back crippling sanctions on Iran. We spoke with the countrys top diplomat and young Iranians to see how these moves have affected their lives.CreditCredit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesNov. 11, 2018The strain was evident in Alireza Karimis voice as he described his struggle to obtain the diazoxide pills his father needs to lower insulin levels and fight pancreatic cancer.The medicine has to be imported, and until recently that was not a problem. But for the past three months, Mr. Karimi has not been able to find it anyplace, and there is now only one bottle left.Now that this medicine isnt here, were forced to give him only one per day, Mr. Karimi said in an interview over Telegram, a popular messaging app for Iranians. The reduced dosage has created complications, like the threat of convulsions and the need to monitor his father 24 hours a day to make sure his insulin levels do not spike, which could send him into a coma.Anxieties over the availability of medicine are mounting in Iran with the reimposition this month of sanctions by the United States after President Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal.Harsh banking restrictions and the threat of secondary sanctions for companies doing business with Iran have made it nearly impossible for foreign pharmaceutical companies to continue working in the country.Trump administration officials say that the sanctions will not affect trade in humanitarian items, but many are skeptical.The fact is that the banks are so terrified by the sanctions that they dont want to do anything with Iran, said Grard Araud, Frances ambassador to the United Nations. So it means that there is a strong risk that in a few months really there will be a shortage of medicine in Iran.The Trump administrations maximum pressure campaign is starting to remove some of the few avenues that Iran had left to conduct banking for humanitarian items.One pharmaceutical importer in Iran, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of harassment by the authorities, said the banking sanctions had unnerved many of his European and American clients, who are looking for signals from the Treasury about what banks they can work with without risking penalties.ImageCredit...Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesIt creates a problem where even when you have a European company that wants to sell to Iran, due to the absence of banks being there, payments cant regularly and reliably be made into Europe, said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, an expert in sanctions and humanitarian trade with Bourse and Bazaar in London.Mr. Batmanghelidj added that the Treasury had been slow or even unwilling to issue licenses authorized by Congress for humanitarian reasons. The licenses allow companies to do business with Iran and other countries that the United States has blacklisted as sponsors of terrorism.The problems are compounded by Irans own economic problems, which have led to a steep decline in the nations currency, the rial, and to steep increases in drug costs, since most are imported. Mr. Karimi said his fathers diazoxide pills used to cost roughly $28 a bottle but the last time he bought any, three months ago, the price had increased to $43.In some cases, shortages have been attributed to patients stockpiling medicines or to the governments efforts to control the supply, knowing that access to hard currency might be difficult in the near future.Recently, nearly 200 mental health professionals wrote an open letter to the authorities about the declining availability of medicines. One of the signatories, Dr. Amir Hossein Jalali, a psychiatrist in Tehran, said in an interview over Telegram that even some domestically produced medicines that need raw materials from outside of the country have also faced a lot of shortages.He said it was hard to change a patients medical routine, especially in mental health and chronic illnesses. Finding an effective treatment can be difficult, and even substituting medicine with something from the same chemical family can lead to a deterioration in the patients condition.Maryam Peyman, who has multiple sclerosis, recently went through her last bottle of Orlept, a German medication. For three months she was unable to find any more, or a replacement drug, making it impossible for her to work or even to concentrate.After three months of extreme discomfort without Orlept, a drug normally used for epilepsy but also prescribed for neurological issues, she finally found a domestically produced alternative, but that is far from ideal.Now that Im using Iranian-made medicine, it gives me headaches and impaired vision, she said. The German medicine didnt give me any headaches. It increased concentration, and it didnt impact my eyesight.Mr. Batmanghelidj said that the Trump administration could improve the situation by issuing clear guidelines for pharmaceutical companies doing business with Iran.Theres been nothing to date other than lip service from Pompeo, he said referring to Mike Pompeo, the American secretary of state. Its either reflective of infighting in the administration or negligence thats taking place. | World |
White-tailed deer on Staten Island have become the first wild animals with documented Omicron infections. The coronavirus has now been found in deer in 15 states.Credit...Andrew Seng for The New York TimesFeb. 7, 2022White-tailed deer on Staten Island have been found carrying the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the coronavirus, marking the first time the variant has been reported in wild animals.The findings add to a growing body of evidence that white-tailed deer are easily infected by the virus. The results are likely to intensify concerns that deer, which are widely distributed across the United States and live near humans, could become a reservoir for the virus and a potential source of new variants.Researchers have previously reported that the virus was widespread in deer in Iowa in late 2020 and parts of Ohio in early 2021.The U.S. Department of Agriculture has confirmed infections in deer in 13 additional states Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Virginia Lyndsay Cole, a spokesperson for the agencys Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said on Thursday. Those animals were infected with earlier variants of the virus.Research suggests that deer are catching the virus from humans and then spreading it to other deer, and there is no evidence that the animals are transmitting it back to people. But longer-term, widespread circulation of the virus in deer would give the virus more opportunity to mutate, potentially giving rise to new variants that could spill over into people or other animal species.The circulation of the virus in deer provides opportunities for it to adapt and evolve, said Vivek Kapur, a veterinary microbiologist at Penn State University, who is part of the Staten Island research team. And its likely to come back and haunt us in the future.The researchers also found that one deer with Omicron already had a high level of antibodies to the virus, suggesting that it may have been previously infected. Omicron has proved able to evade some of the immune systems defenses in humans. If it is similarly immune-evasive in deer, animals infected during earlier outbreaks may be vulnerable to reinfection.The news that Omicron had breached white-tailed deer populations was not unexpected, experts said.Its disappointing but its not surprising, said Dr. Scott Weese, an infectious diseases veterinarian at the University of Guelph in Ontario.Omicron is quite ubiquitous, said Dr. Samira Mubareka, a virologist at Sunnybrook Research Institute and the University of Toronto.The new research, which has not yet been published in a scientific journal, is a partnership among the Penn State researchers, the conservation nonprofit White Buffalo, the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation and other institutions. As part of a deer population-control study, White Buffalo has been working with the city to capture local deer and sterilize some of the young males.ImageCredit...Hannah Yoon for The New York TimesBetween mid-December and the end of January, the field workers collected blood samples from 131 captured deer, as well as nasal and tonsillar swabs from a smaller subset of animals.Nearly 15 percent of the deer had antibodies to the virus in their blood, the researchers found, suggesting that the animals had previously been infected with it.P.C.R. testing of the swabs from 68 deer also revealed that seven of the animals were actively infected with the virus at the time of sampling. The P.C.R. tests also revealed that viral samples from all seven deer had a pattern of mutations that was suggestive of the Omicron variant.The researchers have now sequenced four of those samples and confirmed that at least four deer were infected by Omicron, which spread rapidly through New York Citys human population in December.The recent wave is spilling over, Dr. Kapur said.The researchers cautioned that it was impossible to make sweeping conclusions based on the single deer that tested positive for the virus and also had high levels of antibodies in its blood. They could not rule out the possibility that the animal had developed those antibodies during the course of its current infection.But if the findings hold up, and deer can be repeatedly reinfected by new variants, it raises the risk that the animals could become a reservoir for the virus, the scientists said.You can imagine this could be a never-ending, perpetual cycle of deer constantly circulating the virus among themselves and picking up the new variants, said Suresh Kuchipudi, a veterinary microbiologist at Penn State who led the research team.How humans are spreading the virus to deer remains unknown. People could spread the virus to the animals directly perhaps by hand-feeding deer in parks or yards, the researchers noted or indirectly, through wastewater or contaminated trash.Dr. Mubareka emphasized the need for longitudinal surveillance of the Staten Island deer to determine how the variant evolves, whether it spills over into other wildlife, and what level of illness it causes. Deer have appeared asymptomatic when infected with earlier variants.The researchers are hoping to conduct laboratory studies of the antibodies they detected in the Staten Island deer to try to determine which version of the virus each animal was infected by and how much those antibodies might protect against other variants.Does a Delta infection protect deer from being reinfected by Delta? Does it protect against Omicron? Does an Omicron infection protect against a future Delta infection?These are all open questions, said Kurt Vandegrift, a disease ecologist at Penn State and member of the research team. Were brand-new in finding these infections in the wild. And so thats why were taking data, and thats why we need to do more surveillance.In the meantime, the researchers said, New Yorkers should not fear their local deer, but keeping a safe distance away from wildlife is always a good practice.Several states including New Jersey and Massachusetts have recommended additional measures for hunters butchering animals in the field, such as avoiding the head, lungs and digestive tract, in addition to general hygiene practices. Get vaccinated, wear a mask, gloves, wash your hands, but assume that you could be exposed, Dr. Mubareka said.The best way to prevent deer from becoming a reservoir for the virus is to curb its spread in humans, the scientists emphasized. The discovery of Omicron in deer, Dr. Kuchipudi said, is a reminder and probably call for action that the pandemics not over yet. | Health |
MatterCoronaviruses discovered in Laotian bats are surprisingly adept at infecting human cells, showing that such deadly features can indeed evolve outside of a lab.Credit...Kevin K. CaldwellOct. 14, 2021In the summer of 2020, half a year into the coronavirus pandemic, scientists traveled into the forests of northern Laos to catch bats that might harbor close cousins of the pathogen.In the dead of night, they used mist nets and canvas traps to snag the animals as they emerged from nearby caves, gathered samples of saliva, urine and feces, then released them back into the darkness.The fecal samples turned out to contain coronaviruses, which the scientists studied in high security biosafety labs, known as BSL-3, using specialized protective gear and air filters.Three of the Laos coronaviruses were unusual: They carried a molecular hook on their surface that was very similar to the hook on the virus that causes Covid-19, called SARS-CoV-2. Like SARS-CoV-2, their hook allowed them to latch onto human cells.It is even better than early strains of SARS-CoV-2, said Marc Eloit, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris who led the study, referring to how well the hook on the Laos coronaviruses binds to human cells. The study was posted online last month and has not yet been published in a scientific journal.Virus experts are buzzing about the discovery. Some suspect that these SARS-CoV-2-like viruses may already be infecting people from time to time, causing only mild and limited outbreaks. But under the right circumstances, the pathogens could give rise to a Covid-19-like pandemic, they say.The findings also have significant implications for the charged debate over Covids origins, experts say. Some people have speculated that SARS-CoV-2s impressive ability to infect human cells could not have evolved through a natural spillover from an animal. But the new findings seem to suggest otherwise.That really puts to bed any notion that this virus had to have been concocted, or somehow manipulated in a lab, to be so good at infecting humans, said Michael Worobey, a University of Arizona virologist who was not involved in the work.These bat viruses, along with more than a dozen others discovered in recent months in Laos, Cambodia, China and Thailand, may also help researchers better anticipate future pandemics. The viruses family trees offer hints about where potentially dangerous strains are lurking, and which animals scientists should look at to find them.Last week, the U.S. government announced a $125 million project to identify thousands of wild viruses in Asia, Latin America and Africa to determine their risk of spillover. Dr. Eloit predicted that there were many more relatives of SARS-CoV-2 left to find.I am a fly fisherman, he said. When I am unable to catch a trout, that doesnt mean there are no trout in the river.When SARS-CoV-2 first came to light, its closest known relative was a bat coronavirus that Chinese researchers found in 2016 in a mine in southern Chinas Yunnan Province. RaTG13, as it is known, shares 96 percent of its genome with SARS-CoV-2. Based on the mutations carried by each virus, scientists have estimated that RaTG13 and SARS-CoV-2 share a common ancestor that infected bats about 40 years ago.Both viruses infect cells by using a molecular hook, called the receptor-binding domain, to latch on to their surface. RaTG13s hook, adapted for attaching to bat cells, can only cling weakly to human cells. SARS-CoV-2s hook, by contrast, can clasp cells in the human airway, the first step toward a potentially lethal case of Covid-19.To find other close relatives of SARS-CoV-2, wildlife virus experts checked their freezers full of old samples from across the world. They identified several similar coronaviruses from southern China, Cambodia, and Thailand. Most came from bats, while a few came from scaly mammals known as pangolins. None was a closer relative than RaTG13.Dr. Eloit and his colleagues instead set out to find new coronaviruses.They traveled to northern Laos, about 150 miles from the mine where Chinese researchers had found RaTG13. Over six months they caught 645 bats, belonging to 45 different species. The bats harbored two dozen kinds of coronaviruses, three of which were strikingly similar to SARS-CoV-2 especially in the receptor-binding domain.In RaTG13, 11 of the 17 key building blocks of the domain are identical to those of SARS-CoV-2. But in the three viruses from Laos, as many as 16 were identical the closest match to date.Dr. Eloit speculated that one or more of the coronaviruses might be able to infect humans and cause mild disease. In a separate study, he and colleagues took blood samples from people in Laos who collect bat guano for a living. Although the Laotians did not show signs of having been infected with SARS-CoV-2, they carried immune markers, called antibodies, that appeared to be caused by a similar virus.Linfa Wang, a molecular virologist at the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore who was not involved in the study, agreed that such an infection was possible, since the newly discovered viruses can attach tightly to a protein on human cells called ACE2.If the receptor binding domain is ready to use ACE2, these guys are dangerous, Dr. Wang said.Paradoxically, some other genes in the three Laotian viruses are more distantly related to SARS-CoV-2 than other bat viruses. The cause of this genetic patchwork is the complex evolution of coronaviruses.If a bat infected with one coronavirus catches a second one, the two different viruses may end up in a single cell at once. As that cell begins to replicate each of those viruses, their genes get shuffled together, producing new virus hybrids.In the Laotian coronaviruses, this gene shuffling has given them a receptor-binding domain thats very similar to that of SARS-CoV-2. The original genetic swap took place about a decade ago, according to a preliminary analysis by Spyros Lytras, a graduate student at the University of Glasgow in Scotland.Mr. Lytras and his colleagues are now comparing SARS-CoV-2 not just to the new viruses from Laos, but to other close relatives that have been found in recent months. Theyre finding even more evidence of gene shuffling. This process known as recombination may be reshaping the viruses from year to year.Its becoming more and more obvious how important recombination is, Mr. Lytras said.He and his colleagues are now drawing the messy evolutionary trees of SARS-CoV-2-like viruses based on these new insights. Finding more viruses could help clear up the picture. But scientists are divided as to where to look for them.Dr. Eloit believes the best bet is a zone of Southeast Asia that includes the site where his colleagues found their coronaviruses, as well as the nearby mine in Yunnan where RaTG13 was found.I think the main landscape corresponds to north Vietnam, north Laos and south China, Dr. Eloit said.The U.S. governments new virus-hunting project, called DEEP VZN, may turn up one or more SARS-CoV-2-like viruses in that region. A spokesman for USAID, the agency funding the effort, named Vietnam as one of the countries where researchers will be searching, and said that new coronaviruses are one of their top priorities.Other scientists think its worth looking for relatives of SARS-CoV-2 further afield. Dr. Worobey of the University of Arizona said that some bat coronaviruses carrying SARS-CoV-2-like segments have been found in eastern China and Thailand.Clearly the recombination is showing us that these viruses are part of a single gene pool over hundreds and hundreds of miles, if not thousands of miles, Dr. Worobey said.Colin Carlson, a biologist at Georgetown University, suspects that a virus capable of producing a Covid-like outbreak might be lurking even further away. Bats as far east as Indonesia and as far west as India, he noted, share many biological features with the animals known to carry SARS-CoV-2-like viruses.This is not just a Southeast Asia problem, Dr. Carlson said. These viruses are diverse, and they are more cosmopolitan than we have thought.The interest in the origins of the pandemic has put renewed attention on the safety measures researchers are using when studying potentially dangerous viruses. To win DEEP VZN grants, scientists will have to provide a biosafety and biosecurity plan, according to a USAID spokesman, including training for staff, guidelines on protective equipment to be worn in the field and safety measures for lab work.If scientists find more close cousins of SARS-CoV-2, it doesnt necessarily mean they pose a deadly threat. They might fail to spread in humans or, as some scientists speculate, cause only small outbreaks. Just seven coronaviruses are known to have jumped the species barrier to become well-established human pathogens.Theres probably a vast range of other coronaviruses that end up going nowhere, said Jessica Metcalf, an evolutionary ecologist at Princeton University.Still, recombination may be able to turn a virus going nowhere into a new threat. In May, researchers reported that two coronaviruses in dogs recombined in Malaysia. The result was a hybrid that infected eight children.When a coronavirus that we have monitored for decades, that we think of as just something our pets can get, can make the jump we should have seen that coming, right? Dr. Carlson said. | science |
Heres what we know about when mail-in ballots will be counted.Jan. 5, 2021, 9:11 p.m. ETJan. 5, 2021, 9:11 p.m. ETCredit...Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesAll eyes were on mail-in ballots when general election results were tallied in November. And now, with control of the Senate hinging on two runoff elections in Georgia, it is no surprise that mail-in ballots are getting attention again. Here is what we know about when they will be counted:Mail-in ballots could not be counted before the polls closed, even if they arrived before election day. But many ballots have already been processed, meaning envelope signatures and addresses have been verified, though the tallying of the votes themselves only began Tuesday night.Of course, it is hard to say how long it will take for all of the mail-in ballots to be counted.First, some mail-in ballots may not have been received yet. Although most Georgians had to get their ballots in by the time the polls closed at 7 p.m. Eastern, military and overseas voters have three additional days for their ballots to be received, as long as they mailed them by Tuesday.Second, some counties will count their mail-in ballots faster than others.So when will all the mail-in ballots actually be counted? Only time will tell. | Politics |
Donald Trump Whatever He Touches (Or Eats) Turns to Gold ... On Wall Street 1/20/2018 In case you haven't heard -- especially from him -- Donald Trump's first year in office has been great for the stock market ... but 3 companies in particular have benefited bigly from their association with the Prez. TMZ did some research, and found that the stock price of McDonald's -- which Trump loves to eat, Twitter -- which Trump loves to tweet, and KFC -- another fast food favorite ... have all seen huge gains since he became president on January 20, 2017. Mickey D's has seen the biggest boost so far during Trump's time in office -- its stock has risen 44% over the past year. Twitter's close behind with a 42% increase, and many argue the Prez's usage of the social media platform is keeping it in business. Yum! Brands, which owns KFC, has also seen a substantial 29% increase. As we reported, Trump's physical this week "went exceptionally well" ... but he did discuss dieting with his doctor. Gotta think 2 of these companies are rooting against that. | Entertainment |
Seeing Comet Borisov wont be easy for the typical sky gazer, but astronomers still have a lot to learn from this extrasolar tourist.Credit...European Southern Observatory/EPA, via ShutterstockPublished Dec. 24, 2019Updated Dec. 26, 2019After drifting between stars for eons, Comet 2I/Borisov will make its closest approach to Earth on Saturday, Dec. 28. The comet is only the second confirmed interstellar object to be observed in our solar system, after Oumuamua in 2017. During the comets close approach, it will be about 180 million miles away from us, which at that point will be farther away than Mars.Unfortunately for sky gazers hoping to catch a glance of this years Christmas comet, it will be very difficult to see, though you can try.Can you see Comet Borisov with a telescope?It is going to be very tough. Comet Borisov is small less than half a mile across and it is getting fainter as it moves away from the sun.There are no records, so far, of someone seeing the comet with just their eyes through a telescope, said David Jewitt, a planetary astronomer at the University of California, Los Angeles.Some amateur observations have been made using CCD telescopes, which have cameras in place of the eyepieces. But unless youre using a telescope with an aperture larger than 20 inches, you will see only a fuzzy ball.Gennadiy Borisov, the Crimean astronomer who discovered the comet in August, used a 26-inch aperture telescope he built to make his finding. Also, the comet will be diving into the Southern Hemisphere, so it will be even harder for us to see north of the Equator, Dr. Jewitt said.But if you would really like to try, Dr. Jewitt suggests grabbing a large telescope that is at least a meter in diameter and then going somewhere far from any city lights, like the top of a mountain in a desert.What have we learned about the comet?On Dec. 12, the Hubble Space Telescope released two images of Comet Borisov that show the icy interloper as a bright blue dot crowned by a ghostly aura. The first image was taken in November and features a photobomb from a faraway galaxy. The second was taken while the comet made its closest approach to the sun. The ghastly glow around the comet is made of dust and ice particles that are being ejected from its core. That wispy tail measures more than 100,000 miles long.The Hubble images basically show us that this comet has the same kind of physical structure as comets in our own solar system, said Jennifer J. Wiseman, a senior project scientist with the Hubble Space Telescope mission.Comets in our solar system are like fossil records of its earliest days. Because they spent most of their lives far from the sun, they retain the most primitive material from the solar systems early years. By studying Comet Borisov, scientists are getting some of their closest observations yet into the formation of another star system.The planetary system that this object came from originally was possibly not that different from our solar system, said Heidi B. Hammel, a planetary astronomer with the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy.The Hubble observations have also yielded surprises about the size of the comets core. At its upper limit, it has a radius of about 500 meters, or a third of a mile, and only a couple hundred meters at its lower limit. That makes it about one-fifteenth the size that astronomers previously thought.Because Comet Borisov is so small, its possible the space rock could break apart, Dr. Jewitt said. As the icy rock travels near the sun, it heats up and ejects more and more material. This process, called outgassing, can accelerate the spinning of the comet. The smaller the comet, the faster its spin can be accelerated, which could potentially cause it to explode. Because Comet Borisov just whisked by the sun in early December, theres still a chance it could experience such a fate in the next few months as it tries to exit our solar system.Itll be interesting because well be able to see what comes out from the inside of one of these interstellar bodies as it breaks down, Dr. Jewitt said. Im hoping for an explosion.Are there more interstellar objects in our solar system?Although weve so far observed only two in our solar system Oumuamua and Comet Borisov scientists predict there may be as many as 10,000 interstellar bodies floating within the orbit of Neptune, our solar systems farthest known planet. Nearly all of these objects are too far and too faint to observe.VideoA time-lapse sequence of the comet 2I/Borisov over a seven-hour period. It is the second known interstellar object to enter our solar system, passing through at 110,000 miles per hour. NASA, Images by ESA and J. DePasqualeCreditCredit...Space Telescope Science Institute/NASA, via Associated PressWill we observe more interstellar objects in the future?The difficulty with spotting these interstellar interlopers is that they are not very bright. But astronomers are optimistic we will see many more in the future.Once youve found the first one, then finding more become easier and easier, Dr. Jewitt said. We can expect to find more objects in the next year or two.Dr. Hammel agreed, saying new telescopes like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, which is being built in Chile, will help in the search.Its going to be a really cool time for astronomy, she said.Has an interstellar object ever hit Earth?We dont know the answer yet. Dr. Jewitt has calculated that Earth probably gets pelted with an interstellar object like Comet Borisov or Oumuamua about once every 100 million years. That would suggest our planet has experienced about 50 interstellar encounters during its deep history.And if they did strike our world, what did they bring with them?If they were able to carry biological materials from another system, Dr. Jewitt said, maybe they would survive and could implant all over the galaxy. | science |
TrilobitesIce cores drilled from the southern continent preserved a signal of the peopling of islands thousands of miles away.Credit...Jack TreistOct. 6, 2021When it comes to records of human history, dont overlook Earths only uninhabited continent.Researchers recently found soot preserved in Antarctic ice that theyve linked to fires set in New Zealand by Mori settlers, the islands first human inhabitants. Finding evidence of conflagrations thousands of miles away is a dramatic example of early humanitys environmental impact, the team suggests.These results were published Wednesday in Nature.Since the 1960s, researchers have been extracting long cores of ice from Antarctica, Greenland and other snowy locales. Ice cores, which are made up of layers of snow that accumulated annually and were compressed over time, consist of more than just ice, however. They can also contain particulate matter like soot and volcanic ash that was once airborne.Ice cores are actually telling you what fell out of the sky, said Joseph McConnell, an environmental scientist at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nev.By studying particulate matter in ice cores, scientists can pinpoint past events such as major fires, volcanic eruptions, and even industrial smelting.In 2008, Dr. McConnell and his colleagues began analyzing six ice cores drilled in Antarctica. Working with roughly three-foot-long sections of ice at a time, the team melted each one and fed the resulting liquid into an instrument that turned it into aerosols. The researchers then passed those aerosol particles through a laser that caused any soot present to heat up and glow.We measure that incandescence, Dr. McConnell said.Using this technique, the researchers calculated the rate at which soot particles had fallen over Antarctica over the last two millenniums. They found that four of their ice cores, all collected from continental Antarctica, exhibited roughly constant rates over time. But two other ice cores, both collected from James Ross Island on the northern Antarctic Peninsula, exhibited a roughly threefold uptick in soot beginning in the late 13th century.ImageCredit...Jack TreistThat discrepancy was baffling. What was different about the northern Antarctic Peninsula? Dr. McConnell said.The team turned to atmospheric modeling to investigate the mystery. The soot that ultimately settled on James Ross Island could have only come from a few locations, the researchers found. Because of atmospheric circulation, New Zealand, Tasmania and Southern Patagonia fit the bill, Dr. McConnell said.To home in on the most likely source, the researchers analyzed published records of charcoal found in each of the three places. Charcoal reveals that woody material was burned nearby, and changes in its abundance over time can be traced, just like soot records in ice.Only New Zealand exhibited a pronounced uptick in charcoal abundance at the end of the 13th century, consistent with the ice core records from the northern Antarctic Peninsula.We see this big peak, which we call the initial burning period, around 700 years ago, said Dave McWethy, an ecologist at Montana State University who studies charcoal in New Zealand, and a co-author of the study.But finding signatures of those fires thousands of miles away in Antarctica was a big surprise, Dr. McWethy said. No one knew that it could travel that far and actually be recorded in ice cores.The increase in fire activity in New Zealand at the end of the 13th century is most likely linked to the arrival of Mori, researchers have proposed. Like other Indigenous groups, Mori used fire to make their environment more habitable, said Dr. McWethy. Fire is an amazing tool for peoples around the world.Over 90 percent of New Zealand was forested when Mori settlers arrived, and burning parts of the landscape would have facilitated travel through the dense forest, Dr. McWethy said. Its pretty impenetrable.Fire would also have been important for clearing land to grow crops like taro, yam and kmara, said Kelly Tikao, a researcher of Mori traditions at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand who is of Ngi Tahu, Ngti Mmoe and Waitaha ancestry, who was not involved in the research. Besides enabling agriculture, burning parts of the landscape would have also promoted the growth of wild but edible plants like bracken fern that thrive after fires, Dr. Tikao said.The Mori used fire deliberately, but there was never an intent that it destroy their landscape, Dr. Tikao added.Our very philosophy of who we are is based on the elements of the Earth, fire being one of them, she said. When you believe the land is yourself, the last thing you want to do is kill it. | science |
Africa|Nigerias Battles With Boko Haram Scar the Land and Its Peoplehttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/world/africa/nigeria-boko-haram.htmlMarch 10, 2017ImageCredit...Ashley Gilbertson for The New York TimesWhile working on an article on civilian massacres by the Nigerian military, the photographer Ashley Gilbertson and I heard reports that soldiers were burning villages. The militant group Boko Haram, too, has been accused of setting fire to homes, but residents told us the military had now adopted the tactic as a way to clear the countryside so it could freely carry out operations against the insurgents. We saw the charred remains of villages when we flew over the area, but it was unclear who was responsible.In some places like this one, patches of farmland were burned. The military not long ago opened several main highways from Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, leading to the rest of northeastern Nigeria, saying the area was now cleared of insurgents. Farmers who are living in squalid camps for displaced people in Maiduguri are anxious about the state of their fields. Because they have not been allowed back for years, they have no idea what awaits them on their farms.ImageCredit...Ashley Gilbertson for The New York TimesFrom the sky, Borno State, the region where Boko Haram is most active, is a patchwork of fallow farmland, swaths of desert and a few swampy areas. Famine-like conditions are raging in the area, a region with a rich history of agriculture. Boko Haram has chased off all the farmers, and the militants themselves have fallen victim to food shortages. We spotted only a handful of vehicles on the roads as we passed overhead. The area is mostly a ghost town.ImageCredit...Ashley Gilbertson for The New York TimesEvery shade of beige is visible in this part of Nigeria. We think these are animal tracks, probably from cattle. Boko Haram is notorious for stealing cows to feed their group and to trade as a means of financial support. Most farmers who have livestock have cleared out, but nomadic herders pass through this part of Nigeria. Maybe the tracks are from motorbikes, which officials in Maiduguri banned after insurgents used them to begin attacks and carry out suicide bombings. Now, anyone spotted riding a motorbike is presumed to be a member of Boko Haram.ImageCredit...Ashley Gilbertson for The New York TimesThis is part of a camp for displaced people in a community called Monguno. The town itself was once destroyed by Boko Haram, but military advances helped clear out insurgents, and now tens of thousands of people have poured in, looking for a safe place to wait out the yearslong insurgency. They live in ragged huts in a camp that is low on food supplies. More people arrive daily 350 villagers came the day before we visited. Several recent arrivals told us the military had ordered them to leave their homes. One woman sent an envoy back to check on her house and received word that it had been burned to the ground.ImageCredit...Ashley Gilbertson for The New York TimesLake Chad is not far from this area of Nigeria, and swamps emerge in a few spots, right next to farms. Besides farmers, fishermen have also fallen on hard times during the crisis. The military has largely banned the fish trade, fearing Boko Haram was profiting from it. We met one fisherman in the Monguno camp who had been sneaking back to a small lake to fish, then stuffing his catch in his pants in hopes of passing undetected on his way home.ImageCredit...Ashley Gilbertson for The New York TimesThe military has a big garrison in Monguno, and soldiers keep watch in their vehicles on the outskirts of town. A berm has been constructed around the edges of the camp, which houses about 26,000 displaced people. Mobile phone networks in Monguno have been cut and fuel stations are closed.ImageCredit...Ashley Gilbertson for The New York TimesMost farms are inoperable around here. Famine was declared in pockets of Borno State last year. Many communities are sealed off from safety as insurgents scatter from hide-outs in the forest, pushed out by recent military operations. Humanitarian groups face huge logistical challenges getting food and other supplies to people in need. Even roads the military says are safe now have been attacked by insurgents.ImageCredit...Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times | World |
Canada 3, United States 2Credit...Jonathan Nackstrand/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesFeb. 12, 2014SOCHI, Russia Since 2010, the United States womens hockey team got younger and faster while Canadas Hayley Wickenheiser, the games gold standard, merely grew older. That was the running narrative, anyway, as the Canadians, the three-time defending Olympic champions, lost four consecutive games to the speedy, streaking Americans in the lead-up to the Sochi Games.Wickenheiser did not have a point at the 2013 world championships in Canada, won by the United States, and as she battled injuries, her spot on the Olympic team, a given since 1998, no longer seemed automatic.When Wickenheiser made her fifth Winter Olympics team but lost her captaincy at age 35, the symbolism was easier to read than the Cyrillic alphabet. The time had come for somebody else to lead Canada.If the Sochi Games are Wickenheisers bell lap, starting with her turn as her countrys flag-bearer in last Fridays opening ceremony, she is summoning a wicked finishing kick. On Wednesday, she was the difference maker in Canadas 3-2 victory over the United States in a preliminary game at Shayba Arena.The United States struck first, scoring in the 38th minute on a power-play goal by Hilary Knight, who beat Charline Labont, who finished with 25 saves. The American goaltender Jessie Vetter stopped 19 shots in the first two periods, but in the third minute of the third, with Canada on the power play, Wickenheiser sent a crisp pass to Meghan Agosta, who beat Vetter. Less than two minutes later, Wickenheiser added an even-strength goal on a shot that dribbled off Vetters glove and trickled across the goal line.The Americans protested that the whistle had sounded to stop play before the puck crossed the line, but after a review, the goal stood. Agosta, who turned 27 Wednesday, scored on a breakaway with less than six minutes left for what proved to be the game-winning goal after the United States Anne Schleper scored with 65 seconds left.The United States has eight skaters younger than 24. On the two goals in which Wickenheiser worked her wizardry, the average age of the skaters on the ice for the American team was under 22 years.Wickenheiser, old legs and all, played 21 minutes 38 seconds. Only one Canadian, 26-year-old Catherine Ward, and two American players, the 24-year-old Knight and the 26-year-old Gigi Marvin, spent more time on the ice.I dont think Im old, thats probably the most important thing, Wickenheiser said. I think it comes down to making the plays out there when theyre there, keeping your head about you and knowing that no matter what a pressure cooker it is, its ultimately another game against another really good team.In the record bin of life, Wickenheiser sees experience as the B side of age.I think our team has the experience and composure, she said. When the chips are down, we know how to win.It has become like a broken record, the United States losing to Canada in the Olympics. Since beating Canada for the gold in 1998 in womens hockeys Olympic debut, the United States has lost to Canada in the finals in 2002 and 2010 by a combined score of 5-2. Canada has won 18 straight games at the Olympics.With both teams guaranteed a spot in the semifinals, Wednesdays game was psychological warfare. The Canadians were out to show they are the same old juggernaut. They look looser and more cohesive under their new coach, Kevin Dineen, than they did under Dan Church, who stepped down in December.The United States wanted to show they are nobodys bridesmaids, which is why Wednesdays result was hardly meaningless.Not happy with tonight, said Amanda Kessel, who had two goals in the Americans victory Monday against Switzerland. I dont think we came out with the same fire.Kessel, 22, added: It hurts. Every game matters and you want to win every one.Asked to assess her teams performance, United States Coach Katey Stone said, I feel a little indifferent about how our team played today.Stone and Dineen sat side by side for their postgame news conference. When it was over, they rose to leave and Dineen said to Stone, See you down the road.Both hope their next showdown will be in next weeks gold medal game. Their rivalry almost demands it. During his N.H.L. playing career, Dineen got an up-close view of the Boston Red Sox-Yankees rivalry while playing in Hartford and the Michigan State-Ohio State rivalry while playing in Columbus.I think this one is the real deal, he said. | Sports |
A late move by the Trump administration would stop enforcement of protections against discriminatory practices that have a disparate impact on protected groups.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesJan. 5, 2021WASHINGTON The Trump administration has embarked on an 11th-hour bid to undo some civil rights protections for minority groups, which could have a ripple effect on women, people with disabilities and L.G.B.T. people, according to a draft document, in a change that would mark one of the most significant shifts in civil rights enforcement in generations.The Justice Department has submitted for White House approval a change to how it enforces Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits recipients of federal funding from discriminating based on race, color or national origin. The regulation covers housing programs, employers, schools, hospitals, and other organizations and programs.Under the change, the department would continue to narrowly enforce the laws protections in cases where it could prove intentional discrimination, but no longer in instances where a policy or practice at issue had a disparate impact on minority or other groups.Civil rights groups say that the disparate impact rule is one of their most important tools for showing discrimination because it takes into account patterns of behavior that can seem neutral and compare outcomes for different groups to reveal inequities. Such cases make up most discrimination litigation, as businesses and organizations rarely disclose that they are purposefully engaging in the practice.But the Justice Department argued that its current approach to enforcing civil rights protections addressed a vastly broader scope of conduct than the statute itself prohibits, according to a copy of its draft proposal to amend the regulations obtained by The New York Times. The most substantial amendments to the rule would eliminate references to policies and practices having the effect of subjecting individuals to discrimination.The move is the latest in the Trump administrations efforts to pare back civil rights protections for minority and other groups. It has curtailed other regulations, reversed affirmative action policies and cut government diversity training. The Justice Department effort also dovetails with a decades-long project in the conservative legal movement to push back on civil rights protections seen as going beyond the law.The Justice Department quietly submitted the change to the White House Office of Management and Budget on Dec. 21, making it one of former Attorney General William P. Barrs final acts. It did not make the language available for public review or comment, as is typically required in the federal rule-making process, citing an exception for matters related to agency loans, grants and contracts because the rule covers organizations that receive federal funding.Should the revised language be put in place, as the White House is expected to do, progressive legal groups are likely to challenge it, setting up a potential review by a Supreme Court with a conservative majority seen as hostile to civil rights protections. The incoming Biden administration could not immediately reverse the move, but a new attorney general could delay its enactment.A Justice Department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The change would be the Justice Departments first substantial amendment to how it defines discriminatory behavior in Title VI since 1973, according to the draft document.That proposed change would have broad impact across the federal government because the Justice Department is responsible for defining how the law prohibits discrimination and the attorney general must approve other agencies related regulations. The draft rule noted a signature line for Mr. Barr.The regulation and explanation are exceedingly sparse, and it shows the dangers of rule-making without following the legally required process, including opportunities for public comment, said Lauren Sampson, a staff attorney at Lawyers for Civil Rights.She added that the departments proposal incorrectly says that the Supreme Court has raised questions about disparate impact as not legally sound, when it has upheld as recently as 2015 disparate impact as a vital tool in the work of protecting civil rights.A widely cited example of disparate impact has been the Jim Crow-era literacy tests that some states created as a condition to vote. The tests did not ask about race and so seemed neutral on their face. But they disproportionately prevented Black people from voting because they had long been forced out of schools and could not read. The tests are generally thought of as discriminatory because of that disparate impact on Black people.More recently, the protections against disparate impact were crucial to Education Department investigations into disproportionate discipline rates among Black and Latino students in schools. It allowed the departments Office for Civil Rights to look at policies and take into account harmful outcomes, said Shiwali Patel, senior counsel for the National Womens Law Center, who worked in the office during the Obama and Trump administrations.In several cases, the office found that schools were disciplining students differently by race.Disparate impact analysis is important to create accountability at schools around the discriminatory effects of discipline policies, particularly since its difficult to prove racially motivated intent behind the policies, Ms. Patel said.The Justice Department also relied on Title VI to conduct investigations into policing, including a high-profile examination of the Baltimore Police Department that found widespread civil rights violations against the citys Black residents, according to Becky Monroe, a lawyer at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights who worked at the Justice Department.The Trump administration has long sought to eliminate protections for groups at risk of suffering such impacts, arguing that the Civil Rights Act as passed by Congress only safeguards against intentional acts of discrimination.The administration had embraced the legal objections of conservative allies, including the widely influential Heritage Foundation, and had put the regulation on a list of anti-discrimination laws championed by the Obama administration whose regulations it planned to revise had President Trump won a second term.Federal agencies are honeycombed with policies that adopt the disparate-impact approach, and the Trump administration needs to root them out, Roger Clegg, the former president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative think tank, wrote in National Review in 2018.The Trump administration has already signaled its objection to the concept and taken steps to undermine it.In 2017, the administration closed a complaint from civil rights groups, including the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, alleging that the cancellation of a large transportation project in Maryland called the Red Line by Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, violated the Civil Rights Act because it disproportionately hurt the citys Black residents. The Transportation Department shelved the complaint, which was opened on the last day of the Obama administration, without a finding or an explanation.The most forceful denouncement of the regulation came in 2018, when the Trump administration essentially blamed an Obama-era guidance document that addressed the disproportionate discipline rates among children of color in the United States for the mass shooting carried out by a troubled white student in Parkland, Fla.Trump administration officials sought extensively to link the document to the disparate impact doctrine. In the days before the Education and Justice Departments rescinded the document in December 2018, a federal school safety commission headed by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos issued a report recommending the guidance be withdrawn because it relies on a disparate impact legal theory, but that theory lacks foundation in applicable law. It called the documents reading of the law dubious, at best.Last fall, the Department of Housing and Urban Development completed a rule that would have weakened anti-discrimination policies regulating the mortgage industry.The move drew a highly unusual request from the countrys four biggest banks which would benefit from the proposed changes that the department avoid rewriting the requirements. The federal government should acknowledge that Americans attention to racial discrimination is more pronounced and expansive, Michael DeVito, Wells Fargos executive vice president for home lending, wrote in a letter to the housing secretary, Ben Carson.Civil rights lawyers sued the department, and in October, a federal judge in Massachusetts issued a nationwide injunction on the rule, finding it arbitrary and capricious.These significant alterations, which run the risk of effectively neutering disparate impact liability under the Fair Housing Act, appear inadequately justified, Judge Mark Mastroianni wrote.Among the first cases in which the Supreme Court tackled disparate impact was an education dispute, Lau v. Nichols, in which non-English-speaking Chinese students sued the San Francisco Unified School District for not offering bilingual education or remedial English, arguing that they were not afforded the same educational benefits as their English-speaking peers.In 1974, the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, citing an agency regulation issued under Title VI that said that discrimination is barred which has that effect even though no purposeful design is present.The case cemented the concept of disparate impact as a bedrock of educational civil rights enforcement and is also credited for robust programming for English-language learners now. The Justice Departments move could jeopardize that, advocates warned.Deleting this regulation not only denies the government an important enforcement tool for detecting and addressing racial discrimination, but it will draw into question longstanding requirements that organizations that take federal funds from the department provide meaningful access to their programs to people who do not speak or read English, said Seth Galanter, the senior director of the National Center for Youth Law. | Politics |
Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesMarch 7, 2017AMSTERDAM The parochial world of Dutch elections is not often seen as a hotbed of foreign intrigue. But in recent months, an unexpected worry has emerged: the influence of American money.The countrys fast-rising far-right leader, Geert Wilders, is getting help from American conservatives attracted to his anti-European Union and anti-Islam views. David Horowitz, an American right-wing activist, has contributed roughly $150,000 to Mr. Wilderss Party for Freedom over two years of which nearly $120,000 came in 2015, making it the largest individual contribution in the Dutch political system that year, according to recently released records.By American standards, the amount is a pittance. But to some Dutch, who are already fearful of possible Russian meddling in the election, the American involvement is an assault on national sovereignty.Its foreign interference in our democracy, said Ronald van Raak, a senior member of Parliament in the opposition Socialist party, who has co-sponsored legislation to ban foreign donations. We would not have thought that people from other countries would have been interested in our politics, he said. Maybe we underestimated ourselves.The Dutch parliamentary elections on March 15 are the kickoff for a pivotal political year in Europe. Other elections loom in France, Germany and possibly Italy. With the viability of the European Union at stake, anxieties are rising about foreign interference, with European intelligence agencies warning that Russia is working to help far-right parties through hacking and disinformation campaigns.But sympathy for Europes far right is also coming from Americans who share similar views and are willing to contribute money to help the cause. Measuring this outside support is difficult, though, because many European countries have leaky, opaque accountability systems on campaign finance.France, Germany and the Netherlands have only published campaign finance data from as recently as 2014 or 2015. And only the Netherlands will update that information with more disclosures before Election Day. New campaign finance data is expected to be released on Wednesday.Though Europe is generally known for its public financing of elections, parties are increasingly seeking outside donations, especially since regulatory loopholes abound. In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany sold gold bars and coins in a strategy to inflate its revenue and, through a quirk of the rules, increase its access to public funds, until the practice was banned by Parliament. German parties have also sought to divert public funds provided to parliamentary caucuses.Its illegal but basically done everywhere in Germany, said Christoph Mllers, a professor of public law and legal philosophy at Humboldt University of Berlin.ImageCredit...Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressWhile France bars contributions from businesses, loans are allowed. A Russian bank made headlines in recent years after lending millions of euros to the far-right National Front party of Marine Le Pen. After that bank failed last year, the party complained that it had been shunned by French banks and declared itself in the market for a new lender.If nothing else, European far-right parties are gaining newly emboldened allies.I expect the Trump administration to be more open to these parties than Obama, certainly, said Representative Steve King, an Iowa Republican who is an ally both of President Trump and the European far right, having met with various party leaders during a recent European trip.The State Department, in a statement, declined to comment on political parties in foreign elections.Mr. Horowitz, who has long sounded alarms on Muslim immigration, first rallied to Mr. Wilderss side after the Dutch politician was put on trial in 2010 for inciting hatred against Muslims with a film he made that attacked the Quran; he was acquitted the next year. Mr. Wilders was more recently found guilty of incitement after leading an anti-Moroccan chant at a rally, though he avoided a fine.I think hes the Paul Revere of Europe, Mr. Horowitz said in an interview. Geert Wilders is a hero, and I think hes a hero of the most important battle of our times, the battle to defend free speech, he added, calling the situation in Europe a nightmare.Though Mr. Horowitzs donations adhere to Dutch standards, there was some question of whether they comply with American law.Organized as a 501(c)(3) under American tax law, Mr. Horowitzs foundation is barred from making donations to political organizations. The donations went to the Friends of PVV, according to Dutch records, a foundation covered by political disclosure rules.Michael Finch, the president of Mr. Horowitzs foundation, said in an email that the funds that were sent to Geert Wilders were to help him in his legal cases and were not political donations.But donations to foreign political entities are problematic, tax experts said.The I.R.S. views foreign political organizations as the same as domestic political organizations not appropriate for a charity to support, said Marcus S. Owens, a partner at Loeb & Loeb, and former director of the Exempt Organizations Division of the Internal Revenue Service, in an email. He added, The I.R.S. also views a charity that is controlled by a political organization as transgressing federal tax rules.Mr. Horowitz said he was not certain if the foundation had given additional funds to Mr. Wilderss party this year or last year.VideoThis is Geert Wilders, a far-right Dutch politician with aspirations to be the next prime minister of the Netherlands. He has compared the Quran to "Mein Kampf" and has called Moroccans "scum."CreditCredit...Bart Maat/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesMr. Wilderss backing of Israel, where he once lived, has set him apart from other far-right groups, and he has courted American Jews. Daniel Pipes, another conservative American activist and a Harvard-educated historian known for his controversial statements on Islam, said in an email exchange that he hoped the rise of the insurgent parties leads not to their forming governments but their sending a strong message to the legacy parties to wake up and deal with the imperative issues they have so long ignored.Mr. Pipes said his foundation, the Middle East Forum, provided money in the six figures to help pay legal bills in Mr. Wilderss trial over the film, but specifically to a legal fund, and has not provided political support. Mr. Pipes has called Mr. Wilders the most important European alive today, but has differed with him on his view of Islam, though he himself has expressed inflammatory views on the subject.Dutch records also show that two American foundations paid for Mr. Wilderss flights and hotels on trips to the United States last year. One, the Gatestone Institute, lists John R. Bolton, a combative former United Nations ambassador under George W. Bush, as its chairman. Another, the International Freedom Alliance Foundation, is backed by Robert J. Shillman, a wealthy Trump supporter who paid for a digital ad in Times Square last year depicting Mr. Trump as Superman. The travel payments were previously reported by Foreign Policy magazine.Lawmakers and academics say the European public has seen little need for tight campaign finance regulations because political campaigning in Europe has historically been far more restrained than in the United States.The campaigns dont seem to be that relevant, Mr. Mollers said. You see campaign finance is spent for posters, and no one believes that changes the game.Now, however, European political campaigns could become more expensive as parties turn to data-driven persuasion efforts similar to those used in the United States, even if they are limited by European data-protection laws. The Dutch Green Party, for instance, has licensed software from Blue State Digital, a prominent American data consultancy.Guillaume Liegey, co-founder and chief executive of Liegey Muller Pons, a data consulting firm, was an adviser to President Franois Hollandes 2012 campaign in France, one of the first in Europe to use data-driven techniques.The idea of using data and technology has since then become more of a standard in todays European campaigns, he said in an email. He now consults for the campaign of Emmanuel Macron, a left-leaning politician who is one of the front-runners in the French presidential race, which takes place in two stages in April and May.Few dispute the stakes. Mr. Wilders and Ms. Le Pen, the French far-right leader, are running strong in polls, though both are considered long shots to win control of their governments. If either did win, it could be a devastating blow to the euro currency union, as well as the European Union itself, an outcome that many analysts regard as a foreign policy disaster.Mr. Horowitz disagrees, and portrays the European Union as the disaster.To have this Parliament that represents nobody in Brussels making laws for everybody, its very anti-democratic, said Mr. Horowitz. I always thought it was a bad idea. | World |
