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Cordelia on 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' 'Memba Her?! 1/25/2018 Charisma Carpenter is best known for playing the butt-kicking cheerleader Cordelia Chase -- opposite Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alyson Hannigan -- in the late '90s show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Guess what she looks like now! Share on Facebook TWEET This See also Memba Them Photo Galleries | Entertainment |
Meek Mill Court Clerk's Note Asking for Money Triggers Investigation 1/29/2018 A TMZ story that a clerk in the courthouse asked Meek Mill for money during his probation violation hearing has triggered a formal court investigation ... TMZ has learned. Sources familiar with the matter tell us, judges and other personnel are now investigating the circumstances surrounding a note that court clerk Wanda Chavarria gave Meek, telling him she has bad credit and needs money for her son's college tuition. The clerk told TMZ she did indeed give Meek the note ... she says because they are both from Philly and they take care of their own. Chavarria says the judge in the case was not aware of the note. The judge -- Genece Brinkley -- is herself in the hot seat. Meek's lawyers say she was trying to strong-arm Meek into changing managers to a friend of hers. Meek says she also asked him to rerecord a Boyz II Men song and give her a shout-out. | Entertainment |
Credit...Brett Carlsen for The New York TimesFeb. 17, 2014PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. It has been widely assumed, perhaps out of fear for the alternative, that Matt Harvey will recover from Tommy John elbow surgery and be ready to pitch by September, or, if not, by the start of the 2015 season, some 17 months after the operation. But it could take longer.Just ask Steven Matz. He was a second-round pick out of Ward Melville High School on Long Island, the Mets highest selection in the 2009 amateur draft. Soon after he signed that summer and started throwing, he felt discomfort in his pitching elbow. The Mets shut him down, but the next spring, his elbow felt as if a sharp knife were stabbing it. He had an 80 percent tear of his ulnar collateral ligament. In May 2010, he had Tommy John surgery. He would not pitch again for about 25 months. Now, what advice would Matz, 22, have if the 24-year-old Harvey asked?After the operation, Matz went through normal rehabilitation. He worked back slowly, strengthening his shoulder and elbow, using light bands and two-pound weights. He found it tedious and boring. After about four and a half months, he started throwing. After about a year, he was throwing off a mound. But when he started facing live hitters, there came another sharp pain. He still had his velocity, but the pain was persistent. He said he was not sure if he should try to pitch through it, or tell someone. Eventually, he reported the problem, and the Mets shut him down.When he returned, there was that pain again. The Mets shut him down again. When he came back after that, again that pain. It went on like this for at least a few months, Matz working his way back, only to feel a sharp pain in his elbow. He was shut down so many times that year that he said he could not remember how many.My elbow just couldnt handle it yet, he said.At one point, Matz visited Dr. David Altchek, the Mets medical director, who had performed the operation. Still, the issue was unclear. Matz was becoming frustrated. All along, he had followed orders. He had not pushed too hard or hurried to get back too soon. What would he hurry back to? He was still young, not even 21, still just a prospect. His career had not really started.When his elbow was still hurting in the spring of 2012, Matz saw the orthopedist Dr. James Andrews for a second opinion. Andrews told him he might have another tear in his elbow, or perhaps it was just scar tissue. He told Matz to go pitch one more time, let it rip and see how it felt. Then they would have an idea. During an intrasquad game, Matz let it rip and hit 97 miles per hour with his fastball. He had never thrown that fast before. Better yet: no pain. I havent felt anything since, he said. He was told the recovery had taken so long because his tendon graft had taken a long time to mature. In June 2012, about 25 months after he had Tommy John surgery, Matz made his debut pitching for the Kingsport Mets of the Rookie League. He posted a 1.55 earned run average over six starts before his season was cut short by shoulder tendinitis. Finally healthy last season, Matz made 21 starts for Class A Savannah. The more he threw, he found, the more comfortable he felt. He finished with a 2.62 E.R.A. and 1.14 strikeouts per inning. His fastball, which sat in the low to mid-90-m.p.h. range, showed life. His changeup made batters swing and miss. And his breaking ball, a sort of cross between a slider and a curveball, continued to improve. Paul DePodesta, the Mets vice president for player development and amateur scouting, said, You dont see too many left-handers with that kind of stuff.For all that Matz went through, DePodesta suggested it might have helped him. His arm is young, having not logged a lot of innings, but he is mature beyond his years, having already faced much adversity. DePodesta said Matz could throw around 130 to 140 innings this year and work up to 175 innings by 2015. He is still a way off, and the Mets are not going to rush him. Matz will spend this spring in major league camp, perhaps working on his breaking ball. His locker is just across the clubhouse from Harveys. Now, if Harvey were to come ask for advice, Matz said he would tell him: Just be patient. Dont get frustrated with the workouts. Dont get too antsy. Because then, youre going to start pushing it a little bit, when, maybe, youre not ready for it.Basically, Matz added, Dont try and be a hero. | Sports |
Credit...InstagramJune 20, 2018SAN FRANCISCO Expanding further beyond its origins as an app for sharing pretty photos, Instagram said on Wednesday that it will now allow users to post videos up to an hour long, a feature that will thrust it into direct competition with YouTube and its own parent company, Facebook.At an event in San Francisco that was delayed about 45 minutes because of technical issues, Instagram said it was debuting IGTV, a new video section for videos that are shot vertically which is how people typically record things on smartphones. The company said it would also begin offering IGTV as its own stand-alone app in the next few weeks.Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion when the nascent photo-sharing service had only 30 million users. Since then, Instagram has opened the platform to videos of up to one minute and copied a popular feature of its rival Snapchat by allowing ephemeral posts known as stories.Instagram said it has a billion monthly users. By comparison, Googles YouTube platform has said it has 1.9 billion users logging into the service every month, and Facebook which has itself been pushing consumers to spend more time watching videos has 2.2 billion monthly users.Instagram made the announcement at a morning event that had the look and feel of a late-night rave.For nearly an hour, tech industry reporters and social media stars waited in a neon-lit room pulsing with music spun by a live disc jockey. Food was served with Instagram-worthy presentations, including a do-it-yourself aa station featuring the on-trend breakfast smoothie bowl, and a toast bar which, naturally, featured avocado toast.A company spokesman attributed the long delay before the presentation started to technical difficulties, and just minutes before Instagram unveiled its push into longer videos, its own blog published the news first.In many ways, Instagram is what Facebook is not. Instagram is native to smartphones, attracts a younger, thought-to-be cooler audience and is popular among celebrities and influencers all traits that serve as catnip for advertisers.The new push from Instagram is an acknowledgment of the changing nature of online video viewing. IGTV will feature videos shot vertically to fill the screens of smartphones versus the landscape orientation of televisions and computer monitors. In addition, it was reaching out to the new stars of todays digital video world social media stars with millions of followers on YouTube and Instagram.Winning over such so-called creators is essential to enticing users to spend more time on video platforms. As younger viewers turn away from traditional television, the stars of YouTube and Instagram are building massive audiences that return for new content daily.Video is the way we hang out with friends, the way we pass the time, but the way we watch it is changing, said Kevin Systrom, Instagrams chief executive. Teens might be watching less TV, but theyre watching more creators online.Instagram and YouTube are the two main platforms where creators build an audience to make money from advertising, sponsorship deals or merchandise. As Instagram adds longer videos to its platform, YouTube has been adding social-network-like features to allow creators to communicate more easily with fans.YouTube splits advertising revenue with content creators, something that Instagram does not offer. Mr. Systrom said IGTV will not do advertising at first, but he noted that it wants to do whats fair for creators in the future.Lele Pons, who has 25 million followers on Instagram, took the stage at the event and said she will host a new cooking program for IGTV. At a news conference after the event, Ms. Pons said it was hard to predict how the longer video format on Instagram will change the viewing habits of her fans. She said she will continue to split her efforts 50-50 between YouTube and Instagram.Instagram is also competing against Facebook for the attention of creators. Facebook has been steadily trying to overtake YouTube by expanding its video section with original programming.Earlier this week, Facebook announced that it would allow video creators to work more directly with the company. It introduced Brand Collabs Manager, a platform to connect video creators with sponsorship opportunities, opening the door for those with popular followings to earn more through advertising revenue.Whereas Facebook and YouTube are plowing money into buying original content for their video platforms, Mr. Systrom said Instagram had no such plans, because it wants to remain neutral for creators.Mr. Systrom said Instagram already employs people to monitor inappropriate content, but would add employees because of the longer videos. He declined to say how many people would be added. (YouTube has been plagued by a deluge of troublesome videos that have driven some advertisers from the platform.)Instagram said it was limiting the number of users who can post hourlong videos, with most users capped at 10 minutes. But the limits are temporary, the company said, and the long term goal is for users to face no time limits. | Tech |