Credit...Adek Berry/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesMarch 9, 2017JAKARTA, Indonesia Back in his days as a badminton coach with the Indonesian national team, Ahmad Mushaddeq traveled the world on the states dime. But after he became the spiritual leader of a back-to-the-land organic farming movement on the island of Borneo, regarded by his followers as the messiah who succeeded Muhammad, the government locked him up for the second time on charges of blasphemy.This week, an Indonesian court sentenced him to a five-year prison term, and gave two other leading figures of Milah Abraham, the religious sect he established, prison terms as well. The sentences, delivered on Tuesday, were the latest in a continuing crackdown on new religious movements across Indonesia that has alarmed human rights groups.The verdict is another indicator of rising discrimination against religious minorities in Indonesia, said Andreas Harsono, the Indonesia representative for Human Rights Watch. He called for a review of state institutions that facilitate such discrimination, including the blasphemy law office.Indonesias blasphemy laws have become a focus of debate ever since Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, the hard-charging Christian governor of Jakarta, was indicted on charges of insulting the Quran in November. While his case has drawn the most attention, a significant portion of the more than 106 people convicted on blasphemy charges since 2004 are not Christians or even unorthodox Muslims, but self-proclaimed prophets and their apostles.Indonesia, a Muslim-majority nation, has a broken system of pluralism, said Al Makin, a professor at Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University in Yogyakarta, who testified as an expert witness on behalf of Milah Abraham at the three mens trial. If the government keeps this policy of arresting people who are different from the mainstream, it means the government denies pluralism.Milah Abraham, also known as Gafatar, is by far the largest religious movement to have emerged in Indonesia over the past few decades, claiming over 50,000 members around the archipelago. More than 25 members have been convicted on blasphemy charges over the last decade, including 11 who spent time in prison.During that time, numerous other self-proclaimed messiahs have also languished in prison, including Lia Aminuddin, the founder of a sect who claimed that she was the wife of the archangel Gabriel, and Agus Noro, who claimed to be a reincarnation of Sukarno, Indonesias first president.Though the Indonesian Constitution ostensibly guarantees freedom of religion, that freedom does not extend to new religious movements. The state authorizes just six official religions: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism. Establishing a new faith is virtually impossible. Sects like Milah Abraham are criticized by Muslim councils and targeted by the police for promoting heresies.Freedom is guaranteed in Indonesia, but violations of the law are not allowed, Boy Rafli Amar, a police spokesman, said via the WhatsApp messaging service, writing that Milah Abrahams teachings contradicted those of Indonesias established religions.Professor Makin said new religious movements had faced increasing persecution since Indonesia began transitioning to democracy in 1998.During the reform period, he said, radical groups have used hate speech to build momentum and intimidate the public with radical or conservative ideology, forcing the state to move against new religions. He said this was a pity because many of the 600 new sects in Indonesias history had made its religious landscape more vibrant.Mr. Mushaddeq, 72, a broad-shouldered man with gray eyes and a gift for gab, discussed his journey from badminton coach to controversial prophet in a jailhouse interview in January.Born in Jakarta during the last years of Dutch colonial rule, he said, he essentially raised himself. During the Japanese invasion of World War II, his father was taken as a forced laborer and never returned, and his mother quickly married another man, leaving Mr. Mushaddeq to be raised by his deaf grandmother. She could hardly communicate, which meant that his impressions of the world, and religious teachings, were gleaned through his own experience.ImageCredit...Jefta Images, via Getty ImagesA talented athlete, Mr. Mushaddeq studied sports science in school, eventually rising to become a badminton coach for the national team. Though he had no formal religious education, he taught himself to read Arabic.In 1987, he was recruited as a leader of the Islamic State of Indonesia, a hard-line movement that wanted Islamic law established throughout the country. But by the turn of the millennium, he had a revelation about who his father was that separated him permanently from his former comrades.I am the son of God, son of the spirit of God, he said.By the early 2000s, Mr. Mushaddeq proclaimed a version of a new ideology, ultimately called Milah Abraham, which argued that every Abrahamic faith eventually lost its way. Just as Judaism had given way to Christianity, and Christianity to Islam, it was Islams turn now to give way to a new, vibrant faith, Milah Abraham. This new faith would in turn be superseded by a new iteration of Abrahamic faith centuries from now.We believe messiahs always arise at a time like this, and their enemies are always the priests, said Farah Meifira, a member of the faith.Mr. Mushaddeq hosted study sessions to gain converts, and encouraged his followers to hold their own. They also posted his sermons on YouTube, which spread his message to a wide audience.He was imprisoned for blasphemy for the first time in 2008, but was released halfway through his four-year term after he signed a letter renouncing his claim to be Muhammads successor.Now I am only a messenger from God, he said.In 2012, his followers established a social organization called Gafatar, a back-to-the-land communitarian movement that promoted organic farming and agricultural self-sufficiency. Those who joined Gafatar were also encouraged to learn the teachings of Milah Abraham.Dwi Adiyanto, 32, a farmer who sold his belongings to buy land with Gafatar in West Kalimantan Province on Borneo, said Milah Abraham provided him with a community and allowed him to discover the true path for himself.In late December 2015, Mr. Dwi was called to a local police station and told to leave the province because Gafatars presence was angering locals. Not long after, Mr. Dwis new homestead was burned to the ground by mobs.The police then forced him and about 7,000 other members of the movement to return to their homes on other islands. Human Rights Watch called the action the most notorious example of Indonesian religious intolerance in 2016.Mr. Dwi, who is now a farmer in central Java, said the experience had only served to strengthen his faith. Faith isnt something you can just drop, he said.Still, it is not clear what the future holds for Milah Abraham, whose teachings have also spread to nearby Malaysia, where its local leaders have also been apprehended by the police.The fact that the prophet is in jail does not doom the movement, said Jean-Francois Mayer, a Swiss academic who studies new religious movements. The question is, are there people with deep beliefs and organizational skills outside of jail?In January, Mr. Mushaddeq said that no matter what happened to him, the faith would go on.God is my father, he said. He taught me. But when I say that to other people, they say Im crazy. | World |
Washington MemoAs President Trump pushes Congress to block certification of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.s victory, his Republican allies look to the showdown on Capitol Hill a century and a half ago as a model.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York TimesJan. 5, 2021WASHINGTON A few days before the inauguration, no one knew who would actually take the oath of office as president of the United States. There were cries of fraud and chicanery as a divided, surly nation continued to debate the winner of the election many weeks after the ballots had been cast.The election of 1876 was the most disputed in American history and in some ways one of the most consequential. As Congress convenes on Wednesday to formalize President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.s victory and dispense with Republican objections, many on Capitol Hill and beyond have been looking to the showdown nearly a century and a half ago for clues on how to resolve the latest clash for power.The players in that drama have faded into obscurity. Few today remember the story of Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican who ultimately prevailed and served four years as a tainted president. Fewer still can name his Democratic opponent, Samuel Tilden, who lost the White House despite garnering more votes. But the system that will govern Wednesdays debate was fashioned from that episode, and the standards that were set then are now cited as arguments in the effort to overturn President Trumps defeat.Allies of Mr. Trump, led by Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, have latched onto the resolution of the 1876 dispute as a model, proposing that Congress once again create a 15-member commission to decide the validity of various states electors. We should follow that precedent, Mr. Cruz and 10 other new or returning Republican senators wrote in a joint statement over the weekend.But there are also profound differences between that battle and this one. For one, the candidate claiming to be aggrieved this time, Mr. Trump, is the incumbent president with the power of the federal government at his disposal. For another, Mr. Trumps claims of fraud have proved baseless, universally rejected by Republican and Democratic state election authorities, judges across the ideological spectrum and even by his own attorney general.In 1876, unlike today, three swing states in the South still occupied by Union troops Louisiana, South Carolina and Florida sent competing slates of electors to Washington for Congress to consider. No state has done that this time and every state has certified its results, resulting in a decisive victory for Mr. Biden with 306 electoral votes to 232 for Mr. Trump.I dont really imagine Ted Cruz knows that much about the election of 1876, said Eric Foner, an emeritus history professor at Columbia University and a leading Reconstruction scholar. The fundamental difference here is in 1876, there were disputed returns from three states. Today, theres a lot of talk from Trump and others about fraud, but you dont have two reports of electoral votes each claiming to be official from the states.Other presidential elections have been disputed over the years as well, though never challenged by a losing incumbent president as Mr. Trump has done. In 1800, no candidate received a majority of the Electoral College, so under the Constitution the decision was thrown to the House, which rewarded the presidency to Thomas Jefferson over John Adams, who accepted the decision without trying to hang onto power.Twenty-four years later, Adamss son, John Quincy Adams, came out on top when another election went to the House even though he had fewer popular votes than Andrew Jackson, his main opponent. Jackson was convinced that Adams won through a corrupt bargain with a third candidate, Henry Clay, who threw his support to Adams and later became secretary of state. Four years later, Jackson ran again and won his revenge, ousting Adams.Other elections were challenged without intervention by Congress. Some Republicans suspected that John F. Kennedys victory in 1960 was based on fraud and filed lawsuits, but Richard M. Nixon disavowed the effort. George W. Bush won the presidency over Al Gore in 2000 only after a five-week recount battle was decided by the Supreme Court. Four years later, some Democrats objected to electors for Mr. Bushs re-election when Congress tallied the votes, but the move was fruitless and disclaimed by the losing candidate, John F. Kerry.The fireworks of 1876, however, were like none other and not just because it was the countrys centennial. Then as now, the election dispute had its roots in a major cleavage in American society. Barely a decade after the end of the Civil War, the country remained fractured by geography, economics, class and especially race.The party that ended slavery won the presidency in the short term that year, but the white supremacists got what they wanted in the long term by agreeing to accept defeat in exchange for the end of Reconstruction, ultimately ushering in 90 years of legalized segregation and oppression of newly freed Blacks in the south.The contest pitted two northern governors whose fate would be decided by southern states. Hayes, the Republican, had served as a Union general in the Civil War. He fought at Antietam and was wounded four times over the course of the conflict. A two-term congressman and three-term governor of Ohio, he was a restrained figure, a magic lantern image without even a surface to be displayed upon, in the biting words of Ambrose Bierce, the famed soldier-turned-writer of the era.Tilden, the Democrat, was a lawyer and crusading reformer in New York who helped bring down Tammany Halls Boss Tweed and parlayed that into the governorship. With a drooping left eyelid, he looked like a man in desperate need of a good nights sleep, as Roy Morris Jr. put it in Fraud of the Century, his 2003 account of the election dispute.The election was replete with intimidation, fraud and efforts to suppress the Black vote. In South Carolina, white rifle clubs massacred scores of Black residents to frighten others not to vote. In Florida, Democrats strong-armed Black voters and others by having landlords, shopkeepers, doctors and lawyers charge a 25 percent surtax on anyone suspected of voting Republican. On the other side, the state-owned railroad fired employees who attended Democratic rallies. And votes were said to be for sale at $5 each.ImageCredit...Associated PressOn Nov. 7, 1876, Tilden received over 250,000 more votes than Hayes, but as the night wore on, he had secured just 184 of the 185 electoral votes he needed to win. Hayes trailed with 166. Left outstanding were the three southern states, the last yet to be redeemed by the federal government after the war, with a total of 19 electoral votes exactly the number Hayes would need to win.In all three states, Republican-led returning boards examined the votes and allegations of fraud to Hayess benefit. In Louisiana, where Tilden led by 6,300 votes, the board threw out 15,000 votes they deemed to be illegitimate, 13,000 of them from Democrats, tilting the state for Hayes. The states likewise disputed their own elections and had two competing state governments.When the Electoral College met in state capitals on Dec. 6, all three states sent competing slates of electors to Washington for Congress to pick from. (There was also a dispute over a single elector from Oregon.) Like now, Democrats controlled the House and Republicans the Senate. Unable to choose between the competing electors, lawmakers punted by forming a 15-member commission with five members from the House, five from the Senate and five Supreme Court justices.Fourteen of the members were considered partisans split down the middle so the 15th member was to be the decisive vote and it was expected to be Justice David Davis, who was considered independent. But the Illinois legislature offered him a seat in the United States Senate back when they were filled by appointment and he declined to serve on the commission.The decisive commission seat then went to Justice Joseph Bradley, a farmers son who trained himself as a lawyer and intellectual with 16,000 books in his personal library.Unlike now, Republicans argued that Congress only had the limited power to ensure the procedural validity of the electors, not to go beyond that and determine whether there was fraud. Justice Bradley accepted the view that external evidence could not be considered and so awarded the electors to Hayes.But with the risk of another civil war, the real decision was made separately between party power brokers. While Tilden himself was antislavery, the Democratic Party in that era was the defender of white rule in the South and agreed to accept Hayess election when the commission reported back to Congress in exchange for an end to Reconstruction by the federal government. Hayes later ordered Union troops that had been protecting Republican governments in the disputed states to withdraw and Democrats again consolidated control of the region for generations.At a joint session, Congress declared Hayes the winner at 4:10 a.m. on March 2, 1877, barely two days before the March 4 inauguration date then set by the Constitution. This outcome was a testament to the ability of the American system of government to improvise solutions to even the most difficult and important problems, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote in 2004 in his own study of the episode.Still, Hayes, who was called His Fraudulency and Rutherfraud B. Hayes, never shed the stigma and did not seek another term. Congress, for its part, resolved never to go through that ordeal again. In 1887, it passed a law setting out the procedures for counting electors, rules that have proved durable ever since. On Wednesday, they will be tested as never before. | Politics |
11 THINGS Wed Really like to knowAlthough immunotherapy can work wonders for cancer, it does not help everyone, side effects can be fierce, and costs are high. But the field is young.Credit...Jens Mortensen for The New York TimesNov. 19, 2018Cancer has an insidious talent for evading the natural defenses that should destroy it. What if we could find ways to help the immune system fight back? It has begun to happen. The growing field of immunotherapy is profoundly changing cancer treatment and has rescued many people with advanced malignancies that not long ago would have been a death sentence.Patients with advanced cancer are increasingly living for years not months, a recent editorial in the journal JAMA said. It added that longer survival means that health workers in just about every specialty not just oncologists will be taking care of people who are living with cancer or recovered from it. Immunotherapy accounts for much of the progress. Still, it does not help everyone, side effects can be ferocious, and so can the expense.Overall, immunotherapy works in fewer than half of patients but it can bring remissions that last years.Is this as good as it gets? Probably not. The field is still young, hundreds of clinical trials are underway and basic researchers are trying to find ways to fine-tune the treatments they have already developed, as well as find new ones.[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]So far, the two main forms of immunotherapy approved by the Food and Drug Administration for cancer are drugs called checkpoint inhibitors and CAR-T cells. Both involve a workhorse of the immune system T-cells, a type of white blood cell whose job is to kill cells that have turned malignant or become infected with viruses.But scientists are also trying to open a whole new avenue of immunotherapy, one that focuses not on T-cells, but on another part of the immune system, a white blood cell called a macrophage.Macrophages gobble up and destroy microbes and other foreign substances, but cancer cells can evade capture by flipping an off switch on the macrophage. The malignant cells carry a protein that researchers call a dont eat me signal, which shuts down the macrophages.In an early phase study, published this month in The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers tested 22 patients with lymphoma that had resisted other treatments. They gave the patients a standard drug combined with an experimental one that blocked the dont eat me signal. (Forty Seven, the maker of the experimental drug, helped pay for the study.)The cancer shrank in 11 patients, and disappeared completely in eight. Side effects were minor, especially compared to those from other forms of immunotherapy, the study authors said.They caution that the research is early and needs to be validated. But other researchers are exploring the same approach in different cancers, including multiple myeloma.The concept, if it holds true, is really quite profound, said Dr. Alexander M. Lesokhin, an oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York who is doing similar research but was not involved in the recent study. It could be pretty extraordinary.For one of the patients in the study, the results were pretty extraordinary. Michael Stornetta, 71, has had a disease called follicular lymphoma for about five years, and several different treatments had failed to control it. He entered the study about a year ago at Stanford University, one of 10 centers involved.The lab rats, I consider myself one, he said. Its very gratifying to know Im able to do this and hopefully this drug becomes very successful in treating other types of cancer, including the kind I have. I feel like Im kind of giving something back to humanity.At the start of the trial, 10 to 15 spots lit up on his PET scan, indicating cancer.Now, he said: When I look at the new scan, theyre gone, except for one tiny spot, and they dont think its cancerous, maybe just a residue of dead cancer. He is still being treated, and will probably continue it for a total of two years.I dont know that Ill ever be able to say Im 100 percent cancer free, but I know the results are certainly pointing in that direction. Whether it comes back or not, who knows? Im gratified to know its where it is right now.The work on macrophages and T-cells is based on the same underlying idea: Cancer sometimes tricks these defenders, by flipping an off switch that the body normally uses to keep immune cells from attacking healthy tissue.Checkpoint inhibitors block the off switch, freeing T-cells to go after cancer. The first such drug, ipilimumab (brand name Yervoy) was approved in 2011; the next, nivolumab (Opdivo) in 2014; and since then about a half-dozen more have come to market.Two researchers who identified checkpoints on T-cells, and whose work led to the checkpoint inhibitors, shared this years Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.One of them, James Allison, from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said the next steps are to discover ways to make immunotherapy work for more patients.Medical teams are already chipping away at that goal, in part by combining checkpoint inhibitors with each other, or with standard chemotherapy. In recent months, medical journals have reported that these multiple treatments have considerably prolonged survival in patients with very aggressive cancers: melanoma that had spread to the brain and a hard-to-treat type of breast cancer called triple negative.Similar studies are examining other diseases. At M.D. Anderson, one is even testing two checkpoint inhibitors plus chemotherapy in people with acute myeloid leukemia.CAR-T cells involve a much more complex treatment, in which millions of a patients T-cells are extracted from blood, genetically reprogrammed to attack a particular target on cells, multiplied and then dripped back into the patients vein. This is the treatment that, while still experimental at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia in 2012, saved a 6-year-old with advanced leukemia, Emily Whitehead. Now 13, in eighth grade, Emily is still in good health.Sometimes called living drugs, two CAR-T treatments were approved in 2017 for certain types of leukemia and lymphoma. Both products have unpronounceable names: tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah) and axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta). Kymriah is the commercial version of Emilys treatment.Researchers are testing the CAR-T treatments in other blood cancers and trying to expand their uses and their power by programming them to attack a broader range of targets on cells. So far, they have not worked against so-called solid tumors like breast or colon cancer, but scientists havent given up yet. | Health |
Credit...Al J. Thompson for The New York TimesAs I was driving during a cross-country road trip, my vision became wobbly. An extensive search for a specialist followed.David A. Kaplan faced a medical mystery over double vision.Credit...Al J. Thompson for The New York TimesFeb. 26, 2022Our cross-country drive last winter from New York to Lake Tahoe was going to be eventful enough, with a pandemic, blizzards and the cancellation of salads at McDonalds. But by Omaha, when the lanes on Interstate 80 seemed to be bouncing around before my very eyes, we entered unexpected territory.Are you practicing your slalom turns at 80 miles an hour? my wife asked.Road conditions were normal. Our S.U.V. had new tires. But the lanes often seemed to blur together. Sometimes the melding of lanes occurred late in the day, sometimes early. Sometimes in blinding sun, sometimes in fog. If I closed one eye, the lanes became separate again.What was happening? Id worn glasses for nearsightedness since fifth grade; Id seen my eye doctor within the year; my prescription was current.When we reached Tahoe, I went to an optometrist before even unpacking my skis. She said my eyes were fine, but advised an M.R.I. to rule out a brain bleed or a tumor. Days later, it did.She also told me to see a neuro-ophthalmologist, an increasingly rare subspecialty. Nationally, there are only about 600 of them, and because many do academic research or have general ophthalmic practices, just 250 of them are full-time clinicians. In six states, there are none practicing, according to a paper in the Journal of Neuro-Ophthalmology last year.The Tahoe optometrist warned it could take months to obtain an appointment with one of the few practitioners in the area. But my brother, a surgeon at Stanford, helped me get an appointment at Stanford Medical Center, four hours away, in Palo Alto, Ca., the following week. Dr. Heather Moss conducted the 90-minute examination, taking measurements that included the degree to which my eyes were properly centered.My diagnosis: esotropia, which means inward turning of either or both eyes.When Dr. Moss positioned a bar of triangular plastic in front of either eye, the bouncing stopped. The piece of plastic was a set of prisms, differing in strength from top to bottom. She alternated prisms until we got it right.Wayward eyes can turn outward or upward or downward. All are forms of strabismus, and double vision is the chief symptom in adults whose brains are used to receiving two slightly differing images. (Without those, you wouldnt have depth perception or be able to see in 3-D.) Somebody with symptomatic strabismus gets the two images. But theyre out of whack because the eyes are misaligned, and the brain doesnt compensate for the anatomical-mechanical defect.Typically congenital, it is most often diagnosed in children, whose symptoms present themselves in a lazy eye, because the brain suppresses images from the weak eye. Some children wear an eye patch over the strong eye, to retrain the lazy eye. Many children undergo surgery to reposition the muscles controlling the weak eye.Strabismus is derived from strabos, the Greek word for squint, which aptly describes the reaction by adults who compensate for the defect by closing either eye. Doing so vanquishes the conflicting binocular images from both eyes, which the brain cant overcome.About 4 percent of adults have it, according to the journal Ophthamology. But it often goes undiagnosed and people unwittingly live with imperfect vision. Most regular ophthalmologists are just looking at the eyes not eye movement, said Dr. Marc Dinkin, a neuro-ophthalmologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York.Larry Frohman, a professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and executive vice president of the North American Neuro-Ophthalmology Society, said the specialized field attracts fewer doctors because it requires an additional year of formal training beyond neurology or ophthalmology.While surgery is sometimes the solution to this misalignment in adults, prisms are the common remedy. They can be permanently ground into lenses, displace light and shift the position of what an eye sees, tricking the brain into interpreting images from both eyes into proper alignment.Choosing the right degree of correction can prove difficult. Prisms range in strength from 1 to 40 diopters (1 is weakest), though they rarely are prescribed beyond 15 because of the distortion they can create.ImageCredit...David KaplanDr. Moss recommended that I try temporary Fresnel press-on vinyl lenses, which use water to attach to the inside of glasses. These one-millimeter-thick lenses allow patients to experiment with different strengths. The hassle is that they can fall off, and the plastic, which contains thin etched lines on the surface, isnt as clear as ground-in prisms. I tried a 1-diopter lens and then a 2-diopter, before settling on 3-diopters for the next three months.Driving was no longer harrowing, but my vision was far from perfect, and even seemed to regress a bit. When I returned to the East Coast, Dr. Dinkin at Weill Cornell took over my care. In his examining chair, I finally experienced double vision.When a large A was displayed on the wall and I removed the Fresnel lens on my glasses, I saw two As. When I looked through his hand-held prism, the As magically merged. What I had described as bouncing images on Interstate 80 were really separate images that my brain was trying to fuse. I didnt think it was double vision at the time because the middle driving lane looked pretty much the same as the left lane. In fact, I was seeing two left lanes.Dr. Dinkin increased the strength of my prism to 10 diopters. He divided the prisms into lenses for both eyes 5 and 5 (with light being deflected in different directions). By late spring, Dr. Dinkin said it was time to put the correction in a pair of permanent lenses.The new glasses worked well, though another issue arose. Lenses with permanent prisms are thicker along the edges, with the resulting distortion producing the effect of a fun house mirror. Its especially problematic walking down stairs. So I got another pair of glasses, with slightly weaker prisms 4 and 4 diopters. Im trying to use those most of the time, reserving the 5-and-5 glasses for driving or when I otherwise need a vision boost.How did I wind up with a diagnosis of strabismus in adulthood? Dr. Dinkin and Dr. Moss agreed I have probably had it all or most of my life, although the misalignment of my left eye is almost imperceptible. No doctor had detected the problem before because nobody had been looking for it, and I had voiced no complaints. My eyes themselves had not shifted in position. The symptoms of this condition had emerged with age and fatigue.My vision misadventure was just another of the perils of getting older. Near the end of our stay in Tahoe, I had my first serious ski fall in 20 years, resulting in sprains to my left thumb and right shoulder. No big deal those get better with ice, rest, a splint and 15 weeks. But together with my eyes, I began to wonder about my long-term odds. Its a good thing Im not a racehorse. | Health |
Middle East|Iranian Pilgrims Can Participate in Hajj This Year, Saudi Arabia Sayshttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/world/middleeast/hajj-mecca-saudi-arabia-iran.htmlCredit...Nariman El-Mofty/Associated PressMarch 17, 2017BEIRUT, Lebanon Saudi Arabia said on Friday that Iranians would be able to participate in this years hajj pilgrimage to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, a rare bright spot in relations between the two regional rivals.No Iranian pilgrims attended the hajj last year because of deepening tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Iranian participation in the pilgrimage had become yet another flash point in their sectarian and strategic conflict.The tensions have risen in recent years as they have supported opposite sides in conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and elsewhere. Saudi Arabia, ruled by a Sunni Muslim monarchy, accuses Iran of weakening Arab states by funding militias. Iran, a revolutionary Shiite state, accuses Saudi Arabia of spreading an intolerant interpretation of Islam that has fed terrorism and endangered minorities.Relations between the two countries worsened after the 2015 hajj, when a human crush killed more than 2,400 pilgrims, including more than 464 Iranians, according to a count by The Associated Press. Iranian leaders, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, accused Saudi Arabia of having mismanaged the holy sites and called on the worlds Muslims to reconsider Saudi control of them.Saudi Arabia said the crush happened because pilgrims went the wrong way down a one-way passage but has never provided a detailed explanation of what went awry.Last year, Saudi Arabia broke off diplomatic relations with Iran after rioters stormed the Saudi Embassy in Tehran while protesting Saudi Arabias execution of Nimr al-Nimr, an outspoken Shiite cleric who had criticized the Saudi royal family.But in recent months, officials from the two countries have met to discuss Iranian participation in this years hajj, leading to Fridays announcement that Iranian pilgrims could return.The Saudi state news agency said the kingdom had completed all arrangements for the Iranian pilgrims to return, without offering details. Iranian officials did not immediately comment, although Irans Tasnim news agency said this month that Iran would send about 80,000 pilgrims this year.Last year, 1.8 million Muslims from around the world attended the hajj, which is one of the five pillars of Islam and which all capable Muslims must perform at least once in their lives. | World |
Credit...Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesNov. 14, 2018MOSCOW Pretty much all seasoned travelers know the frustration of flight delays the time wasted puttering in an airport, waiting in a hotel room or, perhaps worst of all, stuck on the tarmac in an idled plane.But how about three days stranded in Siberia?That was the nightmare experienced by the passengers and crew of Air France Flight 116 this week, when their Boeing 777 was diverted to the city of Irkutsk on Sunday, about 2,600 miles east of Moscow, after an acrid smell and light smoke wafted through the cabin.The 282 passengers sat on the plane for some six hours before being allowed to disembark.But a chilly reception then awaited both literally (at one point it was around 1 degree Fahrenheit, or minus 17 Celsius, outside) and figuratively, with passengers forced to stay within the confines of the airport or two hotels where they were put up because they lacked entry visas. Initially, they were denied access to their luggage as well.To make matters worse, a second Boeing 777 sent from Paris to pick up the passengers, who were traveling from the French capital to Shanghai, also broke down before takeoff in Irkutsk as the hydraulic system froze. That led to another long wait on the tarmac in Siberia, before the passengers were once again told to deplane.We are dirty, we smell, it is now over 30 hours that we are under house arrest, without a suitcase or passport, Eleanor Joulie, one of those stranded, wrote on Twitter on Monday, after the ordeal was barely half over.Finally, a third aircraft flew them to Shanghai Pudong International Airport on Wednesday, according to Air France.Among the travelers stuck in Irkutsk were employees of Louis Vuitton, the luxury goods brand, including several social media managers whose Instagram posts displayed a mixture of frustration and mirth as the misadventure dragged on. They cooled their heels at a London-themed pub in their hotel and posted a six-second video on YouTube pretending to be the opening credits of an imaginary TV series called Stuck in Siberia.The episode prompted plenty of jokes from Russians on social media, partly because the story echoed the plot of a popular 1970s Soviet comedy called The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia.Many also pilloried officials in Irkutsk for not letting the foreigners look around Lake Baikal, one of the wonders of Siberia, was only about an hours drive away. Others offered to show passengers the sights if they returned under more pleasant circumstances.Air France, in a statement, said it regretted the situation and wished to apologize to passengers for the inconvenience and significant delay experienced.As for any recompense such as vouchers, the airline said it had contacted the customers concerned to propose suitable commercial measures. | World |
Dec. 1, 2015WASHINGTON Manufacturing in the United States contracted in November for the first time in three years as the sector buckled under the weight of a strong dollar and deep spending cuts by energy companies.Other data on Tuesday showed a sturdy increase in construction spending in October, which should help to offset the drag from manufacturing on fourth-quarter growth.Manufacturing accounts for 12 percent of the economy, and analysts say it is unlikely the persistent weakness will deter the Federal Reserve from raising interest rates this month.Manufacturing is being pummeled by the stronger dollar and the weakness of global demand, but the other 88 percent of the economy continues to perform well, said Steve Murphy, a United States economist at Capital Economics in Toronto.The Institute for Supply Management said its national factory index fell to 48.6 last month, the weakest reading since June 2009, when the recession ended, from 50.1 in October. While a reading below 50 indicates a contraction in manufacturing, the index remains above 43.1, which is associated with a recession.Factory activity has also been undercut by business efforts to reduce an excessive inventory build, which is putting pressure on new orders. The institute said a gauge of new orders tumbled 4 percentage points, to 48.9, last month.Inventories at manufacturers continued to shrink, and their customers reported stocks of unsold goods were too high for a fourth consecutive month.Ten out of 18 manufacturing industries, including apparel, electrical equipment, appliances and components, and computer and electronic products reported contraction in November.Manufacturers cited dollar strength, slower Chinese and European growth and lower oil prices as headwinds. Recent data on business capital spending plans and factory output had offered hope that the worst of the sectors woes were over.But with auto sales and construction spending remaining robust early in the fourth quarter, economists still expect gross domestic product to expand at around a 2 percent annual pace, almost matching the third-quarter pace.The good news is that the much more important services sector continues to do very well, benefiting from solid domestic demand, said Harm Bandholz, chief United States economist at UniCredit Research in New York.In a separate report, the Commerce Department said construction spending increased 1 percent to a seasonally adjusted $1.11 trillion rate, the highest level since December 2007, after rising 0.6 percent in September.Construction outlays were up 13 percent compared with October of last year. Spending in October was buoyed by a 0.8 percent rise in private spending, which touched its highest level since January 2008. Outlays on private residential construction hit their highest level since December 2007.Investment in private nonresidential construction projects rose 0.6 percent, to a near seven-year high, with spending on manufacturing plants rising a robust 3 percent.Public construction outlays jumped 1.4 percent to a five-year high as a surge in federal government spending offset a dip in investment by state and local government.Despite the free-fall in oil patch activity, total construction in the rest of the economy is doing quite well, said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pa. | Business |
Credit...Johnson et al., New England Journal of Medicine, 2016Nov. 2, 2016Powerful drugs that enlist the immune system to fight cancer can, in rare cases, cause heart damage, doctors are reporting.So far, fewer than 1 percent of patients taking these medicines called checkpoint inhibitors have developed heart trouble. But in those who do, the damage can be severe, and the drugs have led to several deaths by provoking the immune system to attack the heart. The risk appears highest when patients take two different checkpoint inhibitors at once.This is a new complication of potentially lifesaving drugs, said Dr. Javid J. Moslehi, the director of cardio-oncology at Vanderbilt School of Medicine and the senior author of an article published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine. Were working to develop treatments for it. Our job is not to say the drugs are bad, but to say, How can we deal with it?The drugs, a form of immunotherapy, are considered a huge breakthrough in cancer treatment. Although they do not work for everyone, they have resulted in lasting remissions for many, including people who were expected to die from advanced cancer that had resisted every other treatment.Checkpoint inhibitors have been approved to treat six types of cancer, and are being used for many other types. The drugs are also being combined with one another for added effectiveness.The heart findings should not scare patients away from the drugs, Dr. Moslehi said. He called them transformative in cancer treatment and said they offered a potential for cure.Four checkpoint inhibitors are on the market: ipilimumab (brand name Yervoy), nivolumab (Opdivo), pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and atezolizumab (Tecentriq).The side effect has prompted some hospitals to add extra cardiac testing for patients taking more than one checkpoint drug, in the hope of catching problems early enough to prevent permanent heart damage. If the tests find signs of trouble, steroids and other drugs may stop the assault by the immune system.This is something oncologists should be aware of, said Dr. Jedd D. Wolchok, chief of melanoma and immunotherapeutics services at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who was not an author of the journal article. Its rare, but the fact that people have died from it is a reason for us to try to spare them that toxicity.Dr. Wolchok said the problem had occurred in one patient at Sloan Kettering but had cleared up on its own. He agreed that it was advisable to order extra heart tests for patients taking checkpoint combinations.Dr. Benjamin A. Olenchock, a study author from the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston, was not available for an interview but said in a written statement that the heart problem had affected patients at his hospital. As the number of patients treated with checkpoint inhibitors has markedly increased, rare cases of cardiac toxicity associated with the use of these cancer therapeutics, sometimes resulting in death, have been seen at multiple institutions including our own, the statement said.The first checkpoint inhibitor was approved in 2011. The drugs work by unleashing T-cells, a type of white blood cell, to kill cancer. But sometimes, the T-cells go into hyperdrive and attack healthy tissue. Doctors have known for years that the drugs can have dangerous side effects, including gut, lung and thyroid trouble. But the cardiac problems have taken longer to emerge.There have been scattered reports in other, less prominent medical journals of heart problems, some fatal, in small numbers of patients taking checkpoint inhibitors alone or in combination. The new report is the most in-depth analysis, including tests for possible genetic or viral causes (none were found) and an examination of a drug-company database to identify other cases.The patients described in Dr. Moslehis article a woman, 65, and a man, 63 developed heart problems and died a few weeks after just one intravenous treatment with a combination of two checkpoint inhibitors: Opdivo and Yervoy. Both patients had advanced melanoma, a deadly skin cancer, and were enrolled in studies. Neither had a history of heart disease.The woman had chest pains, shortness of breath and fatigue, and was admitted to the hospital 12 days after her first dose of the drugs. She had myocarditis inflammation of the heart as well as other inflamed muscles and abnormal heart rhythms.Hoping to quell the inflammation, doctors gave her steroids, but her heart kept deteriorating.The man had similar symptoms, and based on their experience with the woman, the Vanderbilt doctors treated him with even higher doses of steroids, as well as another drug. He survived only a few days longer than the woman did, Dr. Moslehi said.Autopsies found that the patients immune systems had attacked their hearts, rejecting them as if they were transplants.Using data from Bristol-Myers Squibb on 20,594 patients who took the checkpoint inhibitors it makes, Yervoy and Opdivo, the Vanderbilt team found that doctors had reported 18 cases of myocarditis related to the drugs. Six were fatal. The condition was most common and severe in patients who took the combination, affecting 0.27 percent and accounting for five of the six deaths.Dr. Michael B. Atkins, the deputy director of the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington, called the rapid onset of heart problems alarming. He said the cases had led experts in cancer and myocarditis to meet in September with Bristol-Myers Squibb executives. The group agreed that extra heart tests should be included for patients taking combined checkpoint drugs in studies. The tests include echocardiograms and blood tests for troponin, a protein released by damaged heart muscle.The same tests could be done for patients receiving the combined drugs outside of studies, Dr. Atkins said, but he added, I am unaware of any formal recommendation.Checkpoint inhibitors are lifesaving therapies for many patients, at least for melanoma, Dr. Atkins said. Around 60 percent of patients have tumor responses to the combination, and the majority of those appear to be long-lasting responses.Before the drugs were available, the median survival time for those with advanced melanoma was six to nine months, and only 10 percent lived two years, he said.We want to do everything we can to make sure these treatments are safe, he added.Dr. Atkins said he thought it would be possible to save patients who developed heart problems by intervening early with powerful drugs to shut down the inflammation. That approach reversed myocarditis in a patient at another hospital in Washington, he said.But drugs that stop inflammation work by turning off the immune response, so they may cancel out any benefit from the checkpoint inhibitors. That would leave patients where they started, at the mercy of their cancer, he said.So far, there is no way to predict which patients might be vulnerable to heart problems from the checkpoint drugs. For now, Dr. Moslehi said, the best solution is close monitoring for those taking more than one at a time. | Health |
Credit...Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesMarch 18, 2017BERLIN A strong relationship with the United States is a bedrock of German foreign policy, so when Chancellor Angela Merkel met President Trump on Friday, German journalists and analysts scrutinized their body language and the tone of their remarks for clues about how they might work together.Not warm, but not distant, wrote the left-leaning newspaper Sddeutsche Zeitung in its online edition on Saturday.It could have been a lot worse, Germanys mass-circulation daily, Bild, wrote of the relationship that is the cornerstone of the NATO alliance and vital to global security.The initial reaction from Ms. Merkels spokesman, Steffen Seibert, emphasized the positives. Mr. Seibert welcomed Mr. Trumps support of efforts to resolve the crisis in Ukraine and the presidents confirmation of the importance of NATO.Mr. Seibert also reaffirmed Germanys commitment to spend 2 percent of its gross domestic product on its military by 2024, as pledged during last years NATO summit meeting.But that did not seem to be enough for Mr. Trump, who insisted on Twitter early Saturday that Germany owed the alliance vast sums of money.Despite what you have heard from the FAKE NEWS, I had a GREAT meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, he wrote. Nevertheless, Germany owes vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!According to figures released by the alliance, Germany spent 1.2 percent of its gross domestic product on its military in 2016, compared with 3.6 percent for the United States. As security experts have pointed out, NATO members spending more on their defense does not automatically translate into more money being sent to Brussels or Washington.The style of making one point and swiftly changing direction reminded some foreign policy experts of the way Mr. Trump acted on the campaign trail, when his position on certain issues could veer wildly from one day to the next.Once again, weve seen Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, said Sylke Tempel, the editor in chief of Internationale Politik, published by the German Council on Foreign Relations, remarking on the approach that Mr. Trump took during the leaders joint news conference on Friday.He was Mr. Jekyll while reading his statement, saying nice things about economic ties, his commitment to Ukraine, common friendship; all the niceties, Ms. Tempel said. Then, in the question-and-answer session, hes his old self: disparaging the media, criticizing the British.Although memories of Ms. Merkels warm relationship with President Barack Obama remain fresh in the minds of many Germans, it took repeated meetings over several years before the chancellor reached that level with Mr. Obama. During a joint news conference in Dresden in June 2009, she displayed stiff body language and a chilly formality, months after she had denied Mr. Obama permission to speak in front of the Brandenburg Gate during the 2008 presidential campaign.In 2006, Mr. Obamas predecessor, President George W. Bush, sought to win her over with a playful shoulder rub, a move abruptly rebuffed by the pragmatic chancellor. One year later, however, at the summit meeting of the Group of 8 industrialized nations, she coaxed Mr. Bush to voice support for her vision of a global plan to combat climate change.Yet both of Mr. Trumps most recent predecessors followed diplomatic conventions and worked within the institutions established after World War II to foster communication and cooperation among nations.Mr. Trumps America First approach and his disparagement of global trade agreements have caused uncertainty among German politicians and industry leaders. Asked by a German journalist about this approach, the president insisted that while he was not against trade, the United States had been treated unfairly in global trade agreements. But I am not an isolationist, he said.Less than 24 hours later, however, Mr. Trumps government refused to back a pledge to fully oppose trade protectionism at a meeting in Baden-Baden, Germany, of the finance ministers of the Group of 20, which comprises industrial and emerging-market countries as well as the European Union. Participants last year had agreed to resist all forms of protectionism.Germans have been both fascinated and horrified by Mr. Trumps willingness to ignore the strictures of diplomacy when dealing with foreign leaders. For example, he has castigated Ms. Merkel for allowing refugees to flow into Germany in 2015, and he has called into question post-World War II alliances, including NATO and the European Union. Germans have not been entirely sure what to make of him.One thing we can depend upon, that we saw yesterday: Donald Trump says what he wants, Nikolaus Blome, deputy editor of Bild, wrote in its online edition. He has predictable political interests. What he doesnt have is a predictable way to pursue them.Ms. Tempel, of the German Council on Foreign Relations, said simply: If this mission was really about getting a first impression, you got your first impression. | World |
Kevin Hart Eagles Will Crush Vikings ... 'It's Common Sense' 1/19/2018 TMZSports.com Here's Kevin Hart clowning the Minnesota Vikings ... telling TMZ Sports there's a ZERO percent chance Case Keenum's purple crew beats up on the Eagles this weekend. Full disclosure ... Hart's from Philadelphia. So, yeah ... But Kev's pretty funny outside Catch in West Hollywood when we ask how he thinks the NFC Championship game will go down on Sunday. And he SWEARS he won't be betting on the game ... or at least that's the story he's telling while the camera's rolling. | Entertainment |
Political EconomyHugo Dixon | Reuters BreakingviewsDec. 7, 2015Turkeys economy is threatened on many fronts. A dispute with Russia and the prospect of the Federal Reserves raising rates have coincided with President Recep Tayyip Erdogans increasing politicization of the economy and bad governance. This could prove a toxic cocktail given the private sectors high debts.Turkeys cost of capital is rising. The yield on the governments 10-year dollar bond was 5 percent on Friday, up from 4.7 percent a year ago and 4.1 percent just before Turkey shot down a Russian jet last month.The government isnt to blame for global investors falling out of love with emerging markets in general or, indeed, for what Turkey claims was a Russian invasion of its airspace. But many of the risks Turkey is facing are self-inflicted.Russias muscular response to the shooting down of a Russian bomber jet in November threatens to be costly for Turkey. Among the raft of economic sanctions announced, the banning of charter flights to Turkey and other moves to dissuade tourism will be especially damaging. About 3.3 million Russian tourists visited Turkey last year. Whats more, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia seems intent on finding other ways of exacting vengeance.Mr. Putin may increase support for Kurdish militia fighting inside Syria, something Ankara has warned against. This would infuriate Mr. Erdogan, whose main goal in Syria is to prevent the emergence of a Kurdish enclave on Turkeys border. The Turkish presidents Syria strategy is already looking sick, as the West is focusing on fighting the Islamic State and not giving priority to Mr. Erdogans other goal bringing down Syrias leader, Bashar al-Assad.Meanwhile, Mr. Erdogan has failed to prevent renewed fighting with the Kurdistan Workers Party, known as the P.K.K., inside Turkey, though the Kurdish militia group is also responsible. He abandoned peace talks with the group this year, after which violence flared up.The Turkish president benefited from the breakdown in the peace talks because the instability helped his party win a majority in Novembers election after it failed to secure one in an earlier vote in June. But the renewed violence creates a strong sense that the country is fighting on multiple fronts, diminishing its appeal to investors.Mr. Erdogan also has increasingly politicized the economy. After taking power in 2002, he followed prescriptions laid down by the International Monetary Fund in the wake of Turkeys last financial crisis.But in recent years, Mr. Erdogan has undermined the independence of the Turkish central bank by opposing higher interest rates, so much so that the country has little credibility for fighting inflation, which hit 8.1 percent last month. Meanwhile, the Turkish lira has dropped more than a fifth against the dollar in the past year, putting pressure on companies that have borrowed in hard currency.Since the November election, there have been further worrying signs. Ali Babacan, who had been deputy prime minister in charge of the economy and was seen by investors as a safe pair of hands, wasnt reappointed. His replacement, Mehmet Simsek, is well regarded but not considered a heavyweight. Whats more, Mr. Erdogans son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, was made energy minister.The Turkish president is also becoming increasingly authoritarian. The editor of a leading newspaper was put in jail last month for publishing an article that Mr. Erdogan deemed espionage, even though there has yet to be a trial to test the claim. Its not just freedom of the press that has been curtailed. So has the independence of the judiciary, while corruption is widespread, according to the European Commission.Instability and weak rule of law are bad for business. There has also been capital flight. Turkey is vulnerable because it has been consistently running a big current account deficit forecast by the I.M.F. to be 4.5 percent of gross domestic product this year and needs foreign funds to plug the gap.The economy is still expected to grow at about 3 percent, largely because construction and domestic consumption have held up. However, this depends on credit, with households borrowing to buy homes and developers borrowing to build them.Housing investment is fueled by rising property prices, and pushes them still higher. But if prices stop going up, the debt that has backed the purchases could weigh heavily on the economy.The only good piece of news recently is that the European Union has agreed to re-energize talks about Turkey joining the bloc. In theory, that could lead to a series of political and economic reforms that put the country onto a positive new trajectory, as Ankara strived to meet the conditions of membership.Unfortunately, European Union leaders would struggle to persuade their own voters to welcome Turkey as a member; and Mr. Erdogan doesnt seem to have any intention of making the required reforms. Turkey may need to suffer a deeper crisis before this changes. Hugo Dixon writes a weekly column for Reuters Breakingviews. For more financial commentary, visit breakingviews.com. | Business |
A team of researchers say that rather than occupying their own branch in the history of life on Earth, horseshoe crabs are in the same group as spiders and scorpions.Credit...Zack Wittman for The New York TimesFeb. 18, 2022Horseshoe crabs are little armored vehicles with bright blue blood. For hundreds of millions of years, theyve been trundling along the ocean floor. In all that time, other mighty creatures have come and gone: dinosaurs, mammoths, terror birds, Neanderthals. The humble horseshoe crab has lived on, looking not that different these days from their forebears in the Mesozoic Era.I find their fossil record amazing, fantastic and brilliant, said Russell Bicknell, a paleontologist at the University of New England in Australia who studies the crabs evolution and development. I just love that with, realistically, such a tiny tool kit, theyve managed to do so much.But while the horseshoe crab may seem eternal, it has been pulled into the middle of a scientific controversy.In a paper published last week in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, Prashant Sharma, a professor of biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his colleagues are challenging the idea that horseshoe crabs are on their own very particular and individual branch on the tree of life. Rather, they claim that the animals belong right in the middle of the family tree of the arachnids, the group that includes spiders and scorpions. If their analysis is correct, it throws the roots of the arachnids tree into question, and suggests arachnids have a stranger, more complicated evolutionary history than scientists realized.The new paper is the latest salvo in a debate about the emergence of arachnids. Scientists have traditionally relied on detailed analysis of living and extinct creatures bodies to understand evolution. They examined the tips of arachnids mandibles, the placement of legs and other features, tracing traits through evolutionary time. The tree they sketched showed a common ancestor of the whole group that crawled ashore more than 600 million years ago. Since that time, almost all arachnids have lived on land (although they might ascend your door frame to catch flying bugs in a web).But its difficult to know what really happened 600 million years ago on the shores of a younger Earth. Arachnids ancestors broke into a bevy of new species very suddenly, and discerning which groups diverged first, making their own branches of the tree of life, has always been difficult, said Antonis Rokas, a professor of evolutionary biology at Vanderbilt University.In recent years, with the rise of genome sequencing, another way to build family trees has become possible. If comparing anatomies was like poring over passenger manifests at Ellis Island to create a genealogy, then this new technique is like evolutionary 23andMe, sorting organisms according to the similarities in their genetics. It can provide a way to verify what earlier methods have found and even make new discoveries.But, and heres where the debate comes in, the new trees do not always agree with the old ones. Dr. Sharma and his colleagues failed to find consistent evidence of that shared common ancestor the root of the traditional arachnid tree when they built a genome-based tree for a 2014 paper.ImageCredit...Science Photo Library/Getty ImagesInstead, the tree suggested it was more likely that arachnids diverged from one another even further back in the past. And they were not a single, closely related group, but separate clusters of species that had been grouped together by scientists. If that were the case, then the horseshoe crabs, which were thought to be mere neighbors of the arachnids, were actually members of the clan.Dr. Sharma and his colleagues 2014 study was small, but in the new study, they drew on genetic data from more than 500 species as well as anatomical data. The results were the same: Arachnids did not cluster together tightly. Horseshoe crabs, as a result, nestled among them.In the end we just had to speak that heresy out loud, Dr. Sharma said.If arachnids common ancestor is actually much deeper in evolutionary history, then their forebears may have crawled on to land more than once. There may have been multiple waves of that startling transition, with gills transforming into lungs and limbs taking on new roles.We used to think that particular morphological characteristics or ecological transitions, from land to sea or from sea to land, were very rare, said Dr. Rokas, who is not an author of the paper. But we really dont know for any given lineage how difficult these transitions are.Maybe radical change, in other words, is less difficult than we suppose. In this alternate telling of the early days of the arachnids, horseshoe crabs remained comfortably in the water while their relations took their chances on shore, at least two and perhaps three or four separate times over the eons. And if their bodies look similar, Dr. Sharma and his co-authors suggest, perhaps this is because evolution gave them similar solutions to the problem of getting on dry land, ruthlessly honing them into forms that worked.The teams 2014 paper was met critically by researchers who disagree with their interpretation. A group of paleontologists and molecular biologists followed up with a paper proposing ways that genetic information could build a tree that brought arachnids back together.The latest results, still based primarily on genetic data, are difficult to reconcile with what is written in the fossil record, some paleontologists say. They imply a much more convoluted evolutionary path for the arachnids than fossils suggest, Dr. Bicknell said.Others describe this paper as a way station in sciences slow progression toward the truth.Personally, I think it is an interesting finding, said Jeffrey Shultz, a professor of entomology at the University of Maryland who studies arachnid evolution, but experience shows that results can change when the same data are analyzed by different workers, when new data are added to the mix or when new insights into genomic evolution come to light.The new results will certainly lead to debate, said Hannah Wood, a curator and research entomologist at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.But this is how this stuff works, she said, adding that another group can challenge their hypothesis. I think eventually well have an answer.Where does this leave the horseshoe crab? For now, Dr. Bicknell said, this latest idea of their history is another quirk among many.Theyre already weird enough as it is just chuck more fuel on that fire, he said. Its just a case of really, in the family tree, when their weird branch popped off the main stem. When did it happen? And why did it happen? It continues that discussion. | science |
Jake Paul on Suicide Video Logan Was Wrong, Made Huge Mistake 1/23/2018 Jake Paul Logan Paul's little brother is now cleaning the remnants of his brother's mess ... both chiding and defending his brother for posting video of a suicide victim. Fellow YouTube star Jake Paul posted this video Monday and dubbed it "YouTube, Let's Talk About Brother Logan Paul" ... in which Jake says that "what Logan did was very, very, very wrong and he made a huge mistake." As we reported ... Logan issued multiple apologies for posting video of a dead body he found in Japan. The fallout was almost immediate ... most notably with YouTube cutting his role. Jake said Logan didn't mean to offend anyone ... and hopes his big bro bounces back. | Entertainment |
Credit...Betina Garcia for The New York TimesThe Great ReadAs scientists find more tattoos on preserved remains from Indigenous cultures, artists living today are drawing from them to revive cultural traditions.Maya Sialuk Jacobsen, who spent her childhood in Greenland, worked for a decade as a Western-style tattooist before realizing that her Inuit ancestors had also been tattooists.Credit...Betina Garcia for The New York TimesJuly 5, 2021In the 1970s, hunters stumbled upon eight 500-year-old bodies preserved by the Arctic climate near Qilakitsoq, an abandoned Inuit settlement in northwest Greenland. Later, when scientists photographed the mummies with infrared film, they made an intriguing discovery: Five of the six females had delicate lines, dots and arches tattooed on their faces.For thousands of years, tattoos were more than just body decoration for Inuit and other Indigenous cultures. They served as symbols of belonging, signified coming-of-age rituals, channeled spiritual beliefs or conferred powers that could be called upon while giving birth or hunting. Yet starting around the 17th century, missionaries and colonists intent on civilizing Indigenous people put a stop to tattooing in all but the most remote communities.The practice so thoroughly disappeared in Greenland that Maya Sialuk Jacobsen, who spent her childhood there, worked for a decade as a Western-style tattooist before realizing that her Inuit ancestors had also been tattooists, albeit of a very different nature.Today, Ms. Sialuk Jacobsen uses historical documents, artifacts and the Qilakitsoq mummies several of which are now on display at the Greenland National Museum to research traditional Inuit tattoo designs. Then she hand pokes or stitches the patterns onto the faces and bodies of Inuit women, and occasionally men, helping them connect with their ancestors and reclaim a part of their culture.I take great pride in tattooing a woman, she said. When she meets her foremothers in the next world, it will be like looking in a mirror.Without the physical record left by ancient tattooing, modern practitioners like Ms. Sialuk Jacobsen would have little evidence to guide their work. Fortunately, as more Indigenous tattooists around the world resurrect lost traditions, a small group of archaeologists is tracing tattooing through time and space, uncovering new examples of its role in historic and prehistoric societies. Together, the scientists and artists are showing that the urge to ink our bodies is deeply rooted in the human psyche, spanning the globe and speaking across centuries.ImageCredit...Betina Garcia for The New York TimesImageCredit...Werner Forman Archive/The Greenland Museum, via Heritage ImagesPut the needle on the recordUntil recently, Western archaeologists largely ignored tattooing. Because of these scientists disinterest, tools made for tapping, poking, stitching or cutting human skin were cataloged as sewing needles or awls, while tattooed mummies were regarded more as objects of fascination than scientific specimens, said Aaron Deter-Wolf, a prehistoric archaeologist at the Tennessee Division of Archaeology and a leading researcher in the archaeology of tattooing.Even when the 5,300-year-old body of tzi the Iceman was recovered from the Italian Alps in 1991 bearing visible tattoos, some news reports at the time suggested the markings were evidence that tzi was probably a criminal, Mr. Deter-Wolf said. It was very biased.But as tattooing has become more mainstream in Western culture, Mr. Deter-Wolf and other scientists have begun to examine preserved tattoos and artifacts for insights into how past people lived and what they believed.A 2019 investigation into tzis 61 tattoos, for example, paints a picture of life in Copper Age Europe. The dots and dashes on the mummys skin correspond with common acupuncture points, suggesting that people had a sophisticated understanding of the human body and may have used tattooings to ease physical ailments like joint pain. In Egypt, Anne Austin, an archaeologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, has found dozens of tattoos on female mummies, including hieroglyphics suggesting the tattoos were associated with goddess worship and healing. This interpretation challenges 20th-century male scholars theories that female tattoos were simply erotic decorations or were reserved for prostitutes.ImageCredit...Nia Macknight for The New York TimesThe scientific study of tattooed mummies also inspires practitioners like Elle Festin, a tattooist of Filipino heritage living in California. As co-founder of Mark of the Four Waves, a global community of nearly 500 members of the Filipino diaspora united through tattooing, Mr. Festin has spent more than two decades studying Filipino tribal tattoos and using them to help those living outside the Philippines reconnect with their homeland. One of his sources is the fire mummies people from the Ibaloi and Kankanaey tribes whose heavily tattooed bodies were preserved by slow-burning fire centuries ago.If clients are descended from a tribe that made fire mummies, Mr. Festin will use the mummies tattoos as a framework for designing their own tattoos. (He and other tattooists say that only people with ancestral ties to a culture should receive that cultures tattoos.) So far, 20 people have received fire mummy tattoos.For other clients, Mr. Festin gets more creative, adapting age-old patterns to modern lives. For a pilot, he says, I would put a mountain below, a frigate bird on top of it and the patterns for lightning and wind around it.Yet while mummies offer the most conclusive evidence of how and where past people inked their bodies, theyre relatively rare in the archaeological record. More common and thus more helpful for scientists tracking the footprint of tattooing are artifacts like tattoo needles made of bone, shell, cactus spines or other materials.ImageCredit...Alexis Duclos/Gamma-Rapho, via Getty ImagesImageCredit...Robert Hubner/Washington State UniversityTo show that such tools were used for tattooing, rather than stitching leather or clothing, archaeologists such as Mr. Deter-Wolf replicate the tools, use them to tattoo either pig skin or their own bodies, then examine the replicas under high-powered microscopes. If the tiny wear patterns made by repeatedly piercing skin match those on the original tools, archaeologists can conclude that the original artifacts were indeed used for tattooing.Through such painstaking experiments, Mr. Deter-Wolf and his colleagues are pushing back the timeline of tattooing in North America. In 2019, Mr. Deter-Wolf was an author of a study that showed that the ancestors of modern Puebloan people were tattooing with cactus spines some 2,000 years ago in what is now the American Southwest. This year, he published a finding showing that people were tattooing with needles made of turkey bones in what is now Tennessee about 3,500 years ago.Dion Kaszas, a Hungarian, Mtis, and Nlakapamux tattoo practitioner and scholar in Nova Scotia, is learning how to create his own bone tattoo needles from Mr. Deter-Wolf and Keone Nunes, a Hawaiian tattooist. His goal, he said, is to get back to that ancestral technology; to feel what our ancestors felt. Because few examples remain of Nlakapamux tattooing, Mr. Kaszas uses designs from baskets, pottery, clothing and rock art. Research from other cultures shows that tattoo designs often mimic the patterns on other artifacts.For Mr. Kaszas and others, tattooing isnt just a way to revive an Indigenous language nearly silenced by colonialism. It also has the power to heal wounds of the past and strengthen Indigenous communities for the future.The work our tattoos are doing to heal us is a different kind of work than our ancestors used them for, Mr. Kaszas said. Thats a form of medicine, for people to look down at their arm and understand theyre connected to a family, a community, the earth.ImageCredit...Paul Atwood for The New York TimesInk back from the brinkAlthough people from numerous cultures have reclaimed their tattooing heritage in the past two decades, there are many others who have had theirs obscured entirely by colonization and assimilation. As scientists pay more attention to tattooing, though, their work could bring more lost traditions to light.Mr. Deter-Wolf hopes that archaeologists in other parts of the world will begin identifying tattoo artifacts using the methodology he and other North American scientists have pioneered, pushing back its footprint even further. He also oversees an online, open-source database of tattooed mummies, meant to correct popular misinformation and illustrate the geographic spread of such specimens. The list includes mummies from 70 archaeological sites in 15 countries including Sudan, Peru, Egypt, Russia and China but Mr. Deter-Wolf expects it to grow as infrared imaging and other technology uncover more inked skin on existing mummies.Back in Greenland, Ms. Sialuk Jacobsen hopes that the Qilakitsoq mummies also have more secrets to yield. She is encouraging museum directors to examine other parts of the mummies bodies, such as their thighs, with infrared imaging. Inuit women in other parts of the Arctic receive thigh tattoos as part of birthing rituals, but while historical drawings show thigh tattoos on Greenlandic women, there isnt yet any tangible evidence.If the Qilakitsoq mummies do have thigh tattoos, Ms. Sialuk Jacobsen may one day copy the patterns onto women from the Qilakitsoq region, drawing a line between the generations of the past and those yet to come.Our tattoos are very selfless, she said. They arent just for the woman receiving them, but for her grandmothers, her children and her entire community as well. | science |
GadgetwiseCredit...Peter DaSilva for The New York TimesFeb. 12, 2014Here is a question with a surprisingly complex answer: What is the best option for playing video games these days?Gamers have three big-name game consoles to choose from. The Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4 were released in November of last year, joining the Nintendo Wii U, released in 2012.But the three consoles made their debuts in a world that has, in some ways, moved on: Mobile gaming is on the rise; crowdfunding sites have given us new, innovative console ideas; and live-streaming gameplay sites like Twitch.tv are breathing new life into that old gaming standby, the PC.Whats a gamer to do? If you are ready to break the mold of the Big Three console options, here are some alternatives ranging from cheaper to simpler to far more cutting-edge.IPAD MINI AND NEXUS 7 TABLETS Apples iPad Mini and Googles Nexus 7 tablets are both capable and powerful devices, and a Goldilocks size for playing games: just right. Both have powerful processors and can run graphically intense games on high-resolution screens that look almost as good as console games (just smaller).Both Apple and Google have spent time and money wooing game developers to release great titles for tablets: Mass Effect Infiltrator, several variations of Grand Theft Auto, and the fantasy role-playing game Shadowrun Returns, as well as many others that range in price from $5 to $10 in the iTunes store.The Nexus 7 is by far the cheaper of the two, starting at just $230. (You will want the $270 model with 32 gigabytes of storage, though, and that might feel tight if you download a lot of games.) The low-end iPad Mini costs $400, or as much as a PlayStation 4. Again, if you want more storage for games, a 64-gigabyte model is $600. Thats a lot, but the iPad Mini is a versatile device and requires no yearly subscription fees, and games do not cost $60 a pop.ImageCredit...Shuji Kajiyama/Associated PressNINTENDO 2DS If you are shopping for a young gamer, consider the bare-bones Nintendo 2DS hand-held console, which costs just $130. It has a collection of games aimed at children, like Pokemon and Donkey Kong, and it will entertain them in cars, on airplanes and on the bus.You can step up to the $170 3DS for Internet connectivity, a bigger game library and glasses-free 3-D gaming. The Nintendo 3DS is a strong seller, even as Nintendos Wii U console is floundering; the price, portability and fun game collection have made the DS line a winner for years.ImageCredit...Juergen Schwarz/Getty ImagesSony also makes a hand-held gaming console, the PlayStation Vita, which sells for $200 and offers excellent graphics, a large library of games, Wi-Fi and a stylish, premium-feeling design. A new version, the PS Vita Slim, is due out this spring at the same price.ALTERNATIVE CONSOLES The cost and inflexibility of consoles have annoyed gamers for years. Thanks to crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter, inventors have been able to raise money and develop new types of devices that are a major challenge to the old guard.The standout in that field is the Ouya, a tiny $99 console that comes with a controller and can stream Android games to a television, as well as original games developed just for Ouya. The console has about 500 games available, as well as various apps for streaming radio or broadcasting live gameplay.CLOUD GAMING You may not need any new hardware to play console-style games. Game-streaming services like OnLive and Steam let users play games on computers or mobile devices (or a certain few Internet-connected TVs, in the case of OnLive).Steam charges by the game, with many free games available. The platform is best known for its frequent bargain-basement sales, at which full-fledged PC games can be downloaded for tablet-app prices. Games range from free to about $30.OnLive, on the other hand, is billed as a Netflix for gaming. You can rent games, buy them outright, or sign up for a $10 monthly plan that offers unlimited access to streaming games. OnLive also sells a $100 microconsole similar to the Ouya, which allows games to be streamed to a TV. | Tech |
Credit...Tom Brenner/The New York TimesJune 11, 2018GREENBELT, Md. A federal judge on Monday sharply criticized the Justice Departments argument that President Trumps financial interest in his companys hotel in downtown Washington is constitutional, a fresh sign that the judge may soon rule against the president in a historic case that could head to the Supreme Court.The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, the District of Columbia and the state of Maryland, charge that Mr. Trumps profits from the hotel violate anti-corruption clauses of the Constitution that restrict government-bestowed financial benefits, or emoluments, to presidents beyond their official salary. They say the hotel is siphoning business from local convention centers and hotels.The judge, Peter J. Messitte of the United States District Court in Maryland, promised to decide by the end of July whether to allow the plaintiffs to proceed to the next stage, in which they could demand financial records from the hotel or other evidence from the president. The case takes aim at whether Mr. Trump violated the Constitutions emoluments clauses, which prevent a president from accepting government-bestowed benefits either at home or abroad. Until now, the issue of what constitutes an illegal emolument has never been litigated.Attorneys general for the District of Columbia and Maryland say that by allowing foreign officials to patronize the five-star Trump International Hotel blocks from the White House, Mr. Trump is violating the Constitutions ban on payments from foreign governments to federal officeholders. They also claim the president is violating a related clause that restricts compensation, other than his salary, from the federal government or from state governments.In a two-hour hearing, attorneys for the local jurisdictions and for the Justice Department debated what the framers meant by the emoluments clauses, citing definitions of the word emolument in centuries-old dictionaries and quoting Alexander Hamilton and other founders in attempts to discern their intent.The Justice Department contended that the Constitutions framers meant only to bar federal officials from providing a service to a foreign government and receiving compensation. For example, said Brett Shumate, a deputy assistant attorney general, the Constitution would prohibit Mr. Trump from signing a treaty in exchange for a financial benefit. But it allows him to profit financially from foreign diplomats who book his hotel because there is no allegation that in exchange, he took some official action, he said.Judge Messitte repeatedly challenged that interpretation, asking whether the framers meant merely to rule out outright bribery or to ward off situations that could give rise to corruption as well.Is your argument that as long as the president takes the money without corrupt intent, its O.K.? he asked Mr. Shumate. It has to be an actual quid pro quo?Steven M. Sullivan, the solicitor general for the state of Maryland, argued that it would be absurd if Mr. Trump were barred only from profiting for personally rendering a service to a foreign government. That would prohibit him from accepting $5 for carrying a diplomats bags up to a suite at the Trump International Hotel but would permit him to receive thousands of dollars from the same foreign government for its hotel bookings, he said.Mr. Shumate insisted that previous officeholders had engaged in the same type of behavior without a whiff of public controversy. For example, he said, libraries owned by foreign governments had purchased President Barack Obamas biography, earning him royalties.Penny Pritzker held onto to her stock holdings in the Hyatt Hotels Corp. while she served as Mr. Obamas commerce secretary and while foreign governments rented rooms and held conferences at Hyatt properties worldwide, he said.But Judge Messitte seemed unconvinced by that comparison to Ms. Pritzker. It may well have been a violation, he said. I dont know. No one challenged it.The Trump Organization signed a 60-year-lease in 2013 with the federal government for the building, renovated it and reopened it as a hotel just before Mr. Trump was elected president. Since then, the plaintiffs claim, the hotel has made special efforts to drum up business from foreign governments, including appointing a head of diplomatic sales. Mr. Trump himself regularly visits.Judge Messitte has already ruled once in favor of the plaintiffs. In March, he rejected the Justice Departments argument that Maryland and the District of Columbia had failed to show that they had suffered injuries.If he rules for the plaintiffs again next month, the case would typically move to the evidence-gathering phase, which could open up some of Mr. Trumps financial records to public scrutinyBut legal experts said the Justice Department is highly likely to appeal an adverse decision from Judge Messitte. The department could seek an emergency stay, arguing that the circumstances are so extraordinary that a higher court must intervene without waiting for the lower court proceedings to end, as is customary.The federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has another emoluments case on its docket. In February, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit organization known as CREW, appealed a decision by a federal judge in New York to dismiss a suit involving Mr. Trumps restaurant interests. CREW is also a co-counsel in the Maryland case.In promising an opinion in just seven weeks, Judge Messitte appears to be acting with dispatch. As he noted during the hearing, federal judges are almost never called upon to decide a new constitutional question. | Politics |
DealBook|More Rounds to Come in Fight Over Pep Boyshttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/business/dealbook/more-rounds-to-come-in-fight-over-pep-boys.htmlBreakingviewsDec. 29, 2015Carl C. Icahns Pep Boys fight can go another round.The auto parts chain is spurning the Japanese tire maker Bridgestone in favor of a sweetened $1 billion offer from Mr. Icahn, the raider-turned-activist, after several rounds of back and forth. But shareholders seem to be betting that Bridgestone has the financial wherewithal to punch its way to a higher price.The frenzy started when the Tokyo-based Bridgestone struck an all-cash deal in October to acquire Pep Boys for $15 a share part of a wider trend of Japanese companies looking for deals to expand outside their moribund home market. In December, Icahn Enterprises unveiled a $15.50-a-share counterbid that was later matched by the tire maker. Bridgestone was forced to raise its offer yet again, to $17 a share, after Icahn Enterprises improved its initial proposal.Mr. Icahns latest salvo of $18.50 a share values Pep Boys at $1 billion, some 52 percent more than it was worth before the initial Bridgestone pact and double where the company was trading before speculation arose in May that it might be up for sale. Pep Boys stock promptly jumped on Tuesday above the new price to $18.80, suggesting investors anticipate another raise.Thats plausible. Bridgestone had around $500 million of net cash on its balance sheet as of September. Adding an extra $100 million or so to its current offer would still leave the company with a negligible ratio of debt to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, assuming it were to borrow to pay for the entire deal.Mr. Icahn has suggested that he is willing to pay even more if necessary. Both bidders may anticipate substantial cost savings -- Bridgestone from merging Pep Boys service centers with its existing network of tire shops in the United States, and Mr. Icahn from combining it with Auto Plus, a rival car parts dealer he already owns.In the current accommodative merger market, this battle between a deep-pocketed strategic bidder and a master financial mechanic may not be over yet. | Business |
Credit...Elizabeth D. Herman for The New York TimesJune 13, 2018SAN FRANCISCO Apple has long positioned the iPhone as a secure device that only its owner can open. That has led to battles with law enforcement officials who want to get information off them, including a well-publicized showdown with the F.B.I. in 2016 after Apple refused to help open the locked iPhone of a mass killer.The F.B.I. eventually paid a third party to get into the phone, circumventing the need for Apples help. Since then, law enforcement agencies across the country have increasingly employed that strategy to get into locked iPhones they hope will hold the key to cracking cases.Now Apple is closing the technological loophole that let authorities hack into iPhones, angering police and other officials and reigniting a debate over whether the government has a right to get into the personal devices that are at the center of modern life.Apple said it was planning an iPhone software update that would effectively disable the phones charging and data port the opening where users plug in headphones, power cables and adapters an hour after the phone is locked. While a phone can still be charged, a person would first need to enter the phones password to transfer data to or from the device using the port.Such a change would hinder law enforcement officials, who have typically been opening locked iPhones by connecting another device running special software to the port, often days or even months after the smartphone was last unlocked. News of Apples planned software update has begun spreading through security blogs and law enforcement circles and many in investigative agencies are infuriated.If we go back to the situation where we again dont have access, now we know directly all the evidence weve lost and all the kids we cant put into a position of safety, said Chuck Cohen, who leads an Indiana State Police task force on internet crimes against children. The Indiana State Police said it unlocked 96 iPhones for various cases this year, each time with a warrant, using a $15,000 device it bought in March from a company called Grayshift.But privacy advocates said Apple would be right to fix a security flaw that has become easier and cheaper to exploit. This is a really big vulnerability in Apples phones, said Matthew D. Green, a professor of cryptography at Johns Hopkins University. A Grayshift device sitting on a desk at a police station, he said, could very easily leak out into the world.In an email, an Apple spokesman, Fred Sainz, said the company is constantly strengthening security protections and fixes any vulnerability it finds in its phones, partly because criminals could also exploit the same flaws that law enforcement agencies use. We have the greatest respect for law enforcement, and we dont design our security improvements to frustrate their efforts to do their jobs, he said.Apple and Google, which make the software in nearly all of the worlds smartphones, began encrypting their mobile software by default in 2014. Encryption scrambles data to make it unreadable until accessed with a special key, often a password. That frustrated police and prosecutors who could not pull data from smartphones, even with a warrant.The friction came into public view after the F.B.I. could not access the iPhone of a gunman who, along with his wife, killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., in late 2015. A federal judge ordered Apple to figure out how to open the phone, prompting Timothy D. Cook, Apples chief executive, to respond with a blistering 1,100-word letter that said the company refused to compromise its users privacy. The implications of the governments demands are chilling, he wrote.The two sides fought in court for a month. Then the F.B.I. abruptly announced that it had found an undisclosed group to get into the phone, paying at least $1.3 million because the hacking techniques were not common then. An inspector generals report this year suggested the F.B.I. should have exhausted more options before it took Apple to court.Since then, two main companies have helped law enforcement hack into iPhones: Cellebrite, an Israeli forensics firm purchased by Japans Sun Corporation in 2006, and Grayshift, which was founded by a former Apple engineer in 2016. Law enforcement officials said they generally send iPhones to Cellebrite to unlock, with each phone costing several thousand dollars to open. In March, Grayshift began selling a $15,000 GrayKey device that the police can use to unlock iPhones themselves.Apple has closed loopholes in the past. For years, the police used software to break into phones by simply trying every possible passcode. Apple blocked that technique in 2010 by disabling iPhones after a certain number of incorrect attempts. But the Grayshift and Cellebrite software appear to be able to disable that Apple technology, allowing their devices to test thousands of passcodes, Mr. Green said.Cellebrite declined to comment. Grayshift did not respond to requests for comment.Opening locked iPhones through these methods has become more common, law enforcement officials said. Federal authorities, as well as large state and local police departments, typically have access to the tools, while smaller local agencies enlist the state or federal authorities to help on high-profile cases, they said.Law enforcement agencies that have purchased a GrayKey device include the Drug Enforcement Administration, which bought an advanced model this year for $30,000, according to public records. Marylands state police have one, as do police departments in Portland, Ore., and Rochester, Minn., according to records.Hillar Moore, the district attorney in Baton Rouge, La., said his office had paid Cellebrite thousands of dollars to unlock iPhones in five cases since 2017, including an investigation into the hazing-related death of a fraternity pledge at Louisiana State University. He said the phones had yielded crucial information, and he was upset that Apple planned to close such a useful investigative avenue.They are blatantly protecting criminal activity, and only under the guise of privacy for their clients, he said.Michael Sachs, an assistant district attorney in Manhattan, said his office uses workarounds he declined to specify which to access locked iPhones several times a week. That has helped solve a series of cases in recent months, including by getting into an iPhone to find videos of a suspect sexually assaulting a child. The man was convicted this year.In the first 10 months of 2017, the Manhattan district attorneys office said it had recovered and obtained warrants or consent to search 702 locked smartphones, two-thirds of which were iPhones. Smartphones running Googles Android software have been generally easier to access, partly because many older devices lack encryption.The encryption on smartphones applies only to data stored solely on the phone. Companies like Apple and Google regularly give law enforcement officials access to the data that consumers back up on their servers, such as via Apples iCloud service. Apple said that since 2013, it has responded to more than 55,000 requests from the United States government seeking information about more than 208,000 devices, accounts or financial identifiers.The tussle over encrypted iPhones and opening them to help law enforcement is unlikely to simmer down. Federal officials have renewed a push for legislation that would require tech companies like Apple to provide the police with a backdoor into phones, though they were recently found to be overstating the number of devices they could not access.Apple probably wont make it any easier for the police if not forced by Congress, given that it has made the privacy and security of iPhones a central selling point. But the company has complied with local laws that conflict with its privacy push. In China, for instance, Apple recently began storing its Chinese customers data on Chinese-run servers because of a new law there.Apples latest move is part of a longer cat-and-mouse game between tech companies and law enforcement, said Michelle Richardson, an analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology, which supports protections for online privacy.People always expected there would be this back-and-forth that government would be able to hack into these devices, and then Apple would plug the hole and hackers would find another way in, she said. | Tech |
Can we not think and act on two pandemics at a time? asked one epidemiologist.Credit...Foto24/Gallo Images, via Getty ImagesPublished July 20, 2021Updated Sept. 21, 2021The Biden administration has not yet nominated a leader for the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a $7 billion program that sets priorities for AIDS care worldwide leaving countries that receive funding from the program without guidance during a pandemic that is particularly dire for those with H.I.V.PEPFAR is led by a global AIDS coordinator, a cabinet-level position that was last held by Dr. Deborah Birx. Dr. Birx served from April 2014 to February 2020, when she left to join the White House coronavirus task force. Dr. Angeli Achrekar, a deputy, has acted as PEPFARs interim leader since President Biden took office.Global health experts sharply criticized the delay in nominating a permanent chief. Can we not think and act on two pandemics at a time? asked Gregg Gonsalves, a longtime H.I.V. activist and an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health.PEPFAR was started in 2003 by President George W. Bush and has had bipartisan support ever since. Funds distributed by PEPFAR are used to support prevention and treatment programs, including offering voluntary male circumcision, as well as testing for H.I.V. and providing antiretroviral therapy to people of all ages.It is widely regarded as the most successful global health program. Since its inception, the U.S. government has invested more than $85 billion in more than 60 countries, saving an estimated 20 million lives.PEPFAR is an example of what can be done when you combine diplomacy and global health, said Dr. Carlos del Rio, an infectious-disease expert at Emory University in Atlanta and chair of PEPFARs scientific advisory board. Throughout Africa, they love and they respect the U.S. because of PEPFAR.ImageCredit...U.S. Department of StateLast week, a group of more than 50 advocacy organizations sent a letter to Mr. Biden, urging him to immediately appoint a bold, creative and qualified leader for PEPFAR. This is unacceptable, particularly during a time of the dueling pandemics of H.I.V. and Covid-19, they wrote.The White House did not respond to a request for comment.The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted access to H.I.V. prevention, diagnosis and treatment, as well as supply chains for condoms, lubricants and antiretroviral drugs, according to a recent report from UNAIDS.And the pandemic has reversed hard-gained progress on ending H.I.V., including a 23 percent annual decrease in new infections since 2010.The inertia on naming a leader is particularly damaging when more leadership, ambition and governance is sorely needed to guide global efforts to make up lost ground on the H.I.V. response, said Suraj Madoori, a director of the Treatment Action Group, an advocacy organization based in New York.A new study released last week showed that people living with H.I.V. have a heightened risk of serious illness and death from Covid-19. The coronavirus pandemic could also benefit from the health care infrastructure set up to provide services for H.I.V., experts noted.Theres a lot that can happen now, using the PEPFAR structure to confront Covid in those countries, Dr. del Rio said.Not leveraging the PEPFAR infrastructure I think its crazy, its a huge missed opportunity, he added. This administration has been around for six months. Why have we not appointed them?Dr. del Rio said PEPFARs chief had been noticeably absent from global conversations, including a recent U.N. resolution to end AIDS by 2030, and efforts to enable PEPFAR sites to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. Its also important for PEPFARs chief to speak up for the program when budget dollars are allocated, Dr. del Rio added: I almost feel like the program is basically at a standstill.The absence of a U.S. voice is also having ripple effects on many issues in African countries, said Richard Lusimbo, a program manager at Pan Africa ILGA in Uganda. Core programs for key populations like L.G.B.T.Q. people have been cut in several countries since the start of the Biden administration. In Ivory Coast, for example, the budget for key population services was cut by half.In Kenya, a dispute between its government and the U.S. Agency for International Development has led to a shortage of antiretroviral drugs. A permanent PEPFAR leader with political power would have been able to resolve that dispute, Mr. Lusimbo said.Mr. Biden named Samantha Power to lead USAID on Jan. 13, even before he took office. And last week, the White House announced nominees for seven other positions.For weeks, the H.I.V. community has heard that the administration is considering five widely known global health experts to lead PEPFAR: Shannon Hader, Charles Holmes, Chris Beyrer, Vanessa Kerry and Paul Farmer. But no candidate has emerged as the front-runner.Unfortunately, we are watching as global support for the Covid-19 response in Africa is missing, the AIDS response is being weakened, and it is not clear who the U.S. governments leader is on this, Mr. Lusimbo said. Does the administration not understand that, for our communities, the AIDS response and the Covid-19 response are critically interlinked? | Health |
Terrell Owens to Dak Prescott: Watch Your Back In Dallas 1/22/2018 TMZSports.com Terrell Owens says the Dallas Cowboys have a long history of turning on superstar players and running them out of town ... and he doesn't want Dak Prescott to be the next victim. Owens was at LAX when we asked about his weekend Twitter comments ... when he argued that Dallas' disappointing 9-7 record was not Dak's fault. He also argued that Dak is NOT trying to turn the locker room against Dez Bryant, who also had a disappointing season. Instead, Owens seemed to argue that the Cowboys coaching staff and other execs are pushing the negative narratives to create a fall guy ... so they can then fire that guy and look like heroes. Case in point ... Terrell Owens (according to Terrell Owens). T.O. says that's exactly what happened to him back when he sported the star -- claiming Tony Romo and then-offensive coordinator Jason Garrett teamed up to force him out to save face. "Everybody knows what went down," Owens says ... insisting there are multiple witnesses from the Cowboys who will attest that he was done dirty in Big D. "I just didn't like the way they were trying to say Dak is the problem or Dak is putting the blame or turning people against Dez. That's not fair to Dak." | Entertainment |
Researchers compared 10 cases in Italy with previous cases of a similar childhood illness, Kawasaki disease. The rate of the new cases was much higher, and the conditions were more serious.Credit...Piero Cruciatti/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesPublished May 13, 2020Updated May 21, 2020As concerns mount over children with a serious and potentially deadly inflammatory condition, a new study sheds light on the illnesss distinctive characteristics and provides the strongest evidence yet that the syndrome is linked to the coronavirus.The condition, called pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome, has been reported in about 100 children in New York State, including three who died, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said this week. Cases have been reported in other states, including Louisiana, Mississippi and California, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said it will soon issue an alert asking doctors to report cases of children with symptoms of the syndrome.There have also been at least 50 cases reported in European countries, including in France, Switzerland, Spain and Britain, where at least one death has been attributed to the syndrome.In the new study, published on Wednesday in the journal Lancet, doctors in Italy compared a series of 10 cases of the illness with cases of a similar rare condition in children called Kawasaki disease.The authors found that over the five years before the coronavirus pandemic January 2015 to mid-February 2020 19 children with Kawasaki disease were treated at the Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital, which has an advanced pediatric department, in the Bergamo province.But during the two months from February 18 to April 20 alone, the hospital, which is at the epicenter of Italys coronavirus outbreak, treated 10 children with similar hyper-inflammatory symptoms.Ten cases in two months about 30 times the rate of the Kawasaki disease cases, which occurred at a pace of about one every three months suggests a cluster that is driven by the coronavirus pandemic, especially since overall hospital admissions during this time were much lower than usual, the authors said.Nevertheless, the authors noted that the number of cases was small, suggesting that the new syndrome was unlikely to be widespread among children, who have generally been less hard hit by the virus than adults.None of the 10 children died, but their symptoms were more severe than those experienced by the children with Kawasaki disease. They were much more likely to have heart complications, and five of them exhibited shock, which did not occur in any of the Kawasaki disease cases. They had lower counts of platelets and a type of white blood cell, typical of Covid-19 patients defending against the infection. And more of the children with the new syndrome needed treatment with steroids in addition to the immunoglobulin treatment that both they and the Kawasaki patients received.Like the cases in the United States and elsewhere, the 10 children were generally significantly older than the patients with Kawasaki disease, which tends to strike infants and preschoolers. The average age of the Kawasaki patients was 3. All but one of the children with the new syndrome were older than 5 and their average age was 7 .Eight of the 10 children tested positive for coronavirus antibodies. The researchers suggested that negative test results for the other two children might reflect the fact that the tests were not perfectly accurate and that one of the children had just been treated with a large dose of immunoglobulin, which could have interfered with the tests ability to detect antibodies.The presence of antibodies suggests that the Italian children, like many of the cases in the United States, were infected with the virus weeks earlier. Experts say the new inflammatory syndrome appears to be a delayed reaction driven by a childs immune system response to the infection, in contrast to the primary way that the virus affects patients by attacking the cells in their lungs.Listen to The Daily: A Teenagers Medical MysteryHow the case of one 14-year-old could help doctors understand a frightening new illness linked to the coronavirus.transcripttranscriptListen to The Daily: A Teenagers Medical MysteryHosted by Michael Barbaro; produced by Clare Toeniskoetter and Jessica Cheung; with help from Rachel Quester; edited by Liz O. Baylen and Lisa TobinHow the case of one 14-year-old could help doctors understand a frightening new illness linked to the coronavirus.michael barbaroFrom The New York Times, Im Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.[music]Today: From the earliest days of the coronavirus, health officials believed that it largely spared children and teenagers, but recently that belief has been challenged. My colleague Pam Belluck on the story of a 14-year-old boy whose case is being studied to better understand the impact of the virus on children.Its Thursday, May 21.Pam, when does this understanding that we all seem to have about the coronavirus and how it spares children, when does that start to change?pam belluckIn late April, there was this bulletin that was sent out by a pediatric health service in the United Kingdom. It just said were noticing some kids, not very many. They seem to have these symptoms of inflammation. We dont really know what this is about. Some have tested positive for coronavirus. Some havent. And it was just kind of saying we think were seeing something.So I talked to my editors about it, and we were trying to figure out whether we should explore it more at that point. And we decided, well, we dont really know a whole lot. It seems like a small number of cases. We cant even say for certain that its connected to coronavirus, and so we just kind of put it aside for a bit and watch it.And then I think a couple days later I got an email from a hospital in New York City. The person said weve got two cases of this syndrome that theyve been talking about in the UK. If you want to talk to somebody, let us know. And thats how I got to know Jack McMorrow and his family in their apartment in Queens.michael barbaroAnd tell me about this visit.pam belluckIts a very warm, kind of cozy apartment. There are all these welcome home banners and balloons for Jack. And the family, Jack and his father John and his mother Doris, they just immediately welcomed me and our photographer Gabriela in, and they all just start talking. I just know immediately I have to put on my tape recorder because theres no way Im going to capture all this writing things down.john mcmorrowHe sent him a letter.jack mcmorrowYes. Can I explain something john mcmorrowOh, come on. Im giving backdrop here. You can explain all you want.jack mcmorrowNo. First of all, I wanted to talk about how the virus was behaving like a bacteria.john mcmorrowOK, youre gonna, but I just want to say jack mcmorrowThat was way back when.john mcmorrow Randall jack mcmorrowThis things probably not picking up anything.doris stromanI hope you know shes taping all of you because john mcmorrowYeah, we barter like this all day long.doris stromanI got a bell from school jack mcmorrowStop with the bell.doris stroman because they bicker. And I have to do this john mcmorrowAnd its a timeout bell.doris stroman and tell them to both go to each corner.jack mcmorrowIm sorry about all this chaotic pam belluckIts wonderful. Its wonderful.[bell ringing]john mcmorrowAnd these cleaned arteries, they have to bring you right back.jack mcmorrowI was coherent at this time.john mcmorrowNo, I know. But I know youve been jumping things, and I know when youre excited.jack mcmorrowMe jumping things?pam belluckYoure doing great. Youre doing great.jack mcmorrowDad, you went from day one to me in the new I.C.U. Thats like a doris stromanDo I need to get my bell?jack mcmorrow huge jump. Dude, if speakerOh my God.michael barbaroAnd tell me about this family. Who are they?pam belluckSo Jacks father is John McMorrow.john mcmorrowI know its your story, son.pam belluckHe is a truck driver. He works as a Teamster for the film industry. He was recently laid off because of the pandemic. And his mother, Jacks mother, is Doris Stroman. She works at a lab school with five and six-year-old kids. She was wearing a mask that had The Rolling Stones tongue logo on it.doris stroman to figure out what was going on, starting with his pediatrician.pam belluckAnd Jack is 14. Hes a ninth grader. He goes to Catholic school in Queens.jack mcmorrowYeah, and I have a whole bunch of other prop replica stuff.pam belluckSo youre a Star Wars fan?jack mcmorrowI like Marvel a lot more than I do pam belluckOh, youre more of a Marvel person. OK.jack mcmorrowThis is the Infinity Gauntlet from Avengers: Infinity War. I really have to doris stromanThey dont have time for that, Jack.jack mcmorrowThis is why michael barbaroAnd, Pam, what is the story that Jack and his parents tell you about this mysterious condition that he has?pam belluckSo Jack was living the world of a New York City teenager in a pandemic.doris stromanHe never left the house.jack mcmorrowI havent left john mcmorrowSince March 13, hes been in the house.doris stromanYou never left the house. His school john mcmorrowIn his room, not even in here.doris stromanHis Catholic school was one of the first that were closed.pam belluckOh wow.doris stromanDidnt leave the house.pam belluckMarch 12 was his last day of school, and he was doing the online learning thing.doris stromanThe one time he left the house other than was to help me with the laundry and didnt want to touch anything.jack mcmorrowI took a shower after I came up from the laundry room.doris stromanYeah, the kid just jack mcmorrowIm a germophobe.pam belluckThey just kind of stayed in. He was playing video games. He was chatting with his friends and that kind of thing. That was Jacks world.