Deadly Germs, Lost curesFirst Big Pharma fled the field, and now start-ups are going belly up, threatening to stifle the development of new drugs.Credit...Brian L. Frank for The New York TimesPublished Dec. 25, 2019Updated Dec. 26, 2019At a time when germs are growing more resistant to common antibiotics, many companies that are developing new versions of the drugs are hemorrhaging money and going out of business, gravely undermining efforts to contain the spread of deadly, drug-resistant bacteria. Antibiotic start-ups like Achaogen and Aradigm have gone belly up in recent months, pharmaceutical behemoths like Novartis and Allergan have abandoned the sector and many of the remaining American antibiotic companies are teetering toward insolvency. One of the biggest developers of antibiotics, Melinta Therapeutics, recently warned regulators it was running out of cash.Experts say the grim financial outlook for the few companies still committed to antibiotic research is driving away investors and threatening to strangle the development of new lifesaving drugs at a time when they are urgently needed. This is a crisis that should alarm everyone, said Dr. Helen Boucher, an infectious disease specialist at Tufts Medical Center and a member of the Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria.The problem is straightforward: The companies that have invested billions to develop the drugs have not found a way to make money selling them. Most antibiotics are prescribed for just days or weeks unlike medicines for chronic conditions like diabetes or rheumatoid arthritis that have been blockbusters and many hospitals have been unwilling to pay high prices for the new therapies. Political gridlock in Congress has thwarted legislative efforts to address the problem.The challenges facing antibiotic makers come at time when many of the drugs designed to vanquish infections are becoming ineffective against bacteria and fungi, as overuse of the decades-old drugs has spurred them to develop defenses against the medicines.Drug-resistant infections now kill 35,000 people in the United States each year and sicken 2.8 million, according a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released last month. Without new therapies, the United Nations says the global death toll could soar to 10 million by 2050.[Read our other stories in our series on drug resistance, Deadly Germs, Lost Cures.]The newest antibiotics have proved effective at tackling some of the most stubborn and deadly germs, including anthrax, bacterial pneumonia, E. coli and multi-drug-resistant skin infections.The experience of the biotech company Achaogen is a case in point. It spent 15 years and a billion dollars to win Food and Drug Administration approval for Zemdri, a drug for hard-to-treat urinary tract infections. In July, the World Health Organization added Zemdri to its list of essential new medicines.By then, however, there was no one left at Achaogen to celebrate.This past spring, with its stock price hovering near zero and executives unable to raise the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to market the drug and do additional clinical studies, the company sold off lab equipment and fired its remaining scientists. In April, the company declared bankruptcy.Public health experts say the crisis calls for government intervention. Among the ideas that have wide backing are increased reimbursements for new antibiotics, federal funding to stockpile drugs effective against resistant germs and financial incentives that would offer much needed aid to start-ups and lure back the pharmaceutical giants. Despite bipartisan support, legislation aimed at addressing the problem has languished in Congress.If this doesnt get fixed in the next six to 12 months, the last of the Mohicans will go broke and investors wont return to the market for another decade or two, said Chen Yu, a health care venture capitalist who has invested in the field.ImageCredit...Brian L. Frank for The New York TimesThe industry faces another challenge: After years of being bombarded with warnings against profligate use of antibiotics, doctors have become reluctant to prescribe the newest medications, limiting the ability of companies to recoup the investment spent to discover the compounds and win regulatory approval. And in their drive to save money, many hospital pharmacies will dispense cheaper generics even when a newer drug is far superior.Youd never tell a cancer patient, Why dont you try a 1950s drug first and if doesnt work, well move on to one from the 1980s, said Kevin Outterson, the executive director of CARB-X, a government-funded nonprofit that provides grants to companies working on antimicrobial resistance. We do this with antibiotics and its really having an adverse effect on patients and the marketplace.Many of the new drugs are not cheap, at least when compared to older generics that can cost a few dollars a pill. A typical course of Xerava, a newly approved antibiotic that targets multi-drug-resistant infections, can cost as much as $2,000. Unlike expensive new cancer drugs that extend survival by three-to-six months, antibiotics like ours truly save a patients life, said Larry Edwards, chief executive of the company that makes Xerava, Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals. Its frustrating.Tetraphase, based in Watertown, Mass., has struggled to get hospitals to embrace Xerava, which took more than a decade to discover and bring to market, even though the drug can vanquish resistant germs like MRSA and CRE, a group of resistant bacteria that kills 13,000 people a year.Tetraphases stock price has been hovering around $2, down from nearly $40 a year ago. To trim costs, Mr. Edwards recently shuttered the companys labs, laid off some 40 scientists and scuttled plans to move forward on three other promising antibiotics.For Melinta Therapeutics based in Morristown, N.J., the future is even grimmer. Last month, the companys stock price dropped 45 percent after executives issued a warning about the companys long-term prospects. Melinta makes four antibiotics, including Baxdela, which recently received F.D.A. approval to treat the kind of drug-resistant pneumonia that often kills hospitalized patients. Jennifer Sanfilippo, Melintas interim chief executive, said she was hoping a sale or merger would buy the company more time to raise awareness about the antibiotics value among hospital pharmacists and increase sales.These drugs are my babies, and they are so urgently needed, she said.Coming up with new compounds is no easy feat. Only two new classes of antibiotics have been introduced in the last 20 years most new drugs are variations on existing ones and the diminishing financial returns have driven most companies from the market. In the 1980s, there were 18 major pharmaceutical companies developing new antibiotics; today there are three.The science is hard, really hard, said Dr. David Shlaes, a former vice president at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and a board member of the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership, a nonprofit advocacy organization. And reducing the number of people who work on it by abandoning antibiotic R & D is not going to get us anywhere.A new antibiotic can cost $2.6 billion to develop, he said, and the biggest part of that cost is the failures along the way.Some of the sectors biggest players have coalesced around a raft of interventions and incentives that would treat antibiotics as a global good. They include extending the exclusivity for new antibiotics to give companies more time to earn back their investments and creating a program to buy and store critical antibiotics much the way the federal government stockpiles emergency medication for possible pandemics or bioterror threats like anthrax and smallpox.The DISARM Act, a bill introduced in Congress this year, would direct Medicare to reimburse hospitals for new and critically important antibiotics. The bill has bipartisan support but has yet to advance.One of its sponsors, Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, said some of the reluctance to push it forward stemmed from the political sensitivity over soaring prescription drug prices. There is some institutional resistance to any legislation that provides financial incentives to drug companies, he said.Washington has not entirely been sitting on its hands. Over the past decade, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, a federal effort to counter chemical, nuclear and other public health threats, has invested a billion dollars in companies developing promising antimicrobial drugs and diagnostics that can help address antibiotic resistance.If we dont have drugs to combat these multi-drug-resistant organisms, then were not doing our job to keep Americans safe, Rick A. Bright, the director of the agency, said.Dr. Bright has had a firsthand experience with the problem. Two years ago, his thumb became infected after he nicked it while gardening in his backyard. The antibiotic he was prescribed had no effect, nor did six others he was given at the hospital. It turned out he had MRSA.The infection spread, and doctors scheduled surgery to amputate the thumb. His doctor prescribed one last antibiotic but only after complaining about its cost and warning that Dr. Brights insurance might not cover it. Within hours, the infection began to improve and the amputation was canceled.If I had gotten the right drug on Day 1, I would have never had to go to the emergency room, he said.Achaogen and its 300 employees had held out hope for government intervention, especially given that the company had received $124 million from BARDA to develop Zemdri.As recently as two years ago, the company had a market capitalization of more than $1 billion and Zemdri was so promising that it became the first antibiotic the F.D.A. designated as a breakthrough therapy, expediting the approval process.Dr. Ryan Cirz, one of Achaogens founders and the vice president for research, recalled the days when venture capitalists took a shine to the company and investors snapped up its stock. It wasnt hype, Dr. Cirz, a microbiologist, said. This was about saving lives.In June, investors at the bankruptcy sale bought out the companys lab equipment and the rights to Zemdri for a pittance: $16 million. (The buyer, the generic-drug maker Cipla USA, has continued to manufacture the drug.) Many of Achaogens scientists have since found research jobs in more lucrative fields like oncology.Dr. Cirz lost his life savings, but he said he had bigger concerns. Without effective antibiotics, many common medical procedures could one day become life-threatening.This is a problem that can be solved, its not that complicated, he said. We can deal with the problem now, or we can just sit here and wait until greater numbers of people start dying. That would be a tragedy.Matt Richtel contributed reporting. | Health |
Credit...Liselotte Sabroe/EPA, via ShutterstockNov. 1, 2018COPENHAGEN Iran tried to assassinate an Arab separatist leader living in Denmark, the Danish authorities claim, adding that a suspect in the unusual and very serious plot was in custody.The accusations have set off anger and concern in Denmark, a nation that has experienced little political violence in recent years. Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen called the plot totally unacceptable, Denmark recalled its ambassador to Iran, and potential joint European action is on the agenda for a meeting of European Union foreign ministers on Nov. 19.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo congratulated the Danish government on Twitter on its arrest of an Iranian regime assassin.There is sufficient basis to conclude that an Iranian intelligence service has been planning the assassination, the Danish Security and Intelligence Service said in a statement released on Tuesday.The Iranian Foreign Ministry denied the allegations, saying they are in line with the conspiracies and plots of the enemies of Iran.With the United States withdrawing from the nuclear agreement with Iran and resuming economic sanctions, Irans government should be trying to shore up relations with Europe, not worsen them, said Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington.On paper this looks beyond reckless, he said. This atmosphere and lack of trust is not a good sign for the future critical dialogue with Iran.It is possible, Mr. Vatanka said, that one arm of Irans security apparatus attempted an assassination in Denmark without the knowledge or consent of President Hassan Rouhani and his government.The target of the plot was the leader of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz, the Danish security agency said. The group, which the Iranian government classifies as terrorist, aims to create an independent state in Irans oil-rich province of Khuzestan, home to much of the countrys ethnic Arab minority.Danish officials did not name the man; his group identified him as Habib Jabor, but that is an alias. He lives in Ringsted, a town southwest of Copenhagen, and has been under police protection since the spring because of a threat to his safety.The Danish investigators received crucial assistance from the Mossad, which passed along information that it obtained in the course of its normal surveillance efforts, according to a high-ranking Israeli official, who asked not to be named when discussing sensitive matters.Some Iranian officials initially blamed Arab separatists for the Sept. 22 attack on a military parade in the Iranian city of Ahvaz, which killed 25 people and wounded many more, while other officials blamed the Islamic State. When Iran fired missiles into Syria days later, in what it said was retaliation for the massacre, it identified the target as an Islamic State base.An Arab separatist group, the Ahvaz National Resistance, took responsibility for Ahvaz attack, but Mr. Jabors group insisted that it was not involved. The two organizations have links, but the relationship between them is murky.The Danish and Swedish police said that a Norwegian man of Iranian decent was arrested on Oct. 21 in Sweden and remains in solitary confinement, but has denied all charges.In late September, the authorities noticed the man taking photographs of Mr. Jabors residence and intended to pass on the information to an Iranian intelligence service with a view to the information forming part of the plans to assassinate the leader the security service said.A year ago another member of Mr. Jabors separatist group was gunned down outside his home in Amsterdam, and last month Belgium charged an Iranian diplomat over alleged plans to bomb a meeting of Iranian exiles.The Arab separatist movement in Khuzestan has gone on for decades, sometimes carrying out shootings and bombings. Its presence in Denmark went largely unnoticed until a spokesman for Mr. Jabors group who lives in Denmark praised the Ahvaz attack in a television interview.This week, the spokesman, who also uses an alias, said of the alleged assassination plot, we werent completely surprised, but we are angry and saddened, just like all other Danes, that they could come to Denmark. | World |
VideotranscripttranscriptReaction After South Korea Ousts LeaderSupporters and opponents of President Park Geun-hye of South Korea took to the streets on Friday after the court issued a ruling to remove her from office, capping months of turmoil.++SOURCE: China Global Television Network (CGTN)++ SOUNDBITE (Korean) Park supporter Shin Tae-Young We should be thankful to President Park for protecting our nation. Young people these days dont know that. First comes national security, second comes national security. National security is very important. Its only been 67 years since the Korean War erupted. We could soon see another similar tragedy happen. 15. SOUNDBITE (Korean) Lee Jang-hyuk, anti-Park protester: If you do something wrong, you should pay the consequences. Im so happy the Constitutional Court made the right decision. From here, she and those around her must be punished and start thinking properly.Supporters and opponents of President Park Geun-hye of South Korea took to the streets on Friday after the court issued a ruling to remove her from office, capping months of turmoil.CreditCredit...Kim Hong-Ji/ReutersMarch 9, 2017SEOUL, South Korea A South Korean court removed the president on Friday, a first in the nations history, rattling the delicate balance of relationships across Asia at a particularly tense time.Her removal capped months of turmoil, as hundreds of thousands of South Koreans took to the streets, week after week, to protest a sprawling corruption scandal that shook the top echelons of business and government.Park Geun-hye, the nations first female president and the daughter of the Cold War military dictator Park Chung-hee, had been an icon of the conservative establishment that joined Washington in pressing for a hard line against North Koreas nuclear provocations.Now, her downfall is expected to shift South Korean politics to the opposition, whose leaders want more engagement with North Korea and are wary of a major confrontation in the region. They say they will re-examine the countrys joint strategy on North Korea with the United States and defuse tensions with China, which has sounded alarms about the growing American military footprint in Asia.Ms. Parks powers were suspended in December after a legislative impeachment vote, though she continued to live in the presidential Blue House, largely alone and hidden from public view, while awaiting the decision by the Constitutional Court. The house had been her childhood home: She first moved in at the age of 9 and left it nearly two decades later after her mother and father were assassinated in separate episodes.Eight justices of the Constitutional Court unanimously decided to unseat Ms. Park for committing acts that violated the Constitution and laws throughout her time in office, Acting Chief Justice Lee Jung-mi said in a ruling that was nationally broadcast.ImageCredit...Yonhap, via European Pressphoto AgencyMs. Parks acts betrayed the trust of the people and were of the kind that cannot be tolerated for the sake of protecting the Constitution, Justice Lee said.As the verdict was announced, silence fell over thousands of Park supporters who rallied near the courthouse waving South Korean flags. Soon, they tried to march on the court and called for destroying it. When the police blocked them, some of the mostly elderly protesters attacked the officers with flagpoles, hurling water bottles and pieces of the sidewalk pavement. Two pro-Park demonstrators, ages 60 and 72, died during the unrest.Ms. Park did not comment on the ruling, and remained in the presidential palace after her removal from power. But In Myung-jin, the leader of Ms. Parks conservative Liberty Korea Party, said he humbly respected the ruling.With the immunity conferred by her office now gone, Ms. Park, 65, faces prosecutors seeking to charge her with bribery, extortion and abuse of power in connection with allegations of conspiring with a confidante, her childhood friend Choi Soon-sil, to collect tens of millions of dollars in bribes from companies like Samsung.By law, the country must elect a new president within 60 days. The acting president, Hwang Kyo-ahn, an ally of Ms. Parks, will remain in office in the