[music] Then in mid-April, Jacks parents start to notice some unusual things.john mcmorrowThree weeks ago, he came out to me with a rash on the backside of his hands.jack mcmorrowYeah.john mcmorrowI thought it was jack mcmorrowIt was bad.john mcmorrow from the antibacterial soap. You know, Purell. Maybe hes doing it too much. Hes sensitive.jack mcmorrowYeah, for like we thought it was nothing more than eczema.john mcmorrowAnd then I think a day or two later he jack mcmorrowNo, it was like john mcmorrow your mother told you something about your eyes. She thought you were playing video games too much.jack mcmorrowYeah, the eyes definitely, but I dont know if that was pam belluckThey went on, and then the next week and this was April 21 jack mcmorrowI had got a normal fever, like 101, 102.pam belluck Jack gets a fever.jack mcmorrowI woke up one day with doris stromanSore throat.jack mcmorrow sore throat. That was the first inflammation symptom that we had, which was doris stromanOn his hands, on his feet jack mcmorrowOn my hands, on my feet doris stroman on his neck.jack mcmorrow and on my neck. That was the first pam belluckAnd then around Friday, April 24, things start to get more severe.jack mcmorrowThat ended up being a swollen lymph node that grew to about the size of a tennis ball that you could visibly see coming on the side of my neck.doris stromanThat was alarming.pam belluckBy the next day, Saturday morning, he wakes up and hes got a 104.7 fever.michael barbaroThat is a real fever.pam belluckThat is a serious fever. They call their pediatrician at 7:30 in the morning, and she says, you guys, you got to get to an urgent care clinic, and they do. And there he gets a coronavirus test, but its going to be a couple days before he gets the results.michael barbaroSo at this point they think it might perhaps be Covid-19.pam belluckIt doesnt look like Covid-19, but were living in a world of Covid-19, and so I think that they are just sort of saying, well, lets just test him. We dont really know what this is. They send him home. Things just keep getting worse and worse. And by Monday morning, Jack wakes up. He cannot move. He cant move.jack mcmorrowBecause I wake up, and to even sit up, I screamed for them. And I had 105 almost.pam belluckAnd hes lying on the couch.jack mcmorrowI was sleeping with my socks on, and he kind of saw red. And he takes off my socks to reveal my entire feet, right here, had just rashes on the insides and bottom.doris stromanAt that time jack mcmorrowAnd my hands.doris stroman we thought that was the apex.jack mcmorrowAnd my hands.doris stromanBut it wasnt until days later.jack mcmorrowYeah, they thought that was bad. My hands here on my palms, a little bit at the back, all rashes. So my skin to even touch my skin and feel pam belluckIts terribly, terribly frightening. And he says to me, I was very emotional.jack mcmorrowIm using the word emotional to try and cover up the fact I was crying like a baby. It was so bad.pam belluckThey happen to have a home blood pressure monitor, so they take his blood pressure. And this is where, as if all of these symptoms werent alarming enough and frightening enough, the blood pressure is very low. And so they know they had to take him to the hospital. They had to figure out how to get him out of the house. He cant move. So John and Jack kind of demonstrate this for me.jack mcmorrowI put my hands on his arms like this and, not kidding, shuffled my way.john mcmorrowAnd I had to then hold him up jack mcmorrowWith his arms.pam belluckJohn picks him up, puts Jacks feet on top of Johns feet, and then walks backward out the apartment door, sort of shuffling Jack along.doris stromanAnd when we got to the hospital john mcmorrowThey took a wheelchair.doris stroman they took a wheelchair.jack mcmorrowYeah, I took a wheelchair.doris stromanHe couldnt walk.john mcmorrowHe couldnt walk no more. He couldnt bend his legs.pam belluckSo he gets to the hospital. They are trying to figure out, again, whats going on. They dont know.john mcmorrow everything back and forth. You had a cardiologist department. You had the pulmonary specialist, infectious disease experts, and then you had the immunology all throwing numbers and prescriptions and how they count through each other to deal with him. And this is stuff that I its French to me. You might as well just tell me pam belluckAnd while hes there, they get the coronavirus test results back from the clinic that he went to on Saturday two days earlier.michael barbaroAnd what does it say?pam belluckTheyre negative. So theyre crossing that off the list. They say, we really should probably send you home because we dont really know what this is, and we think maybe you can just kind of watch it at home.doris stromanBecause they were riding the wave that he tested negative.pam belluckWell, Doris is not happy about that. She says doris stromanAnd I said, well, he needs to be tested again. And she said, we only test those who are admitted. And I said, well, then he needs to be admitted. We have nowhere to be pam belluckSo theres a communication around that. And they agree theres no harm in doing another coronavirus test. Why not? We dont really know whats happening. Why not? So they do another coronavirus test. And then while theyre there waiting, another symptom emerges.doris stromanWhen he woke up, his eyes were like this. And I was just like, what just jack mcmorrowYeah, they were rolling in the back of my head.doris stromanAnd they were red.pam belluckHis eyes turned bright red. As his mom is telling me about this, she is pointing to a red pillow on their couch, and she says, its like this. And his eyes are rolling back into his head, and theyre bright red.doris stromanHe was like, Im fine, Im fine, like this. Im fine. Im fine.john mcmorrowWhen was this?pam belluckThen the doctor comes in and tells them that, guess what? The new coronavirus test, the second one, it was positive.michael barbaroPam, how could that be that he has a negative test and just a few days later, suddenly a positive test?pam belluckWell, unfortunately this is kind of the reality of coronavirus testing right now that they are not 100 percent reliable. Its a little bit of a Wild West situation. So there are cases of false negatives, and thats obviously what was the case with Jack. So once they realize that he is Covid positive, they decide at that hospital that hes got to go to a childrens hospital. And Jack is not on board with this. He does not want to go.And the doctor says to him, If I send you home today, you will be dead by tomorrow.jack mcmorrowThat, I would say, had scared me to death. But it more scared me to life. It scared me to fight.pam belluckSo Jack gets to the childrens hospital in the ambulance. And the doctors take one look, and they realize, this is not what we thought coronavirus infection looks like. This is not the way it usually affects patients. And they know that by looking at Jack and figuring out whats going on with him, they are going to learn a lot more about what this virus can do to kids.[music]michael barbaroWell be right back.jack mcmorrowIm getting to the pain now. It was a throbbing, stinging rush of, like, you could feel it going through your veins.pam belluckSo when Jack gets to the hospital, he is just exhausted and in so much pain.jack mcmorrowYou could feel it was almost like someone injected you with straight up fire. Just fire.pam belluckThe major symptom thats going on with Jack is that he has very low blood pressure.jack mcmorrowYouve got to remember, my heart rate was at 165 while I was sleeping. Thats like a marathon runner.pam belluckAnd he has a very, very fast heart rate, because his heart is trying very hard to compensate for that low blood pressure that is preventing him from pumping oxygen and nutrients throughout his body to his critical organs. So thats what theyve got to treat. That is a condition that is called cardiogenic shock. It is heart failure. It is fatal if not treated. And he was telling me that he started to focus his energy. He started to feel like, I have got to understand what is going on with my body. Ive got to know, because if I dont know what Im fighting, then I cant fight it. So he starts to talk to the doctors.jack mcmorrowThey dont get a lot of kids that can actually talk to them since its pediatrics.pam belluckAnd hes a ninth-grade kid, and hes been taking biology, and he has some understanding about the heart and the lungs and how they all work. And so hes asking them lots of questions.jack mcmorrowWe were going back and forth with the whole especially the way my heart related to my cardiovascular and circulatory system, never mind my pam belluckAnd that made him feel much more in control, or at least it was a little bit less terrifying for him once he kind of realized what he could understand. But in that first day or two jack mcmorrowIt was scary.pam belluck he did feel like he wasnt going to come out of it.speakerIt didnt look like I was coming out of it the same, if at all.michael barbaroAnd how do the doctors try to treat Jack during this time?pam belluckSo the first thing that theyre trying to do is give him blood pressure medication to try to get his blood pressure up, but its just not working. Its been 48 hours. And they are so worried about his heart, which is not pumping enough oxygen to his body, that they think theyre going to need to put him on a ventilator.michael barbaroWow.john mcmorrowThey were going to intubate him. And I said, you know, that was breaking my heart.doris stromanIf they were to john mcmorrowAnd so did they. They didnt want it, because they know that they had to brace me on the realistic approach that only 20 percent come off.pam belluckSo they say, well, you know, why dont we try some steroids? Now, steroids are this widely used medication that works in a lot of different ways and works for some things, it doesnt work for other things, and its really hard to know whether its going to help him or not. But within a few hours, he starts to stabilize. They decide they dont need the ventilator, and jack mcmorrowThey were bringing me Icees and ginger ale john mcmorrowThey were bringing him everything, lollipops jack mcmorrow and I hadnt had water.john mcmorrowHe hadnt no water, nothing in his mouth for over 48 hours because they were jack mcmorrowFor 48 hours.john mcmorrow preparing him to do the tube.jack mcmorrowMy mouth was I felt like I was dying. And then they were throwing Icees my way. They were like, here you go, kid. They gave me lollipops. They gave me ginger ales. I was, like, living the life.pam belluckSo it seems like the steroids worked, but doctors actually dont know that 100 percent. And John, Jacks father, called the pediatrician, their longtime pediatrician, and said, what happened? I dont know what happened. And john mcmorrowHe laughed. And I said, why? Why? Why? How did this happen? What did he do? And he goes, I dont know. I said, you know my familys going to believe this was the power of prayer. And he goes, Ill go with that, because we dont know why. We dont know.pam belluckMy family is going to think that its a miracle. And the pediatrician says, well, that works for me because I dont really know either.michael barbaroAnd Pam, beyond the steroids and whether or not those worked, what did the doctors understand about what was going on here?pam belluckWell, theyre kind of mystified. I mean, theyve got this kid, and they know that he has a positive coronavirus test, but he doesnt have symptoms that kind of look like what theyve come to expect from coronavirus. And at the same time, just that very morning theyve had two or three other kids show up with the same symptoms, very similar symptoms. And those kids have tested negative for coronavirus. So they dont have a live coronavirus infection, but the doctors are wondering.And so they have another test in their toolkit. They have whats called an antibody test, which can tell you not whether you have the live infection right now, but it can tell you whether somebody has ever had coronavirus infection. And they think, lets just give these kids these other kids that test and see.And lo and behold, those kids end up being positive for coronavirus antibodies. And that means that all of these kids who are showing up with these mysterious symptoms that cannot be explained by anything else that doctors know have this one common denominator. They have all had coronavirus.michael barbaroPam, at this point, what do the doctors think that this is exactly? Because all of these kids have had coronavirus, but most of them dont still have it.pam belluckWhat they think is this may be a kind of second-stage effect of coronavirus that we didnt know was possible, that we didnt know was part of the way this virus worked. These kids didnt get the lung problems, the breathing problems, that kind of assault on the lungs that is the primary way that coronavirus works.And so what the doctors think is that at the time of their infection, their immune system did a really good job of just swatting the infection away, of battling it away thats why they didnt have any symptoms at the time. But that somehow in the course of that fight, their immune system got so revved up and so hyperactive that it generated this inflammatory response weeks later, and their bodies had this incredible overzealous reaction that went throughout their bodies and caused all sorts of havoc.michael barbaroSo this is not coronavirus for kids. Its some kind of later-down-the-line, affiliated set of horrible conditions that follows it.pam belluckExactly.michael barbaroI mean, what seems particularly scary about this is that theoretically any kid who has had the coronavirus and I have to imagine there are tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of these across the United States, people like Jack who probably showed no symptoms whatsoever from the original infection it now seems possible that they could develop these really awful new secondary symptoms.pam belluckThats exactly the risk here. Thats exactly the worry. We know that kids are just as likely to get infected as adults. They dont have any protection from infection. A whole lot of them end up showing no symptoms. And we wanted to think that that meant that they really werent getting that sick. But now we have this thing that shows up weeks later, and we dont have any idea who will end up with this inflammatory syndrome and when.michael barbaroI mean, what are the implications of that as we think about reopening schools, for example? I mean, one of the kind of saving graces, silver linings of this pandemic was that kids were supposed to be spared, and that understanding seems to have been the basis for plans to reopen schools. What does it mean that this second-stage set of symptoms is now starting to show up among children?pam belluckIt definitely puts a serious complication in those plans. Its something that governors, federal officials, they are already thinking about they are going to have to think about. Its not like you can test kids and say, OK, youre negative, or you have antibodies, youre going to be fine. Because you could have antibodies, and then you could end up with this. So it makes that issue much more tenuous and much more complicated, and I dont think anybody has a good answer for that right now.michael barbaroAnd Pam, how is Jack doing at this point?pam belluckHes doing OK. Hes home.jack mcmorrowAnd I came home to take the best shower Ive ever had in my entire life. Not even gassing it. It was like 30 minutes.doris stromanYou cant get him in, and then you cant get him out.jack mcmorrowNo, no, no. It was like doris stromanYou know. You have kids.jack mcmorrowIt was like 30 minutes, this one. And it felt fine, and then I was like, I got to stop running around because Im going to fall. Im going to get lightheaded and pass out. But completely ignoring my own self advice, just ran into my room, put on my headphones, talked to my friends, and I said, Im home! And they were all like, yeah!doris stromanAny time he runs around jack mcmorrowAnd it was the best.doris stroman and says Im alive, Im alive jack mcmorrowNo.doris stroman we go, Im a real boy!jack mcmorrowIm a real boy.doris stromanIm a real boy!jack mcmorrowNo, no, no, because I said that.doris stromanFrom Pinocchio.jack mcmorrowNo, because I was in the hospital, and I was like there are no strings on me because john mcmorrowBecause he did IVs pam belluckHe has some residual heart issues, but they think that his issues, because hes so young and otherwise healthy, that hell probably emerge from this with no real issues. They are going to be following him. Theyre going to be following these other kids, too, because this is still a mystery, and they dont really know whether its going to have any long-term effects.And since his case, since his successful treatment, doctors have been using the same playbook on other kids with his issue. So they think that the steroids were what helped him, and they are giving other kids steroids a lot earlier when they come into the hospital. So far, apparently the results have been pretty encouraging. They are writing up Jacks case, along with some of the other kids, in an article thats going to be published in a medical journal. Jack was very excited to learn about that. And he said to me jack mcmorrowIts been really good being back home, and I just want to do more with my life now, now that I have it back.pam belluckI really want to do something with my life, now that I have it back.jack mcmorrowIn any way that I can.pam belluckThat is awesome.jack mcmorrowYeah.pam belluckHe said this while holding his Captain America shield. So I thought [LAUGHTER]michael barbaroHe is, after all, a 14-year-old.pam belluckHe is, after all, a 14-year-old boy.jack mcmorrowI literally sent my biology teacher an email, saying thank you for educating me.pam belluckReally?john mcmorrowOh, that was the first thing he did.jack mcmorrowI can show you it if you want.john mcmorrowYes. You should actually pam belluckI would love to see it.john mcmorrow show it.doris stromanNo, no, not now. Not now. Let her have it so pam belluckYeah, why dont you email it to me.doris stromanIts long, so just let her read it when she gets a minute.pam belluck[READING JACKS EMAIL] OK, Ill try to make this email quick, because Im still in the hospital recovering. The complications of this virus have left me with pneumonia. And more serious than that, heart issues. A mild heart blockage, as explained by the doctors. This heart blockage is the main reason Im not at home recovering right now, but rather in a cardio-monitoring room.As hard as it is to keep up with all of this and understand many aspects of these complications, because of how little they know of Covid, I have to say, once it came around to them talking to me about my heart and my systems, Im confident that I was able to keep up with the conversation and understand what was wrong with me and what to do to keep fighting or rather, to keep my vitals in check.To summarize what Im trying to say and this is the honest truth I would like to thank you for educating me as you did and for providing me the educational support to understand my body when I need to most. Because based off of my knowledge on my heart and circulatory system, Im now able to work off of that knowledge and help myself understand the doctors and communicate to them.I dont want to drag this out, and I know I said that Id try to make this short, but I really do have to thank you for educating me enough to know what I needed to know. Im sorry for making this email so long, and I really feel bad for disturbing you on a Saturday night. But seriously, Im genuinely thanking you for educating me as you did, and I look forward to seeing you on Zoom or in class if we return this school year.I hope your family and yourself stay safe. Thank you.michael barbaroThats lovely.pam belluckIsnt that amazing?michael barbaroIs he back in school remotely?pam belluckHe is back. Jack is back in school remotely. Hes taking that biology class and hes seeing his friends. And he is he is being Jack.michael barbaroThank you, Pam. We really appreciate it.pam belluckThank you.[music]michael barbaroLast week, health officials gave Jacks condition a name: Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children. So far, it has been found in about 200 children in the U.S. and Europe, and has killed several of them. Because the condition was just identified, its unclear how many cases have remained unreported. Well be right back.[music] Heres what else you need to know today.archived recording (andy beshear)Retail opened today. Big day, big step. And what we saw out there from everything that we could see is people trying really hard.michael barbaroOn Wednesday, two months after the pandemic began, all 50 states began reopening to varying degrees.archived recording (andy beshear)And thats important, because we have one shot at reopening the economy the right way.michael barbaroKentucky permitted retailers to let in customers. Connecticut allowed restaurants and malls to reopen with significant limits. And New York allowed religious gatherings of up to 10 people.archived recording (andrew cuomo)I understand their desire to get back to religious ceremonies as soon as possible. As a former altar boy, I get it. I think those religious ceremonies can be very comforting.michael barbaroBut there were signs on Wednesday that the reopenings would be slow and risky. Ford, which restarted its U.S. assembly lines earlier this week, said it would halt operations at plants in Illinois and Michigan after workers there tested positive for the virus.[music]Thats it for The Daily. Im Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.jack mcmorrowActually, Im trying to open my range and hang out more. Like, I want to fill my entire schedule. I dont want to ever be not doing something. Because I find myself I used to find myself oftentimes stuck in my own world, not letting anyone in.pam belluckYeah.jack mcmorrowYou know?pam belluckYeah.jack mcmorrowIm a very doors-closed type of guy. I need to go out and shoot my shot and do my thing and go out to parties and stuff.john mcmorrowFor what? What are you talking about?pam belluckI was asking jack mcmorrowAnd Im planning Im planning to do all that during the summer of quarantines, not in session. I have plans with friends, and we are going to go out and do stuff now. We are striving. Were going to go to the beach. Were going to go on vacation. Were going to go john mcmorrowRight now I have him back home. I dont know anything about his plans, but they will not be going overnight.pam belluck[LAUGHS]jack mcmorrowIts definitely not going to be overnight. Its going to be over a span of when this quarantine ends, me and my boys are going out.john mcmorrowWe go away a lot. We have a shore place. | Health |
Credit...Said Khatib/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesNov. 11, 2018JERUSALEM A covert Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip apparently went bad on Sunday, leaving at least seven Palestinians dead, including one senior Hamas military commander, and puncturing a nascent cease-fire with a flurry of airstrikes and rocket fire.An Israeli lieutenant colonel was killed and another officer was wounded in the action near Khan Younis, the first known Israeli ground incursion into Gaza since Operation Protective Edge, in July 2014, set off a seven-week war.The impetus for the Israeli operation and its nature were unclear. Reports in the Israeli news media generally described it as an intelligence mission that went awry.Palestinian militants responded with waves of rockets aimed at Israeli communities near Gaza, and Israeli aircraft pounded targets in Gaza for a time. With sirens going off repeatedly in the Gaza periphery, Israel ordered its citizens there to remain close to air-raid shelters and schools were closed on Monday.The Israeli military took the unusual step of announcing that none of its personnel had been captured in Gaza. And by early Monday, the Israeli news media were playing down the significance of the countrys soldiers operating in Gaza territory.A former Israeli military commander in charge of long-range missions, Tal Russo, made the rounds of television studios assuring viewers this had been an intelligence operation, not an assassination or abduction mission. It was of the sort, he said, that are carried out all the time, every night and in all fronts.Whatever the incursions purpose, the fighting it set off threatened to damage, if not scuttle, delicate multilateral efforts to calm the Israel-Gaza border.Those efforts have appeared to be bearing fruit.Israel has allowed new shipments of diesel fuel to Gazas power plant, which is supplying many more hours of electricity to residents of the impoverished enclave. Over the weekend, Hamas distributed $15 million in Qatari-donated cash as back pay to thousands of its civil servants who have received only a fraction of their salaries for months.ImageCredit...Tsafrir Abayov/Associated PressBut the perception that Israel, by allowing the fuel and cash shipments into Gaza, was paying off Hamas set off acrimonious wrangling between two rival right-wing members of Israels security cabinet.Earlier Sunday, Education Minister Naftali Bennett called the cash infusion protection money. Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman accused Mr. Bennett of having supported such payments and of having opposed in recent weeks the more aggressive military reprisals against Hamas that Mr. Lieberman favored.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in Paris for the Armistice Day centennial, assured reporters earlier in the day that he was working in every possible way to restore the quiet to the residents of Gaza and also prevent a humanitarian crisis. He said that the border was in the first stage of a lull and that he was doing everything I can in order to avoid an unnecessary war.By nights end Mr. Netanyahu had cut short his trip and was flying back to Israel in response to the Gaza hostilities.Basem Naim, a former Hamas health minister who leads Gazas Council on International Relations, said tensions were high enough that a mistake could lead to a new war.This event showed clearly that the situation here is very fragile, he said, and without a political horizon and international guarantees for Israeli obligations, everything can easily collapse.The clash, Mr. Naim said, also showed the risk of relying so heavily on the personal commitment of Netanyahu for the uneasy cease-fire when the Israeli government remains divided over it.According to a statement from Hamas, Israeli special forces in a civilian car drove about two miles inside the Gaza Strip, east of Khan Younis, where they killed Noor Baraka, 37, a local battalion commander of al-Qassam Brigades, the Hamas military wing. Mr. Barakas responsibilities included digging attack tunnels and firing rockets into Israel.According to a local journalist, Muthana al-Najjar, the Israelis, dressed as civilians including some in womens clothing were in a civilian vehicle that stopped outside Mr. Barakas home, where it drew suspicion. A gunfight ensued, and the fleeing Israelis called in airstrikes to cover their retreat to Israeli territory.At least seven Palestinians were wounded, according to the Gaza health ministry.Mr. Baraka, whose prior home was destroyed by an Israeli missile in 2009, was killed near a mosque named for Ismail Abu Shanab, who was the third-ranking Hamas leader before his own assassination by Israel in 2003. | World |
Global HealthCredit...Robert Hood/Fred Hutch News ServiceNov. 28, 2016A rare but treatable form of cancer can now be diagnosed cheaply and easily with dried blood spots instead of whole blood, scientists in Seattle announced last week.The new test for chronic myeloid leukemia can be run with a few dime-size spots on a paper card that can be mailed to a center for diagnosis.Dr. Jerald Radich, a leukemia specialist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, said that since his lab developed the test cards have arrived by mail and in luggage from Africa and Asia, still useful after heat, cold and weeks in transit.The test began as a summer project for high school and college students in my lab, Dr. Radich said. A major hurdle, he said, was finding paper that wasnt so acidic or starchy that it degraded the RNA marker used to detect the disease.Chronic myeloid leukemia, which in poor countries is often diagnosed late, when victims have distended spleens and soaring white cell counts, was once a death sentence, Dr. Radich said. But new drugs like imatinib better known as Gleevec, introduced in 2001 have kept many patients in remission for years.Once they receive the diagnosis, patients from 80 poor and middle-income countries are referred to The Max Foundation, which helps them get drugs donated by Gleevecs maker, Novartis, or other companies.Dr. Radich began his quest for a simpler test in 2009, after Pat Garcia-Gonzalez, the foundations chief executive, attended a conference in Africa and learned that hundreds of potential aid recipients could not afford the $600 it cost to ship blood to diagnostic labs in Europe or the United States. An Ethiopian hematologist said some of his patients had sold their cows or homes to pay the shipping costs.Gleevec, which made almost $5 billion for Novartis last year, has been at the center of a long battle between pharmaceutical companies and activists fighting price increases. The drug cost about $26,000 per year in 2001, and Novartis repeatedly raised the price even as competitors emerged; early this year, it was more than $120,000.Those who support broader access to medicines argue that poor countries should reject patents and make generic versions of leukemia drugs. In 2013, Indias highest court struck down Novartiss patent application for Gleevec, opening the way for generics. They now cost about $400 a year in India and about $9,000 in Canada.One generic became available in the United States in February, but prices did not begin to soften until August, when more drugs were allowed on the market.Novartis has placed no limits on how many doses it will donate, Ms. Garcia-Gonzalez said, but she sees the program as a bridge to the day when countries will be able to afford to pay for such drugs.We like it when the government has a stake in the patients being diagnosed correctly, getting the right drugs and doing well, she said. When the drug company is doing everything for free, it doesnt matter to them. | Health |
Credit...Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesDec. 12, 2015HAMBACH, France On a drizzly afternoon in October, Mathis Cdric buzzed around the kitchen of his small Alsatian restaurant in Hambach, France, a bucolic town near the German border. It was lunchtime, and workers from a nearby Smart car factory would soon be filtering in to grab the daily special of sauerkraut and sausages before heading to their afternoon shift.Typically, when the workers gathered around the small tables, the atmosphere was chatty. But lately, a pall has hung over the conversation.To lift competitiveness, the bosses at Smart, owned by the German auto giant Daimler, had asked the plants 800 employees to vote on whether they would be willing take a pay cut and temporarily abandon the cherished 35-hour workweek, which had long prevailed at Smart and every other business in France. In return, Smart, Hambachs biggest employer, would guarantee their jobs for five years.To Mr. Cdric, the answer seemed clear: For the sake of the factory, if not the town, the workers should agree to the deal. But Smarts proposal had opened a rift inside the plant and with the factorys powerful unions. Rumors flew that Smart might be closed if an accord was not reached.This is on everyones minds its the No. 1 fear, Mr. Cdric said. Frankly, I dont understand why some of them dont want to do a little more to save jobs. I work 40 hours just on the weekend, he added. But I guess people want to hold on to what theyve got.This week, after a three-month fight led by the unions, the workers will have one last chance to agree to change their contracts to allow a longer workweek, which would start in January. The unions that oppose the change are still resisting. But Philippe Steyer, Smarts director of human resources, said he expected at least three-quarters of Smarts employees to accept the change.More than 15 years after Frances 35-hour workweek became law, the showdown at Smart, which has captured headlines nationwide, is a vivid reminder that the measure is still a social and political lightning rod. At Smart and many other companies, employers say the rule and other rigid labor laws make France one of the most expensive places in Europe to do business.To the outside world, France appears to be one of the most laid-back places anywhere to work an impression that even made its way to one of the Republican presidential debates.I mean, literally, the Senate, what is it, like a French workweek? Jeb Bush asked Senator Marco Rubio recently, accusing him of a slack work ethic. You get like three days where you have to show up?In reality, the 35-hour workweek has become mostly symbolic, because a multitude of loopholes allow companies to work around the law. French employees work an average of 40.5 hours a week more than the 40-hour average in the European Union and have high productivity. Many workers at the Smart factory already pull longer hours and are compensated in overtime.As France now grapples with five years of sluggish economic growth and high unemployment, President Franois Hollande has been exploring options that could hollow out whats left of les trente-cinq heures. The government has proposed legislation that next year would give companies and workers more leeway in setting their own work rules, and would permit collective negotiation over salaries, employment conditions and the length of the workweek.The mere hint that Mr. Hollande might relax the 35-hour rule put him at odds with the left wing of his Socialist party, which ushered in the law in 2000 and considers it a totem of social progress.French labor unions have also vowed to block the changes. The unions wield strong negotiating power even though less than 8 percent of the French work force now holds membership.At the Smart factory, the national debate was crystallized this fall around a nonbinding vote in September that wound up dividing the factory between blue-collar workers, who generally opposed the change, and white-collar workers, who supported it. Smarts managers framed the referendum as a test of willingness to adapt to globalization. But some employees feared the mandate to lift competitiveness amounted to little more than squeezing workers to increase profitability.What theyre asking is for people to work more and earn less, said Didier Getrey, a local leader at Frances C.F.D.T. union, which is leading the deal opposition.We cannot live in a world where were always scraping savings off the backs of the little guy to enrich the 1 percent, Mr. Getrey said. Those are Chinese labor standards. We are not going let it happen in France. The standoff frayed nerves in Hambach, a former iron ore mining town that brims with red geraniums and rows of tidy Alsatian-style houses.Many of Smarts employees have lived in the hamlet for years and work side by side at the factory making the Smart Fortwo, the lollipop-colored minicars that can squeeze into half a parking space in New York, Paris and other crowded cities. Nearly 2,000 other people in the area live off the Smart factory, including employees at cafes, hotels and other small businesses.Many of the towns older people remember the hard times before Smart arrived. The Lorraine region, which was annexed briefly by Germany during World War II, depended on the mining industry for most of the last century. When cheaper competition arose in the 1960s from Eastern Europe and elsewhere, the mines began closing, prompting thousands of layoffs over the next three decades.Fortunes revived after local politicians and President Jacques Chirac persuaded Daimler to open the ultramodern Smart facility in 1997, praising low costs and high French productivity. New roads were paved into the rolling green hills, with names like Creativity Street and Mobility Boulevard. Helmut Kohl, then the German chancellor, joined Mr. Chirac in a ribbon-cutting ceremony to inaugurate Smartville, whose factory and supplier buildings swept over 168 acres.But competition from other countries is once again clouding the towns future. While the Hambach plant is still profitable, Daimler recently opened a lower-cost Smart car facility in Slovenia, producing four-seater Smart cars. Many people at the plant and in town worried that Smart might move operations there if the two sides could not reach a deal.If Smart were to leave, this place would become an economic desert, said Gaston Meyer, Hambachs mayor.Local unemployment isnt as bad as when the mines closed, but it is stuck around 10 percent, on par with the national average. Nearby, a massive plot is supposed to be transformed into a new industrial park. The mayor is working to lure companies. But if there is even a hint that Smart might move, he wonders what business would even want to come.We havent returned to the times of Zola, he said, referring to the French author mile Zola, who chronicled the grim struggle of workers in 19th-century France. But we live off of industry, so we need to do everything we can to entice industries to stay and develop.Philippe Steyer first set foot in the Smart factory 16 years ago as a floor manager overseeing the assembly line. A bright, youthful man with a firm demeanor, he walked the floor frequently, talking with employees who transformed bare Smart car frames into glossy, finished vehicles by snapping in steering wheels, dashboards and doors.Five years later, Mr. Steyer moved into an airy administrative office to work in the human resources department. The move made him one of them an executive in the eyes of some colleagues.After he was recently promoted again, this time to human resources director, Daimler officials called. Daimler was beginning to enact a companywide plan to improve competitiveness across all production sites to ensure their future viability. Would the French operation get on board?Mr. Steyer knew that would mean a fight.Across the country, French unions had been guarding against the unraveling of the 35-hour week. In Paris, they recently sought to override a vote taken by the mostly nonunionized employees of the Sephora cosmetics store on the Champs lyses to be able to work until midnight for more pay. The Sephora workers prevailed after a protracted fight.At Smart, Daimler was trying to push the limits even further.Were in a good situation, Mr. Steyer acknowledged. But we need to prepare in case hard times come. Economic cycles move fast. We believe its better to do this before a crisis hits and our backs are against the wall.Besides, he observed, Smart was the last factory in Western Europe still making small cars. The French carmaker Renault moved production of the Twingo to Slovenia over a decade ago. Fiat was making the Fiat 500 in Poland, where labor costs were nearly a third of Western Europes.Mr. Steyer authorized the nonbinding September vote, in which Smart employees would decide whether to work 39 hours, but get paid only for 37. White-collar workers would give up half of the 10 rest days they get annually on top of five weeks vacation. In exchange, Daimler would authorize Smart to guarantee jobs through 2020, and return the plant afterward to a 35-hour workweek.Even if workers rejected the measures, Mr. Steyer promised that Daimler would not close the French plant.On the day of the September vote, Mr. Getrey, the staunch opponent of Smarts plan, stood in the parking lot handing out leaflets with members of the C.G.T., another powerful union that opposed it. Because Smart was still profitable, Mr. Getrey told workers that management had no legal right to ask them to decide.This is a test of what could become a bigger national fight over the 35-hour workweek, Mr. Getrey said.Not everyone was persuaded by the unions argument. Raymond Wasbauer, a maintenance administrator, had worked at Smart since 1998 and was promoted several times. With his earnings, he was able to afford a modest home, evenings out with his family and vacations away several times a year.I voted yes Im ready to do what I need to keep the operation going, Mr. Wasbauer, 50, said afterward. The world today is different than it was back when I got hired, he said. We need to make sure we survive.When the vote was tallied, 56 percent of the overall employees had backed the change. Yet the referendum revealed a deep divide: 61 percent of the factory workers voted against, while among white-collar employees, 74 percent approved.The two unions vowed to stop Smart from going any further.If they want us to work 39 hours, paid 39 hours, fine, Mr. Getrey said. Otherwise, this is basically blackmail, he said. We wont move one single iota.But last week, as the opposing unions stood firm, Smart raised the specter of moving production from France to Slovenia. On Wednesday, managers handed employees amendments to their contracts to cede the 35-hour workweek, at least for the next five years, and gave them a Dec. 18 deadline to sign.If 75 percent agreed, Smart would move to a longer workweek as of January. If not, Mr. Steyer said, we would clearly need to study the possibility of making this car elsewhere.The workers took their slips of paper and went home to mull things over. As Mr. Getrey again warned them not to sign, another union that had reluctantly come around to Smarts point of view urged employees to seize their last chance save the factory.In France today, can we really afford to insist on keeping perks at the risk of losing jobs? said Mario Mutzette, the head of that union. If Smart closes, he added, we will have a social disaster.Mr. Steyer said, however, We are confident that enough people will sign. | Business |
Credit...Ruben Sprich/ReutersFeb. 13, 2014KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia It is never easy being a ski racer from a snow-challenged country like England, something Chemmy Alcott has known all her life. The path grew more arduous when she broke her neck skiing at 12 and had two vertebrae surgically fused.That did not keep Alcott, a London native, off the racing slopes. In fact, it started her continuing resolve in the face of recurrent, serious injury and adversity.Alcott grew into an accomplished racer, posting quality results on the World Cup circuit and finishing 11th in the 2006 Turin Olympics downhill, the highest finish by a British woman in Alpine skiing since 1968.But her career seemed star-crossed. In a five-year span, she tore knee ligaments, had surgery on both feet and endured ankle and foot fractures.ImageCredit...Clive Rose/Getty ImagesIn 2010, while training for a downhill in Canada, she soared over a jump at high speed and crash landed, her right leg snapping in two places with the bone protruding inside her ski boot.A lot of people said it was the worst injury they had ever seen, said Alcotts friend Julia Mancuso, the four-time Olympic medalist from the United States.While Alcott was rehabilitating, she lost her financing from a British sports organization. She began an exhaustive fund-raising effort as she worked to get back on the slopes. The goal was the Sochi Games, which would be Alcotts fourth Olympics.Training in Switzerland in August, she broke her lower right leg again the third break in less than three years. A 15-inch metal rod was inserted to stabilize the leg. It was roughly six months before the womens downhill in the mountains north of Sochi.Is it possible to define the power of an Olympic dream?Its crazy what Ive gone through absolutely crazy but theres nothing I wouldnt have tried to be here, Alcott, 31, said when she arrived here earlier this week.In the womens downhill Wednesday, Alcott roared down the course to finish 19th in a field of 42.To be lying in a hospital bed less than six months ago and now be 19th, thats my gold medal, she said. I know it sounds absolutely crazy to be celebrating a 19th place, but you have to know the whole story.The whole story includes years of wondering if her commitment to keep racing was wise given her physical and financial setbacks. Alcott could have moved on to another sport (she was a top junior tennis player).Obviously, I didnt want to risk my future life because of all the surgeries Ive had, Alcott said. And it is very challenging to keep going, even heartbreaking, but I wanted to keep skiing. This is my sport.Her family grew apprehensive but supported her.Every time I crash, I ended up moving in with them and they take care of me, Alcott said. I owe them a lot. For sure, when I retire Ive got a lot of dues to pay. Theres a lot of babysitting Im going to have to do to repay their kindnesses.Learning to raise money for her training proved to be educational, so much so that Alcott now calls it an unintended benefit.The fund-raising has made me a good businesswoman because I had to make hundreds of cold calls where people would hang up on me all the time, she said. But I got sponsors and eventually fantastic support. So Im very confident in that arena now. I am my business now, and when I retire thats something Ill take with me.Mancuso, who finished eighth in the downhill, was at the bottom of the course Wednesday looking up the mountain and admiring her friends result. The two hugged afterward.Shes got so much tenacity, coming back from the most incredibly traumatizing injury, Mancuso said. Her fight to get back has been really inspiring. I missed her those couple of years on the World Cup when she was rehabbing, and I think so did every single person on the World Cup.We all missed her energy. She told me her first day back she was so surprised how many people came up to her and said they were so happy she was back. But thats how people feel about Chemmy.Alcott said this was her final Olympics.Standing in the finish area Wednesday, she looked around and smiled.No one gets here easily, she said. I went through the adversity and the recovery because in my heart Im a ski racer. I would have done it all for that one run today. | Sports |
Kabul JournalCredit...Erin Trieb for The New York TimesMarch 6, 2017KABUL, Afghanistan One is a barber, 22, who found his voice in rap, his passionate rhymes expressing the angst of a generation that has known nothing but war. His religious mother disapproves of music, switching the channel when a song comes on.The other is a girl, 16, who was raised by her widowed mother in a conservative eastern city. When she appears onstage, dazzling in a vivid green head scarf and silver-trimmed dress, she owes it to the mother who put her foot down in the face of protest from relatives.These are the unlikely stars of a music competition modeled after American Idol that provides weary Afghans a much-needed release on weekend nights.In its 12th season, the show, Afghan Star, is pure entertainment: Young artists, dressed in chic local and Western wardrobes by a young local designer, belt out songs onstage, accompanied by an orchestra of Afghan and Western instruments. People can vote by text.But amid an escalating battle with extremists, entertainment like this is a risky business, especially in a conservative society that looks down on music as vulgar. And especially when it includes women.The shows judges drive around in armored vehicles. The contestants are provided with safe housing inside a compound for the duration of the show. Audience members go through multiple security checks.ImageCredit...Erin Trieb for The New York TimesIn previous seasons, the network that televises Afghan Star, Tolo TV, would rent spaces in the city to hold the show. After threats to its staff increased a Taliban car bomb killed seven colleagues last year the network decided this season to move the studios inside a gated street in Kabuls protected diplomatic enclave.Still, war has a way of disrupting the music.During one recent episode, a female contestant changed her upbeat song to a mournful one that she performed dressed mostly in black. Her uncle had been killed in a suicide bombing in front of the Afghan Parliament that week.VideoShaqayeq Roya, an Afghan Star contestant, performing shortly after her uncle was killed in a suicide attack.We told her she didnt need to perform that week, said Massoud Sanjer, the head of Tolos entertainment wing. She said, No, life continues. But she changed her song selection.None of this dissuades contestants like Zulala Hashemi, the 16-year-old who was raised by her widowed mother in Jalalabad, a city so conservative that women are rarely seen on the streets and when they do venture out, almost always in burqas.ImageCredit...Erin Trieb for The New York TimesBetween recordings, on the occasions the mother and daughter return home, they put on their burqas and disappear into anonymity.Zulala always sang at home, but never took formal music lessons. This year, when she saw an ad for Afghan Star tryouts, she asked her mother if she could participate. She was surprised to win a spot on the show, which would bring her to Kabul.She has a voice that is very particular to Afghanistans geography, said Waheed Qasemi, a revered Afghan artist who is the shows music director. Its a mountainous voice.But for her voice to be recognized, Zulala has had to put up with the resistance of her relatives, including her brother, who is a police officer. She is also afraid of facing her teachers and classmates because they may get angry with her.I knew they wouldnt give me permission, and until this day they havent given me permission, Zulala said about her relatives. But I wanted to show my talent to the people; I didnt want my talent to go in vain.What made it all possible was the support of her mother, Mermen Hashemi, who has a degree in economics and has worked in many senior jobs in the province, including running the government archives. Mrs. Hashemi has raised nine children on her own since her husband died of an illness 16 years ago, and she said she would not put up with meddling from relatives.I have earned with my own hands, and I have defended myself and my children, Mrs. Hashemi said. No one has given me anything, and I have not given anyone time to say anything about my children.Mrs. Hashemi has been with her daughter in Kabul over the last three months, following her like a shadow, according to Mr. Sanjer. She is in the green room when Zulala performs on stage, and she follows her into the dressing room when Zulala needs to change between performances.Zulala is one of the three remaining contestants in the competition, which is set to end on the Persian New Years Eve in mid-March.The favorite, however, is Sayed Jamal Mubarez, the barber from the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, who tops the votes week after week.ImageCredit...Erin Trieb for The New York TimesHis rising fame has made his mother relent: She will watch him perform, but only if he stays away from vulgarities and there are no women gyrating in his video clips.Mr. Mubarez discovered rap only four years ago. At his barbershop, he would rap along to the Iranian artists playing on his sound system as he cut hair. Their words of protest spoke to him.About two years ago, Mr. Mubarez started writing his own verses. A purist, he has since stopped listening to other rap to make sure his words come from the heart. He writes at night, and if he cant get a piece done in one 90-minute sitting he drops it as forced.If I get up from writing it and say I will complete it another time, that rap cannot be written later, Mr. Mubarez said.He has gained a large following in just four months on the show, a remarkable rise in a country that is only beginning to discover rap music. He sticks to subjects that speak to the people.ImageCredit...Erin Trieb for The New York TimesMany of his raps are inspired by personal stories, like one he wrote about his lack of education. Mr. Mubarez had a cousin as a classmate in school who later went on to university, while Mr. Mubarez, the oldest son in the family, worked jobs from the age of 12 churning asphalt, clearing snow to bring money home to his father.Years later, the cousin with the university diploma stayed with Mr. Mubarezs family. Mr. Mubarez said he was nervous around him, feeling backward and ashamed. After he dropped off the cousin at the bus station one evening, he put his feelings to verse.From the earth to the sky is the difference between us/Dont say why I didnt study just go, let us be.From his barbershop, he posted the rap on YouTube and shared it on Facebook so people, particularly the cousin, could see that if Jamal didnt study, it was because his life was different than yours.Even male stars like Mr. Mubarez feel the heavy pressure of society when performing. That was on display during a recent episode, when he performed a duet with Aryana Sayeed, the Afghan pop sensation who is a judge on the show.Ms. Sayeed, who has spent much of her life abroad, is known as much for her bold style as for her music, pushing the boundaries of a conservative society with her close-fitting dresses.On the day of the performance, she was wearing a blue dress that accentuated her curves; Mr. Mubarez, in a red New York Yankees cap over a white bandanna, was wearing red shoes, white pants and his signature black leather jacket.Midway through the performance, much to the pleasure of the audience, the two singers broke into a little dance, shimmying as they stepped left and right.When viewers tuned into the show after the taping, they found no trace of the performance. The executives had cut it out, apparently because Ms. Sayeeds appearance had been too provocative.But they put the video online, and Mr. Mubarezs family got to watch it.They are a little uncomfortable, Mr. Mubarez said. My mother is unhappy. | World |
Ms. Morenos intenSati program helped bring positive psychology into the exercise world.Credit...Araya Diaz/Getty ImagesFeb. 10, 2022Patricia Moreno, who injected a dose of spirituality into the world of fitness and created a popular exercise program called intenSati, which became a staple at some Equinox gyms and a presence on YouTube, died on Jan. 22 at her home in Los Angeles. She was 57.The cause was cervical cancer, her wife, Kellen Mori, said.Ms. Moreno began teaching workout classes more than two decades ago and founded intenSati in 2002, melding the word intention with the Buddhist term sati, for mindfulness or awareness. Between bouts of kickboxing and aerobics, she would intersperse refrains like I am worthy of my own love or Everything I need is within me, adding liberal doses of mindfulness, journaling and other self-help practices.It was a melding of spirituality and exercise, something relatively new.Posted online, her workouts and spoken positive mantras which she termed affirmations drew a sizable following, including 6,500 YouTube subscribers and 18,000 Instagram followers. The program includes more than 1,000 intenSati Leaders, who teach their own classes, and has brought in about $5 million in revenue, according to Lucy Osborne, who took over intenSati after Ms. Morenos death.Ms. Morenos method resonated with those seeking spiritual and emotional connections to wellness. People cry in class all the time, she told Cosmopolitan magazine in 2013. Whenever I train new intenSati instructors I always tell them, If people are crying, youre doing your job right.One of those instructors, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, is also a professor of history at the New School in Manhattan and is writing a book about fitness in America. Today, there are many programs that marry the language of enlightenment with intense exercise, she said in an email, but Patricia, who came out of the aerobics world of the 1980s and who was a serious student of yoga and meditation, was very early to integrate the two.What sets intenSati apart from other fitness programs, Professor Mehlman Petrzela added, is its sense of playfulness and presence outside of the luxury, high-end fitness world. In addition to Equinox clubs, primarily in New York and Los Angeles, intenSati instructors teach at community centers and have made workouts available at no cost on social media.Danielle Friedman, the author of Lets Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World (2022), said in an email that Ms. Morenos program helped to shift the language of fitness culture away from one of self-criticism, guilt and shame and toward one of celebration, joy and affirmation.Patricia Esperanza Moreno was born on Aug. 14, 1964, in San Jose, Calif., to Jose and Edith (Salcido) Moreno. Her father was a lawyer, and her mother ran a restaurant. She had 10 siblings. After graduating from James Lick High School in San Jose, she took classes at San Jose State University.Overweight as a child, Ms. Moreno became interested in fitness as a way to manage her weight. She began teaching fitness classes in California in her teens. In the 1990s, she moved to New York City and found work teaching a kickboxing fitness class at a newly opened Equinox gym; she eventually became one of its highest-paid instructors.A 1995 article about fitness clubs in The New York Times described Ms. Moreno as one of Equinoxs most popular teachers in New York. She shows up in a flannel shirt, black pants and a white muscle shirt, the reporter, Jennifer Steinhauer, wrote. Calling out a few steps here and there, she dances with almost no self-consciousness, as if all the people in her class were guests at a party in her living room and just happened to be wearing Lycra.Ms. Moreno and Dr. Mori, a dentist, met in 2006, when Dr. Mori was taking an intenSati class in Manhattan. They married in 2008.In addition to Dr. Mori, she is survived by her daughters Olivia, Sophie and Stella Moreno-Mori and her siblings Edith Shipton, Denise Gossett, Darsie Marie Moreno, Marilyn Moreno, Norma Moreno-Grimnes, Elizabeth Ziegenhagen, Hector Moreno, Sylvia Rich and Jesse Moreno.After her diagnosis of Stage 4 cervical cancer, Ms. Moreno continued her intenSati practice and documented her experience on Instagram and other social media platforms, emphasizing the spiritual side of her work.This diagnosis and all thats come along with it, she wrote on Instagram in September, is revealing to me how important it is to focus on reconnecting to the broader part of me and not limiting my view of myself as a physical body. | Health |
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/technology/personaltech/computer-guest-malware.htmlTECH TIPUsing an account with limited powers may help protect the system from malicious software that is looking to dig deep.June 11, 2018Q. I have heard that making a guest account on the computer and using it yourself can help stop viruses. Why is this, and how would I go about making an extra account?A. Administrator accounts on a Windows, Mac or Linux computer have the ability to adjust settings, install new programs, change passwords and perform other functions that affect the entire system. Accounts designated as standard, limited or guest have much less control over the entire system and can make only minor changes that are specific to that account, like changing the desktop wallpaper. Malicious software that invades a computer through the user logged in as the administrator can usually burrow in deeper to do more damage.To set up a limited account for yourself (or a child) on a Windows 10 Home or Professional system, go to the Start menu and select the gear-shaped Settings icon. On the Settings screen, choose Accounts, then Family & other people to Add someone else to this PC. Follow the instructions on the screen to create the account. As with most account creation, you may need to enter the administrator password at some point.ImageCredit...The New York TimesOn a Windows 7 system, go to the Start menu and select Control Panel and then User Accounts and Family Safety. Click User Accounts and then Manage another account. Click Create a new account and follow the steps on the screen. Mac administrators can set up the less powerful Standard accounts, Managed accounts with Parental Controls, or Sharing-only accounts for screen- and file-sharing. To get started, go to the Apple menu and choose System Preferences. In the System Preferences box, click Users & Groups. In the Users & Groups box, click the padlock icon, enter the Macs administrator password and click the plus (+) icon to get started.Personal Tech invites questions about computer-based technology to [email protected]. This column will answer questions of general interest, but letters cannot be answered individually. | Tech |
A proposal in the South Korean legislature is an early test of how forcefully the Biden administration will defend the companies abroad while trying to trim their power at home.Credit...Ed Jones/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesPublished Aug. 23, 2021Updated Aug. 27, 2021WASHINGTON For months, Apple and Google have been fighting a bill in the South Korean legislature that they say could imperil their lucrative app store businesses. The companies have appealed directly to South Korean lawmakers, government officials and the public to try to block the legislation, which is expected to face a crucial vote this week.The companies have also turned to an unlikely ally, one that is also trying to quash their power: the United States government. A group funded by the companies has urged trade officials in Washington to push back on the legislation, arguing that targeting American firms could violate a joint trade agreement.The South Korean legislation would be the first law in the world to require companies that operate app stores to let users pay for in-app purchases using a variety of payment systems. It would also prohibit blocking developers from listing their products on other app stores.How the White House responds to this proposal poses an early test for the Biden administration: Will it defend tech companies facing antitrust scrutiny abroad while it applies that same scrutiny to the companies at home?Washington has a longstanding practice of opposing foreign laws that discriminate against American firms, sometimes even when doing so conflicts with domestic policy debates. But President Biden wants a consistent approach to his concerns about the tech giants incredible power over commerce, communications and news. In July he signed an executive order to spur competition in the industry, and his top two antitrust appointees have long been vocal critics of the companies.The approach the White House chooses may have widespread implications for the industry, and for the shape of the internet around the world. A growing number of countries are pursuing stricter regulations on Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, fragmenting the rules of the global internet.American officials have echoed some of the industrys complaints about the proposal, saying in a March report it appeared to target American companies. But trade officials have yet to take a formal position on it, said Adam Hodge, a spokesman for the United States Trade Representative. He said officials were still considering how to balance the claim that the legislation discriminates against American companies with the belief among tech critics in South Korea and America that the legislation would level the playing field.We are engaging a range of stakeholders to gather facts as legislation is considered in Korea, recognizing the need to distinguish between discrimination against American companies and promoting competition, Mr. Hodge said in a statement.Apple said that it regularly dealt with the United States government on a range of topics. During those interactions it discussed the South Korean app store legislation with American officials, including at the U. S. Embassy in Seoul, the company said in a statement.The company said the legislation would put users who purchase digital goods from other sources at risk of fraud, undermine their privacy protections, make it difficult to manage their purchases and endanger parental controls.A Google spokeswoman, Julie Tarallo McAlister, said in a statement that Google was open to exploring alternative approaches but believed the legislation would harm consumers and software developers.The proposal was approved by a committee in the Korean National Assembly last month, over the opposition of some in the Korean government. It could get a vote in the bodys judiciary committee as soon as this week. It would then require a vote from the full assembly and the signature of President Moon Jae-in to become law.ImageCredit...Jean Chung for The New York TimesThe proposal would have a major impact on Apples App Store and the Google Play Store in Korea.The Google store accounted for 75 percent of global app downloads in the second quarter of 2021, according to App Annie, an analytics company. Apples marketplace accounted for 65 percent of consumer spending on in-app purchases or subscriptions.One way software developers make money is by selling products directly in their apps, like Fortnites in-game currency or a subscription to The New York Times. Apple has insisted for years that developers sell those in-app products through the companys own payment system, which takes up to a 30 percent cut of many sales. Last year, Google indicated it would follow suit by applying a 30 percent cut to more purchases than it had in the past. Developers say that the fees are far too steep.After South Korean lawmakers proposed the app store bill last year, the Information Technology Industry Council, a Washington-based group that counts Apple and Google as members, urged the United States Trade Representative to include concerns about the legislation in an annual report highlighting barriers to foreign trade. The group said in October that the rules could violate a 2007 accord that says neither country can discriminate against firms with headquarters in the other.Apple said that it was not unusual for an industry group to provide feedback to the trade representative. The company said the government had explicitly asked for comment on potentially discriminatory laws. In a statement, Naomi Wilson, the trade groups vice president of policy for Asia, said that it encouraged legislators to work with industry to re-examine the obligations for app markets set forth in the proposed measure to ensure they are not trade-restrictive and do not disproportionately affect American companies.When the trade representatives report was published in March just weeks after Mr. Bidens nominee to the position was sworn in it included a paragraph that echoed some of the tech groups concerns. The report concluded that the South Korean laws requirement to permit users to use outside payment services appears to specifically target U.S. providers and threatens a standard U.S. business model.ImageCredit...via Jo Seoung LaeThe American report did not say the law would violate the free trade agreement with South Korea. But in July, the managing director of a group called the Asia Internet Coalition, which lists Apple and Google as two of its members, pointed to the report when he told Koreas trade minister that the law could provoke trade tensions between the United States and South Korea.The Biden administration has already signaled its concerns, the director said in a written comment in July.American diplomats in Seoul also raised questions about whether the legislation could cause trade tensions.Google said something like that, and a similar opinion was expressed by the U.S. Embassy in Korea, said Jo Seoung Lae, a lawmaker who backs the legislation. He added that the embassy had been in touch with his staff throughout June and July. Park Sungjoong, another lawmaker, also said that the embassy had expressed trade concerns about the law.Mr. Jo said that a Google representative had visited his office to express opposition to the proposal, and that Apple had also provided their feedback opposing the legislation.Mr. Jo said that he had requested that the United States provide its official position, but he said he had not received one yet.American trade officials sometimes defend companies even when they are criticized by others in the administration. While former President Donald J. Trump attacked a liability shield for social media platforms, known as Section 230, his trade representative wrote a similar provision into agreements with Canada, Mexico and Japan.But Wendy Cutler, a former official who negotiated the trade agreement between South Korea and the United States, said that it would be difficult for America to argue that the Korean rules violate trade agreements when the same antitrust issues are being debated stateside.You dont want to be calling out a country for potentially violating an obligation when at the same time your own government is questioning the practice, said Ms. Cutler, now the vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute. It weakens the case substantially.South Korean and American app developers have run their own campaign for the new rules, arguing it would not trigger trade tensions.ImageCredit...Pool photo by Jeon Heon-KyunIn June, Mark Buse, the top lobbying executive at the dating app company Match Group and a former board member of a pro-regulation group called the Coalition for App Fairness, wrote to Mr. Jo, the Korean lawmaker, supporting the proposal. He said that the Biden administration knew about concerns around the tech giants, making trade tensions less likely.Later that month, Mr. Buse attended a virtual conference about the app store legislation hosted by K-Internet, a trade group that represents major Korean internet companies like Naver, Googles main search competitor in South Korea, and Kakao.Mr. Buse, who traveled to Seoul this month to press the case for the legislation on behalf of the Coalition for App Fairness, made it clear that his employer considered it a high-stakes debate. He listed the many other countries where officials were concerned about Apples and Googles practices.And all of this, he said, is following the leadership that the Korean assembly is showing. | Tech |
Elvis Presley Paper Cup Fetches More Than $3k 1/23/2018 These days $3,000 will buy you 3 iPhone Xs, or Elvis Presley's once used paper cup ... from 6 decades ago! Choose wisely. Actually, it's too late to choose ... the old vintage paper cup sold at auction over the weekend, with a winning bid of $3,300. We're told the person who bought it owns the Icon Hotel in Luton, England. As we reported, the seller was aiming to get $1,000 for it. Sooo ... BONUS!!! The cup dates back to Elvis' 1956 tour stop in Tulsa, where it ended up in the hands of a fan. Some people shell out $3,300 for a Super Bowl ticket, so no point in judging. Just kidding, judge away. | Entertainment |
Health|Deaths from tuberculosis rose in 2020, for the first time in a decade, the W.H.O. says.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/14/health/tuberculosis-deaths-covid.htmlDeaths from tuberculosis rose in 2020, for the first time in a decade, the W.H.O. says.Credit...Rijasolo/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesOct. 14, 2021Deaths from tuberculosis, the worlds biggest infectious disease killer until the Covid-19 pandemic arrived, have increased for the first time in more than a decade, totaling more than 1.5 million people in 2020. That trend is expected to worsen in 2021 and 2022, according to a report released on Thursday by the World Health Organization.The report confirmed the warnings from the W.H.O. and other global health organizations that the Covid-19 pandemic would reverse years of progress against other infectious diseases, including TB, H.I.V. and malaria.This is alarming news that must serve as a global wake-up call to the urgent need for investments and innovation to close the gaps in diagnosis, treatment and care for the millions of people affected by this ancient but preventable and treatable disease, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O.s director general, said in a statement.Reported diagnoses of TB also dropped sharply, to 5.8 million cases in 2020 from 7.1 million in 2019, suggesting that many more cases than before are going undiagnosed and untreated a trend that is likely to have a long-term effect on TB deaths. And only 2.8 million people were given preventive treatment for TB in 2020, a 21 percent decrease from 2019.In many poor countries, health care workers, funds and testing equipment that would normally be dedicated to TB were redirected to cope with Covid-19, according to the W.H.O. report. Lockdowns and disruptions in supply chains also interrupted access to treatment and care.At the same time, global funding for TB has fallen to $5.3 billion from $5.8 billion, less than half of whats needed, according to the W.H.O. report.There were some glimmers of good news amid the sobering statistics. In the Russian Federation, the incidence of TB fell by 6 percent a year between 2010 and 2020, and the W.H.O. European Region overall exceeded the 2020 goal with a decrease of 25 percent. | Health |
Technology|Instagram Tries Clamping Down on Misinformationhttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/30/technology/instagram-tries-clamping-down-on-misinformation.htmlOct. 30, 2020, 2:23 p.m. ETOct. 30, 2020, 2:23 p.m. ETInstagram on Thursday took aim at the spread of misinformation on its platform, announcing that it would temporarily eliminate users ability to view some recent posts ahead of Election Day.In two tweets, Instagram said it would remove the recent tab from hashtag pages. Previously, users could view the most recent posts tagged with a particular hashtag. Now, only top posts under a specific hashtag that have been reviewed by the platform will be viewable.Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, said the change was made to reduce the real-time spread of potentially harmful content that could pop up around the election.As we near the U.S. elections, were making changes to make it harder for people to come across possible misinformation on Instagram. Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) October 29, 2020 The change took effect Thursday night and the recent tab will return sometime after the election, an Instagram spokeswoman said. The platform said it hopes the change will allow it to proactively stop misinformation from spreading, rather than having to wait until a falsehood has already been widely shared.Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation analyst at the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan think thank, said Instagrams decision, just days before the election, was rather late but better than nothing.I hope in the future the social media platforms recognize that elections are an inflection point in disinformation campaigns, not an end point, she said. A decision like this earlier in the cycle might have lessened the spread of voting misinformation, for instance.Ms. Jankowicz said much of the misinformation spreading on Instagram was related to QAnon, the baseless pro-Trump conspiracy theory, and false information about Senator Kamala Harris of California, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee.Instagrams decision follows crackdowns on viral falsehoods by Facebook and Twitter. Twitter recently added context to trending topics and de-emphasized retweets ahead of the election, while Facebook said it would ban political ads indefinitely. Both companies have added some labels to misleading posts and highlighted accurate voting information after rising alarm about the possibility of a disputed election outcome and the chaos that could follow. | Tech |
Credit...Olivier Hoslet/European Pressphoto AgencyMarch 11, 2017BRUSSELS Belgiums Parliament has quietly passed legislation giving the government extraordinary powers to deport legal residents on the mere suspicion of engagement in terrorist activities, or for presenting a risk to public order or national security, without a criminal conviction or the involvement of a judge.The law applies only to foreign residents, not to Belgian nationals or refugees, part of a toughening of domestic security laws that has begun to worry human rights groups and ordinary citizens as a threat to civil liberties. Besides counterterrorism concerns, supporters of this law have been motivated by anti-immigrant sentiments, which they feel are widely shared not only in their country but across the European Union and even in the United States.Amid fears of terrorism, some other European countries have also introduced stricter immigration policies, and Hungary, Austria and the Netherlands have lowered their threshold for deportation in recent years.But the Belgian legislation stands out for its vague language, which grants unprecedented powers to the government to interpret and enforce the law as it sees fit, critics said.Last week, about 70 groups representing civil rights advocates, minorities, labor and the arts signed an open letter in protest of the new law. At least two rights groups are preparing to fight the law in the Constitutional Court, the nations highest court for constitutional matters.The law was first presented by Belgiums secretary for asylum and migration, Theo Francken, a Flemish nationalist and a member of the center-right government, in July in the wake of the Brussels terrorist attacks that killed 32 people and wounded 340.On Feb. 9, Mr. Francken managed to slip an amendment to the countrys Foreigners Law before Parliament without much of a public debate, let alone opposition. Although the law was discussed in a parliamentary committee and during a plenary session, most real discussion was limited to closed-door cabinet meetings, experts said.Since then, Mr. Francken has been increasingly on the defensive over the measure.I am not going to put someone out of the country, who has lived here all of his life and has children here and so forth, just because he got two speeding tickets. Thats absurd, Mr. Francken said in a telephone interview. That is not my intention at all.Let me be very clear. This is about 20 cases of terrorism and 50 cases of heavy criminality, he said. Its about simplifying the procedures of orders for leaving the territory.But a month after the law passed, some members of Parliament and civil society groups are growing worried about the powers that it granted to the executive branch.Were turning the clock back 10 years, said Jos Vander Velpen, president of the Belgian Human Rights League. We have six months to appeal it, and were already intensively preparing our arguments.Last year, a 56-page report by Human Rights Watch on Belgiums counterterrorism measures criticized a raft of problematic laws and policies.In particular, the report warned that a 2015 law allowing the authorities to revoke Belgian citizenship from dual nationals convicted of terrorism could create perceptions of a tier of second class citizens based on their ethnicity and religion.Belgium has worked hard this past year to prevent further attacks, but its law and policy responses have been undermined by their overbroad and sometimes abusive nature, said Letta Tayler, a senior terrorism researcher at Human Rights Watch and the reports author.Belgium, a country of 11 million people, received 107,000 requests for asylum over the last four years and granted it in over half of cases. During the same period, Belgium became the biggest per-capita exporter of foreign terrorist fighters in Western Europe about 500 joined the Islamic State in Syria.The country also served as a base for most of the terrorists who carried out the attacks in Paris in November 2015 and in Brussels in March 2016. All of them had immigrant backgrounds, and only some were Belgian nationals.The new law asks officials to weigh the possible threat a foreigner poses against the links that person has with Belgian society. It will be tougher to expel someone with strong links, who has a family and a job, but easier to do so with someone who barely visits the country.In its previous form, the Foreigners Law, which dates to 1980, allowed the deportation of foreigners only after they were convicted of serious crimes, including terrorism, and with the oversight of a magistrate. People who were born in Belgium or moved there under the age of 12 were exempt from deportation.All of those restrictions have been eliminated.An amendment in 2005 built in most of these protections, the result of a decades-long battle, said Mr. Vander Velpen, the human rights lawyer.His organization is building a case against the new law, based on the argument that it violates the separation of powers and denies a foreign resident the right to appeal.The Immigration Office can immediately, without interference of a judge, put someone out of the country based on indications that he or she could pose a threat to the public order, he said.Afterward, that person can appeal the administrations decision in front of a judge, but that does not suspend the immediate deportation, Mr. Vander Velpen explained.Government officials have offered assurances that there are exceptions in case of extraordinary emergencies when deportation poses an imminent danger to a persons life, for example.People representing groups that defend the interests of minorities said they worried that the law would deepen the divide between residents who hold a Belgian passport and those who dont. They fear the law gives the Immigration Office too much power to arbitrarily interpret the meaning of public order and national security.Those who might be affected have been vocal in their opposition. They include Belgiums 1.3 million legal residents who do not have Belgian nationality some 10 percent of the total population, according to government statistics.Aya Sabi, a 21-year-old columnist for two Belgian newspapers, sent Mr. Francken a Twitter message last month saying that as a Dutch national with Moroccan ancestry living in Belgium for eight years, she had become deportable since recently.A heated and public exchange ensued, with Mr. Francken accusing her of lying and trying to draw attention to herself.Youve always been deportable, he responded. By the law voted by the left in 2005. Why didnt I hear from you back then?Ms. Sabi replied that in 2005 she was 10 years old.In an interview this month, she said that removing terrorists from Belgian soil isnt going to solve anything; theyll just continue abroad.Thats the same logic the government applied when foreign terrorist fighters started to leave for Syria, she added, and that didnt turn out well, did it?Confronted with the argument, Mr. Francken said the new law lets him withdraw the Belgian residency permits of about 20 fighters in Syria who are about to return. He will move to do so on the first day the law takes effect, which is in about 10 days, he said.If I can keep a Syria fighter in Syria, then Ill definitely do that, thats for sure, he said. Were already taking back all the Belgian nationals. And to be honest, we dont know what to do with them anymore, and in fact, the whole of Europe doesnt know what to do with these people anymore. | World |
Stormy Daniels to Wendy Williams My Vagina's Trained & Beautiful ... Come See It, Anytime!!! 1/31/2018 Stormy Daniels is going to war -- a vagina war -- with Wendy Williams, and she's willing to put it ALL on the line ... TMZ has learned. Stormy caught wind of Wendy's show Wednesday when the host called her washed up, messy -- and the coup de grace -- "all worn out down below." Now, Stormy's firing back, telling TMZ ... "My vagina is a well trained beautiful athlete that would not have the longest running contract in porn history if she were ugly." Fox The porn star -- who now swears she did NOT bang Donald Trump -- says she'd be happy to show Wendy what she's working with, whenever Wendy wants. All jokes aside ... Stormy's upset about the attack on her lady parts, and says she's considering a defamation lawsuit. She might want to get a consultation before pursuing that. | Entertainment |
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/business/international/hundreds-of-companies-paid-little-or-no-tax-in-australia.htmlCredit...Tim Wimborne/ReutersDec. 17, 2015SYDNEY Australian tax authorities on Thursday published the records of hundreds of companies, including Google and Apple, which show that they paid little or no tax on their earnings in the country.Of more than 1,500 largely foreign-owned companies that reported total earnings over 100 million Australian dollars ($72.11 million) in the 2014 financial year, more than one-third paid no tax, the Australian Taxation Office data showed.The commissioner of taxation, Chris Jordan, criticized certain foreign-owned companies for being overly aggressive in the way they structure their operations.Australia has led efforts at the Group of 20 rich nations to close tax loopholes.Just because they don't pay tax doesn't mean that they are avoiding tax, Kelly ODwyer, assistant treasurer, told reporters, adding that the government had strengthened the tax office's powers to ensure corporations paid their due.Among the offshore companies that paid no tax on their Australian earnings were the oil services company Halliburton, the hotel chain Hilton Worldwide Holdings, the aviation company Boeing, its British rival BAE Systems, the beer company SABMiller and the automakers Honda Motor and the Ford Motor Company.For all but SABMiller, the zero annual tax payment came despite reporting taxable income. SABMiller generated no taxable income despite having 2 billion Australian dollars in total earnings.Apple paid a tax of 74 million Australian dollars on income of 247 million dollars. That was in line with the country's 30 percent tax rate but a fraction of the total 6.1 billion dollars it made in Australia that year.Google paid 9 million dollars of tax on 91 million dollars in taxable income; it made 357 million dollars in Australia last year.A BAE Systems spokeswoman said the company paid no income tax that year because of losses it incurred developing a new surveillance system for the Royal Australian Air Force. The company showed full details of its tax arrangements to the countrys tax office to ensure it was compliant.A Hilton spokeswoman declined to comment, while representatives for Apple, Google, Halliburton, SABMiller, Ford and Honda did not respond to requests for comment.The disclosure could build public support for an overhaul to the company tax system after a government inquiry into corporate tax avoidance this year led to some tense clashes between executives and lawmakers.Peter Burn, head of policy at business lobby the Australian Industry Group, said the data release showed tax laws needed to be updated, not that companies were evading their responsibilities.The question of where value was created was a thorny one for tax authorities the world over, he said.Individual company tax laws haven't really come to terms with that yet, and Australia is probably well ahead of the pack rather than behind it, Mr. Burn said. | Business |
Deal ProfessorDec. 9, 2015Yahoo remains stuck in the deal cycle, putting off what looks like an inevitable sale for another year.Still, a year gives its chief executive, Marissa Mayer, another chance to increase a price tag on the once-great Internet company.And there is still much to save. Yahoo has roughly one billion users. It has 81 million users of its mail service in the United States alone. This type of reach would have investors salivating were Yahoo a privileged member of the unicorns, those rare start-ups valued privately at $1 billion or more, particularly because Yahoo actually has revenue of nearly $5 billion a year.But alas, Yahoos core business has been struggling. Yahoo has yet to find a core purpose other than being an Internet destination. Ms. Mayer has adopted multiple strategies, which ReCode called convoluted, to try to turn the company into a media content business.Yahoo needs new products, but it is instead showing just how hard a turnaround is in technology. AOL sort of did it but was only able to claw back a few billion dollars of value from the more than hundred billions lost.ImageCredit...Harry CampbellYahoos turnaround may work, it may not. But what has really been going on here for the last year is an attempt to deal with Yahoos investments in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan. These investments saved Yahoo, but they are also hastening its demise.You may be scratching your head at this point. Yahoos investment in Alibaba is valued at $32 billion, and the Yahoo Japan investment is valued at $8.6 billion. How could such stellar investments doom Yahoo? The sad fact is that Yahoo is being assigned negative value by the stock market, and certainly not the value of $4 billion to $8 billion assigned to it privately.The Alibaba stock holdings make invisible any gains or losses at the real Yahoo business.With no real stock market value for Yahoo, rumor and sentiment appear to be driving Yahoos fate. It also means that Yahoo must appease the market by unleashing this value, something it has been trying to do for years.But even a valuation of up to $8 billion probably has Yahoos board gnashing its teeth after all, one billion Internet users has to be worth more. Twitters revenue is less than Yahoos with far fewer users, and even that company is worth $17 billion. (Twitter, however, is growing in revenue.)And so the Yahoo boards decision to continue to pursue a spinoff of Yahoos core business is part of its attempt to deal with the Alibaba problem, but in truth, it is to crystallize Yahoos value. And that is a value that will immediately place Yahoo as a target as the other Internet companies salivate about buying one billion users on the cheap.It all came to a head this year, when Yahoo proposed a spinoff of the Alibaba stake and the I.R.S. countered that it would not provide a favorable private letter ruling on the tax-free nature of that spinoff.VideoMarissa Mayer, chief executive of Yahoo, and Maynard Webb, the chairman, discuss the company's decision to spinoff of its core Internet business, leaving the Alibaba stock in the old company.CreditCredit...CNBCYahoos lawyer, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, was willing to give a tax opinion, but the risk became too much.And so the move backed Yahoo into a corner. The only tax-efficient plan left was to hive off Yahoos core business. This is harder than the Alibaba spinoff because it essentially involves creating a new Yahoo, which will take a year at least. There must be I.R.S. approvals, Securities and Exchange Commission clearance and a shareholder vote.In the meantime. Ms. Mayer will have more time to improve Yahoos business as the real value of Yahoo will be obscured. And when the value emerges, Yahoo will be ready for sale, stripped of its Alibaba shares.It will be a difficult road for Ms. Mayer. The announcement on Wednesday was not about a sale, but it is still likely to create more uncertainty. Sale announcements often spur employees to look for new jobs and can reduce morale. And it also scares off customers and suppliers who worry for the future. As of now, Yahoo is going to struggle mightily to retain talent.But the gamble is probably worth it: Yahoos user base is enormous, and the board is betting it can be further monetized. This is most likely why the announcement was not about an outright sale. There is too much potential value, and even a $10 billion Yahoo is a minnow among Internet whales, likely not long for this world.The question is whether Ms. Mayer can use this additional year to fulfill Yahoos potential. | Business |
Credit...Nam Y. Huh/Associated PressMarch 10, 2017First-year doctors in training will now be permitted to work shifts lasting as long as 24 hours, eight hours longer than the current limit, according to a professional organization that sets work rules for graduates from medical schools in the United States.In setting the new standard, which goes into effect on July 1, officials at the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education said on Friday that they hoped to avoid confusion and disruptions in care that can result when a patient is handed off to one doctor from another whose shift is ending.The rules do not change for residents after the first year, who have been permitted to work 24-hour shifts if necessary. The new rules also leave in place a requirement that all residents work no more than 80 hours a week.But the new guidelines roused the ire of critics who say that exhausted and inexperienced residents will be working too many hours to remain alert and focus on the critical decisions they make. The issue has been a focus of controversy for at least 30 years, after a patient named Libby Zion died under the care of residents in a New York hospital.We know sleep-deprived people can have impaired motor skills and their memory can deteriorate, said Dr. Michael A. Carome, director of health research at Public Citizen, an advocacy group.Accreditation officials said they once believed as much, too, and had tried to protect first-year students from working too many hours. In 2011, the council required that first-year residents, unlike more experienced residents, work no longer than 16 hours in one stretch.The hope was that shorter shifts would improve patient care. Those hopes, the group wrote in a new report, have not been realized. Instead, the council said, patient care was disrupted when residents shifts ended after 16 hours.First-year residents do not have to work for 24 hours straight their shifts can be shorter but if needed they may be asked or may choose to continue to work for that length of time.Whether a longer shift can be better for patients, and for the training of young doctors, has been rigorously studied in two randomized trials, the accrediting council noted one involving surgeons in training, and the other involving specialists in internal medicine.The study involving internal medicine residents is still underway, but the study of surgical residents, published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that shorter shifts had no effect on patient care.Continuity of care was also better with the longer shifts. Surgical residents in the study reported that they strongly prefer the option to work longer shifts, the council said.The task force held a meeting last year, about the time the randomized study was published, in which representatives of medical organizations told them what, if anything, they would like to change about the rules for first-year residents.Everyone agreed that the 80-hour maximum was appropriate, but we heard from a large number of organizations that 16 hours was not successful, said Dr. Rowen K. Zetterman, co-chairman of the task force, referring to the maximum shifts for first-year doctors.Such shifts have had a significant negative impact on the professional education of the first-year residents, and effectiveness of care delivery of the team as a whole, the council wrote in its report, which also said that residents physical and mental health should be monitored carefully, as well.Dr. Anai Kothari, a third-year surgical resident at Loyola University Medical Center who served on the task force, said he had had a 16-hour maximum shift when he was a first-year student, and much preferred the 24-hour maximum for residents in subsequent years.Most people want to be there for the patient if the patient needs them, he said. No one, Dr. Kothari added, wants to leave in the middle of an operation.Dr. Stephen Evans, past chairman of the American Board of Surgery and chief medical officer for MedStar Health, a hospital system in the Washington area, also favored giving first-year residents the option to work a longer shift.If you are a pediatric first-year resident taking care of a critically ill patient, and the child dies, do you just walk away from the family because the 16 hours are up? he asked.Dr. Carome, however, said that if the problem is the handoff from a doctor whose shift is ending, then it is the procedure that needs fixing, not residents shifts and sleep. | Health |
Credit...Gabriella Demczuk for The New York TimesIt had already been a complicated year of recuperation. Then the Republican congressional baseball team returned to the field where it was attacked.Players on the Republican congressional baseball team returned this spring to the field in Alexandria, Va., where they were almost killed last June.Credit...Gabriella Demczuk for The New York TimesJune 10, 2018ALEXANDRIA, Va. Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama remembers how the gunman had described him: 63, white hair.On a bright morning last June, a man who was distraught over President Trumps election opened fire on the Republican congressional baseball team here at a public park complex. Four people were shot before the Capitol and Alexandria police took him down.Mr. Brookss name was one of six listed on a piece of paper that the gunman, James T. Hodgkinson, carried. He was found to have harbored anti-Republican sentiment online, and had asked two congressmen that morning for the party affiliation of the team.Yet in findings shared with lawmakers over the past year, the F.B.I. suggested that Mr. Hodgkinson, 66, came to the field to commit suicide in a firefight with the police, but said that the bureau did not have incontrovertible proof that he had come to the scene to specifically target the Republicans. A week after the shooting, the F.B.I. said the gunman had most likely acted spontaneously, and it has not said publicly that the attack was politically motivated.The conclusions complicated an already difficult year, one in which players were negotiating their grief with their responsibilities as public officials.Seated in a conference room in the Capitol last November, the team watched a presentation from F.B.I. agents in disbelief. The findings were a significant break from the players collective memory of June 14, when they believed they were targets of a political assault.Resentment had been bubbling for months. Federal investigators had already delivered versions of their presentation in two other meetings: one with those wounded that day and one with the lawmakers identified by the gunman.There was disappointment and bewilderment, like, youre really telling us this? Were not just getting a report. We lived it, Representative Brad Wenstrup of Ohio said of the reaction in one gathering.ImageCredit...Gabriella Demczuk for The New York TimesThe congressmen had a hard time masking their contempt. Mr. Wenstrup told the agents how surprised he was that he had never been interviewed. Representative Gary Palmer of Alabama walked out of the room.The F.B.I., which has conducted a lengthy investigation into the attack, declined to comment.The players had spent months absorbing the enormity of what had happened. Now, they had a version of events they believed contradicted their experience of those nine minutes that spring morning.Rip the Scab OffIn late April, the Republicans returned to the field here where they had almost been killed, preparing for their annual charity game against Democrats at Nationals Park, which will be held on Thursday.The shooting could have changed the course of American politics. Instead, the same team reconvened to practice in unusual circumstances, reacclimating to the scene of a mass shooting as the players continued to grapple with trauma.The decision was fraught. Some wanted to claim power over the gunman, to make the space theirs again. The mayor of Alexandria encouraged them to return.You need to come back, and you need to rip the scab off, said Brian Kelly, a staff member on the team.In group meetings, several congressmen declared that it was wrong to relive the anguish of that day. Many of the players suffered flashbacks. Now, they would have to stand several times a week in the same spots where they had heard the first cracks, to make the same throws and take the same swings they had taken before they were attacked.Bullet holes still dot the fencing and storage units, and Little League teams continue to line dugouts pockmarked by them.ImageCredit...Gabriella Demczuk for The New York TimesThere was an alternative: a newer field in Washington, closer and more convenient for practices at daybreak.Representative Roger Williams of Texas, the teams manager, was determined not to return. His legislative assistant, Zachary Barth, who was shot in the leg, was too.The first day was hard. It was hard for me to look where I was hiding, Mr. Williams said, referring to the first-base dugout, which he had dived into shortly after the shooting began. I had no desire to go back.Mr. Barth drove his boss to the first practices this year: anxious car rides into this peaceful neighborhood just south of the Pentagon.I cant believe were going back here, Mr. Barth remembers their saying. It wasnt choice No. 1, or 2, or 3.The first day back was the wrong kind of anniversary.Ryan Thompson, Representative Joe Bartons chief of staff and an organizer of the game, stood next to Matt Mika, a lobbyist who was gravely injured in the attack, along the first-base line, where they had been when the shots rang out. They couldnt shake how eerie it was.The bullet holes that hit the shed right next to me are still there, said Representative Barry Loudermilk of Georgia.The group agreed on something of a compromise: alternate between the two fields, but not on a fixed schedule, so their presence would be difficult to anticipate. The Capitol Police designed a security system to ring the field.ImageCredit...Gabriella Demczuk for The New York TimesBut after a week in Alexandria, the team moved practice full time to Washington, where the field would be easier to secure. A group of lawmakers led by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky argued that the experiment the attempt to readapt was not worth it.Politician as SurvivorAfter the attack, some of the most insistent Second Amendment advocates on Capitol Hill took on the role of shooting survivor.Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the majority whip, was among those shot. After he returned to Congress in September, Mr. Scalise redoubled his commitment to gun rights, even as he counseled survivors of other shootings who were newly animated about gun control. One February afternoon, as he welcomed survivors of the mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., to his office in the Capitol, Mr. Scalise found himself in a back-and-forth with a teenage student about state laws that could have stopped the young attacker.He shifted the discussion from gun control to one about the need for confiding in others, something he did in the hospital when teammates visited and described what the shooting looked like from different angles.His encounter with a gunman forced him and his teammates, who would seek one another out on the House floor in the months afterward to treat the issue as a matter of experience.I grew up with the culture, said Will Batson, a Senate aide who was on the pitching mound when the first shots were fired. Friends had guns. Theyd go hunting before school. Mass shootings, you never think youre going to have to deal with it.But even as the Republicans, many of them gun owners, re-examined their relationship with firearms, the shooting only hardened their beliefs. The House this year has repeatedly rejected proposals for stricter gun control legislation.In a Senate campaign ad, Mr. Brooks used footage of himself from the morning of the shooting to promote his commitment to gun rights, a move that upset Mr. Scalises staff.ImageCredit...Gabriella Demczuk for The New York TimesIf we had had guns, we could have ended it there, Mr. Brooks said in an interview. None of us were in a position where we could defend ourselves.Some were confident in how the scene would have unfolded had they been armed. Mr. Loudermilk, for his part, surmised that Mr. Hodgkinson, who was killed in the attack, could have been cut off earlier. I had no way of defending myself or my friends, he said. I felt completely vulnerable.But some on the team didnt see the question in such a straightforward way.Brad Barton, the son of the Texas congressman, who coached the team last year, initially believed that there may have been two gunmen. The sounds and ricochets seemed to be coming from all directions.Being in a mass shooting, Brad Barton said, hinders a persons ability to process what you see and then respond rationally.I dont know what I would do if I were there again, he said. Can you see the gunman? Its too much to know. Would you run or hide? Until the lead starts flying, you just dont know.Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, who hid in the first-base dugout as he watched bullets hit the gravel in front of him, said his teammates attention to gun rights after the fact was just another sign of deepening tribalism.Its tough to support some shade of gray in the middle, when this issue probably calls for that, he said. Im not one who says, Lets ban every weapon or force registration on everybody. But there are things we can and should do on a common-sense basis, and that list is longer after the shooting.Distilling MemoriesThe morning was familiar to those who have been through war. Sounds from the shooting haunt many on the team: sirens, loud cracks, bullets whizzing by the ear. Several players turned to combat veterans for guidance.ImageCredit...Gabriella Demczuk for The New York TimesMr. Kelly spoke to Navy SEALs about the shock that comes from being inside something akin to a battle scene, with no training. The SEALs taught Mr. Kelly to transform his recollection of that day into black and white.It doesnt go away, but it slows itself down, he said.In the months afterward, Mr. Loudermilk knew his wife could tell when he was mentally revisiting the scene. His facial expression would abruptly change.What brought it back was any time of quiet, he said.Veterans advised him to write down everything that had happened before and after the shooting, from the moment he woke up until the episode passed. The idea, Mr. Loudermilk said, was to make his impressions even more particular, so he could phase out certain details and dampen the intensity of flashbacks.Writing in a journal helped him reimagine the shooting, first without sound, then without smell, then without color.In August, Mr. Loudermilk noticed that he had finally gone a full day without thinking about the shooting.This spring, Mr. Batson had a combat veteran accompany him to a shooting range, thinking it might help soften his perception of guns again.Whenever he watches TV reports of mass shootings now, Mr. Batson said, he pictures himself trapped in the scene he sees onscreen. He recalls how helpless how slow he felt while dodging fire.It brings out a lot of those sensations, a lot of those emotions, he said. I can relate to the people who survived. I know how scared you are, how youre thinking about your family.ImageCredit...Gabriella Demczuk for The New York TimesLoud Noises and Odd TastesThe first thoughts that occur to a target in a mass shooting often have no rhyme or reason. Crouched in the dugout, Mr. Williams, who played professionally, remembers believing he had to survive so he could witness his granddaughters birth. Seconds later, he considered how he wanted Centerfield by John Fogerty to play at his funeral.Mr. Williams still anticipates grim daydreams when he is alone.Every day Im thinking about it, he added. It just happens.He skipped Fourth of July fireworks last year to avoid the auditory reminders.When Mr. Loudermilk visited a shooting range months after the attack, he heard gunshots and rushed back into his car.Some people think if you have P.T.S., its a sign of weakness, he said. But its reality.Mr. Flake talked about the shooting with his children in a way that reminded him of how he had explained the Sept. 11 attacks to them when they were younger. He remembers how spooked he was by gunshot sound effects at a fund-raiser at a memorial exhibit days after the shooting.Brad Barton developed a metallic taste in his mouth that his doctors have attributed to the trauma. He constantly drinks water to try to clear away the flavor. Loud noises at construction sites still make him jump.For Representative Rodney Davis of Illinois, who was batting when the shooting started, the sounds live with him in ways he sometimes cannot understand. There is an image frozen in his mind: of a woman walking her dogs, caught in the middle of the gunfire, her eyes fixed on him in an expression he interprets as a plea for help.At some point after the shooting, he woke up in the middle of the night, sweating profusely.I thought to myself, is that the way sleeps going to be all the time? Mr. Davis said.Alternate worst-case scenarios still run through his head.What if the shooter stood on the first-base side? What if he hadnt hit the fence with the first shot? Those are thoughts that go through my mind all the time, he said, adding: I dont think theyll ever leave me. I dont think theyll ever leave any of us.Theyre Shooting at UsJust after 7 a.m. the day of the shooting, Brad Barton was playing catch with his 11-year-old half brother when he saw Mr. Scalise go down just feet away from him. You have this immediate feeling of guilt, he said. I cant help him.Life suddenly seemed 30 seconds long. Mr. Barton dropped to the ground, in the line of fire, believing he was about to die.His first instinct was to call his ex-wife, who was with his kids. He wanted to say goodbye to her, to have her wake up their children, to have his voice reach them in real time. The call went to voice mail.Theyre shooting at us, Mr. Barton says, his voice shaking.God, hes got a lot of ammo.Jeez, thats a powerful gun.Mr. Barton often meets people who refuse to believe he was actually there. He will play them the message, two and a half minutes that seem like eternity. It is testimony: long pauses and heavy breathing interrupted by the sound of gunfire aimed at those around him. | Politics |
Politics|Portraits of California Voters: You Cant Have Change Without Votinghttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/us/politics/california-primary-voters.htmlFrom San Diego to the Central Valley, Californians are sending a message with their votes in Tuesdays primary.June 5, 2018ImageCredit...Hilary Swift for The New York TimesCalifornia voters are making lots of decisions in Tuesdays primary election. Theyre choosing candidates for a new governor as Jerry Brown retires from a lifetime in politics, and theyre choosing whether to nominate Senator Dianne Feinstein for a sixth term. And in seven Republican districts that favored Hillary Clinton in 2016, theyre choosing whether to send Democrats to Washington instead. New York Times photographers in each of these districts spoke to voters to find out what is motivating them and what message they hope the results on Tuesday send. I think its important to have a say in the community that we build, said Kennedy Monterroza, an 18-year-old Democrat from Oceanside, in the 49th District. She is voting for the first time on Tuesday. That is the first level of making a change in the country as a whole, she said.Follow live coverage from Times journalists as voters head to the polls.The 49th DistrictImageCredit...Hilary Swift for The New York TimesI thoroughly approve of the direction were going, said Nina Eaton, a Republican from Carlsbad. Im a pretty happy person to see things progressing and not in stalemate anymore. The 39th DistrictImageCredit...Kayla Reefer for The New York TimesDaniel Briones, 19, canvassed in Fullerton for Andy Thorburn, a Democrat running in the 39th District, on Monday. He believes Mr. Thorburn is the only viable progressive candidate in the race. Theres a need for this district to go blue, Mr. Briones said. The 48th DistrictImageCredit...Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesHarold Reed of Costa Mesa mailed in his ballot for the primary. The 79-year-old Republican said he likes to feel that his vote will influence the outcome of the election, but he also wants members of his party to work with Democrats. We just have to be together, and I dont think we are together on a lot of stuff, he said. The 10th District ImageCredit...Josh Haner/The New York Times"You cant have change without voting, said Diane Bonkofsky, 67, of Tracy. Ms. Bonkofsky said she was undecided among the six Democrats running for Congress there. She said she values experience and sets realistic expectations. Usually when somebody says theyre going to do too much or do something that sounds impossible, theyre pretty much a liar, she said.The 25th DistrictImageCredit...Rozette Rago for The New York TimesUnless Im giving my input about who I want in office, I cant complain, said Allyson Sagardia, a Democrat in Santa Clarita. She is voting for the first time on Tuesday. The 21st DistrictImageCredit...Ryan Christopher Jones for The New York TimesJennifer Stephens-Bonds, 34, said she would be voting on Tuesday to make sure tax dollars are going to the right place. Ms. Stephens-Bond is a social worker in Hanford and is registered as a Democrat.The 45th DistrictImageCredit...Eric Thayer for The New York TimesJocelyn Ruiz, 20, of Tustin, says she is voting to express her own view and opinion. Ms. Ruiz is a Democrat, but she doesnt have a specific message in mind for the results of Tuesdays primaries. If it does good, its for the better, she said. | Politics |