interim. The Trump administration is rushing a missile defense system to South Korea so that it can be in place before the election.After the ruling, Mr. Hwang called key Cabinet ministers to put the nation on a heightened state of military readiness, saying the lack of a president represented a national emergency. He also warned North Korea against making additional provocations.ImageCredit...Chung Sung-Jun/Getty ImagesThe last time a South Korean leader was removed from office under popular pressure was in 1960, when the police fired on crowds calling for President Syngman Rhee to step down. (Mr. Rhee, a dictator, fled into exile in Hawaii and died there.)In a sign of how far South Koreas young democracy has evolved, Ms. Park was removed without any violence, after large, peaceful protests in recent months demanding that she step down. In addition to the swell of popular anger, the legislature and the judiciary two institutions that have been weaker than the presidency historically were crucial to the outcome.This is a miracle, a new milestone in the strengthening and institutionalizing of democracy in South Korea, said Kang Won-taek, a political scientist at Seoul National University.When crowds took to the streets, they were not just seeking to remove a leader who had one year left in office. They were also rebelling against a political order that had held South Korea together for decades but is now fracturing under pressures both at home and abroad, analysts said.Ms. Parks father ruled South Korea from 1961 to 1979. He founded its economic growth model, which transformed the nation into an export powerhouse and allowed the emergence of family-controlled conglomerates known as chaebol that benefited from tax cuts and anti-labor policies.Ms. Park was elected in 2012 with the support of older conservative South Koreans who revered her father for the countrys breakneck economic growth.ImageCredit...Jung Ui-Chel/European Pressphoto AgencyBut the nexus of industry and political power gave rise to collusive ties, highlighted by the scandal that led to Ms. Parks fall.The scandal also swept up the de facto head of Samsung, Lee Jae-yong, who was indicted on charges of bribing Ms. Park and her confidante, Ms. Choi.Samsung, the nations largest conglomerate, has been tainted by corruption before. But the company has been considered too important to the economy for any of its top leaders to spend time behind bars until now. The jailing of Mr. Lee, who is facing trial, is another potent sign that the old order is not holding.In the wake of the Park scandal, all political parties have vowed to curtail presidential power to pardon chaebol tycoons convicted of white-collar crimes. They also promised to stop chaebol chairmen from helping their children amass fortunes through dubious means, like forcing their companies to do exclusive business with the childrens businesses.With the conservatives discredited and no leading conservative candidate to succeed Ms. Park the left could take power for the first time in a decade. The dominant campaign issues will probably be North Koreas nuclear weapons program and South Koreas relations with the United States and China.If the opposition takes power, it may try to revive its old sunshine policy of building ties with North Korea through aid and exchanges, an approach favored by China. That would complicate Washingtons efforts to isolate the North at a time other Asian nations like the Philippines are gravitating toward Beijing.ImageCredit...Jung Yeon-Je/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesMoon Jae-in, the Democratic Party leader who is leading in opinion surveys, has said that a decade of applying sanctions on North Korea had failed to stop its nuclear weapons programs. He has said that sanctions are necessary, but that their goal should be to draw North Korea back to the negotiating table.He believes that Ms. Parks decision to allow the deployment of the American missile defense system known as Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or Thaad has dragged the country into the dangerous and growing rivalry between Washington and Beijing; China has called the system a threat to its security and taken steps to punish South Korea economically for accepting it.Conservative South Koreans see the deployment of the antimissile system not only as a guard against the North but also as a symbolic reaffirmation of the all-important alliance with the United States. Mr. Moons party demands that the deployment, which began this week, be suspended immediately. If it takes power, it says it will review the deployment of the antimissile system to determine if it is in South Koreas best interest.As South Korea has learned, it cannot always keep Washington and Beijing happy at the same time, as in the case of the countrys decision to accept the American missile defenses.Yet Ms. Parks impeachment was also a pushback against Cold War conservatives like her father, who seized on Communist threats from North Korea to hide their corruption and silence political opponents, said Kim Dong-choon, a sociologist at Sungkonghoe University in Seoul.Ms. Parks father tortured and executed dissidents, framing them with spying charges. Now, his daughter faces charges that her government blacklisted thousands of unfriendly artists and writers.Her removal means that the curtain is finally drawing on the authoritarian political and economic order that has dominated South Korea for decades, said Ahn Byong-jin, rector of the Global Academy for Future Civilizations at Kyung Hee University in Seoul.Analysts cautioned that political and economic change will come slowly.As Mr. Moon put it recently: We need a national cleanup. We need to liquidate the old system and build a new South Korea. Only then can we complete the revolution started by the people who rallied with candlelight. | World |
Politics|Republicans splinter over whether to make a full break from Trump.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/us/politics/republicans-splinter-over-whether-to-make-a-full-break-from-trump.htmlCredit...Jason Andrew for The New York TimesJan. 8, 2021President Trump not only inspired a mob to storm the Capitol on Wednesday he also brought the Republican Party close to a breaking point.Having lost the presidency, the House and now the Senate on Mr. Trumps watch, Republicans are so deeply divided that many are insisting that they must fully break from the president to rebound.Those divisions were in especially sharp relief this week when scores of House Republicans sided with Mr. Trump in voting to block certification of the election in a tally taken after the mob rampaged through the Capitol.Republicans who spent years putting off a reckoning with Mr. Trump over his dangerous behavior are now confronting a disturbing prospect: that Wednesdays episode of violence, incited by Mr. Trumps remarks, could linger for decades as a stain on the party much as the Watergate break-in and the Great Depression shadowed earlier generations of Republicans.His conduct over the last eight weeks has been injurious to the country and incredibly harmful to the party, said Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey who was the first major Republican to endorse Mr. Trump.Mr. Christie said Republicans must separate message from messenger, because I dont think the messenger can recover from yesterday. | Politics |
DMX Back to Jail for Failing Drug Tests 1/30/2018 DMX is going back to jail -- he was taken into custody in a Manhattan court Tuesday morning for failing drug tests ... a violation of his probation in his tax evasion case. We're told the judge ruled X was a flight risk after testing positive for opiates, cocaine and oxycodone. As we reported ... DMX was supposed to be completing rehab while he was out on bail in his tax evasion case. He'd been given some leeway to travel for performances as of late. TMZ.com U.S. Attorney Spokesman Nicholas Biase says prosecutors referenced the video TMZ got of DMX last week. Something definitely seemed off as he preached in a St. Louis airport bar. Witnesses said he was drinking and buying shots for other patrons. Boozing is also a probation violation. DMX's attorney, Murray Richman, told us, "I'm saddened and disappointed. We'll have to deal with it accordingly." He added he'll try to get X back into a rehab program. He's set to be sentenced in March. The judge said DMX had told a "great big lie" when he agreed to his bail terms. | Entertainment |
Business BriefingDec. 25, 2015While Japans core consumer prices rose for the first time in five months in November, household spending tumbled, casting doubt on the central banks view that robust consumption will help accelerate inflation to its 2 percent target. The mixed batch of data will keep alive expectations that the Bank of Japan governor, Haruhiko Kuroda, who has said he will do whatever it takes to achieve his ambitious price goal, may nudge the central bank into expanding stimulus as early as next month. The downward pressure from falling oil prices seems to have run its course, which helped core C.P.I. rise, said Hidenobu Tokuda, senior economist at the Mizuho Research Institute, referring to the core consumer price index. But consumer prices likely wont rise as fast as the B.O.J. projects. We expect the central bank to ease next year. The core C.P.I., which includes oil products but excludes volatile fresh food prices, rose 0.1 percent in November from a year earlier, data showed on Friday. The rise followed a 0.1 percent drop in October and came as higher food prices moderated the pressure from slumping energy costs. But household spending suffered the biggest annual fall in eight months, down 2.9 percent in November from a year earlier. | Business |