News AnalysisVideotranscripttranscriptFrom Gay Rights to Bush v. Gore: Anthony Kennedys LegacyThe Timess Supreme Court correspondent, Adam Liptak, looks at many of Justice Anthony Kennedys most consequential votes.Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement, effective July 31. Justice Kennedys greatest judicial legacy was his championship of gay rights. He wrote every major gay rights decision, including one called Obergefell, which established a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, and it will be what he is most remembered for. Justice Kennedy was a moderate conservative; voted more often with the courts conservative wing; was the author of Citizens United, which amplified the role of money in politics; cast a vote with the five-justice majority in Bush v. Gore in 2000, which handed the presidency to President George W. Bush I George Walker Bush, do solemnly swear. joined the five-justice majority in District of Columbia against Heller, which revolutionized Second Amendment law and established a personal right to keep and bear arms. He was often prepared to cut back on the death penalty, whether it involved people with intellectual disabilities, people who committed crimes when they were younger than 18 or people who committed crimes other than murder. He joined the controlling opinion and in a 1992 decision, Planned Parenthood against Casey, which re-established and saved Roe v. Wade, the decision that guarantees a constitutional right to abortion. And in recent years, he has joined the courts liberals in cases on affirmative action and abortion. And those cases in which Justice Kennedy joined the courts four more liberal members are almost certainly at risk if President Trump appoints a conservative to the court.The Timess Supreme Court correspondent, Adam Liptak, looks at many of Justice Anthony Kennedys most consequential votes.CreditCredit...Eric Thayer/Getty ImagesJune 27, 2018WASHINGTON Justice Anthony M. Kennedy has served for more than 30 years under two chief justices: William H. Rehnquist and John G. Roberts Jr. Courts are by tradition named for the chief justice. Since 2005, it has been the Roberts court.But if influence were the deciding factor, it would be more accurate to speak of the period since 1988 as the Kennedy court.Justice Kennedy has occupied a place at the courts ideological center for his entire tenure, though he shared the middle ground with Justice Sandra Day OConnor for most of his first two decades. On her retirement in 2006, his vote became the undisputed crucial one in most of the courts closely divided cases.There have been about 51 decisions in which Justice Kennedy joined a liberal majority in a closely divided case, while Chief Justice Roberts dissented. All of those precedents could be in jeopardy, said Lee Epstein, a law professor and political scientist at Washington University in St. Louis.To be sure, Justice Kennedy often voted with the courts conservatives. He wrote the majority opinion in Citizens United, which allowed unlimited campaign spending by corporations and unions, and he joined the majority in Bush v. Gore, which handed the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush. Justice Kennedy also voted with the courts conservatives in cases on the Second Amendment and voting rights.Not infrequently, though, he joined the courts liberal wing in important cases on contested social issues, including liberal decisions on gay rights, abortion, affirmative action and the death penalty. A court containing two Trump appointees could chip away at those rulings.Mr. Trump has vowed, for instance, to appoint justices committed to overruling Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion. That would not happen overnight if another Trump appointee joined the court, but aggressive restrictions on access to abortion would very likely be sustained.The vote count in the courts most recent abortion case is telling. In 2016, when the court was short-handed after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Kennedy joined the courts four-member liberal wing to strike down a restrictive Texas abortion law. That ruling would almost certainly have come out differently from a court without Justice Kennedy and with two Trump appointees.The right to same-sex marriage seems more secure, and Mr. Trump has said he considers the issue settled. But a court including a second Trump appointee would be quite unlikely to expand gay rights and would instead be receptive to arguments from religious groups that object to same-sex marriage.According to a court spokeswoman, Justice Kennedy told his colleagues on Wednesday of his decision to step down, effective July 31.It has been the greatest honor and privilege to serve our nation in the federal judiciary for 43 years, 30 of those years on the Supreme Court, Justice Kennedy said in a statement.In a letter to Mr. Trump, Justice Kennedy, 81, expressed profound gratitude for having had the privilege to seek in each case how best to know, interpret and defend the Constitution and the laws that must always conform to its mandates and promises.That language earnest, flowery, a little mystical was characteristic of his judicial writing, which was not to everyones taste.Justice Kennedys opinions were studded with vague and soaring language.At the heart of liberty, he said in a 1992 decision upholding the constitutional right to abortion, is the right to define ones own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life.Phrases like that infuriated his critics, notably Justice Scalia. In a 2003 dissent, Justice Scalia mocked its famed sweet-mystery-of-life passage, calling it the passage that ate the rule of law.Justice Kennedys final opinions on the court had a valedictory quality. He wrote an inconclusive decision in a clash between a baker and a gay couple, and he joined a pair of decisions ducking the question of whether the Constitution prohibits partisan gerrymandering.Justice Kennedy valued civility and dignity, and the Trump years seemed to take a toll. In Tuesdays decision upholding Mr. Trumps travel ban, he seemed to chide the president for incivility even as he said the courts could do nothing to force him to behave with the decorum Justice Kennedy prized.There are numerous instances in which the statements and actions of government officials are not subject to judicial scrutiny or intervention, he wrote. That does not mean those officials are free to disregard the Constitution and the rights it proclaims and protects.The oath that all officials take to adhere to the Constitution is not confined to those spheres in which the judiciary can correct or even comment upon what those officials say or do, he wrote. Indeed, the very fact that an official may have broad discretion, discretion free from judicial scrutiny, makes it all the more imperative for him or her to adhere to the Constitution and to its meaning and its promise.A new Trump appointee would almost certainly vote with the courts most conservative members, thrusting Chief Justice Roberts into the courts ideological center. The chief justice has drifted slightly to the left in recent years, but aside from two votes sustaining President Barack Obamas health care law, it is hard to point to a major decision in which he disappointed political conservatives.Should Roberts become the median, the court could move well to the right, taking its place as the most conservative court in modern history, Professor Epstein said.In the Supreme Court term that just concluded, Chief Justice Roberts already seemed to be moving to the courts center, voting with the majority in divided cases more often than any other justice. The term yielded an extraordinary run of conservative rulings, including blockbusters upholding Mr. Trumps travel ban and dealing a sharp blow to public unions.This term gave us a preview of what the Supreme Court would be like if Chief Justice Roberts were to become the swing vote, said Leah Litman, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine. Progressives will lose, and they will lose a lot, except in a few criminal cases.Legal experts struggled to recall a recent example of a chief justice who was also the swing justice.Justice Kennedy himself did not like to be called the swing justice. The cases swing, he said in 2015 at Harvard Law School. I dont.That was correct. His jurisprudence contained an idiosyncratic mix of commitments, but they were fixed and strong, and they yielded vigorous opinions, very often speaking for the majority.Every day youre not in the majority you think is a dark day, he told C-Span in 2009. By that standard, Justice Kennedy had very few dark days. | Politics |
Todays meth is far more potent than earlier versions, but because it isnt an opioid, many federal addiction treatment funds cant be used to fight it.Credit...Joseph Rushmore for The New York TimesDec. 17, 2019TULSA, Okla. The teenager had pink cheeks from the cold and a matter-of-fact tone as she explained why she had started using methamphetamine after becoming homeless last year.Having nowhere to sleep, nothing to eat thats where meth comes into play, said the girl, 17, who asked to be identified by her nickname, Rose. Those things arent a problem if youre using.She stopped two months ago, she said, after smoking so much meth over a 24-hour period that she hallucinated and nearly jumped off a bridge. Deaths associated with meth use are climbing here in Oklahoma and in many other states, an alarming trend for a nation battered by the opioid epidemic, and one that public health officials are struggling to fully explain.The meth problem has sneaked up on state and national leaders. In Oklahoma, meth and related drugs, including prescription stimulants, now play a role in more deaths than all opioids combined, including painkillers, heroin and fentanyl, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The spending package that lawmakers agreed on this week includes legislation from Senators Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, and Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, that would allow states to address the resurgence of meth and cocaine by using some of the billions of dollars that Congress had appropriated to combat opioid addiction. Meth use first ballooned in the United States from the 1990s into the early 2000s, when it was often made in small home labs with pseudoephedrine, the main ingredient in many drugstore cold medicines. But todays meth, largely imported from Mexico, is far more potent.Its way different from the meth people were using 20 years ago, said Dr. Jason Beaman, the chairman of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Center for Health Sciences at Oklahoma State University. Its like they were drinking Mountain Dew and now they are injecting Red Bull.ImageCredit...Joseph Rushmore for The New York TimesNationally, since late last year, meth has turned up in more deaths than opioid painkillers like oxycodone and hydrocodone. In 14 of the 35 states that report overdose deaths to the federal government on a monthly basis, meth is also involved in more deaths than fentanyl, by far the most potent opioid. Provisional data from the C.D.C. shows there were about 13,000 deaths involving meth nationwide in 2018, more than twice as many as in 2015. That is still far fewer than opioid deaths over all, which passed 47,000, but the pace is accelerating while opioid fatalities have flattened.The most recent federal data, for example, estimates that from May 2018 to May 2019 there were 24.6 percent more deaths involving meth and other drugs in its class than in the previous year, compared with 9.4 percent more deaths involving fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. Deaths involving meth have been concentrated in the western United States but are moving eastward, even to regions that meth barely touched in the past, like New England. This is the one thing that keeps me awake at night, said Dr. Brett P. Giroir, assistant secretary for health at the Health and Human Services Department, at a conference on stimulant abuse on Monday. Within a few short months, and you can model it any way you want, methamphetamines will be secondary to fentanyl nationwide associated with overdose deaths.Unlike with opioids, there is no way to reverse the effects of a meth overdose, just as there is no medication approved to treat meth addiction and the cravings it creates. For now, treatment for meth addiction consists largely of behavioral therapies with a much more moderate effect size compared with medication, said Dr. Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.For many here in Oklahoma, what treatments do exist are out of reach. Most poor adults in the state do not qualify for Medicaid coverage that would help those with meth addiction gain access to treatment, because the state has chosen not to expand the program under the Affordable Care Act. And while Oklahoma has won a windfall of money $355 million from lawsuits against opioid manufacturers, much of it is specifically for fighting opioid addiction. We know there is funding coming in for the opioid problem, said Mimi Tarrasch, the chief officer of Women in Recovery, an alternative sentencing program in Tulsa. But what I see, and what our community continues to see, is really a lot of addiction to methamphetamine.ImageCredit...Joseph Rushmore for The New York TimesMeth is still not considered nearly as deadly as heroin or synthetic fentanyl, the latter of which has killed tens of thousands of Americans over the past five years, often within minutes, by depressing their breathing. Instead, meth stimulates the central nervous system, causing agitation, sleeplessness, psychosis and gradual damage to the heart, brain and other organs.Basically your blood pressure goes up so high that you can rupture your aorta or have a stroke, said Dr. Andrew Herring, an emergency medicine and addiction specialist in Oakland, Calif.In many cases, opioids are contributing to meth deaths, as people use both types of drugs together. Opioids were found to play a role in about half of the deaths involving meth in 2017, the most recent year for which detailed toxicology results are available. Some experts think the number is probably larger. Dr. Daniel Ciccarone, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies patterns of drug use, said he suspected some coroners and medical examiners were not checking the blood of overdose victims for dozens of fentanyl analogues, which have chemical structures similar to fentanyl but require specialized toxicology testing.Meth-related deaths may also be rising simply because the number of users is rising, Dr. Ciccarone said, including those with underlying heart or other problems.Its embarrassing that we dont have the answer at our fingertips and we should, Dr. Ciccarone said at the stimulant abuse conference.Research suggests that in some cases, fear of dying from fentanyl is compelling people to use meth instead. Others are using meth as an upper to rouse themselves after using opioids, which have a sedative effect, or to help with opioid withdrawal. Still others are turning to meth for a high even as they take anti-craving medications to recover from opioid addiction.Dr. Giroir said combining meth and fentanyl could be the most dangerous move of all, although researchers are still trying to figure out how the drugs work together.We definitely want to dissuade people from the notion that somehow a downer and an upper cancel each other out, he said. Early data suggests the combination is probably more deadly than the sum of its parts.Some deaths involving meth are due to the risky or violent behavior it can cause, not the drug itself. Rose and her 19-year-old boyfriend, stopping to talk to a reporter one morning on their way to a drop-in center where they hoped to shower, said they knew of a man who had hanged himself after a meth-fueled fight with his girlfriend.Last year in Tulsa, a 25-year-old man with schizophrenia died after he shattered the glass door of a downtown bank while on meth and two police officers, who had been pursuing him, shot him with a Taser 27 times. His autopsy report said the likely cause of death was cardiac arrest due to methamphetamine toxicity in the setting of physical exertion/restraint, with cardiovascular disease as a contributing factor. The mans relatives say excessive force by the police was to blame and are planning to sue, said Damario Solomon-Simmons, a lawyer for the family.Many autopsies of Oklahoma residents whose deaths involved meth also found heart problems. In one typical case, a 48-year-old receptionist was found dead in a hotel room in May, her body withered to 77 pounds, her heart diseased. The cause of death was found to be acute methamphetamine toxicity.ImageCredit...Joseph Rushmore for The New York TimesDr. Beaman, who sees patients at a psychiatric crisis center here in Tulsa, said psychosis and other mental conditions caused by meth use were taking up more and more resources. In June alone, he said, more than half of the admissions to the crisis center were related to meth. I cant treat people with schizophrenia, Dr. Beaman said, because Im spending all my time treating people who are using meth.Shayla Divelbiss, 29, of Glenpool, Okla., considers herself lucky to be in good health now after using meth for six years, during which she ignored a thyroid condition and went days at a time without sleep. After waiting two harrowing months for a bed at 12 & 12, a treatment center for the poor and uninsured, she was able to stop.All the responsibilities of being a human just went out the window, she said of her time on meth. I quit cooking and eating. I had real bad anxiety. I was skin and bones.Daniel Raymond, the director of policy at the national Harm Reduction Coalition, said it was imperative to figure out exactly how meth users were dying so that cities and states could build public health strategies based on that knowledge. For now, those strategies include warning users about the risks of overamping, a word used to describe using too much meth, and the best ways to address it, like cooling down, drinking water and sleeping. Syringe exchanges have an important role for those who inject meth, he said, just as they do for opioid users.At 12 & 12, a former hotel on the outskirts of Tulsa, 64 percent of the clients are addicted to meth, said Bryan Day, the chief executive. State lawmakers have agreed to give the center more money next year to add beds for meth patients and increase their average stay, which is about 30 days. He estimated that 4,000 people in the state need treatment for meth addiction but are not receiving it. My belief is that their judgment for a period of time is very, very skewed, leading to frightening choices and decisions and impulses, Mr. Day said. The brain takes time to heal. We dont want to shortchange this population. | Health |
News AnalysisCredit...Robert Dawson/Amgen, via Associated PressMarch 20, 2017Imagine you have a high risk of heart disease. Maybe you even have had a heart attack or a stroke. Since then you have done everything you can to stay healthy: you exercise, track your blood pressure, take a statin.With the publication of a new study last week, you may well be wondering if theres one more measure you should try. In a multimillion-dollar trial, a new kind of cholesterol-lowering drug significantly reduced heart attacks and strokes among patients like you.Should you run out and get a prescription? Well, not so fast.In 2015, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new class of drugs for the reduction of LDL cholesterol, the type associated with heart disease and stroke. The medications, called PCSK9 inhibitors, are administered by injection and can reduce LDL levels by a whopping 60 mg/dl on average.The introduction of PCSK9 inhibitors led some experts to believe that we might be able to virtually eliminate heart disease. But theyve been slow to catch on. Each prescription costs $14,000 per year, despite the fact that these drugs had yet to be evaluated in a big study that tested whether they could actually reduce risk.It may seem obvious that lowering LDL cholesterol would inevitably reduce the risk of heart disease. But drugs can be unpredictable. They tend to have many effects. A drug that ameliorates one risk factor might have other effects that offset the benefit.On Friday, investigators reported the results of a highly anticipated trial of a PCSK9 inhibitor called evolocumab (brand name Repatha). This medication reduced LDL levels to an almost unfathomable 30 mg/dl from about 90 mg/dl on average, which is typically considered low.Over about two years of study, the researchers found that the new drug, when added to statin therapy, further reduced the risk of heart attack or stroke by about 15 percent. For about every 70 people treated with the drug, one person benefited in this way. This is not far off the size of the benefit that statins provide.So the drug works, which is good news for patients. And no safety concerns emerged. But the applause from heart experts has been muted, because expectations were so much higher. Their hope had been that drastically low LDL cholesterol levels would make it difficult or even impossible to have a heart attack.Where does that leave someone contemplating whether they should add this drug to an existing regimen?For people with a high risk of heart attack or stroke, there is now evidence that evolocumab may help you dodge the bullet. It is not a panacea, and you need to decide whether the odds sound good: You may be the lucky one among about 70 people who take the drug. The benefit is likely to be greatest among those with the most risk, including people with very high LDL levels despite treatment.Still, the cost is sky-high. Not all insurance companies will consider this drug a reasonable value, and some experts already think that the price should come down, given the size of the benefit. On the positive side, there was some indication that the benefit was increasing over time, but that is highly speculative at this point.Another reason to hesitate: The studys short time frame means that there wasnt much time in which to detect safety problems. If you are cautious about the safety of medications, you may want to wait and see what happens as more people start using it.Besides, there is a much less expensive alternative to evolocumab. Ezetimibe (Zetia) is another medication that can be added to statins to further reduce cholesterol. One study has indicated that it can reduce risk when added to statin therapy, though not quite as much as evolocumab did.For people with a low risk of heart disease, there is probably little to gain from taking a PCSK9 inhibitor. Many, many of these kinds of patients would have to be treated for someone to benefit. And there are no trials yet in this population.What about people who have trouble with statins? First, it turns out that some of the perceived problems with statins are not related to statins at all; you may need help from your doctor to determine whats really causing your symptoms. And some people tolerate one statin better than another.If statins are really not for you, ezetimibe is an option. If you still want to further lower risk, then you might add evolocumab, despite its expense, to ezetimibe. This can be a particularly important option for people at high risk because of very high LDL levels.There are not yet studies of outcomes in patients who use these medications because they cannot take statins. But it is a reasonable guess that the benefit will be similar to that reported in the newly released study about a 15 percent reduction in heart attacks or strokes.If there is a silver lining, its that the tried-and-true remedies are highly effective at reducing the threat for those at great risk of heart attack and stroke. Despite the newest drugs, a combination of heart-healthy behavior, blood pressure control and statin therapy remains the gold standard. | Health |
Yolanda Hadid Naked Daughter Pics?! I LOVE IT! 1/31/2018 TMZ.com It's been called "creepy," and "incestuous" and straight up "no bueno" ... but Yolanda Hadid says she LOVES the new pic of her naked daughters' hooha-to-hooha shot on the cover of Vogue. Bella and Gigi Hadid have been getting a lot of heat (both good and bad) for the risque pic --- which features the sisters sans clothes and with their legs wrapped around each other. It's definitely sexually charged ... which is weird because, you know ... THEY'RE SISTERS!! Mama Hadid ain't creeped out at all -- giving her seal of approval in Bev Hills -- "Love the skin you're in, baby!" But when asked specifically if she thought the cover was incestuous, Yolanda clammed up. Naked Sisters Photo ... | Entertainment |
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy served as the decisive vote in several closely watched cases during his tenure. Here are some major decisions where he left his mark. Credit...Eric Thayer/Getty ImagesJune 27, 2018For much of his 30-year tenure on the Supreme Court, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy served as the decisive vote in several closely watched, divisive cases. His retirement at the end of next month will pave the way for a contentious fight to determine the future direction of the Supreme Court. A Trump appointee would likely create a five-member conservative majority that would potentially cripple or undo previous rulings on abortion rights, affirmative action and the death penalty cases where Justice Kennedy left his mark by siding with the four liberal justices. The following are some of the landmark cases where Justice Kennedy served as the deciding factor. On GAY RIGHTSObergefell vs. HodgesJustice Kennedy, a champion of gay rights, wrote every majority decision for landmark gay rights cases, most notably the 2015 decision that granted same-sex couples the right to get married. No longer may this liberty be denied, Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority in the historic decision. No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.Justice Kennedy was joined by the four more liberal justices on the court at the time in declaring that the plaintiffs in the case sought equal dignity in the eyes of the law.Vote count: 5-4 On ABORTIONPlanned Parenthood v. CaseyJustice Kennedy was one of three justices who wrote the controlling opinion in the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision, which reaffirmed the constitutional right to have an abortion. That right was first established in Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case. At the time, legal experts said it was the only case in which Justice Kennedy had found an abortion restriction unconstitutional in his 28 years on the Supreme Court.Vote count: 5-4 Whole Womans Health v. HellerstedtJustice Kennedy was a crucial vote in the 2016 case that reaffirmed and strengthened constitutional protections for abortion rights, striking down parts of a restrictive Texas law that could have drastically reduced the number of abortion clinics in the state, leaving them only in the largest metropolitan areas. Vote count: 5 -3 On AFFIRMATIVE ACTIONFisher v. University of TexasJustice Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion in 2016, was a critical vote in the unexpected decision to deny a challenge to a race-conscious admissions program at the University of Texas at Austin. He had never before voted to uphold an affirmative action plan, and had dissented in the last affirmative action case before this one. Considerable deference is owed to a university in defining those intangible characteristics, like student body diversity, that are central to its identity and educational mission, Justice Kennedy wrote on behalf of himself and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.But still, he added, it remains an enduring challenge to our nations education system to reconcile the pursuit of diversity with the constitutional promise of equal treatment and dignity.Vote count: 4-3 On ELECTIONS AND CAMPAIGN finance Bush v. GoreThe Supreme Court handed the 2000 presidential election to President George W. Bush, ending the recount of Floridas disputed presidential votes. Justice Kennedy, along with Justice Sandra Day OConnor, were the only two justices whose names did not appear separately on any of the other opinions, signaling that one or either wrote the unsigned majority opinion. We are presented with a situation where a state court with the power to assure uniformity has ordered a statewide recount with minimal procedural safeguards, the opinion said. When a court orders a statewide remedy, there must be at least some assurance that the rudimentary requirements of equal treatment and fundamental fairness are satisfied.Vote count: 5-4 Citizens United v. Federal Election CommissionJustice Kennedy was again the deciding factor in a bitterly divided 2010 decision that said the government could not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections. The majority said the decision was based on the free speech principle in the First Amendment: the government cannot regulate political speech.If the First Amendment has any force, Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.President Barack Obama criticized the decision as a victory for powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans. It overruled two precedents: a 1990 decision that upheld restrictions on corporate spending to endorse or oppose political candidates and a 2003 decision that upheld the part of a bipartisan law that restricted campaign spending by corporations and unions.Vote count: 5-4 On GUN RIGHTS District of Columbia v. HellerJustice Kennedy joined the majority of the court in 2008, ruling that there is a constitutional right to keep a handgun at home for self-defense. The decision overturned the District of Columbias ban on handguns. The case marked the first time in nearly 70 years that the Supreme Court weighed in on the meaning of the Second Amendment. The opinion, which Justice Kennedy signed on to, rejected the argument that the right of the people to keep and bear arms applied to gun ownership only in connection to service in the well regulated militia referenced in the amendment.Vote count: 5-4 On Capital PunishmentKennedy v. LouisianaA sharply divided Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the death penalty was unconstitutional as a punishment for crimes against individuals other than murder. The decision spared the lives of the only two men in the country who had been sentenced to death for child rape.Justice Kennedy, again writing for the liberal majority, said there was a distinction between intentional first-degree murder on the one hand and nonhomicide crimes against individual persons, even when considering devastating crimes like the rape of a child. Vote count: 5-4 Hall v. Florida Justice Kennedy sided with the courts liberal wing in 2014 to impose more limitations on capital punishment, ruling that Floridas I.Q. score cutoff was too stringent in deciding which mentally ill individuals should be spared from the death penalty. The ruling affected a handful of other states in requiring them to take a less mechanical approach to mental disability when considering capital punishment. The death penalty is the gravest sentence our society may impose, he wrote. Persons facing that most severe sanction must have a fair opportunity to show that the Constitution prohibits their execution. Floridas law contravenes our nations commitment to dignity and its duty to teach human decency as the mark of a civilized world.Vote count: 5-4 | Politics |
Credit...Jonathan Nackstrand/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesFeb. 18, 2014SOCHI, Russia The Swedish defenseman Erik Karlsson moves like an ice dancer, his feet a blur of motion. He has a quick first step that allows him to jump into rushes like a 500-meter speedskater bursting off the starting line. Through the first three games of the Olympics, Karlssons feet did not fail him.He was tied for third in ice hockey tournament scoring with 5 points as Sweden posted a 3-0 record in preliminary play and gained the top seed. In the quarterfinals Wednesday, Sweden will face Slovenia, a first-time Olympic participant, which shut out Austria, 4-0, on Tuesday.Karlssons participation in the Sochi Games was jeopardized last year when his footwear foundered. In a game at Pittsburgh on Feb. 13, his left Achilles tendon was sliced by the skate blade of the Penguins Matt Cooke as they battled for the puck along the boards. Karlsson, then the leagues reigning Norris Trophy winner as the top defenseman, was wearing knit socks, which offered little resistance to a skate blade.When he returned to the ice, he was wearing cut-resistant socks.Unfortunately, I didnt wear it from the beginning, said Karlsson, 23, whose freakish injury led to a run in the N.H.L. of socks made out of materials like Kevlar and copper to protect the calves.Jimmy Howard, a goaltender on the United States Olympic team who plays for the Red Wings, was among the N.H.L. players who started wearing them. He said Detroits equipment manager had encouraged all of the players to switch to socks offering more protection. Howard was happy to comply, he said, given that around the net, you see skates going everywhere.Another American Olympic team member, James van Riemsdyk, a forward for the Toronto Maple Leafs, said he planned to start wearing the new socks next season. His decision was clinched, oddly, by a tendon injury his teammate Dave Bolland sustained in November while wearing the high-tech socks.ImageCredit...Gene J. Puskar/Associated PressIf not for the socks, perhaps Bollands injury would have been far worse. But that is not why van Riemsdyk said, Everything about it makes me a little queasy.He meant the equipment change, which is a scarier prospect than a freakish injury for players who are creatures of habit.In November, Karlsson signed with Stable 26, a company that sells footgear developed by a chiropractor, Daryl Sherman, who treats athletes including runners, hockey players, skiers and golfers. In addition to Karlsson, athletes at the Sochi Games wearing the companys socks include the downhill skier Jan Hudec, who won a bronze medal in the super-G, and Mikal Kingsbury, the silver medalist in freestyle skiing mens moguls.Karlsson says he likes that the socks are lightweight and comfortable, but he is working with the company to develop a more cut-resistant model, using a new material that could be available to the public by the end of the year.Hopefully within a couple of months, well have something thats going to be good enough for players to want to wear it all over the world, said Karlsson, who believes cut-resistant socks, like helmets, will eventually be mandatory in the N.H.L.It could be a tough sell. The Red Wings Daniel Alfredsson, 41, who played with Karlsson in Ottawa and has been reunited with him on the Swedish team here, played in the game when Karlsson was hurt. The image of Karlsson writhing in pain is seared in his memory.And yet, after experimenting with high-tech socks in practice, Alfredsson decided he was more comfortable risking injury than discomfort.I find them too hot, he said.Karlsson did not sweat making the switch. Its very rare that someone gets cut, he said. But Ive been cut twice now, and its not a fun thing to go through.Karlsson was told by his doctors last year that the tendon, which was 70 percent ruptured, would take six to eight months to heal. As usual, Karlsson was in a rush. He returned after 10 weeks, for three games in late April and the playoffs. When the league broke for the Olympics this month, he was the top-scoring defenseman with 55 points in 59 games.It wasnt until this year he could perform at the level hes capable of, Alfredsson said.Last Thursday, on the first anniversary of his injury, Karlsson practiced with his teammates and later attended a figure skating competition with Alfredsson.Its not something I put any focus on whatsoever, Karlsson said. Just moving forward.On Sunday, Karlsson gave his teammate Henrik Lundqvist, the Rangers goaltender, a lift around the Olympic Park on one of the bicycles made available to the athletes. He delivered Lundqvist back to the village safely, but the next day at practice gave the whole team a scare when he crashed into Lundqvist while trying to stop Loui Eriksson from scoring in a breakaway drill. The Bolshoi training rink grew deathly quiet for several seconds while Lundqvist got up.I think it looked worse than it was, Karlsson said, adding, I told him I was sorry about 500 times.Earlier in the same drill, Alfredsson fell while trying to catch Karlsson.He has one speed that most of us dont have, Alfredsson said. Thats probably his biggest asset is his skating and his ability as a defenseman to join the rush.The Swedish coach, Par Marts, smiled Monday when asked about Karlssons antics. Either hes on or off, thats it, he said. Nothing in between. | Sports |
Credit...Shira InbarThe backlash to Apples efforts to fight child sexual abuse show that in the debate between privacy and security, there are few easy answers.Credit...Shira InbarPublished Aug. 18, 2021Updated Oct. 14, 2021Apple unveiled a plan two weeks ago founded in good intentions: Root out images of child sexual abuse from iPhones.But as is often the case when changes are made to digital privacy and security, technology experts quickly identified the downside: Apples approach to scanning peoples private photos could give law enforcement authorities and governments a new way to surveil citizens and persecute dissidents. Once one chip in privacy armor is identified, anyone can attack it, they argued.The conflicting concerns laid bare an intractable issue that the tech industry seems no closer to solving today than when Apple first fought with the F.B.I. over a dead terrorists iPhone five years ago.The technology that protects the ordinary persons privacy can also hamstring criminal investigations. But the alternative, according to privacy groups and many security experts, would be worse.Once you create that back door, it will be used by people whom you dont want to use it, said Eva Galperin, the cybersecurity director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights group. That is not a theoretical harm. That is a harm weve seen happen time and time again.Apple was not expecting such backlash. When the company announced the changes, it sent reporters complex technical explainers and laudatory statements from child-safety groups, computer scientists and Eric H. Holder Jr., the former U.S. attorney general. After the news went public, an Apple spokesman emailed a reporter a tweet from Ashton Kutcher, the actor who helped found a group that fights child sexual abuse, cheering the moves.But his voice was largely drowned out. Cybersecurity experts, the head of the messaging app WhatsApp and Edward J. Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who leaked classified documents about government surveillance, all denounced the move as setting a dangerous precedent that could enable governments to look into peoples private phones. Apple scheduled four more press briefings to combat what it said were misunderstandings, admitted it had bungled its messaging and announced new safeguards meant to address some concerns. More than 8,000 people responded with an open letter calling on Apple to halt its moves.As of now, Apple has said it is going forward with the plans. But the company is in a precarious position. It has for years worked to make iPhones more secure, and in turn, it has made privacy central to its marketing pitch. But what has been good for business also turned out to be bad for abused children.A few years ago, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children began disclosing how often tech companies reported cases of child sexual abuse material, commonly known as child pornography, on their products.ImageCredit...AppleApple was near the bottom of the pack. The company reported 265 cases to the authorities last year, compared with Facebooks 20.3 million. That enormous gap was largely due, in most cases, to Apples electing not to look for such images to protect the privacy of its users.In late 2019, after reports in The New York Times about the proliferation of child sexual abuse images online, members of Congress told Apple that it had better do more to help law enforcement officials or they would force the company to do so. Eighteen months later, Apple announced that it had figured out a way to tackle the problem on iPhones, while, in its view, protecting the privacy of its users.The plan included modifying its virtual assistant, Siri, to direct people who ask about child sexual abuse to appropriate resources. Apple said it would also soon enable parents to turn on technology that scans images in their childrens text messages for nudity. Children 13 and older would be warned before sending or viewing a nude photo, while parents could ask to be notified if children under 13 did so.Those changes were met with little controversy compared with Apples third new tool: software that scans users iPhone photos and compares them against a database of known child sexual abuse images.To prevent false positives and hide the images of abuse, Apple took a complex approach. Its software reduces each photo to a unique set of numbers a sort of image fingerprint called a hash and then runs them against hashes of known images of child abuse provided by groups like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.If 30 or more of a users photos appear to match the abuse images, an Apple employee reviews the matches. If any of the photos show child sexual abuse, Apple sends them to the authorities and locks the users account. Apple said it would turn on the feature in the United States over the next several months.Law enforcement officials, child-safety groups, abuse survivors and some computer scientists praised the moves. In statements provided by Apple, the president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children called it a game changer, while David Forsyth, chairman of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said that the technology would catch child abusers and that harmless users should experience minimal to no loss of privacy.But other computer scientists, as well as privacy groups and civil-liberty lawyers, immediately condemned the approach.Other tech companies, like Facebook, Google and Microsoft, also scan users photos to look for child sexual abuse, but they do so only on images that are on the companies computer servers. In Apples case, much of the scanning happens directly on peoples iPhones. (Apple said it would scan photos that users had chosen to upload to its iCloud storage service, but scanning still happens on the phone.)To many technologists, Apple has opened a Pandoras box. The tool would be the first technology built into a phones operating system that can look at a persons private data and report it to law enforcement authorities. Privacy groups and security experts are worried that governments looking for criminals, opponents or other targets could find plenty of ways to use such a system.As we now understand it, Im not so worried about Apples specific implementation being abused, said Alex Stamos, a Stanford University researcher who previously led Facebooks cybersecurity efforts. The problem is, theyve now opened the door to a class of surveillance that was never open before.If governments had previously asked Apple to analyze peoples photos, the company could have responded that it couldnt. Now that it has built a system that can, Apple must argue that it wont.I think Apple has clearly tried to do this as responsibly as possible, but the fact theyre doing it at all is the problem, Ms. Galperin said. Once you build a system that can be aimed at any database, you will be asked to aim the system at a database.In response, Apple has assured the public that it will not accede to such requests. We have faced demands to build and deploy government-mandated changes that degrade the privacy of users before, and have steadfastly refused those demands. We will continue to refuse them in the future, the company said in a statement.Apple has indeed fought demands to weaken smartphone encryption in the United States, but it has also bowed to governments in other cases. In China, where Apple makes nearly all of its products, it stores its Chinese customers data on computer servers owned and run by a state-owned company, at the demand of the government.In the United States, Apple has been able to avoid more intense fights with the government because it still turns over plenty of data to law enforcement officials. From January 2018 through June 2020, the most recent data available, Apple turned over the contents of 340 customers iCloud accounts a month to American authorities with warrants. Apple still hasnt fully encrypted iCloud, allowing it to have access to its customers data, and the company scrapped plans to add more encryption when the F.B.I. balked, according to Reuters.Apples fights with the F.B.I. over smartphone encryption have also been defused because other companies have regularly been able to hack into iPhones for the police. It is still expensive and time-consuming to get into a locked iPhone, but that has created an effective middle ground where the police can gain access to devices they need for investigations but it is more difficult for them to abuse the technology.That stalemate on encryption has also enabled Apple to retain its brand as a champion of privacy, because it is not actively giving the police a way in. But that compounds the potential harm of its new tools, security experts said.For years, technologists have argued that giving the police a way into phones would fundamentally undermine the devices security, but now governments can point to Apples endorsement of its photo-scanning tools as a method that helps the police while preserving privacy.Apple has taken all their platinum privacy branding and theyve applied it to this idea, Mr. Stamos said. This Apple solution screws up the entire debate and sets us back years. | Tech |
Credit...Associated PressFeb. 15, 2014The timing could have been better for the French pole-vaulter Renaud Lavillenie.If you are going to break one of the great records in sports, it is probably best not to break it when much of the sports world is preoccupied with the Winter Olympics.France has been closely following the exploits of its biathlete Martin Fourcade, the winner of two gold medals so far in Sochi. But Lavillenie stole the spotlight Saturday night by breaking Sergei Bubkas nearly 21-year-old world record at an indoor meet in Donetsk, Ukraine, with Bubka watching and applauding from the stands.Lavillenie, 27, did it by clearing 6.16 meters (20 feet 2.5 inches) without so much as grazing the bar on his first attempt, his eyes and mouth wide with the implications of it all even before he had gotten all his limbs over the horizontal bar.Its going to take me some time to come back down, Lavillenie said in French in an interview with BFM TV. It was a world record that was so mythical. To do it on the first attempt, without touching, all you can do is just savor it.Bubkas world records of 6.14 meters outdoors (20-1 ) and 6.15 meters indoors (20-2), the latter set in Donetsk on Feb. 21, 1993, had long been considered impregnable. A Ukrainian who spent much of his career representing the Soviet Union, Bubka was ahead of and above his time.He largely dominated the pole vault for a decade, from the early 1980s to the early 1990s, and he set 18 world records indoors and 17 outdoors, usually in one-centimeter increments to maximize his earning power and increase the number of world-record bonuses he was able to collect.No one had seriously challenged him until Saturday; Bubka had the best six indoor marks in history. (He still has the best nine marks outdoors.) Lavillenie, the 2012 Olympic champion, gradually transformed himself into a threat, clearing 6 meters indoors and outdoors. Still, few could have imagined he would strike so quickly.In December, the French sports daily Lquipe published a holiday dream edition in which it reported on imaginary sports stories as if they were fact. On the front page, Lavillenie was clearing a bar with the number 6,16. The article was dated Aug. 24, 2015, and the dateline was Beijing, where the next world outdoor championships will take place.In the article, the real Lavillenie played along by answering questions as if he had indeed broken the record, and on Saturday night, Lquipe republished that interview in a hurry on its website.From fiction to reality, the website read.Lavillenies best mark until this year was 6.03 meters indoors. But he cleared 6.04 meters in Rouen, France, on Jan. 25 and then 6.08 meters in Bydgoszcz, Poland, on Jan. 31. On Saturday, he went eight centimeters higher, a huge improvement for a veteran pole-vaulter.Lavillenie told reporters that, having not competed since the Poland meet, he felt fresh when he arrived in Donetsk, the city where Bubka grew up, where Bubka set the now-former world record and where there is now a statue of Bubka, pole in hand.I knew I had the potential to attack it, Lavillenie said of the record. But from that point, to beat it so quickly is a whole other story.After he landed, Lavillenie spread his arms wide and then ran off the mat and back up the runway. In the stands, Bubka, now 50, was smiling and applauding.A new era in the sport has arrived, Bubka told reporters in Donetsk after congratulating Lavillenie. Today the winner is an Olympic champion, someone who already has tasted success several times.Lavillenie, at 5 feet 9 inches, is short for a world-class pole-vaulter. But he is a dynamic, explosive presence down the runway, and he has told Lquipe that he first believed a world record was possible when he cleared 6.01 meters at the 2013 European indoor championships with nearly 15 centimeters to spare.But this time the bar was in the right place, the record-breaking place, and unlike Bubka, who would have happily taken his pole and his bonus and called it a night, Lavillenie tried again at 6.21 meters.He was unsuccessful, but that is surely not what the French or anyone else will remember about Saturday night in Donetsk. | Sports |
Credit...Tannen Maury/Bloomberg NewsNov. 13, 2016The drugs seemed miraculous when they were introduced in 1999, and they soon became blockbusters, with billion-dollar sales. Vioxx, made by Merck, and Celebrex, made by Pfizer, could quell pain and inflammation just as well as drugs like ibuprofen and naproxen, but they did not cause ulcers and gastrointestinal bleeding.But then, the shocker. A Merck clinical trial asking if Vioxx could also prevent colon cancer revealed that the drug increased the risk of heart attacks, and the company pulled it off the market in 2004. Ever since, a question has hung over Celebrex. Did it cause heart attacks, too?A decade ago, the Food and Drug Administration asked Pfizer to find out. Now, at long last, the resulting clinical trial is done. Most medical researchers, including the studys principal investigator, thought Celebrex would be riskier than either ibuprofen or naproxen. Instead, it was at least no worse and may even be safer than the alternatives.This is definitely a striking finding, said Dr. Michael Lauer, a cardiologist at the National Institutes of Health who was not associated with the study.An estimated two million people in the United States take Celebrex or generic celecoxib, said Dr. Milton Pressler, a cardiologist in charge of clinical affairs for Pfizer Essential Health. The drug is available only by prescription; as the trial dragged on its patent expired, so now generic companies also sell it.The study involved 24,000 people with arthritis who were at high risk for heart disease or already had it. A third of them were randomly assigned to take Celebrex, a third to take naproxen and a third to take ibuprofen. The doses were equivalent and neither the participants nor the investigators knew who was taking what.The results were published online in the New England Journal of Medicine on Sunday to coincide with a presentation at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association by Dr. Steven Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic, who directed the new study.He and others emphasized that the findings apply only to people taking the drugs every day for months or years and who are at high risk for heart disease or already have it. They do not apply to someone who pops an occasional ibuprofen like Advil for a pulled muscle or takes a naproxen such as Aleve for a headache.When the trial was designed, many thought, based on data from small studies, that naproxen was safest and celecoxib was likely to be the riskiest. In fact, said Susan Ellenberg, a biostatistician at the University of Pennsylvania, some at the F.D.A. wanted to label naproxen as being safest. But an advisory committee that met in 2015 said to wait for the results of the new trial and warned that none of the drugs were risk-free.The F.D.A. declined to comment on the outcome of the study.Dr. Michael Joseph Blaha, director of clinical research for the Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease, said many of his heart patients also have arthritis.This is a common question that people have: Is it safe to take these drugs? said Dr. Blaha, who was not associated with the new study.The main purpose of the study was to investigate noninferiority to see if celecoxib was at least as safe as the other two drugs. It was.Yet major questions remain, said Dr. Peter W.F. Wilson, of the Emory Clinical Cardiovascular Research Institute. There was no placebo, which made it hard to pick up an increase in heart risk if it occurs with all the drugs.Pfizer is now sifting through more than three million pages of data and putting together a comprehensive report to send to the F.D.A., Dr. Pressler said. Then, he said, it will be up to the agency to decide what changes, if any, should be made to the drugs label, which currently warns against heart and gastrointestinal effects.The study found that during the trial 188 of the celecoxib patients (2.3 percent) died of heart disease or hemorrhage, or had a heart attack or a stroke, compared with 201 patients taking naproxen (2.5 percent) and 218 patients (2.7 percent) taking ibuprofen.The real surprise was in other outcomes the study investigated. Significantly more patients taking ibuprofen had worsening kidney function. Patients taking either ibuprofen or naproxen were significantly more likely to be hospitalized for high blood pressure. And despite the assumption that naproxen was the safest, there were 25 percent more total deaths with naproxen than celecoxib 163 with naproxen compared with 132 with celecoxib.As expected, because celecoxib was intended to avoid bleeding problems, both ibuprofen and naproxen patients had significantly more gastrointestinal bleeding and ulcers.These other outcomes were not the primary focus of the study and could not be considered proof of harm, though they did warrant further study, Dr. Nissen emphasized.Dr. Wilson took issue with stressing the secondary outcomes. The rules of clinical trial research say what counts is the outcome you designed your study to find. To then drill into secondary endpoints and find superiority thats not really fair, he said.Pfizer paid for the study one of the largest it has ever done, Dr. Pressler said but to avoid conflicts of interest, members of the studys executive committee, who all were academic researchers, agreed to not accept payments from any maker of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for the duration of the trial.The study did have some real weaknesses, said Dr. Elliott M. Antman, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a past president of the American Heart Association. Only a minority of the patients actually had documented heart disease and it is those patients who are most worrisome. Many dropped out, making it hard to interpret the data.They asked an important question, but the trial was hard to complete, he said. The weaknesses of the study made him unable to be confident of its conclusions. Still, he said, this is the best we will get, adding we will probably never see another study like this.Dr. Antman said he would continue to advise that any of these drugs be taken only by the lowest-risk patients in the lowest effective dose for the shortest possible time.Others, like Dr. Blaha, accepted the conclusions. I would not feel comfortable saying it is perfectly safe to take celecoxib, he said. But if you need to take a daily pill it might be safer to take this one than the other two.The study, he said, convinced him to change his practice.On average it looks like celecoxib is safer, he said. If you need to be on it for more than a couple of months, I would think strongly about celecoxib. | Health |
While Twitter started labeling some of the presidents inflammatory messages, Facebooks chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has said his company should leave them alone.Credit...Jason Henry for The New York TimesPublished June 1, 2020Updated Oct. 10, 2021OAKLAND, Calif. Hundreds of Facebook employees, in rare public criticism on Monday of their own company, protested executives decision not to do anything about inflammatory posts that President Trump had placed on the giant social media platform over the past week.Many of the employees, who said they refused to work in order to show their support for demonstrators across the country, added an automated message to their digital profiles and email responses saying that they were out of the office in a show of protest.The protest group conducting a virtual walkout of sorts since most Facebook employees are working from home because of the coronavirus pandemic was one of a number of clusters of employees pressing Facebook executives to take a tougher stand on Mr. Trumps posts.Inside the company, staff members have circulated petitions and threatened to resign, and a number of employees wrote publicly about their unhappiness on Twitter and elsewhere. More than a dozen current and former employees have described the unrest as the most serious challenge to the leadership of Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive, since the company was founded 15 years ago.The hateful rhetoric advocating violence against black demonstrators by the US President does not warrant defense under the guise of freedom of expression, one Facebook employee wrote in an internal message board, according to a copy of the text viewed by The New York Times.The employee added: Along with Black employees in the company, and all persons with a moral conscience, I am calling for Mark to immediately take down the Presidents post advocating violence, murder and imminent threat against Black people. The Times agreed to withhold the employees name.Mr. Zuckerberg has argued on a number of occasions that Facebook should take a hands-off approach to what people post, including lies from elected officials and others in power. He has repeatedly said the public should be allowed to decide what to believe.That stand was tested last week when Twitter added fact-check and warning labels to two tweets from the president that broke Twitters rules around voter suppression and glorification of violence. But as Twitter acted on Mr. Trumps tweets, Facebook left his posts on its platform alone. Mr. Zuckerberg said Mr. Trumps posts did not violate the social networks rules.Personally, I have a visceral negative reaction to this kind of divisive and inflammatory rhetoric, Mr. Zuckerberg said in a post to his Facebook page on Friday. But Im responsible for reacting not just in my personal capacity but as the leader of an institution committed to free expression.Mr. Zuckerberg spoke briefly with Mr. Trump in a telephone call on Friday, according to two people familiar with the matter. The call, which was previously reported by Axios, was described as productive, though it was not clear what was said. Mr. Zuckerberg explained his position to employees in a live-streamed question and answer session later that day.In a video of the session that was reviewed by The Times, hundreds of employees voiced opposition by posting comments alongside the session, and some questioned whether any black people had been involved in making the decision.The lack of backbone, and this weak leadership, will be judged by history. Hate speech should never be compared to free speech, one employee wrote. The president (sic) is literally threatening for the National Guard to shoot citizens. Maybe when were in the middle of a race war the policy will change.Mr. Zuckerberg said the posts were different from those that threaten violence because they were about the use of state force, which is currently allowed.While there was some support for the chief executive during the livestream, the results of an internal poll taken during the session and posted by a staff member showed that more than 1,000 Facebook employees voted against Mr. Zuckerbergs choice. Nineteen of the respondents said they agreed with the decision.In response to the walkout on Monday, Mr. Zuckerberg has moved his weekly meeting with employees to Tuesday from Thursday. The meeting will be a chance for employees to question Mr. Zuckerberg directly.A Facebook spokeswoman said Monday morning that executives welcomed feedback from employees. We recognize the pain many of our people are feeling right now, especially our Black community, said Liz Bourgeois, the spokeswoman. We encourage employees to speak openly when they disagree with leadership.Mr. Zuckerbergs post last week explaining his decision on Mr. Trumps posts frustrated many inside the company. More than a dozen Facebook employees tweeted that they disagreed with Mr. Zuckerbergs decision, including the head of design of Facebooks portal product, Andrew Crow.An engineer for the platform, Lauren Tan, posted about the situation on Friday. Facebooks inaction in taking down Trumps post inciting violence makes me ashamed to work here, Ms. Tan wrote in a tweet. Silence is complicity.Two senior Facebook employees told The New York Times that they had informed their managers that they would resign if Mr. Zuckerberg did not reverse his decision. Another person, who was supposed to start work at the company next month, told Facebook they were no longer willing to accept a position at the company because of Mr. Zuckerbergs decision.Over the weekend, several petitions circulated among Facebook employees calling for the company to make personnel changes and for more diversity of voices among Mr. Zuckerbergs top lieutenants.ImageCredit...Tom Brenner/The New York TimesIn private online chats, employees have called for the resignation of Joel Kaplan, Facebooks vice president of global policy. Mr. Kaplan is seen as being a strong conservative voice within the company. In 2018, he upset some employees when he sat in the front row of the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was a close friend.Roger McNamee, a venture capitalist who was an early investor in Facebook but in recent years has turned into an aggressive critic of the company, said Facebooks decision to leave Mr. Trumps posts alone was typical of a longtime pattern of behavior among big social media companies.Internet platforms that are pervasive as Facebook and Google are globally must always align with power, including authoritarians. It is a matter of self-preservation, Mr. McNamee said. Facebook has been a key tool for authoritarians in Brazil, the Philippines, Cambodia and Myanmar. In the U.S., Facebook has consistently ignored or altered its terms of service to the benefit of Trump. Until last week, Twitter did the same thing.Mr. Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, the companys chief operating officer, planned to host a call on Monday evening with civil rights leaders who have lashed out publicly against Facebooks protection of Mr. Trumps posts. The call was expected to include Vanita Gupta of the National Leadership Conference, Rashad Robinson of Color of Change and Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.The civil rights leaders said they would push back on Mr. Zuckerbergs position on Mr. Trumps posts, which they see as violations of Facebooks community standards that do not permit voter suppression or the incitement of violence, even by political figures.Its really important for Mark Zuckerberg to contend with the fact that he is prioritizing free expression while our democracy is literally burning, said Ms. Gupta, who organized the call with the executives.On Sunday, Mr. Zuckerberg wrote that he would be donating $10 million to groups working on racial justice. The move, coupled with his earlier post expressing solidarity with the demonstrators, did little to quell the internal protest.Mr. Robinson, the civil rights group leader, said Mr. Zuckerbergs financial pledge was one of the most insulting things Ive ever seen. The donation of money, he said, doesnt change Facebooks policy of protecting Mr. Trumps comments that contain falsehoods and appear to violate the companys policies.Facebook executives have long acknowledged that the company has failed to attract a diverse work force.Theres a long history of Facebook, as a company, not seeing or being responsive to black employees, said Mark Luckie, who quit the company in 2018 and published a memo titled Facebook is failing its black employees and its black users.Like many Silicon Valley companies, Facebook had a severe lack of diversity, especially among executives, Mr. Luckie said in an interview. When you dont have a diverse group of people at the top of the company, you dont understand the issues involved or why your employees are upset.In 2014, 2 percent of Facebooks employees were black. In 2019, that number had increased to 3.8 percent, according to the companys diversity report.In the post to the internal message board, the dissenting Facebook employee ended his comment with a quote from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the slain civil rights leader.Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter, the quote read.Sheera Frenkel reported from Oakland, Mike Isaac from San Francisco, Cecilia Kang from Washington and Gabriel J.X. Dance from Staunton, Va. | Tech |
R. Kelly If GFs Were White They'd Lock Him Up ... Angry Dad Claims 1/31/2018 R. Kelly is getting away with his alleged sex cult because America doesn't care about underage black girls being victimized ... according to the father of one of Kelly's girlfriends. Angelo Clary tells TMZ ... his 20-year-old daughter, Azriel Clary, is one of the singer's alleged victims. He's incredulous Kelly isn't facing the same fate as Harvey Weinstein or Bill Cosby -- and believes race is the only difference. TMZ.com Angelo says Azriel was 17 when she met Kelly to discuss her music career. He and Azriel's mother were there, but he claims Kelly slipped his number to Azriel when they weren't looking. Shortly after that, she moved in with him. Angelo hasn't seen her since, and last spoke to her 8 months ago. As we reported ... Joycelyn Savage's family also accused Kelly of cutting them off from their daughter. Just like the Savage fam, Angelo says police told him there's nothing they can do unless Azriel claims she's being held against her will. | Entertainment |
TV SportsFeb. 17, 2014Bode Miller had just tied for a bronze medal in the mens super-G at the Olympics in Sochi, Russia, on Sunday and it was time to be interviewed. NBC had already established Millers quest as an emotional story line, putting a microphone on his wife, Morgan, to hear her reactions to his races, and having the couple sit for an interview with Tom Brokaw. He was being humanized as the changed man, the family man, the mature 36-year-old whose brother had died last year.This is the type of storytelling that lubricates NBCs prime-time Olympic engine.This time, the engine backfired.It was not out of bounds for NBCs Christin Cooper to ask a medal winner questions about his brothers death. (Millers brother, Chelone, was a snowboarder who died last year at 29.) It was a relevant area to pursue, part of his Olympic biography. And Miller brought it up in response to her first question, saying that he had a lot of emotion riding on the race.Cooper picked up on that quickly and asked, Bode, youre showing so much emotion down here, whats going through your mind? That probably should have been the last question about his brother. This was, after all, an interview with a great skier who had just won a bronze medal, the sixth Olympic medal of his career. He had done no wrong to be milked for more emotion than he wanted to reveal.Cooper needed to strike a far better balance in her questions so that the takeaway for viewers would not be that she was badgering him.Maybe the absence of detail in his answer he said only that it had been a long struggle coming in here. And, uh, just a tough year compelled her to go forward.I know you wanted to be here with Chelly experiencing these games; how much does it mean to you to come up with a great performance for him? And was it for him? she said. Now she was sounding intrusive, and maybe doubting his fraternal inspiration. It was one question too many, at least the way it was phrased. But it pushed Miller into a thoughtful answer that he did not know if he had won a medal for his brother or to make myself proud.He was holding up, but tears had started to trickle down Millers face.He was being a stand-up guy, even if he was being pulled through a wringer.Now was truly the time to stop. If youve made a medal winner cry, it is time to simply say thank you and move on. It was on tape, so NBC could have cut it off and gone to Matt Lauer in the studio. Instead, Cooper forged on, wondering whom he seemed to be talking to when he looked up in the sky before he started his run down the mountain.It was not a bad question, but by this point, it was overkill.Whats going on there? she said.Millers helmeted head was bowed and he was unable to answer. The clock kept ticking, and I expected NBC to turn its camera elsewhere or for Cooper to say, Thanks, Bode, you had a great race. That did not happen. And there was no interview with the gold medalist, Kjetil Jansrud, to plug in and change the tempo.Instead, Cooper, a former Olympian who won a silver medal in the giant slalom at the 1984 Games, tried to comfort Miller, putting a hand on his shoulder. In all, NBC lingered over this scene for 75 seconds as Miller continued to weep, as he walked away, as he was comforted and as his wife embraced him. He might have cried on his own, for his brother, for joy, for the way his life had changed. But had the tears not been provoked by Coopers questions, we probably would not have seen that emotion.Dan Hicks, who called the super-G race for NBC, talked over some of this tearful imagery unnecessarily mentioning how Miller had seemed like a different skier than in the past and how his emotions continued to flow out. Yep, we saw that.Emotion is a real and honest element of athletic triumph and defeat. And you dont want a network to tell its journalists to stick to soft questions when interviewing the winners. But in this instance, Cooper and NBC lacked the sensitivity to know when enough was enough.It did not end there. Later Sunday, Miller visited Matt Lauer in the studio on Sunday night. You always strike me as someone who likes to keep your emotions pretty close to your vest, and yet this has been a pretty challenging year for you, Lauer said to Miller, again bringing up his brothers death and his public custody battle. Miller, who did not bring up the interview, said he talked to his brother at the start, saying give me a couple hundreths today, give me that little extra push.He continued: Then for it to come down and be as close as it can possibly get in ski racing and end up with a medal, it just seemed kind of connected. At that point, I was just pretty overwhelmed with the feeling of getting a little bit of help from my brother.Battered by online criticism of Christin Coopers interview of Miller after it was broadcast Sunday night, NBC released a statement Monday.Our intent was to convey the emotion that Bode Miller was feeling after winning his bronze medal, a spokesman for the network said. We understand how some viewers thought the line of questioning went too far, but it was our judgment that his answers were a necessary part of the story. Were gratified that Bode has been publicly supportive of Christin Cooper and the overall interview.Miller also came to Coopers defense in a pair of posts on Twitter on Monday and expanded on those comments in an interview on NBCs Today with Lauer.Ive known Christin a long time, and she is a sweetheart of a person, Miller said. I know she didnt mean to push. I dont think she really anticipated what my reaction was going to be, and I think by the time she sort of realized it, I think it was too late and I dont really, I dont blame her at all. He continued: I feel terrible that she is taking the heat for that because it really is just a heat of the moment kind of circumstance, and I dont think there was any harm intended. So, it was just a lot of emotion for me, its been a lot over the last year and that you sometimes dont realize how much you contain that stuff until the dam breaks and then its just a real outpouring. | Sports |
Credit...Ben Gray/Associated PressJan. 5, 2021The Democrats now appear favored to prevail in both of their Senate races in Georgia, and therefore are the favorites to take control of the U.S. Senate. The two Republican candidates hold small leads in the vote count, and still have a chance to hold onto those advantages, but most of the remaining vote is in Democratic-leaning areas.The largest block of remaining ballots is the in-person vote in DeKalb County, a heavily Democratic area that includes part of Atlanta. Over all, the two Democratic candidates are favored to win the remaining vote by around nine percentage points, according to estimates from The Upshot.Democrats benefited from a strong turnout among Black voters, who are on track to represent a much larger share of the electorate than they did in the general election, based on the turnout by precinct and early voting data.With 5 percent of the vote left to count, the Rev. Raphael Warnocks projected lead over Kelly Loeffler (1.9 points) is larger than Jon Ossoffs projected lead (1.0) over David Perdue. Its hard to say when either race will be called. The Ossoff-Perdue call might have to wait until late absentee and provisional ballots are counted. | Politics |
Merck has taken a step to make its antiviral pill available in poor nations, but many obstacles remain for broad access to coronavirus drugs.Credit...Rebecca Conway/Getty ImagesPublished Oct. 17, 2021Updated Oct. 27, 2021Nearly a year after the first Covid-19 vaccination campaigns began, the vast majority of the shots have gone to people in wealthy nations, with no clear path toward resolving the disparity.News this month that an antiviral medication had proved effective against the coronavirus in a large clinical trial has brought new hope of a turning point in the pandemic: a not-too-distant future when a simple pill could keep infected people from dying or falling severely ill.The drug, molnupiravir, made by Merck, is easy to distribute and can be taken at home. The trial results showed it halved the risk of hospitalization and death among high-risk people early in their infections. The company, which is developing the drug with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics of Miami, has applied for emergency-use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration; a decision could come in early December.Unlike the vaccine manufacturers Pfizer and Moderna, which have resisted calls for license agreements to let overseas manufacturers make their shots, Merck will allow generic manufacturers in India to sell the pills at a far lower price in more than 100 poorer countries. Most nations in sub-Saharan Africa, where vaccination rates are as low as 3 percent, are covered by the deal.Drug-access advocates say the Merck licensing deal is an encouraging start but only a small step toward equity. Merck has begun production of the drug, but it is unclear how much of the generic product will be available next year. The agreements leave out many undervaccinated nations, such as Ukraine, that have been hit hard by Covid. And an antiviral must be combined with reliable, affordable testing, which is also limited in many places.Several other drug makers, including Pfizer, are expected to announce efficacy data from trials of similar medications; the companies said it was too soon to comment on whether they would enter similar agreements.All this means that treatments could remain largely with nations able to pay for early access, as they have done with vaccines.A drug like this that is kept at room temperature, you could get it to even the remotest parts of the world - its fair to say that this drug could prevent hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations and deaths, said John Amuasi, an infectious disease expert and global health at the Kumasi Center for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine in Ghana. But the barrier is going to be price. Look at how long it has taken for vaccines to reach Africa. My worry is that we are steadily on course to do the same with the drugs.More than 18 months into the pandemic, Covid remains an illness largely to be endured rather than treated. The few medicines that have shown some benefit such as monoclonal antibodies are costly, complex to administer, and, in poor nations, scarce or absent. Yet without widespread vaccination, those populations remain vulnerable to Covid and need affordable medicines.ImageCredit...Merck, via Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesThe U.S. government bought much of the supply of the antiviral remdesivir last year after early research showed it might speed recovery from Covid. Now it is pursuing a similar strategy for molnupiravir: It has a $1.2 billion agreement to purchase 1.7 million courses of the drug if it receives F.D.A. authorization. That is 20 percent of what the company says it can produce this year. Other relatively well-off countries, including Australia, South Korea and New Zealand, have signed deals as well.Merck was criticized two decades ago for selling its H.I.V. drugs at prices unaffordable in Africa. This time, the company recognized the imperative of widening access early.We really did have a responsibility that, if this drug was found to be a safe and effective oral drug that someone could take at home, we need to make sure that, especially in low- and middle-income countries where they dont have the strongest health care systems, that this would have very wide access, said Jenelle Krishnamoorthy, Mercks vice president for global policy.The voluntary licenses the company negotiated with the Indian drugmakers offer the possibility that governments in the poorest nations could buy molnupiravir for well under $20 per five-day course, compared with $712 in the U.S. deal.The eight Indian companies are in clinical trials with their versions of the drug, and four confirmed to The Times that they expected to release results soon; one industry executive who was not authorized to speak on the record said he expected his firm to produce the drug for less than $10 per course.Suerie Moon, an expert on drug access issues, called Mercks Indian generic licenses a positive precedent for Covid treatments - and a smart business move for the company. Its not a coincidence that Merck has experience from H.I.V. internally, with their leadership and culture, they know that if they dont address the access challenges, they will be slammed, said Dr. Moon, co-director of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. Generic manufacturing is not in itself a guarantee of global access. Half of all the coronavirus infections reported in low- and middle-income nations in the first six months of 2021 occurred in 32 countries excluded from the Merck license. Brazil, Malaysia, Mexico and Peru are not included. Nor are China and Russia. Generic production licenses for restricted territories can leave middle-income countries that have frail public health systems paying prices nearly as high as rich ones. Merck says it will use World Bank income data from these countries to calculate what it charges for the drug in each. Merck is also in negotiations with the Medicines Patent Pool, a United Nations-backed nonprofit that works to make medical treatment and technologies accessible. Charles Gore, director of the organization, said he hopes Merck will agree to a licensing agreement that could permit companies in an even wider range of places to make the drug, while Merck sells its own product in rich nations. Such a deal, he said, would set an important precedent for other companies.If Merck, or Pfizer or other drug makers do not ensure widespread availability of Covid treatments, they could face widespread use of compulsory licensing, in which governments override intellectual property restrictions to allow manufacture of medications, often in emergency situations. While Merck will earn a royalty on the drugs sold by the generic makers, and likely also on any deals reached through the patent pool, under compulsory licensing the company has no say in the price of the drug or the amount of the royalty.Unitaid, the Geneva-based global health agency, said $3.5 billion in new funding from rich nations was needed to make therapeutics accessible, the bulk of it for antivirals in low-income countries.We need a global effort. We need donors to step up with funds to make sure treatments reach everyone, Janet Ginnard, the director of strategy, said.Unitaid and partners are preparing to make a provisional purchase agreement for a treatment such as molnupiravir, conditional on a recommendation by the W.H.O.But it is not clear what supply will be available, given the bilateral deals that have been struck or are being negotiated by the U.S. and others. Countries will prefer to negotiate bilaterally or at a regional level rather than wait and rely on a global mechanism, Dr. Moon said.ImageCredit...Manjunath Kiran/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesShe noted that as vaccine supply became a global crisis, lower-income countries took out loans to strike bilateral deals, and treatment purchases could be similar.Mercks voluntary licenses for molnupiravir are all with companies in India, a concentration that could pose risks. Covax, the United Nations-backed alliance of organizations working to deliver vaccines to poorer nations, was relying on the Serum Institute of India to produce the bulk of shots. But after the virus surged in March, the Indian government banned vaccine exports, and those are only resuming now.There is also a supply-chain question: Licenses with the United Nations Medicines Patent Pool could see companies all over the world making generic treatments. But most medications raw materials are made in India and China, and they have faced crunches throughout the pandemic.Recent experience with vaccines suggests that if there is limited supply, those who can pay will have first access, said Maringela Simo, a senior World Health Organization official. The risk right now is that the rich countries dominate the market and buy all of these medicines, she said.She said the W.H.O had been working on Covid treatment access with limited success.Weve had enormous difficulties. We talked to every company that has a product that potentially could be good, we have been discussing voluntary licensing through the Medicines Patent Pool, and theres very little interest, she said. If there is not an opening on the part of industry to share technology now, when the world needs it most, when will it happen?Testing will be an additional challenge. The drugs work best if taken as soon as symptoms appear, and patients must be sure they have the coronavirus. But testing is scarce in many places: The W.H.O. estimates that fewer than 15 percent of Covid infections are detected in Africa, for example.But if early antiviral treatment is made available globally, it could reduce spread. Then you have fewer health systems incapacitated and a greater economic recovery for the benefit of everyone, said Brook Baker, a law professor at Northeastern University who is part of a therapeutics access effort led by the W.H.O. Even from a somewhat self-interested perspective, its shortsighted and counterproductive not to ensure access to these medicines. | Health |
Feb. 5, 2014Credit...The New York TimesLouise Brough Clapp, whose powerful serve-and-volley game propelled her to 35 championships in Grand Slam tennis tournaments of the 1940s and 50s and made her one of the most brilliant doubles players in the womens game, died on Monday in Vista, Calif. She was 90. The International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I., announced her death. A former teenage star in Southern California, Louise Brough, as she was known for most of her career, was ranked among Americas top 10 female players 16 times by the United States Tennis Association and achieved the No. 1 national ranking in 1947. She was No. 1 in the world in 1955.She won six singles titles, including four at Wimbledon, as well as 21 doubles championships and 8 mixed doubles titles in Grand Slam events, tying her with Doris Hart at No. 5 on the overall career list for both women and men. In doubles play, Brough (pronounced bruff) usually teamed with Margaret Osborne duPont, a longtime friend, and they were virtually unbeatable. Brough and duPont captured 12 womens doubles championships in the United States Nationals, the forerunner of the United States Open, winning every year at Forest Hills, Queens, from 1942 to 1950 and again from 1955 to 1957.They also won five doubles titles at Wimbledon and three at the French championships. Broughs only Grand Slam womens doubles title without duPont came when she teamed with Hart at the 1950 Australian championships.But in the quest for womens tennis supremacy, duPont, who died in 2012, was also a rival, as were Hart, Maureen Connolly, Althea Gibson, Shirley Fry and Pauline Betz.Brough defeated duPont for the 1947 Nationals title in singles play, then lost to her in the 1948 final in a match that went to 28 games in the last set. Brough bested duPont twice in the Wimbledon singles final.One of Broughs most memorable matches came in the second round of the Nationals in 1950, when she faced Gibson, who that year became the first black player allowed to enter the tournament. Gibson was ahead, 7-6, in the third set when a thunderstorm suspended play. Brough won the next day by taking three consecutive games, but that match heralded the beginning of Gibsons rise to stardom.The Grand Slam champion Alice Marble marveled at Broughs twist serve and its topspin, which overwhelmed her opponents.Brough streamlined it to match that of many of our men, Marble once wrote. She gets an enormously high bounce on this serve, and women are notoriously feeble in their effort to return it, especially on the backhand. ImageCredit...The New York TimesThe tennis historian and journalist Bud Collins called Brough one of the great volleyers in history and paid tribute to her prowess in doubles.A willowy blonde, she was quiet and diffident, but she was the killer in the left court when at play alongside duPont, he wrote in Bud Collins Modern Encyclopedia of Tennis. Althea Louise Brough was born in Oklahoma City on March 11, 1923. Her family moved to Beverly Hills, Calif., when she was a child, and she learned to play on public courts. She vied with Gussie Moran (who would be best known for creating a sensation at Wimbledon in 1949 with her lace-trimmed panties) as the best teenage player of their era in Southern California and won the girls national junior championships in 1940 and 1941.Broughs Wimbledon singles titles came in 1948, 1949 and 1950 and again in 1955. Besides winning the United States singles title in 1947, she was runner-up five times. She won the Australian singles in 1950. And she had a 22-0 record in Wightman Cup play between the United States and Britain.Late in her career, Brough was plagued by the jitters.Sometime after 53 I lost my confidence, just like that, she told The San Diego Union-Tribune. I couldnt even toss the ball up on my serve. I was way off balance. My nerves were shot.Still, she continued to win Grand Slam events through 1957, when she was beaten by Gibson in the final of the United States Nationals.She later played in senior tournaments, winning the United States Hard Court doubles for women 40 and over twice in the 1970s with Barbara Green Weigandt.Brough, who lived in Vista, had no immediate survivors. Her husband, Dr. Alan Clapp, a dentist, died in 1999. When the 1985 Wimbledon tournament neared, Brough attended an informal reunion at the Los Angeles Tennis Center with five fellow Wimbledon champions: Jack Kramer, Bobby Riggs, Ted Schroeder, Gene Mako and Bob Falkenburg. She had won 13 singles, doubles or mixed doubles titles at Wimbledon, but they came before the Open era and its huge prize money.Its fun to watch what they spend it on, Brough remarked at that reunion. But I could slit my throat when I think about how much money I could have won playing today. | Sports |
Credit...Mark Makela for The New York TimesJune 5, 2018SAN FRANCISCO While a number of large financial institutions have discussed trading Bitcoin, one firm has already begun doing it. Very quietly.The financial firm, Susquehanna International Group in Bala Cynwyd, Pa., just outside Philadelphia, is one of the largest players in trading traditional investments like stocks, options and exchange traded funds, or E.T.F.s. Over the last two years, the privately owned company has also built up a trading desk of around a dozen people that buys and sells millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin and other virtual or cryptocurrencies in private deals.Now the firm is opening trading to a small group of its 500 clients, with plans to expand.The move is the latest sign that the virtual currency markets, which were once relegated to the fringes of the financial world, are being embraced by big, mainstream investors.The parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, the Intercontinental Exchange, has been in talks about opening a subsidiary for cryptocurrency trading, and Goldman Sachs is on the verge of opening its own trading operation.But Susquehanna, which has around 1,800 employees around the world, has a lot more money backing its trading desk and a lot more ability to interact with clients than the hedge funds and trading firms that have also been early participants in the virtual currency markets.The arrival of big financial institutions has raised concerns among some Bitcoin aficionados, who worry that it will harden Bitcoins status as a speculative trading asset like gold and diminish hopes that it can be used in day-to-day transactions.Not so, said Bart Smith, the head of the digital asset group at Susquehanna. The firm believes that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies inspired by it are likely to have a wide array of uses, but for now, he said, Bitcoins best bet is to challenge gold as a scarce commodity that can be moved around more easily.The original Bitcoin software determined that only 21 million Bitcoin would ever be created. That cap isnt expected to be hit until 2140, and the limited number of tokens currently in circulation has made the online currency appealing as a commodity.Mr. Smith said that he could also imagine Bitcoin, or some competitor, becoming a digital payment method for the internet as Jack Dorsey, Twitters chief executive, recently predicted but that he wasnt too worried if that didnt happen.We believe that this technology and this asset class is going to change some facet of financial services, and we think it is going to exist forever, he said.Susquehanna first experimented with trading Bitcoin in 2014 after the investor twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss asked the firm about being involved with a Bitcoin E.T.F. that they had applied to regulators to create.Regulators eventually denied that application. But Susquehanna kept its one Bitcoin trader on board, and then added a few more last year when the cryptocurrency markets took off.The firm decided to step up its operation, and go out to clients, after seeing the success of Bitcoin futures contracts, which were introduced by exchanges in Chicago late last year and have been growing volume in recent months.Susquehanna will trade futures, which are contracts tied to the future price of Bitcoin. It will also allow customers to buy and sell actual Bitcoin and a few other cryptocurrencies like Ether and Bitcoin Cash.To make these available to customers, Susquehanna recently amended the broker dealer license that it has on file with regulators. That change will allow the company to trade cryptocurrencies that are labeled by regulators as securities. Regulators in the United States have recently indicated that many newly created virtual currencies though not Bitcoin should likely be categorized as securities and traded only by regulated entities.ImageCredit...Mark Makela for The New York TimesMost of the cryptocurrency exchanges where Susquehanna trades are largely unregulated. Bloomberg recently reported that American authorities were investigating whether some traders were taking advantage of this to manipulate the price of Bitcoin by posting lots of trades that they didnt intend to complete.Mr. Smith said he had not seen clear evidence of manipulation, but cryptocurrency markets are still very immature compared with the other markets where Susquehanna trades, especially given the lack of regulations for many of the largest exchanges holding cryptocurrencies.He said the single biggest problem for sophisticated investors was the security risk in holding virtual currencies. In other markets, Susquehanna doesnt have actual custody of stocks or bonds.Bitcoin was built so that users can hold and transfer their tokens with a password or private key that no one else knows. If the private key is compromised, a hacker can take the coins, and the owner has no way to get them back. That has led to big losses at several Bitcoin exchanges.Susquehanna built its own systems for storing the cryptocurrencies it is holding for more than a day. To deter hackers, the private keys are kept in devices in an off-site facility that is not connected to the rest of the companys computer systems.There were no financial services firms out there two years ago that were storing and moving large amounts of cryptocurrencies, so there is no road map, he said.Then there is the matter of trying to figure out on a daily basis what a single Bitcoin or Ether token should be worth.There is still little agreement on what factors traders should take account of when deciding on a value for cryptocurrencies, given that many of the expected uses for digital tokens are still hypothetical. While Mr. Smiths teams look at the technical and security specifications of the coins, it is much harder to answer the most important question: Will they be used as something other than a digital commodity?The value is: What do you think the best-case scenario of these different digital assets is in the future and handicapping what is the percentage chance that they will get there, he said. | Tech |
Voting has appeared to unfold without any major problems in Georgia on Tuesday. Democrats may have claimed a bigger share of the early vote than they did in Novembers election, election data shows.Credit...Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesJan. 5, 2021[Follow our live Georgia Senate election updates.]The end of voting appeared to unfold smoothly in Georgia on Tuesday in the states high-stakes runoff elections, which will determine which party controls the Senate and set the agenda for the new administration in Washington.Election protection lawyers reported no major problems with voting machines or extended waits at polling places.Two Republicans, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, are battling to keep their seats. If their Democratic challengers, Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, both win, Democrats will reclaim the Senate majority.Control of the Senate will effectively set the parameters of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.s first two years in office. A Republican-led Senate would complicate his ability to staff his cabinet, pass legislation and drive his political priorities.Heres a look at what we know about the two runoff races.How has in-person voting gone on Tuesday?Smoothly, so far.Weve had minor issues, said Helen Butler, executive director of the Georgia Coalition for the Peoples Agenda, a voter education organization. For the most part its going quite well in Georgia.The longest lines reported to election protection hotlines were around 30 minutes, according to voter protection lawyers. Kristen Clarke, executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said the most common complaint reported to a hotline run by her organization was that some voters failed to receive mail ballots before the Election Day deadline.Many voters across the state availed themselves of the opportunity to participate in early voting, Ms. Clarke said. We are not surprised that we are not seeing poll sites flooded with large overwhelming numbers of voters today.How have the Democrats and Republicans fared in early voting?Entering Tuesday, about 3.1 million people had already voted in the runoff races, nearly 40 percent of all the registered voters in the state, according to data compiled by the University of Floridas U.S. Elections Project. That total surpassed the 2.1 million ballots cast in the states last Senate runoff election, which happened in 2008.The early voting data suggests that the races are very competitive. There are some indications that Democrats had a bigger share of the early-voting electorate than they did in the general election, raising hopes for a party that has traditionally been the underdog in runoff races. The Atlanta area, the Democrats political base, saw some of the highest turnout rates in the states early voting.ImageCredit...Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesThe outcome now depends on whether Republicans are able to overcome the Democrats early gains with strong in-person voting turnout on Tuesday. Rates of early voting have been lowest in the conservative northwest corner of the state, worrying some Republicans. But others argue that their supporters typically vote in higher numbers on election day and hope that President Trumps rally on Monday in Dalton, a city in the northwest, pushed more Republicans to the polls.Democrats early voting advantage helped them beat Mr. Trump in the November election, when Mr. Biden won nearly 400,000 more absentee ballots in the state.When are the deadlines to vote?For those planning to cast ballots in person on election day on Tuesday, voting locations opened at 7 a.m. Eastern time and close at 7 p.m. Anyone in line at 7 p.m. can stay in line to vote.Absentee ballots must be received by mail or placed in a drop box by 7 p.m. Tuesday to be counted. (Democrats warned voters on Monday not to mail in ballots at this point but to put them in drop boxes.) Military and overseas ballots must be postmarked by Tuesday.What should we expect in terms of the results?Strategists from both parties remain uncertain on what to anticipate beyond a tight race. Demographic changes have shifted the politics in Georgia, turning the traditionally conservative Southern state into a hotly contested battleground.In November, Mr. Perdue received 49.7 percent of the vote, just short of the majority he would have needed to avoid a runoff, while his challenger, Mr. Ossoff, had 47.9 percent a difference of about 88,000 votes. The field was more crowded in the other Senate contest: Mr. Warnock finished with 32.9 percent of the vote and Ms. Loeffler with 25.9 percent.Modeling the electorate for these rematches isnt easy: Never has a Georgia runoff determined the balance of power in the Senate or been held in the midst of a pandemic.Both parties were expecting turnout to be significantly higher than in the 2008 Senate runoff election, though few analysts anticipated numbers close to the five million voters in Georgia who cast ballots in Novembers general election.Republicans believe they are likely to win if roughly one million people cast ballots on election day voters who could help offset the Democrats apparent early-voting advantage. That would equate to a total turnout of 4.1 million.At this point in the race, early turnout is 23 percent lower than it was in the November election, according to state data compiled by Ryan Anderson, a data analyst in Atlanta. Entering Tuesday, about 1.2 million people who voted early in the general election had not yet voted in the runoffs.When will we know the results?The Georgia State Election Board extended some emergency provisions from the November election, like keeping drop boxes in place for absentee ballots. Some of the rules were tweaked to encourage a faster count, which would enable the winners to be seated sooner. The new Congress was already sworn in on Sunday.Counties were required to begin scanning and processing ballots at least a week before the election, though they cannot begin counting or tabulating them until polls close on Tuesday. Those new rules may lead to quicker results, although in a close race most Georgians (and everyone else) may go to sleep before news outlets have enough results to declare a winner.In November, it took a week and a half of counting after Election Day before it was clear that Mr. Biden had won the state.Republicans are expected to command an early lead on election night, both because the more conservative areas of the state typically report results faster and because votes cast in person, which have favored Republicans during the pandemic, are typically released earlier. Heavily Democratic counties, including the suburban Atlanta areas that helped Mr. Biden win, historically take longer to count votes.And yes, there could be yet another round of counting. Under Georgia law, if the margin separating the candidates is within half of a percentage point, the losing candidate can request a recount in which election officials would again run the ballots through scanners.After multiple vote counts last year, state officials are preparing for all contingencies. The deputy secretary of state, Jordan Fuchs, has said the requirement for a full hand recount like the one conducted in November doesnt apply to runoff elections.How did the parties strategize?Runoff races have traditionally been relatively sleepy contests, with lower turnout that has favored Republicans because of a drop-off among Democrats, particularly Black voters, after the general election. (The runoffs themselves were devised by white Georgians in the 1960s to dilute the power of Black voters.)Not this year. A staggering influx of political spending flooded the state, as campaign operatives, party officials and outside groups descended on the races. Nearly $500 million was spent on advertising, according to Ad Impact, an advertising tracking firm, saturating the airwaves at previously unheard-of levels.ImageCredit...Nicole Craine for The New York TimesDemocrats worked to keep turnout high, intensifying their outreach efforts, targeting voters of color with focused advertising campaigns and deploying a flotilla of high-wattage political stars to the state. As Mr. Trump prepared for his rally on Monday night, Mr. Biden campaigned for the Democrats in Atlanta in the afternoon.A push to reach new voters, led by Stacey Abrams, prompted an estimated 800,000 residents to register to vote in this election cycle a groundswell that voter mobilization groups have tried to build upon since November. Some Democrats and voting rights organizations have raised concerns about access to voting locations and possible suppression.The Democratic efforts may be working: Data shows that nearly 31 percent of voters who cast ballots during the early voting period are Black, an increase of about three percentage points from their share in the general election.Republicans believe that some voters who backed Mr. Biden will want to see checks on Democratic power in Washington. But their effort has been complicated by Mr. Trumps refusal to stop litigating the previous contest.The release of an audio recording of a phone call in which Mr. Trump pressured Georgias secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to overturn the results of the election upended the runoff races in the final days.Some Republican strategists worry that Mr. Trumps attacks on the presidential election results have complicated their efforts to win back some of the moderate suburban voters who fled their party in November.A fringe group of conservatives also encouraged Republicans to boycott the election to support Mr. Trumps baseless claims about fraudulent vote counting, which could erode the two Republican candidates margins. | Politics |
DealBook|British Authorities Accuse 11th Person of Rigging Benchmark Interest Ratehttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/22/business/dealbook/british-authorities-accuse-11th-person-of-rigging-benchmark-interest-rate.htmlDec. 21, 2015LONDON British authorities said on Monday that they had begun criminal proceedings against a former Socit Gnrale employee in a continuing investigation into the manipulation of a global benchmark interest rate.Stephane Esper, the former Socit Gnrale employee, is the latest person expected to face criminal charges in an inquiry by the Serious Fraud Office, which investigates financial crime in Britain, related to the manipulation of the euro interbank offered rate, or Euribor.The fraud office announced in November that it expected to bring conspiracy to defraud charges against 10 current and former employees of Barclays and Deutsche Bank when they make their first court appearance at Westminster Magistrates Court in London in January. Mr. Esper also is expected to be charged at that time.Criminal proceedings will be issued against other individuals in due course, the fraud office said in an update on its website on Monday.Mr. Esper could not be located for comment on Monday.A Socit Gnrale spokeswoman confirmed that Mr. Esper left the bank in 2009, but declined to comment further.The fraud office has previously charged more than a dozen people as part of a long-running investigation into the manipulation of the London interbank offered rate, a similar benchmark interest rate known as Libor.The Libor scandal has led to billions of dollars in fines and has rocked the reputations of some of the worlds biggest banks, including Barclays, the Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS and Deutsche Bank.To set Libor, Euribor and other rates, banks submit the rates at which they are prepared to lend money to one another, on an unsecured basis, in various currencies and at varying maturities.Socit Gnrale was among a group of global financial institutions fined a combined 1.7 billion euros, or about $1.8 billion, by the European Union in December 2013 to settle charges that they colluded to fix benchmark interest rates, including Euribor.Since the first inquiry began seven years ago, the Libor scandal has engulfed some of the worlds largest banks and tarnished the reputations of many of Britains leading lenders.In August, Tom Hayes, a former trader at Citigroup and UBS, became the first person to be convicted on criminal charges in Britain of conspiring to manipulate Libor. On Monday, an appeals court declined to overturn his conviction, but reduced his sentence to 11 years in prison. | Business |
Credit...Left, Paul Vernon/Associated Press; right, Bo Rader/The Wichita Eagle, via Associated PressJune 4, 2018WASHINGTON The conservative Koch political network said on Monday that it would begin a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign to promote free trade, sharpening a disagreement with President Trump over tariffs and highlighting a growing rift between conservative donors and the Republican base on trade issues.The paid media campaign from three Koch-affiliated groups Freedom Partners, Americans for Prosperity and the Libre Initiative will promote the traditional free-market view of open trade as beneficial to all countries involved. The groups said the advertisements would draw on a set of trade principles in line with that philosophy, including calling on Mr. Trump to scrap tariffs that he has threatened and already put in place.[David Koch Died on Aug. 23 at the Age of 79]The campaign comes at a moment of tension within the Republican Party, which has traditionally embraced free-market views but is now being led by a protectionist president who routinely threatens and imposes trade barriers that have long been anathema to many Republicans.The billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David, have long supported Republican candidates and causes, including Mr. Trumps $1.5 trillion tax cut. But the Kochs have increasingly found themselves at odds with the president, and sometimes with Republican leaders in Congress, on other issues including trade and immigration.They previously funded an ad campaign urging Congress and the president to assist millions of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children, and last week they bought web ads to support a Democrat, Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, even tough she is a top Republican target in the midterm elections.The Trump administration has taken some incredibly positive steps for the American economy, but tariffs will undercut that progress and needlessly hamstring our full economic potential, Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, said in announcing the advertising campaign.James Davis, the executive vice president of Freedom Partners, said the campaign was a demonstration of our long-term commitment to advance common-sense trade policies that will ensure Americas brightest days are ahead, and to directly confront the protectionist ideas that would hold us back.Along with pressing the administration to drop its tariffs on steel and aluminum imports and on Chinese goods, the group is calling on Mr. Trump to work on modernizing the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada and to re-engage in negotiations toward joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership alongside 11 Pacific Rim nations.It is unclear how much of an impact the campaign may have on the Republican base. Mr. Trumps embrace of protectionist policies, such as tariffs, has helped galvanize a rapid shift in attitudes among rank-and-file Republicans on trade. The Pew Research Center reported in May that Republicans are now equally likely to say free-trade agreements have been generally good or generally bad for the United States; in 2015, before Mr. Trump began a presidential bid that criticized trade deals heavily, Republicans were much more likely to say such agreements had been good for the country.A survey conducted in early May for The New York Times by the online polling firm SurveyMonkey found that 78 percent of Republicans approved of Mr. Trumps tariffs on steel and aluminum. A majority of independents and Democrats disapproved of the tariffs.Mr. Trumps tariff impositions and threats have drawn condemnation from top Republicans in Congress, but little legislative pushback. After Mr. Trump said last week that he would follow through on steel and aluminum tariffs against Mexico, Canada and the European Union, Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin said he disagreed with the decision.There are better ways to help American workers and consumers, Mr. Ryan said. I intend to keep working with the president on those better options.Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said on Friday in Louisville that I dont think anything good will come out of a trade war, and I hope we pull back from the brink here. But he said Republicans in Congress could do little to stop Mr. Trumps actions.Under the trade law, the president has pretty much all the ability to do these things, so theres not much we can do to impact it, Mr. McConnell said. Its really an executive branch activity, and hes got the authority to do what hes chosen to do. Its just that I think many of us feel that it shouldnt be done.Republican leaders could try to counter Mr. Trump by working with Democrats to curb Mr. Trumps trade powers. Senator Mike Lee of Utah has proposed such a bill, which Senator Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania recently endorsed.But Republican leaders appear to have little appetite for sweeping legislation. Instead, they seem content to advance more targeted measures, such as blocking the administration from softening its punishment of the Chinese telecommunications firm ZTE.The rhetoric-heavy opposition from congressional Republicans to Mr. Trumps trade agenda has drawn criticism from some other Republicans who frequently clash with Mr. Trump.My party, the Republican Party, has been in favor of free trade as long as I can remember, Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio, who finished well behind Mr. Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential campaign, said on Sunday on CBSs Face the Nation.But Mr. Kasich said he was shocked at the fact that our leaders think they have got to they have to ask permission from the president to do anything. He called on Mr. McConnell and Mr. Ryan to stand up to Mr. Trump on the issue.I think they ought to make it very clear that theyre not going to just sit back and tolerate this, he said, that theyre going to do whatever they can do legislatively to send a clear signal. | Politics |