Business|Virginia to Replace Guardrails With Others Deemed Saferhttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/17/business/virginia-to-replace-guardrails-with-others-deemed-safer.htmlDec. 16, 2015Virginia has decided to begin replacing certain roadside guardrails, including some made by Trinity Industries, a company that has been accused of making a defective rail.A series of crash tests of Trinitys ET-Plus guardrail that were overseen by Virginias Department of Transportation included one conducted at a shallow angle that the agency said had raised concerns.The agency expects to begin replacing at least some, if not all, guardrails no later than fall 2016, targeting places where crashes could be more severe, like high-speed roadways. The agency said it may also be replacing some guardrail units that were not made by Trinity.Were taking action to reduce the severity of crashes and save lives, said Charles Kilpatrick, the departments commissioner.Jeff Eller, a Trinity spokesman, said the ET-Plus was still accepted for federal reimbursement, and that the company supported Virginias move to crash-test the current version of all guardrail end terminal products using its nonstandard criteria.Installation of any new ET-Plus guardrails remains banned by Virginia. The state has been replacing the guardrails when damaged, about 270 so far. According to the states transportation department, there may be between 11,000 and 15,000 ET-Plus guardrails on state roads. Replacing a guardrail costs about $5,000 to $7,500, the state said.Only one guardrail has been tested and approved so far under newer, more stringent guidelines. It too is made by Trinity. Another companys product has been tested, but not yet approved.More than 30 states, including Virginia, suspended purchase of the guardrails last year after a jury in a 2013 whistle-blower case decided that Trinity had defrauded the federal government when it failed to disclose potentially hazardous design changes.Trinity, which had voluntarily stopped shipping the guardrail, said in October that it would resume sales. The Justice Department and the Transportation Department have begun a joint criminal inquiry into Trinity. At issue is the guardrails end terminal, a flat piece of steel at the front that, on impact, is meant to glide along the rail, pushing it safely out of the way.In 2005, Trinity narrowed the channel behind the head, possibly causing the system to jam, state officials have said. When that happens, the rail may ram through the vehicle itself, potentially injuring occupants. | Business |
Sports BriefingFeb. 19, 2014Graeme McDowell pulled off the biggest stunner on a day of comebacks in the Match Play Championship in Marana, Ariz. McDowell won the last three holes against Gary Woodland to force extra holes, then beat him with a 6-foot birdie on the 19th hole.Jason Dufner, the P.G.A. champion, escaped against Scott Stallings, rallying from 3 down with five holes to play to beat Stallings with a par in 19 holes, and Henrik Stenson avoided becoming the third straight No. 1 seed to lose in the opening round. | Sports |
Out ThereThe Event Horizon Telescope has once again caught sight of the unseeable.Credit...Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration/National Science FoundationPublished May 12, 2022Updated May 13, 2022Astronomers announced on Thursday that they had pierced the veil of darkness and dust at the center of our Milky Way galaxy to capture the first picture of the gentle giant dwelling there: a supermassive black hole, a trapdoor in space-time through which the equivalent of four million suns have been dispatched to eternity, leaving behind only their gravity and violently bent space-time.The image, released in six simultaneous news conferences in Washington and around the globe, showed a lumpy doughnut of radio emission framing empty space. Oohs and aahs broke out at the National Press Club in Washington when Feryal zel of the University of Arizona displayed what she called the first direct image of the gentle giant in the center of our galaxy. She added: It seems that black holes like doughnuts.Dr. zel is part of the Event Horizon Telescope project, a collaboration of more than 300 scientists from 13 institutions that operates an ever-growing global network of telescopes that compose one large telescope as big as Earth. The teams results were published Thursday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.I met this black hole 20 years ago and have loved it and tried to understand it since, Dr. zel said. But until now, we didnt have the direct picture.In 2019, the same team captured an image of the black hole in the galaxy Messier 87, or M87. That image, the first ever taken of a black hole, is now enshrined in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. We have seen what we thought was unseeable, Sheperd Doeleman, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said at the time.Astronomers said the new result would lead to a better understanding of gravity, galaxy evolution and how even placid-seeming clouds of stars like our own majestic pinwheel of stars, the Milky Way, can generate quasars, enormous geysers of energy that can be seen across the universe.The news also reaffirms a prescient 1971 paper by Martin Rees of Cambridge University and his colleague Donald Lynden-Bell, who died in 2018, suggesting that supermassive black holes were the energy source of quasars. In an email, Dr. Rees called the new result a logistical achievement (and I liked the computer models).Dr. zel said that the similarity of the new picture to the one from 2019 demonstrated that the earlier image was not a coincidence. In an interview, Peter Galison, a physicist and historian at Harvard and a member of the collaboration, noted that the M87 black hole was 1,500 times as massive as the Milky Ways; typically in physics or astronomy, when something increases by a factor of 10 or more, everything changes. The similitude across such an immense scale is astonishing, Dr. Galison said.At Thursdays news event, Michael Johnson, a team member and also of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center, said: This is an extraordinary verification of Einsteins general theory of relativity.Einsteins bad dreamBlack holes were an unwelcome consequence of the general theory of relativity, which attributed gravity to the warping of space and time by matter and energy, much in the way that a mattress sags under a sleeper.Einsteins insight led to a new conception of the cosmos, in which space-time could quiver, bend, rip, expand, swirl and even disappear forever into the maw of a black hole, an entity with gravity so strong that not even light could escape it.Einstein disapproved of this idea, but the universe is now known to be speckled with black holes. Many are the remains of dead stars that collapsed inward on themselves and just kept going.But there appears to be a black hole at the center of nearly every galaxy, ours included, that can be millions or billions of times as massive as our sun. Astronomers still do not understand how these supermassive black holes have grown so big.Paradoxically, despite their ability to swallow light, black holes are the most luminous objects in the universe. Materials gas, dust, shredded stars that fall into a black hole are heated to millions of degrees in a dense maelstrom of electromagnetic fields. Some of that matter falls into the black hole, but part of it is squirted out by enormous pressures and magnetic fields.ImageCredit...Alex Welsh for The New York TimesImageCredit...Ksenia Kuleshova for The New York TimesSuch fireworks quasars can outshine galaxies by a thousandfold. Their discovery in the early 1960s led physicists and astronomers to take seriously the notion that black holes existed.What gave rise to such behemoths of nothingness is a mystery. Dense wrinkles in the primordial energies of the Big Bang? Monster runaway stars that collapsed and consumed their surroundings in the dawning years of the universe?Since 1974, the center of the Milky Way has been known to coincide with a faint source of radio noise called Sagittarius A* (pronounced Sagittarius A-star).Astronomers including Andrea Ghez of the University of California, Los Angeles and Reinhard Genzel of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics had calculated that whatever was there had the mass of 4.14 million suns and was confined within a sphere the size of Mercurys orbit around the sun. They reached that estimate by tracking the orbits of stars and gas clouds swirling about the center of the Milky Way and measuring their velocities at one-third the speed of light. For their achievement, Dr. Genzel and Dr. Ghez won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2020.What else could Sagittarius A* be but a black hole?Chasing a shadowImageCredit...EHT CollaborationProving that it was a black hole was another job entirely. Seeing is believing.In 1967, the physicist James Bardeen proposed that a black hole would be visible to observers as a ghostly dark circle amid a haze of radio waves.A black holes gravity will distort and magnify its image, resulting in the case of Sagittarius A* in a shadow about 50 million miles across, appearing about as big from Earth as an orange would on the moon, according to calculations performed in 2000 by Eric Agol of the University of Washington, Heino Falcke of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany and Fulvio Melia of the University of Arizona.Astronomers ever since have been trying to sharpen the acuity of their telescopes to resolve the shadow of that orange. But ionized electrons and protons in interstellar space scatter the radio waves into a blur that obscures details of the source. Its like looking through shower glass, Dr. Doeleman said recently.To see deeper into the black hole shadow, researchers needed to be able to tune their radio telescopes to shorter wavelengths that could penetrate the haze. And they needed a bigger telescope.In 2009, Dr. Doeleman and his colleagues formed the Event Horizon Telescope, named after the point of no return around a black hole. Today, the collaborative project employs 11 different radio telescopes around the world.The team scored its first triumph in April 2019, when it presented a picture of the M87 black hole. In 2021, team members refined their data to reveal magnetic fields swirling around the black hole like a finely grooved rifle barrel pumping matter and energy into the void.ImageCredit...Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesThe data for Sagittarius A* were recorded during the same observing run in 2017 that produced the M87 image, but with more antennas eight instead of seven because the team was able to include a South Pole telescope that could not see M87.The Milky Ways black hole is a gentle giant compared to the one in M87, which sends quasars shooting across space. If our black hole were a person, Dr. Johnson said of Sagittarius A*, its diet would consist of one grain of rice every million years.It is ravenous and bright but inefficient, he added. Its only putting out a few hundred times as much energy as the sun, despite being four million times as massive. And the only reason we can study it at all is because its in our own galaxy.Our black hole was more difficult to observe than the one in M87 for another reason: At less than one-thousandth the mass and size of the M87 hole, ours evolves more than a thousand times faster, changing its appearance as often as every five minutes. Dr. zel described it as burbling and gurgling.In contrast, the M87 black hole barely budges during a weeklong observing run, like the Buddha, just sitting there, Dr. Doeleman.So over a night of observing, its changing while youre collecting data. Youre trying to take a picture of something with the lens cap off and you just get this blurry mess.On Thursday, Katherine Bouman, a team member and computer scientist at the California Institute of Technology, said that making a picture from the 3.5 petabytes of data from the observations was like listening to a song being played on a piano that has a lot of missing keys.Using a technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry, the antennas in the network were paired off with each other one-by-one, like individuals shaking hands with everyone in a crowd. The more telescopes in the network, the more such handshakes can be performed and their results compared. Computer algorithms could then begin to fill in the missing data and simulate the possible structure of the black hole disk.Most of these simulations portrayed a ring about as big as the orbit of Mercury, consistent with the predictions from Einsteins equations and the observations by Dr. Genzel and Dr. Ghez.Astoundingly, our findings corroborate predictions made more than 100 years ago, said Lia Medeiros, a team member and astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.Not all is perfect, though. The computer simulations estimated that the black hole should be noisier and more turbulent. Something is missing, said Priya Natarajan, a Yale University astronomer who studies black holes and galaxy formation.Dr. Doelemans next goal is to expand the network to include more antennas and gain enough coverage to produce a movie of the Milky Ways black hole. The challenge for black-hole cinema will be to delineate the underlying structure of the black hole from the matter that is moving around in it.Kip Thorne, a Nobel Prize laureate and black hole expert at Caltech, said he was eagerly awaiting reliable movies of the gas flow around the black hole: That is where major new insights and perhaps surprises may come.The results could be spectacular and informative, agreed Janna Levin, a gravitational theorist at Barnard College of Columbia University, who was not part of the project. Im not bored with pictures of black holes yet, she said. | science |
Politics|D.C. braces for two days of protests as the leader of the Proud Boys, a far-right group, is arrested.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/05/us/politics/dc-braces-for-two-days-of-protests-as-the-leader-of-the-proud-boys-a-far-right-group-is-arrested.htmlCredit...Stephanie Keith/Getty ImagesPublished Jan. 5, 2021Updated Jan. 6, 2021The leader of the Proud Boys, a far-right group that has vocally supported President Trumps efforts to overturn the election results, was arrested on Monday in Washington as Mayor Muriel Bowser requested support from the Army National Guard before expected protests of the November vote in the nations capital.Enrique Tarrio, 36, the chairman of the Proud Boys, was arrested by the Metropolitan Police on suspicion of burning a Black Lives Matter banner that was torn from a historic Black church in Washington during protests last month that led to several violent clashes, including stabbings, around the city.A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Department confirmed that Mr. Tarrio, 36, had been arrested on charges of destruction of property. Upon his arrest, he was found to have two high-capacity firearm magazines and charged accordingly with possession.The protests by the Proud Boys and other groups are expected to occur on Tuesday and Wednesday.In anticipation, officials announced that about 340 Army National Guard troops are expected to deploy on Tuesday and remain for two days in support of local law enforcement. Their mission is to help control traffic and to protect the streets and public transit stops, officials said.The District of Columbia National Guard is in a support role to the Metropolitan Police Department, which will enable them to provide a safe environment for our fellow citizens to exercise their First Amendment right to demonstrate, Maj. Gen. William J. Walker, the commanding general of the D.C. National Guard, said in a prepared statement.In June, Mr. Trump raised the option of deploying active-duty troops onto the streets and ran into resistance from both his defense secretary at the time, Mark T. Esper, and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The president eventually backed down.Some Pentagon officials acknowledged that they were worried about a possible repeat: that Mr. Trump could seek to use civil unrest, especially if it turned violent, to deploy active-duty troops to restore order.Since the protests in June, some of the countrys senior military leaders have talked among themselves about what to do if Mr. Trump again tries to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy active-duty troops into the streets, Pentagon officials confirmed. The Insurrection Act enables a president to send active-duty troops to quell disturbances over the objections of governors.Pentagon officials have been keeping track of nightly episodes of civil unrest across the country, in order for Defense Department officials to be able to counter any narrative that might come from the White House that such occurrences could not be handled by local law enforcement. | Politics |
Politics|Announcing National Security Council staff appointees, Biden restores the office for global health threats.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/us/politics/announcing-national-security-council-staff-appointees-biden-restores-the-office-for-global-health-threats.htmlCredit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesJan. 8, 2021President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. formally announced nearly two dozen members of his National Security Council staff on Friday, including a senior official for global health threats whose office was downgraded before the coronavirus pandemic.Among the 21 appointees is Elizabeth Cameron, who will be the councils senior director for global health security and biodefense, a job she held in the Obama White House and briefly under Mr. Trump. John R. Bolton, President Trumps then-national security adviser, eliminated the office in May 2018. Ms. Cameron has argued publicly that the move contributed to the federal governments sluggish domestic response to the pandemic, and Mr. Biden vowed as a candidate to restore the office.Mr. Biden also officially announced that his deputy national security adviser would be Jon Finer, a former chief of staff to Secretary of State John Kerry, whose impending appointment The New York Times reported this week. Mr. Finer and several other appointees are Obama administration veterans, continuing the trend of officials who have served with Mr. Biden returning to government.Other appointees include Brett McGurk, President Barack Obamas former envoy to the coalition against the Islamic State, who will be the National Security Councils coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa. The councils senior director for Russia and Central Asia, charged with managing Mr. Bidens complex approach to the Kremlin, will be Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former intelligence officer and Central Intelligence Agency analyst.ImageCredit...J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressShanthi Kalathil, a senior director at the National Endowment for Democracy, will be coordinator for democracy and human rights, causes on which Mr. Biden has pledged to renew focus.Juan Gonzalez, a former Obama specialist on Latin America, will be senior director for the Western Hemisphere under Mr. Biden. Sumona Guha, a vice presidential adviser to Mr. Biden, will be senior director for South Asia.In a notable act of outreach to progressives eager to see their perspective represented amid Mr. Bidens largely centrist team, he will name Sasha Baker, the top foreign policy adviser to Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, as the councils senior director for strategic planning.The National Security Council is the White House body, with a staff that typically ranges from 100-150, that coordinates the federal governments national security and foreign policy plans and actions. Mr. Biden has named Jake Sullivan, a former senior vice presidential aide in the Obama White House, as national security adviser. | Politics |