VideotranscripttranscriptTrump Signs Executive Order to End Family SeparationPresident Trump has faced immense political pressure to end the separation of migrant families at the border. His executive order will seek to find ways to hold parents and children together.Were signing an executive order. I consider it to be a very important executive order. Its about keeping families together, while at the same time being sure that we have a very powerful, very strong border. And border security will be equal, if not greater, than previously. So were going to have strong, very strong borders. But were going to keep the families together. I didnt like the sight or the feeling of families being separated. And it continues to be a zero tolerance. We have zero tolerance for people that enter our country illegally. Youre going to have a lot of happy people. Mr. President, why did you wait so long to sign this [unclear] This has been going on for 60 years. Sixty years. Nobodys taken care of it. Nobodys had the political courage to take care of it, but were going to take care of it. But its been going on its been going on for a long time.President Trump has faced immense political pressure to end the separation of migrant families at the border. His executive order will seek to find ways to hold parents and children together.CreditCredit...Al Drago for The New York TimesJune 20, 2018WASHINGTON President Trump caved to enormous political pressure on Wednesday and signed an executive order meant to end the separation of families at the border by detaining parents and children together for an indefinite period.Were going to have strong very strong borders, but we are going to keep the families together, Mr. Trump said as he signed the order in the Oval Office. I didnt like the sight or the feeling of families being separated.But ending the practice of separating families still faces legal and practical obstacles. A federal judge could refuse to give the Trump administration the authority it wants to hold families in custody for more than 20 days, which is the current limit because of a 1997 court order.And the presidents order does nothing to address the plight of the more than 2,300 children who have already been separated from their parents under the presidents zero tolerance policy. Federal officials initially said those children would not be immediately reunited with their families while the adults remain in federal custody during their immigration proceedings.There will not be a grandfathering of existing cases, said Kenneth Wolfe, a spokesman for the Administration for Children and Families, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services. Mr. Wolfe said the decision about the children was made by the White House.But later Wednesday evening, Brian Marriott, the senior director of communications for the agency, said that Mr. Wolfe had misspoke and insisted that it is still very early, and we are awaiting further guidance on the matter. Mr. Marriott said that reunification is always the goal and that the agency is working toward that for the children separated from their families because of Mr. Trumps policy.His statement left open the possibility, though, that the children could be connected with other family members or appropriate sponsors living in the United States, not necessarily the parent they were separated from at the border.The president signed the executive order days after he said that the only way to end the division of families was through congressional action because you cant do it through an executive order. But he changed his mind after a barrage of criticism from Democrats, activists, members of his own party and even his wife and eldest daughter, who privately told him the policy was wrong.Mr. Trump had previously been told by advisers that there was no way for the policy to be changed through an executive order, and it was unclear what the genesis of the measure he signed was. But the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, had concerns about moving ahead with an executive order that would face an uphill battle in the courts.The presidents chief of staff, John F. Kelly, did not voice major objections, according to a White House official. The move also helped alleviate pressure on Kirstjen Nielsen, Mr. Kellys protge and handpicked successor at the Department of Homeland Security.ImageCredit...Sandy Huffaker for The New York TimesStories of children being taken from their parents, audio of wailing toddlers and images of teenagers in cagelike detention facilities had exploded into a full-blown political crisis for Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans, who were desperate for a response to those who have called the practice inhumane, cruel and evil.The presidents four-page order says that officials will continue to criminally prosecute everyone who crosses the border illegally, but will seek to find or build facilities that can hold families parents and children together instead of separating them while their legal cases are considered by the courts.But the action raised new questions that White House officials did not immediately answer. The order does not say where the families would be detained. And it does not say whether children will continue to be separated from their parents while the facilities to hold them are located or built.Officials on a White House conference call said they could not answer those questions.Justice Department officials said the legal authority to end family separation relies on a request they will make in the coming days to Judge Dolly M. Gee of the Federal District Court in Los Angeles, the daughter of immigrants from China who was appointed by President Barack Obama. She oversees a 1997 consent decree, known as the Flores settlement, which prohibits immigration authorities from keeping children in detention, even if they are with their parents, for more than 20 days.The 1997 case imposes legal constraints on the proper treatment of children in government custody, which stopped Mr. Obama after his administration began detaining families together during a similar flood of illegal immigration several years ago.Its on Judge Gee, said Gene Hamilton, the counselor to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Are we going to be able to detain alien families together or are we not?Mr. Hamilton said the judges previous rulings prohibiting extended detentions of families has put this executive branch into an untenable position.He said that the presidents order is a stopgap measure that could be fixed permanently if Congress passes legislation to overhaul the immigration system. While the House is scheduled to vote Thursday on two competing immigration bills, the presidents decision appeared to lessen the urgency for lawmakers to address the issue.With Republicans in the House and Senate pursuing different approaches to put a stop to the heart-wrenching scenes at the border, no legislative breakthrough seemed imminent.Republicans in the Senate have proposed narrow legislation that would end the practice, while House Republican leaders are focused on a broader bill, though its passage was in doubt on the eve of Thursdays vote.In the meantime, legal experts said it seems highly unlikely that the courts will agree to the request by the Trump administration. That would mean the president is almost certain to face an immediate legal challenge from immigration activists if the government tries to detain families for more than the 20-day limit.I dont think anyone wants to see little children detained for long periods of time, said Lee Gelernt of the American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the Trump administrations separation of families. If they start detaining families and kids in tents or other places, I think you will see immediate lawsuits.Kevin Appleby, a senior director at the Center for Migration Studies, predicted such a challenge.Advocates said officials should jail only those immigrants who have committed other crimes, are a flight risk or pose a danger to others.It is outrageous that the president is pushing the criminal detention of innocent children as a solution to his own evil act, Mr. Appleby said. The best solution would be releasing families to sponsors or placing them in community-based alternatives to detention programs, which are less expensive and much more humane.Until Wednesday, Mr. Trump had refused to simply end his governments zero-tolerance policy that was announced last month and led to the separation of more than 2,300 children from their parents, saying that the alternative would be to fling open the countrys borders and allow immigrants who cross the border illegally to remain in the United States.But the president, furious about the pummeling he has taken in the news media in recent days, began casting about for a solution to the politically damaging situation, people familiar with his thinking said.He made his announcement flanked by Vice President Mike Pence and Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of homeland security, and vowed not to relent in his administrations prosecution of people trying to enter the country illegally.We are keeping a very powerful border, and it continues to be a zero tolerance, Mr. Trump said. We have zero tolerance for people that enter our country illegally.But he added, The borders just as tough, but we do want to keep families together.In signing the order to end the separation of families, Mr. Trump also abandoned the positions that he and his allies had stuck to for weeks: that Democrats were to blame for the wrenching scenes of kids being torn from their parents, and that the administration was helpless to fix the problem without action by Congress to overhaul immigration laws.In effect, though, the president was caught between his messaging and the likelihood of inaction on Capitol Hill. That became clearer on Tuesday when Republicans in the Senate and House moved in different directions on confronting the family separation issue.Mr. Trump acknowledged his position during remarks to reporters before his announcement on Wednesday.The dilemma is that if youre weak, if youre weak, which some people would like you to be. If you are really, really pathetically weak, the countrys going to be overrun with millions of people, Mr. Trump said. And if youre strong, then you dont have any heart. Thats a tough dilemma. Perhaps Id rather be strong.In addition to the public condemnations of his policy including by Pope Francis on Wednesday Mr. Trump had been lectured by the first lady, Melania Trump, and Ivanka Trump, his eldest daughter, according to White House officials.Melania Trump had been pushing her husband about the family separation policy from the beginning, an official said, arguing that there was a middle way between opening Americas borders and tearing children away from their parents. Separating children from their mother and father, she told him, is wrong.Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, were also pressing the president to find a way to end the political crisis caused by the family separations at the border, according to people familiar with their conversations.But it is not clear what the political damage may be to Mr. Trump from having taken actions that he repeatedly said he was not allowed to do.As recently as Tuesday, in a speech to the National Federation of Independent Business, the president insisted that there were only two options: totally open borders or criminal prosecution for law breaking.And you want to be able to do that, he said. We dont want people pouring into our country.The president has also opened himself up to charges of hypocrisy. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Trump repeatedly slammed Mr. Obama for abusing his executive authority when he issued an executive order to protect the young immigrants known as Dreamers.As a candidate, Mr. Trump said he would use executive orders sparingly, adding that Obama, because he couldnt get anybody to agree with him, he starts signing them like theyre butter. So I want to do away with executive orders for the most part.Mr. Obama, whose administration also grappled with how to handle massive flows of illegal immigrants from Central America, has remained mostly silent during the controversy over the separation of children from their parents at the border. But in a Facebook post on Wednesday, Mr. Obama denounced the lack of morality in a policy that leads to the kinds of scenes that have played out across television screens during the past several weeks.To watch those families broken apart in real time puts to us a very simple question: are we a nation that accepts the cruelty of ripping children from their parents arms, or are we a nation that values families, and works to keep them together? Mr. Obama wrote. Do we look away, or do we choose to see something of ourselves and our children? | Politics |
Politics|First Draft on Politics: A Special Edition for the California Primarieshttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/04/us/politics/california-primary-explained.htmlCredit...Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesJune 4, 2018Hello! Tomorrow is one of the years busiest primary nights, and heres a special afternoon edition of First Draft to get you up to speed. Eight states have primaries on Tuesday. In Montana, Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat in a deeply red state, is up for re-election. Democrats in New Jersey are eyeing several suburban districts in their quest to take control of the House of Representatives.But its California thats drawing the most attention, and rightfully so. The state has the fifth-largest economy in the world, and the choices its voters make have ramifications far beyond its state line.Well have live results from all eight states on Tuesday night at NYTimes.com. And until then, weve rounded up seven key stories to help you understand the California primaries:First up, the state has an unusual primary system. Instead of each party selecting a nominee and those nominees facing off in November, under Californias system, it is simply the top two vote-getters this week who will face off this fall. Its unusual, yes, and its wreaking a little bit of havoc on the states election process.Heres an explanation of how the system works. And heres a look at the effect it has had on House races across the state, where Democrats fear that a crowded field and conflicting endorsements may leave some voters confused and offer an opening to Republicans.ImageCredit...Max Whittaker for The New York TimesIn the race for governor, the leading Democrats, Gavin Newsom and Antonio Villaraigosa, are struggling to break from the shadow of Gov. Jerry Brown, as well as their own past personal indiscretions. Among the Republicans, John Cox, the leading candidate has seen his position grow stronger in the days leading up to the primary. Heres a look at where the governors race stands. Like a lot of the country, California has pockets that are deeply red and deeply blue.In San Francisco, which is voting for a new mayor, the four front-runners are all Democrats who agree on the liberal basics like legalized marijuana and funding public transportation. But the issue of homelessness in the city has opened a fissure in the race: how should one of the wealthiest cities in the world care for its poorest residents?The Central Valley, the states agricultural core, is represented by conservative congressmen like Kevin McCarthy and Devin Nunes. Its a rural heartland that embraces conservative values, and all the noise of the primaries appears to have had little effect on the regions voters. | Politics |
Credit...Jung Yeon-Je/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesMarch 17, 2017BEIJING Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson signaled on Friday that the Trump administration was prepared to scrap nearly a decade of United States policy toward North Korea in favor of a more aggressive effort to eliminate the countrys nuclear weapons program. Whether that means pre-emptive action, which he warned was on the table, will depend a great deal on how China responds.North Korea relies on Chinese trade and aid to keep its economy afloat, and China has long been unwilling to withdraw that support. Up to 40 percent of the Norths foreign currency essential for buying goods abroad comes from a network of about 600 Chinese companies, according to a recent study by Sayari Analytics, a Washington financial intelligence firm.Mr. Tillerson went to China on Saturday, a day after saying in Seoul, South Korea, that the United States would not negotiate with North Korea on freezing its nuclear and missile programs. His interactions with his hosts in Beijing, and whether he takes a hard line with China over its support for North Korea, will be closely watched as will be Chinas response.A sign of the administrations stance came on Friday as President Trump criticized both North Korea and the Chinese government. North Korea is behaving very badly, he said on Twitter. They have been playing the United States for years. China has done little to help!The Chinese leadership is likely to bristle at such criticism, but it may be reviewing its options, given the collision course that North Korea and the United States seem to be on.Last month, Beijing showed a new willingness to punish its longtime ally when it suspended imports of North Korean coal, saying it had reached the annual limit allowed under United Nations sanctions. Customs figures later showed that China had in fact imported only about 30 percent of the quota for 2017.Yang Xiyu, a veteran Chinese diplomat involved with North Korea, said Mr. Tillerson may be able to persuade Chinese leaders to do more when he meets with them in Beijing this weekend, particularly against Chinese companies that do business with the North.Mr. Yang cited as a potential model the case that United States officials built last year against a Chinese executive accused of selling North Korea a chemical that can be used in nuclear-enrichment centrifuges. While Beijing was not happy about the case, it eventually accepted it. It wasnt easy, but it was the right way to push the issue to a solution, he said.When the United States filed criminal charges against the businesswoman, Ma Xiaohong, the owner of the Dandong Hongxiang Industrial Development Company, other Chinese companies conducting similar transactions were apparently left untouched.But Mr. Yang, who was a top negotiator for China during six-nation talks with North Korea from 2003 to 2009, suggested that those companies may now be vulnerable.If the United States continues to present evidence of illegal activities that contravene Chinas responsibilities under United Nations sanctions, there is a great deal of room for cooperation, he said. He noted that China had published five executive orders, totaling more than 900 pages, listing items banned from export to North Korea.Such activities violate Chinas adherence to those orders, he said.Mr. Yang added: The United States should say, Lets extend our cooperation to implementation of the United Nations resolutions on sanctions. They should say, Starting with the Hongxiang case, lets move forward.In Beijing, Mr. Tillerson met with Chinas top foreign policy official, Yang Jiechi, and the foreign minister, Wang Yi, on Saturday. He will see President Xi Jinping on Sunday.We have committed ourselves to do everything we can to prevent a conflict from breaking out, Mr Tillerson said at a press conference after meeting Mr. Wang.The secretary said China and the United States will work together to see if they could make North Korea take a course correction and move away from nuclear weapons.Mr. Tillerson declined to specify the number of steps that would be taken to achieve that goal.Over the past quarter-century, the Chinese government has been unwilling to cripple the North Korean economy, fearing a refugee crisis or a destabilizing conflict on its border. North Korea imports virtually all of its oil from China, and cutting off the spigot could severely undermine the North Korean economy. Doing so, however, would almost certainly cause chaos in North Korea, something China fears.ImageCredit...Pool photo by Lee Jin-ManRound after round of economic sanctions have failed to persuade North Koreas leaders to abandon their nuclear ambitions.China has long justified its support for North Korea on humanitarian grounds, and rejected accusations that it has been unwilling to get tough on Pyongyang.But with North Korea closing in on its goal of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear payload to the United States, and the Trump administration deploying a missile defense system to South Korea that China considers a threat to its security, the Chinese leaderships calculus may be shifting.It is not a foregone conclusion that Chinas leaders will shelter North Korea, Anthony Ruggiero, a former United States Treasury official involved in sanctions enforcement against Pyongyang, told a congressional panel last month.Mr. Ruggiero said the United States would be likeliest to achieve Chinese cooperation from a position of strength.In 2013, he noted, when the Treasury blacklisted North Koreas primary foreign exchange bank for contributing to the proliferation of nuclear materials, the Bank of China, one of Chinas major commercial banks, immediately closed its account with the North Korean outfit.Now, no major Chinese banks deal with North Korea for fear of being penalized by the United States, though smaller ones do, along with front companies operating along the North Korean border with few links to the United States financial system, according to American sanctions experts.This is a good example of China acting to cut off North Koreas activities inside China when those actions threaten Chinas economic interests, Mr. Ruggierio said of the Bank of Chinas severance of its North Korea connections.A more recent episode that could serve as a model came last week, when the United States Department of Commerce fined ZTE, one of Chinas biggest technology companies, $1.19 billion for breaking sanctions and selling electronics to Iran and North Korea.This is what the U.S. should be doing, but finding it out aint easy, said Stephan Haggard, a visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, which is based in Washington. I think that Commerce pretty much had a gun to ZTEs head.Officials in the Trump administration have discussed putting pressure on Chinese banks through secondary sanctions, which would make it hard for any bank that did business with the North to also deal in American dollars. That technique worked against Iran, helping to force it to the negotiating table over its own nuclear program.But such measures are likely to have much less impact in North Korea, which is already isolated, than they did in Iran, a major trading nation, sanctions experts said.North Korea has one of the smallest international trade profiles on earth, said Joseph M. DeThomas, a former American ambassador who served as a State Department adviser on Iran and North Korea sanctions. North Korea often has to end-run the entire financial system to move money. They do things the old-fashioned way: sending guys on airplanes with suitcases full of money.In an opinion article this week in The New York Times, a former United States deputy secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, said the Obama administration had quietly pressed countries to eject North Korean workers whose remittances help fund the countrys military. He did not say how successful that effort had been. Tens of thousands of such workers are employed in Chinas northeastern cities like Dandong and Hunchun, along the North Korean border.But Marcus Noland, of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said he believed the organized export of labor earned the North Korean government less than has often been reported hundreds of millions of dollars per year, probably less than half a billion, he said. The next time you hear the claim of $2 billion annual earnings from the organized export of labor, remember not to believe everything you hear, he said.Far more has been contributed in foreign currency by Chinese companies doing trade across the border, said Jessica Knight, director of analysis at Sayari Analytics. Customs data indicates more than $8 billion in cross-border trade between China and North Korea since 2013, much of it in commodities like coal and steel, she said.Whether any sanctions at all will deter the North from its nuclear pursuits is far from clear. The former United States defense secretary William J. Perry, who dealt with the North Korean problem during the Clinton administration, said on Friday in Beijing that he doubted they would.We have sanctioned them a hundred times, and it didnt stop developing nuclear weapons, he said. They seem to be prepared to suffer economic deprivation for the people so they can achieve the preservation of the regime, which they think that nuclear weapons is going to do for them. | World |
A physicist and entrepreneur who cut an imposing figure, he did more than anyone to make optical research a priority in government and corporate budgets.Credit...Joseph McKeown/Getty ImagesPublished Jan. 7, 2021Updated Jan. 11, 2021When Narinder S. Kapany was in high school in the 1940s in Dehradun, an Indian city in the Himalayan foothills, his science teacher told him that light travels only in straight lines. By then he had already spent years playing around with a box camera, and he knew that light could at least be turned in different directions, through lenses and prisms. Something about the teachers attitude, he later said, made him want to go further, to prove him wrong by figuring out how to actually bend light.By the time he entered graduate school at Imperial College London in 1952, he realized that he wasnt alone. For decades researchers across Europe had been studying ways to transmit light through flexible glass fibers. But a host of technical challenges, not to mention World War II, had set them back.He persuaded one of those scientists, Harold Hopkins, to hire him as a research assistant, and the two clicked. Professor Hopkins, a formidable theoretician, provided the ideas; Dr. Kapany, more technically minded, figured out the practical side. In 1954, the pair announced a breakthrough in the journal Nature, demonstrating how to bundle thousands of impossibly thin glass fibers together and then connect them end to end.Their paper, along with a separate article by another author in the same issue, marked the birth of fiber optics, the now-ubiquitous communications technology that carries phone calls, television shows and billions of cat memes around the world every day.In later years, journalists took to calling Dr. Kapany the father of fiber optics, and several even claimed that he had been robbed of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics, which instead went to Charles Kao for his own groundbreaking work in fiber optics.That claim re-emerged after Dr. Kapany died on Dec. 3 in Redwood City, Calif., at 94. His son, Raj Kapany, confirmed the death but did not provide a cause.Whether Dr. Kapanys scientific contributions stand alongside Dr. Kaos can be debated, but his work as an intellectual evangelist for the burgeoning field of fiber optics is undeniable.He was a pioneer, the science journalist Jeff Hecht said in an interview, an enthusiastic promoter of a technology that long seemed more like science fiction than fact. As an academic researcher, and later as the chief executive of one of the first venture-capital-backed companies in Silicon Valley, Dr. Kapany relentlessly pushed fiber optics onto corporate and government research budgets, ensuring that the breakthroughs that he and Professor Hopkins made in the 1950s would bear fruit in the 1960s.According to Mr. Hechts 1999 history of fiber optics, City of Light, between 1955, when Dr. Kapany received his doctorate, and 1965, he was the lead author or co-author of 56 scientific papers an astounding 30 percent of all research published in the field during that decade. He wrote the first book on fiber optics and, in a 1960 cover article he wrote for Scientific American, even coined the term itself.ImageCredit...via Kapany familyNarinder Singh Kapany was born on Oct. 31, 1926, in Moga, a town in Punjab, in northwest India, and raised in Dehradun, about 200 miles to the east. His father, Sundar Singh Kapany, worked in the coal industry; his mother, Kundan Kaur Kapany, was a homemaker. After graduating from Agra University (now Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar University), he worked for a government munitions factory in Dehradun before moving to England.Despite his love for research, Dr. Kapany had never planned on becoming an academic scientist. He had originally moved to Britain for an internship at an optics firm in Scotland, to learn skills he could use in starting his own company back in India. But the opportunity to work with Professor Hopkins, a towering figure in the world of optics, was too tempting to resist.Their relationship, however, though fruitful, proved unstable: Both were physically imposing men with outsize personalities, and they fell out soon after publishing their seminal paper in Nature. Professor Hopkins accused Dr. Kapany of overstating his contribution; Dr. Kapany retorted that only he was able to turn the professors chalkboard musings into reality.In 1954, soon after the Nature article appeared, Dr. Kapany married Satinder Kaur, like him an Indian native, who was studying dance in London. The next year the two sailed to New York after he was offered a job at the University of Rochester and a consulting contract with Bausch & Lomb, the eye care company.Two years later, after the birth of their son, Raj, the Kapanys moved to Illinois, where Dr. Kapany took a job teaching at the Illinois Institute of Technology and where their daughter, Kiran, was born.Satinder Kapany died in 2016. Dr. Kapany is survived by his two children and four grandchildren.Dr. Kapany cut a dashing figure around the Chicago social scene his jackets custom made and slimly cut, his beard knotted tight to his chin and his mustache manicured like David Nivens, his son said, referring to the British actor.ImageCredit...via Kapany familyBut Dr. Kapany was growing restless in academia, and in 1960 he moved his family to California to start a new company, Optics Technology, to commercialize his research. He based it in Palo Alto, then just emerging as a tech hub, and received funding from Draper, Gaither & Anderson, one of the first venture-capital firms on the West Coast.As president and chief of research at the company, Dr. Kapany was focused on product development; to run the business side, the board hired Thomas J. Perkins, a young business executive who would go on to become a Silicon Valley eminence as co-founder of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins.Once again, Dr. Kapany worked closely with a similarly forceful personality, and once again there were fireworks. The two mens epic, sometimes alcohol-fueled fights were ostensibly about where to take the company, whether to move products to market quickly Mr. Perkinss plan or to focus on government-funded research and development.But there was clearly something deeper and more fundamental about their antagonism. It was a mutual hate for each other of near biblical proportions, Mr. Perkins later wrote.I told anyone who would listen, he added, that I wanted engraved on my tombstone, I still hate him.Mr. Perkins eventually demanded that the board choose between them. They chose Dr. Kapany.Dr. Kapany took the company public in 1967, but it was already sinking under the weight of poor sales and a strained budget. He left that year and, in 1973, founded a new company, Kaptron, which made fiber optics equipment. After later selling the business, he founded yet another company, K2 Optronics, with his son in 1999.Even as he filled out his career as a serial entrepreneur, Dr. Kapany never fully left academia: He taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz, from 1977 to 1983, and he later endowed chairs at several University of California schools in optics and in Sikh studies.ImageCredit...via Sikh FoundationDr. Kapany was a practicing Sikh and fiercely proud of his heritage. He amassed one of the worlds largest collections of Sikh art and sponsored rooms to feature it in museums around the country. My father became convinced that the world at large should know who the Sikhs are and that the Sikh people themselves should not forget who they are as they emigrate to other lands far from their original roots, his daughter said.But he was also aware of how exotic he seemed to some as an Indian in early postwar America, before the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 opened the door to millions of Asian immigrants. Whenever he demonstrated fiber optics to visitors, he called it his Indian optical rope trick.And he adopted an American accent, retaining just enough of his Indian and English tenor to make him stand out an aptitude for code-switching that, his son said, contributed to his success in both the science lab and the boardroom.He used that turban like a lethal weapon, his son said. When you see a guy who looked like that and who spoke like J.F.K., youre not going to forget him. | Tech |
Credit...Leo Smith/American Society of Ichthyologists and HerpetologistsThe diminutive predator is a terrible swimmer but thrives in the intertidal zone thanks to odd evolutionary adaptation.A Pacific spiny lumpsucker specimen under fluorescent light. Its bony scales arent scales at all but enamel, the stuff of teeth.Credit...Leo Smith/American Society of Ichthyologists and HerpetologistsFeb. 25, 2022The nightmare of the Pacific spiny lumpsucker starts with the teeth: needle-sharp, lining the rim of bulbous lips. A single fin crowns the fishs head like a mohawk, and spiked studs cover nearly every inch of its body, recalling an armored car from a Mad Max movie.But the nightmare passes quickly: The Pacific spiny lumpsucker is barely three inches long.Pacific spiny lumpsuckers are certainly one of the cutest fish that you can find, Karly Cohen, a Ph.D. candidate in biology at the University of Washington, said recently.Ms. Cohen and her colleagues have found that the fish has an extremely curious evolutionary and life history. In a study published in December in the Journal of Morphology, the researchers looked at how Pacific spiny lumpsuckers develop such armor and how they use it.ImageCredit...Mark Conlin/AlamyThe known range of Pacific spiny lumpsuckers stretches from the coast of Washington State up through western Canada and Alaska, across the Bering Sea to eastern Russia and down to northern Japan. They live in waters several feet deep and can vary in size between a golf ball and a human head.In addition to resembling a spiky puffball, the lumpsucker also has suckers on the bottom of its body similar to those on octopus tentacles. These evolved long ago from pelvic fins, Ms. Cohen said, and enable the lumpsucker a terrible swimmer to cling to rocks, coral and other surfaces and not be swept away by the strong currents of the intertidal zone.Being a really round fish in a bouncy environment is a tough job, Ms. Cohen said.The Pacific spiny lumpsucker is typically an ambush predator, sitting and waiting to suck in small fish, crustaceans or other creatures that pass by. Its stationary lifestyle means that it often serves as a platform for algae, which provide camouflage in its rocky surroundings, said Leo Smith, an ichthyologist at the University of Kansas who was not involved in the research.The lumpsuckers habit of staying put also allows the males to be stay-at-home dads. The females often lay their eggs in empty barnacle shells, and the males guard them aggressively until they hatch.Research by Ms. Cohen and her colleagues, and recently accepted in the Journal of Morphology, found that male lumpsuckers also fluoresce a bright red. This may help them hide while babysitting eggs; the algae that grows on the barnacles fluoresces the same color as the fish.ImageCredit...Leo Smith/American Society of Ichthyologists and HerpetologistsThe young, once hatched, sink to the sea floor and grasp onto something with their fully developed suction cups. They just stick there for a while, like, This is my safe spot, this is where I go, Ms. Cohen said.The researchers ran CT scans on lumpsuckers they captured off the shore of the University of Washingtons Friday Harbor Laboratories on San Juan Island between Vancouver Island in Canada and the Washington State mainland. They found that the scales are made of enamel and arent fish scales at all but odontodes. They come from teeth, said Ella Woodruff, an undergraduate at Carleton College in Minnesota and an author on the December study.The study found that Pacific spiny lumpsucker hatchlings start their lives with armor only around their mouths, where teeth would be. As the young grow, the odontodes spread toward the tail, like a lumpsucker version of wisdom teeth. The armor shields them from predators and the tumultuous environment of the intertidal zone, where crashing debris could do serious damage to an unprotected softball.It protects their bones from secondary infection from getting banged around, Dr. Smith said, and the plates grow back if they fall off, adding insurance and flexibility.Normally a full set of armor would spell trouble for a clumsy swimmer. But enamel is lighter than other kinds of bone, so it doesnt weigh them down much, Ms. Cohen said.Dr. Smith said that the new study helped to explain why the armor of the Pacific spiny lumpsucker is so different from that of other animals in the intertidal zone, and why the creature looks so strange.These things are like Scooby-Doo villains, he said.ImageCredit...Tom McHugh/Science Source | science |
Barely 10 percent of doctoral degrees in the geosciences go to recipients of color. The lack of diversity limits the quality of research, many scientists say.Credit...Nemanja Spoljaric/Getty ImagesDec. 23, 2019When Arianna Varuolo-Clarke was growing up, her favorite evenings were spent watching the Weather Channel with her grandfather. She wanted to chase thunderstorms and understand where tornadoes came from, she said. She decided to become an atmospheric scientist. In 2014, she landed an internship at the National Center for Atmospheric Research as a college sophomore, and quickly realized that her path as a woman of color would not be easy.Youd walk through the halls and its a lot of old white men, Ms. Varuolo-Clarke said. Still, she pushed forward and began her Ph.D. in atmospheric science at Columbia University last year.The fields lack of diversity gained new urgency in May when her graduate student cohort was targeted with a series of racist emails. The messages, sent to affiliates of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia by a person outside the community, said that black people were genetically inferior and did not belong in academia. It was hurtful and invalidating to be told that she didnt belong in the world that had drawn her in since childhood, Ms. Varuolo-Clarke said. It was an isolated incident. But it brought to the surface what still needs to be done in the field. In a commentary last week in Nature Geoscience, Kuheli Dutt, Lamont-Dohertys assistant director for academic affairs and diversity, wrote that a lack of diversity and inclusion is the single largest cultural problem facing the geosciences today.The geosciences which include the study of planet Earth, its oceans, its atmosphere and its interactions with human society are among the least diverse across all fields of science. Nearly 90 percent of doctoral-degree recipients are white. In the countrys top 100 geoscience departments, people of color hold under 4 percent of tenured or tenure-track positions. A 2016 survey from the National Science Foundation showed that representation of people of color in geosciences has barely budged in the past four decades, although significant gains have been made in terms of gender balance.Asian-Americans are better represented than other people of color, according to Dr. Dutt, accounting for 6 percent of those earning geoscience doctorates in 2016. Between 1973 and 2016, just 20 Native American women, 69 black women and 241 Hispanic women earned Ph.D.s in the field, of some 22,600 total.The fields lack of diversity begins with a pipeline problem, geoscientists say. National surveys have shown that black people are less likely than white people to participate in outdoor activities. One survey, conducted in 2009, queried 4,103 respondents and found that African-Americans accounted for just 7 percent of national park visitors, and another survey found that they were more likely to report receiving poor service by park employees. Robert Stanton, the first black director of the National Park Service, has said that the idea that black folks dont like parks has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.Lisa White, a micropaleontologist at University of California, Berkeley, said most public high schools, especially those in urban environments, did not have the resources to organize outdoor field trips introducing students to the earth sciences. As the assistant director of education and outreach at the U.C. Museum of Paleontology, Dr. White has noticed that students of color tend to be more familiar with medicine, engineering, computer science and other STEM fields that lead directly to job opportunities.Compounding the pipeline problem is one of stereotypes. The typical earth scientist is often seen as a rugged white male. You think of a bearded guy on top of a mountain wearing flannel and hiking boots, said Jonathan Nichols, an associate research professor at Lamont-Doherty. We just had our big fall conference and there were 20,000-plus geologists, and you look around and its all old bearded guys.That stereotype, Dr. Nichols said, can make the field feel unwelcoming to people of color, who dont see themselves represented at conferences and among faculty members. Dr. White concurred that the geosciences had an image problem that prevents young people of color from applying for research opportunities.That lack of representation in turn affects the quality and focus of earth science research, especially on climate change.Its not rich white people who will be impacted first and most by climate change, Dr. Nichols said. Its the people in marginalized communities. And if you forget that this work isnt just an academic pursuit, then why are you even doing it? You have to keep in mind the real impact.Lorelei Curtin, a fifth-year Ph.D. student at Columbia University, said her earth science classes could be enriched by a greater focus on nonwhite and Indigenous histories and voices, given that Indigenous people have a unique connection to the land. Ms. Curtin helped start a book club at Lamont-Doherty called Race Talk, which brings together geoscientists for discussions on race and white privilege. The group has read Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence, by Derald Wing Sue, as well as Home, by Toni Morrison. Ms. Curtin said that scientists were not accustomed to conversations that center on individual stories and experiences rather than data, so sensitive discussion of racism presented a challenge.Dr. Dutt, Lamont-Dohertys diversity director, joined the Observatory 11 years ago as its only person of color in a leadership role. Since then she has led trainings for geoscientists on recognizing their implicit biases to foster a more racially inclusive environment. Her article in Nature Geoscience last week, titled Race and Racism in the Geosciences, was so popular that the journals editors removed its pay wall. The article called on geoscientists to take personal responsibility for ridding their field of prejudice.I wanted to write the piece to address the disconnect between the way white people and people of color view topics of racism, Dr. Dutt said. Most of the people Ive worked with in my role as diversity officer are nice people and well-intentioned people. But privilege tends to be invisible to the person who has it. After the discriminatory email messages in May, Dr. Dutt organized a forum to discuss diversity, and the lack of it, in geoscience; the event was standing room only. Ms. Varuolo-Clarke was moved by how many of her classmates attended, realizing that the emails had brought to the surface racial challenges that the earth scientist community must confront.Sometimes its an elephant in the room that Im a woman of color, Ms. Varuolo-Clarke said. Id rather we talk about it versus tiptoeing around it. | science |
Byron Scott to Kobe: Congrats On Oscar Nomination ... He'll Be Huge in Hollywood 1/25/2018 TMZSports.com Byron Scott is ecstatic his old teammate Kobe Bryant was nominated for an Oscar -- and tells TMZ Sports he hopes people celebrate Mamba because people deserve 2nd chances in life. Questions have been raised about how Kobe will be received at the Academy Awards on March 4 by a Hollywood crowd that's been cracking down on stars accused of sexual misconduct. Obviously, Kobe has sexual misconduct allegations of his own in his past -- but Scott says he hopes people are able to forgive Kobe and let him move forward with his life. "Everybody makes mistakes, everybody deserves a second chance." | Entertainment |
Fact Check of the DayPresident Trump falsely claimed the Korean War was the longest war in history. It was one of a host of inaccurate or puzzling statements he made to reporters on Friday. June 1, 2018WHAT WAS SAIDWe talked about ending the war. And you know, this war has been going on its got to be the longest war almost 70 years, right? Mr. Trump, speaking to reporters after a meeting with a North Korean envoy on FridayTHE FACTSFalse. The Korean War began in 1950 and an armistice ended the fighting in 1953, but no peace treaty was officially signed. Still, Mr. Trump is wrong that the uneasy 65-year truce could constitute the longest war. It is difficult to definitively say what was the longest war ever. Some involved a continuing fight while others were a series of conflicts with periods of peace. But no matter the parameters, there are numerous examples of wars that ran longer than the Korean War. For example, the Hundred Years War between England and France spanned from 1337 to 1453. The Punic Wars, from 265 B.C. to 146 B.C., lasted longer, but was made up of three wars between Rome and Carthage. Like the Korean War, several wars have been technically extended because no formal peace treaty was signed. The Punic Wars can be said to have lasted over two millenniums, until 1985, when the mayors of Rome and Carthage agreed to an official peace treaty. And Japan and Russia have yet to sign a treaty to end World War II because of a continuing territorial dispute (though they currently are discussing a formal resolution). Theres also the curious case of the Scilly conflict, a war between the Netherlands and Isles of Scilly in England that technically lasted more than three centuries but involved no injuries and no shots fired. A formal declaration of war went unheeded until 1986, when a peace treaty was signed.South Korea, North Korea and the United States are discussing a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War. WHAT WAS SAIDDont forget, this was a meeting where a letter was given to me by Kim Jong-un, and that letter was a very nice letter. Oh, would you like to see what was in that letter? Would you like it? Mr. Trump to reporters, at 2:43 p.m.THE FACTS This is contradicted eight minutes later. I havent seen the letter yet. I purposely didnt open the letter. I havent opened it. I didnt open it in front of the director. Mr. Trump to reporters, at 2:51 p.m. Mr. Trump is referring to a letter from Mr. Kim, the North Korean leader, that his envoy delivered to the president at the White House. It was not immediately known what the letter said, and Mr. Trump shed no clarity on its contents. An hour later, an unnamed White House official told the Reuters correspondent Steve Holland that Mr. Trump has read the letter but did not specify whether that was before or after his comments to reporters. WHAT WAS SAIDMexico is making over $100 billion a year and theyre not helping us with our border because they have strong laws and we have horrible laws. We have horrible border laws. Mr. Trump, nearing the end of his 15-minute remarks to reporters.THE FACTS This requires context. The presidents claim would have been more accurate a decade ago, when unauthorized immigration was a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. But in 2008, Mexican lawmakers decriminalized illegal immigration, which is now considered a minor offense. Under American federal law, a first-time violation of illegally entering the United States can be punished by fines of up to hundreds of dollars or a jail sentence of up to six months. The two countries have similar laws and protocols for inspection and documentation at their respective ports of entry. But Mexico is much weaker in enforcing its border laws, said Rey Koslowski, a professor at the University at Albany who specializes in international migration. To say that somehow or another that Mexico is stronger and better equipped, Mr. Koslowski said, is laughable. The United States also detains and deports more people than Mexico. Thats partly because of its larger population of undocumented immigrants, but also because of aggressive enforcement which Mr. Trump has previously lauded. OTHER CLAIMS Mr. Trump also overstated the United States trade deficit with Mexico as over $100 billion a year (it was $69 billion last year); falsely claimed the United States loses many, many billions of dollars with Canada (it has a trade surplus); and said the 3.8 percent unemployment rate was the lowest in 50 years (it was also 3.8 percent in 2000). Sources: The New York Times, The Hundred Years War, The Fall of Carthage, The Los Angeles Times, Atlas Obscura, The Arizona Daily Star, Rey Koslowski | Politics |
Credit...Saeed Khan/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesNov. 18, 2018SYDNEY, Australia The United States and China turned a Pacific Rim trade summit this weekend into a stage where the world could do little more than stand by and watch as two great powers aggravated their battle over trade.President Xi Jinping and Vice President Mike Pence both made their cases to the global leaders assembled in Papua New Guinea then they dug in and refused to compromise. That left the group of 21 nations in disarray, unable to agree on even a routine joint statement like those that had closed every other Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit since 1989.Countries caught in the trade-war crossfire between China and the United States are becoming increasingly exasperated.The entire world is worried, said Prime Minister Peter ONeill of Papua New Guinea.The disagreement over the final statement reflects a hardening of the conflict between China and the United States, with each side deploying aggressive, uncompromising rhetoric reminiscent of that heard during the Cold War.During a weekend of diplomacy in Chinas backyard that had been meant to defuse trade tensions, Mr. Xi and Mr. Pence instead chose escalation, attacking each others positions and battling for loyalty within a trade group that represents 60 percent of the global economy.Experts said the stalemate at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, known as APEC, would set up a high-stakes showdown at the Group of 20 conference in Argentina this month, which Mr. Xi and President Trump are expected to attend.The core issues in the clash were familiar and have shaped the trade dispute between the United States and China for months.Mr. Trump has made a combative stance on trade a signature element of his administrations foreign policy. So draft versions of an APEC communiqu showed that the United States wanted strong language condemning Chinese trade practices it calls coercive and predatory. Among them: restricting market access and pushing foreign companies to hand over valuable technology.The Chinese delegation sought to reaffirm its opposition to what it says are protectionism and unilateralism by the United States, especially the tariffs Mr. Trump has imposed on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods as part of an unprecedented effort to force China to change its policies.Mr. Trumps trade offensive has stoked fears of an economic Cold War between the worlds two largest economies. While the president has sought to preserve cordial personal relations with Mr. Xi, the broader relationship between the United States and China has deteriorated steadily, not just in the commercial sphere but also in security issues like the South China Sea.Mr. Xi seemed eager to shore up ties with an important trading partner, North Korea. He told President Moon Jae-in of South Korea on the sidelines of the trade forum that he was considering accepting an invitation from the North's leader, Kim Jong-un, to visit, a spokesman for Mr. Moon said.Such a visit, as well as any additional support for North Korea at a time when its nuclear promises are falling short of American demands, could bring a new round of threats that go beyond trade to global security.But at the APEC conference in Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, the tensions centered on economics.For years, American foreign policy has sought to balance the economic benefits of cooperating with China with the risks of treating the country as an adversary.Now, the scales have tipped.From Mr. Trumps tweets to defense position papers and a major speech by Mr. Pence on Oct. 4, the United States has made clear that it sees China as a strategic threat.Its a new level of Cold War rhetoric, said Hugh White, a prominent regional analyst at the Australian National University.Economic cooperation, he said, is being sidelined.The Trump administration, for the first time since Nixon in 1972, has sought to distance America from Chinas economic opportunities, Mr. White said. Thats a huge shift.Mr. Pence has played an especially prominent role in the confrontation.[Sign up for Damien Caves Australia Letter to get news, conversation starters and local recommendations in your inbox each week.]Appearing in Mr. Trumps place at APEC, he doubled down on recent criticism of Chinas geopolitical strategies and attacked the countrys One Belt, One Road initiative an infrastructure plan financed by China that covers some 70 countries.He urged Asian nations to work with the United States. If they do, he said, they will not be saddled with debt, a problem some countries are facing as a result of their partnerships with Beijing.Mr. Xi, who spoke before Mr. Pence, insisted that such criticism was misguided. Chinas infrastructure plan, he said, is inclusive and beneficial.It will not close a door and create a small circle, Mr. Xi said. It is not the so-called trap, as some people say. It is the sunshine avenue where China shares opportunities with the world to seek common development.Experts said the two countries positions have become more entrenched.It boils down to mutual intransigence between the U.S. and China, said Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at the Australian National University.Jonathan Pryke, a Pacific Rim expert at the Lowy Institute, agreed, describing the result as raw stubbornness.Earlier on Sunday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia tried to sound upbeat. I think there is a lot more progress being made here than I think is probably being acknowledged, he said.He and many other national leaders seemed eager to return to a time when the worlds strongest powers got along, or at least worked together on building the world economy.What the leaders of many countries fear, especially in Asia, is a cleavage into two camps.No one wants to be forced to make a choice, said Mr. White, the analyst.For now, the world beyond the United States and China seems to have been given the task of maintaining calm and of trying to steer the world away from economic divisions and greater clashes.By Sunday night, it was increasingly difficult to see the summit meeting as anything but a continuation of hostilities.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada was among the first to make that clear. The joint statement, he said, was a lost cause.I dont think it will come as a huge surprise that there are differing visions, he said. | World |
The Alpha variant traveled more efficiently in small droplets, two new studies found. The Delta variant may have continued this evolution.Credit...Eugene Hoshiko/Associated PressOct. 1, 2021Newer variants of the coronavirus like Alpha and Delta are highly contagious, infecting far more people than the original virus. Two new studies offer a possible explanation: The virus is evolving to spread more efficiently through air.The realization that the coronavirus is airborne indoors transformed efforts to contain the pandemic last year, igniting fiery debates about masks, social distancing and ventilation in public spaces.Most researchers now agree that the coronavirus is mostly transmitted through large droplets that quickly sink to the floor and through much smaller ones, called aerosols, that can float over longer distances indoors and settle directly into the lungs, where the virus is most harmful.The new studies dont fundamentally change that view. But the findings signal the need for better masks in some situations, and indicate that the virus is changing in ways that make it more formidable.This is not an Armageddon scenario, said Vincent Munster, a virologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who led one of the new studies. It is like a modification of the virus to more efficient transmission, which is something I think we all kind of expected, and we now see it happening in real time.Dr. Munsters team showed that small aerosols traveled much longer distances than larger droplets and the Alpha variant was much more likely to cause new infections via aerosol transmission. The second study found that people infected with Alpha exhaled about 43 times more virus into tiny aerosols than those infected with older variants.The studies compared the Alpha variant with the original virus or other older variants. But the results may also explain why the Delta variant is so contagious and why it displaced all other versions of the virus.It really indicates that the virus is evolving to become more efficient at transmitting through the air, said Linsey Marr, an expert in airborne viruses at Virginia Tech who was not involved in either study. I wouldnt be surprised if, with Delta, that factor were even higher.The ultratransmissibility of the variants may come down to a mix of factors. It may be that lower doses of the variants are required for infection, or that the variants replicate faster, or that more of the variant virus is exhaled into aerosols or all three.The Alpha variant proved to be twice as transmissible as the original virus, and the Delta variant has mutations that turbocharged its contagiousness even more. As the virus continues to change, newer variants may turn out to be even more transmissible, experts said.But the tools at our disposal all still work well to halt the spread. Even loosefitting cloth and surgical masks block about half of the fine aerosols containing virus, according to the study of people infected with variants, published this month in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.Still, at least in some crowded spaces, people may want to consider switching to more protective masks, said Don Milton, an aerosol expert at the University of Maryland who led the research.Given that it seems to be evolving towards generating aerosols better, then we need better containment and better personal protection, Dr. Milton said of the virus. We are recommending people move to tighter-fitting masks.To compare how different variants spread through the air, his team asked participants with mild or asymptomatic infections to recite the alphabet, sing Happy Birthday loudly or shout out the University of Maryland slogan, Go Terps!People infected with the Alpha variant had copious amounts of virus in their nose and throat, much more than those infected with the original virus. But even after adjusting for that difference, those infected with the variant released about 18 times as much virus into the smallest aerosols.But the researchers examined only four people infected with Alpha, and 45 with older variants. That could skew the observed differences between the variants, said Seema Lakdawala, a respiratory virus expert at the University of Pittsburgh, who was not involved in either new study.Infected people can pass the virus along to many, many others or to none at all. How much virus they expel may depend on where in the respiratory tract it is replicating, the nature of the mucus in its environment, and what other microbes it may hitch a ride with.We have really no idea why some individuals are superspreaders and others are not, Dr. Lakdawala said. Theres a lot of heterogeneity between individuals.Data from a greater number of participants would be more convincing, but the two studies together do suggest that enhanced transport through aerosols at least partly contributes to the variants contagiousness, she said.Dr. Munsters study did not involve people at all, but Syrian hamsters. Using the animals allowed the team to control the experimental conditions tightly and focus only on the movement of aerosols, Dr. Munster said.The researchers separated pairs of hamsters with tubes of different lengths that allowed airflow but no physical contact. They looked at how well the different variants traveled from infected donor hamsters to uninfected sentinel hamsters.When the cages were more than two meters apart, only the smallest aerosols particles smaller than 5 microns were shown to infect the sentinel hamsters. And the team found, as expected, that the Alpha variant outcompeted the original virus in infecting the sentinel hamsters.The results were posted on bioRxiv, a website that features papers before they have been published in a scientific journal.The researchers are now testing the Delta variant and expect to find that it is even more efficient, Dr. Munster said.Together, the new findings underscore the importance of masks for vaccinated people, especially in crowded spaces, experts said. Although people with breakthrough infections after vaccination are much less likely to spread the virus than unvaccinated people, the contagiousness of the variants raises the probability.With billions of people worldwide vaccinated, and billions still unvaccinated, the virus may still change in unexpected ways, Dr. Munster said: There might be additional evolutionary pressures, shaping the evolutionary direction of this virus. | Health |