Credit...Craig Ruttle/Associated PressJune 6, 2018The pornographic film actress Stephanie Clifford sued President Trumps fixer, Michael D. Cohen, and her own former lawyer on Wednesday, making public a set of text messages discussing efforts to quash the story of her alleged affair with Mr. Trump as it emerged early this year.The suit, filed in California State Court, accused Keith M. Davidson, the Beverly Hills lawyer who represented Ms. Clifford in 2016, of violating attorney-client privilege. It also said he withheld relevant communications from her and her current lawyer, Michael Avenatti.The suit accused Mr. Cohen, Mr. Trumps personal lawyer, of helping and encouraging Mr. Davidson to breach his professional duties of confidentiality and loyalty to his client this year. In 2016, Mr. Cohen paid her $130,000 shortly before the election to keep quiet about the alleged affair.The legal challenge is at least the third that Mr. Avenatti has brought in the last three months on behalf of Ms. Clifford, known professionally as Stormy Daniels. The suit intensifies the legal pressures on Mr. Cohen, who has been a subject of Ms. Cliffords earlier complaints, and brings Mr. Davidson directly into the fray of civil litigation for the first time.In April, Ms. Clifford sued Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump for defamation, and in March, she sued to be released from the nondisclosure agreement. That suit has been delayed as a federal corruption investigation in New York scrutinizes Mr. Cohen and the $130,000.ImageCredit...via YouTubeMr. Cohen, who has repeatedly denied the affair on Mr. Trumps behalf, did not respond to an inquiry made through his lawyers.Dave Wedge, a spokesman for Mr. Davidson, called the suit outrageously frivolous and said Ms. Cliffords filing constituted a full and complete waiver of attorney-client privilege leaving Mr. Davidson, who has limited his public comments this year, to speak freely.According to the complaint filed on Wednesday, Mr. Davidson put Mr. Trumps interests ahead of Ms. Cliffords in his frequent communications with Mr. Cohen. The men exchanged 17 text messages on Jan. 17 this year, when In Touch magazine published excerpts from a 2011 interview in which Ms. Clifford detailed her alleged encounters with Mr. Trump. That piece was the first confirmation from Ms. Clifford of the alleged affair, which had been reported by The Wall Street Journal.In those exchanges, according to the complaint, Mr. Cohen told Mr. Davidson that he had Ms. Clifford tentatively scheduled for Hannity tonight, referring to the Fox News program hosted by Sean Hannity who was months later revealed to be another client of Mr. Cohens.Two weeks later, Mr. Cohen released a statement that denied the affair and was signed by Ms. Clifford, who later said she felt forced to lie.In January, Mr. Cohen also wrote to Mr. Davidson that the wise men all believe the story is dying and dont think its smart for her to do any interviews. After Mr. Davidson agreed 100 percent, Mr. Cohen replied, Thanks pal.ImageCredit...Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty ImagesOther text messages accompanying the court filing showed that in early March three days after Mr. Cohen had secretly obtained a temporary restraining order to silence Ms. Clifford Mr. Cohen indicated to Mr. Davidson that he was talking with the first lady, Melania Trump.Mr. Avenatti on Wednesday called the private messages evidence that prior denials by Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen relating to what Mr. Trump knew, and about the honesty of my client, were absolute lies. He argued it was implausible that Mr. Cohen would have arranged a media appearance for Ms. Clifford without Mr. Trumps knowledge, or that Mr. Cohen would have withheld details of his efforts to silence Ms. Clifford from the Trump family.In late April, Mr. Trump, who had weeks earlier denied knowing about the payment to Ms. Clifford, confirmed that Mr. Cohen had represented him in the agreement.Two lawyers for Mr. Davidson, Michael Padula and Gene Rossi, said on Wednesday that they saw nothing objectionable in the text messages. The idea that an attorney isnt going to have some communication with the other side is absurd, Mr. Padula said. Mr. Avenatti characterizes it that they should be adversarial and mean, but that isnt always the case.Mr. Davidsons past client list has put him in the middle of the sex-tape cases of the Austin Powers actor Verne Troyer, the wrestler Hulk Hogan and the onetime Playboy model and MTV host Tila Tequila. The lawyers tactics have come under scrutiny before, including in 2010, when the California State Bar suspended his law license for 90 days for four counts of misconduct.Ms. Cliffords lawsuit seeks more than $200,000 as well as punitive damages. It calls for Mr. Davidson to share all of his files on Ms. Clifford with her, and for Mr. Cohen to disclose any recordings of phone conversations he had with Mr. Davidson relating to Ms. Clifford. In an April raid of Mr. Cohens home and office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized numerous recordings.In a separate legal agreement months before the 2016 election, Mr. Davidson represented another woman who said she had had an affair with Mr. Trump the former Playboy model Karen McDougal. In March this year, Ms. McDougal also sued to be released from her nondisclosure agreement, alleging that Mr. Davidson had not honestly represented her interests and had, per reporting by The New York Times, secretly communicated with Mr. Cohen, who was not a party to her contract. In April, she was freed from that agreement. | Politics |
Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesRussia DispatchShoyna, a fishing village in the frigid far north, is slowly vanishing under dunes that engulf entire houses. For children, home is now a giant sandbox. Adults have to say goodbye to my high heels.A house submerged in sand in Shoyna, Russia.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesNov. 11, 2018SHOYNA, Russia Shoyna, a Russian fishing village on the frigid shores of the White Sea, is slowly vanishing under sand that engulfs entire houses, their roofs just barely visible above the dunes.For young children, its a magical place: their whole world a sandbox with natural slides everywhere. For everyone else, life in this barren landscape likely a man-made environmental disaster can be a daily grind.Anna Golubtsova lives on the second floor of her home. The ground floor turned into an unwelcome beach.Well have to hire a bulldozer to push the sand back, and again next year, said Ms. Golubtsova. We have to do it lest the snow piling up on top of the sand buries us to our roof.A nearby house was so overtaken by the dunes its residents had to go in and out through the attic.Local residents say more than 20 houses have been completely buried under the sand. Boardwalks take the place of sidewalks on the village streets.ImageCredit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesImageCredit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesImageCredit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesIn the years after World War II, Shoyna was a thriving fishing port, with old Soviet newsreels telling stories of the fishermen here heroically exceeding their production targets.But overfishing not only depleted local stocks; it probably ruined the areas ecosystem. Trawlers scraped the sea floor clean of silt and seaweed. And with nothing to hold the sand in place anymore, waves started washing it ashore, each of the trillions of grains a reminder of the reckless depredation of the seas.This disruption of the seabed, perhaps combined with a natural change in the bed of the river that flows through Shoyna and into the White Sea, is the best suspect to blame for the sand invasion, said Sergey Uvarov, the marine biodiversity project coordinator for the World Wildlife Fund in Russia. But no formal environmental studies of the remote region have been conducted.ImageCredit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesImageCredit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesImageCredit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesIn the summertime, small airplanes, and the occasional helicopter, are the only way to reach Shoyna.Evdokiya Sakharova, 81, serves as an informal greeter at the sandy landing strip. In her youth, the now desert-like area was filled with grassy meadows where cows would be taken to pasture, and villagers had their own little farms next to their homes.I remember the village when it was full of life, not sand, she said.During its heyday as a fishing port, Shoynas quay could barely fit the more than 70 fishing vessels coming in and out every day. At its height, the villages population was over 800; today its home to 285 people.The emptying out didnt happen all at once. First the fish processing plant closed, then the brickworks. The farms held on for a while. We kept planting vegetables, fertilizing the soil and sweeping away the sand advancing from the shore, Ms. Sakharova said. Until it became pointless.The people in this village, where trails left by ATVs, humans and dogs crisscross the sand between the houses, dont expect much in terms of amenities. The village has no sewage system, and water has to be carried from wells. Houses are heated with firewood or coal.Food supplies in Shoynas only store cost almost twice as much as in the nearest town, and many residents turn for sustenance to the natural areas outside the village where the sand has not yet reached.Arctic cloudberry grows in the tundra. Harvesting it is backbreaking labor, but its both delicious and lucrative. Locals sell it to middlemen, and it ultimately fetches almost as much as red caviar in city stores. In the fall, wild geese can be hunted and enough meat stored to last the winter. Sometimes nomadic reindeer herders stop by, exchanging meat for other goods.Small-scale fishing still happens throughout the year, in the summer for food and in the winter for trade. Its quite a way to the nearest market, however. Fish has to be hauled along a frozen river on snowmobiles for eight to 10 hours to the nearest town, Mezen.Shoyna runs on its own schedule. If you need bread, you have to place an order at a bakery open four days a week. At the villages bathhouse, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are reserved for women, Thursdays and Fridays for men.ImageCredit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesImageCredit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesImageCredit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesTheres little entertainment out here, said Karina Kotkina, an intern at the local meteorological station. Were lucky to have internet connection.Every Saturday theres a dance night at the local community center frequented by the few young people still living in the village, as well as soldiers from the nearby military base.I still cant forgive my commander for letting me go on a leave to the village 23 years ago, joked a former soldier, Viktor Schepakov, who now works at the villages diesel power station. This is when I met my future wife and decided to stay in Shoyna.Debates about staying in Shoyna or moving along have been going on for decades.ImageCredit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesResettlement can be subsidized under a federal assistance program for residents of far northern regions. Many young people do leave to study, work and travel. But some of those who have bolted come back after a while: It can be hard to adapt to urban life after years spent in the village.Shoyna drags you in, said Pavel Kotkin, 21. I spent four years studying in the city and came back. I love Shoyna and want to spend my life here.But what about the sand?I cant do without it, Mr. Kotkin said. My feet hurt after walking on asphalt.ImageCredit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesImageCredit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesImageCredit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesFor those who stay, jobs are scarce. Most of those available are in the public sector, like teaching or serving on the village council. The weather is also an employment driver.Anna Kravets is the director of the local meteorological station that monitors what can be the extreme conditions here. She came to Shoyna from Rostov-on-Don, in Russias mild south. I miss fresh vegetables, she said. The stuff from the local store is too green and tasteless.While shes now accustomed to the sand, it took time. Its hard to walk on it, your feet and legs get tired too quickly, Ms. Kravets said. I had to say goodbye to my high heels.When the fishery was closed, some large vessels were just abandoned on the shore, and the rusting hulks look like mythical beasts.ImageCredit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesImageCredit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesImageCredit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesWhen we were kids, we used to play hide-and-seek there, build our little houses there, Mr. Kotkin reminisced. These ships were our whole world.People bring their old machinery to join these ships on the shore. But its a junkyard with a broader purpose: The rusting clutters last mission is to serve as an improvised breakwater, helping shield houses on Shoynas shore from crashing waves.There are some signs that Shoynas ecosystem may be recuperating. Grass started reappearing in Shoyna in the last five years. Fishermen, too, tell tales of seaweed tangling in their nets where there was none before.But for now, the sand continues to come.The wind carries the sand from the shore to a lighthouse on the beach, still the villages most visible landmark. From there, the wind picks up the sand from the dunes lining the lighthouses foundation and carries it further toward the village. Grains of sand rattle against the windows and whip the faces of passers-by.Some of this sand will eventually end up on the porch of Ms. Sakharova, the airport greeter. She grabs a shovel every morning and gets to digging her house out little by little.My kids and grandchildren are asking me to move to the city, but I dont want to, she said. Shoyna is my home. Its nice and calm out here.ImageCredit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times | World |
It was 2000, and Bill Clinton was upbeat. The internet, he said, was opening up the world. Theres no question China has been trying to crack down on the internet, he said. Good luck. Thats sort of like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. The internet would inevitably push China toward democracy, he said. How could any country control something so free-flowing and still hope to be technologically vibrant? Something would surely have to give. He was wrong. Today, China has the worlds only internet companies that can match Americas in ambition and reach. It is years ahead of the United States in replacing paper money with smartphone payments, turning tech giants into vital gatekeepers of the consumer economy. And it is host to a supernova of creative expression in short videos, podcasts, blogs and streaming TV that ought to dispel any notions of Chinese culture as drearily conformist. Karmas a Bitch, a meme All this, on a patch of cyberspace that is walled off from Facebook and Google, policed by tens of thousands of censors and subject to strict controls on how data is collected, stored and shared. Chinas leaders like the internet they have created. And now, they want to direct the nations talent and tech acumen toward an even loftier end: building an innovation-driven economy, one that produces world-leading companies. Not long ago, Chinese tech firms were best known for copying Silicon Valley. Google Baidu YouTube Youku Uber Didi But the flow of inspiration now runs both ways. American social media executives look to Tencent and ByteDance for the latest tricks for keeping users glued to their phones. Tencents WeChat app, an all-in-one hub for socializing, playing games, paying bills, booking train tickets and more, paved the way for the increasingly feature-stuffed chat apps made by Facebook and Apple. Facebook recently took a page from TikTok, a Chinese service that is a sensation among Western tweens, by releasing its own highly similar app for creating goofy short videos. If people in the West didnt see this coming, it was because they mistook Chinas authoritarianism for hostility toward technology. But in some ways Chinese tech firms are less fettered than American ones. Witness the backlash against Big Data in the United States, the calls to break up giants like Facebook and the anxiety about digital addiction. None of those are big problems for Chinese companies. In China, there is pretty much only one rule, and it is simple: Dont undermine the state. So titans like Weibo and Baidu heed censorship orders. Unwanted beliefs and ideologies are kept out. Beyond that, everything is fair game. Start-ups can achieve mammoth scale with astonishing speed; they can also crash brutally. Thanks to weak intellectual property protections, they can rip one another off with abandon not great for rewarding innovation, but O.K. for consumers, who get lots of choices. And the money just keeps flowing in. In another advantage, old-school industries like media, finance and health care have been dominated by lumbering state-run giants. That has allowed internet champions like Alibaba and Tencent to sew themselves into these businesses with ease. With their mobile payment platforms, the two giants have built sprawling ecosystems in which vast amounts of commercial activity now take place. Little remains of daily life that has not been transformed. Shopping. Getting a loan. Renting a bike. Even going to the doctor. This level of clout hasnt gone unnoticed by Chinas leaders. Never in the Communist era have private entities wielded such influence over peoples lives. To keep tech in its place, the government is demanding stakes in companies and influence over management. Regulators have reprimanded online platforms for hosting content they deem distasteful too raunchy, too flirty, too creepy or just too weird. Thats why the best way for tech companies to thrive in China is to make themselves useful to the state. Nearly everyone in China uses WeChat, making the social network a great way for the authorities to police what people say and do. SenseTime, whose facial recognition technology powers those fun filters in video apps, also sells software to law enforcement. Image recognition software by SenseTime Crowd analysis software by SenseTime Identification software by SenseTime labeling people and cars in real time Participants at a Chinese internet conference identified by Face++ software The risk for these companies is that the government demands more, sucking away resources that could be better spent chasing innovations or breaking into new markets. In China, says Lance Noble of the research firm Gavekal Dragonomics, the governments support can be a blessing and a curse. | World |
Credit...Tom Brenner/The New York TimesJune 27, 2018Washington Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedys announcement on Wednesday that he would retire this summer immediately thrust the high court to the center of the battle for control of the Senate, with Republicans daring red-state Democrats to oppose the nominee to replace Justice Kennedy, and Democrats warning that a rush to seat a new justice before the election would further galvanize moderate and liberal voters.With the Republican majority already on a 51-49 knifes edge, senators and strategists from both parties said the clash over the balance of the Supreme Court would immediately overwhelm a campaign that to date had largely revolved around President Trumps conduct and issues surrounding the economy, immigration and health care.The summer and fall will be consumed by the fight over Mr. Trumps proposed replacement, and inject a new set of high-stakes issues into the campaign, primarily the prospect of overturning Roe v. Wade, as well as gay rights, voting rights and the rights of workers.Youre looking at the likelihood of a young, radical and persuasive voice on the court who would leave an imprint for a generation, said Senator Christopher Murphy of Connecticut, a Democrat.Democrats said that Senator Mitch McConnells decision to replace Justice Kennedy before the midterms would further motivate voters already enraged by Mr. Trump and anger progressives still smarting over Mr. McConnells decision to block President Obama from filling an open Supreme Court seat in 2016. Party strategists across the country convened on emergency conference calls Wednesday afternoon trying to figure out the best way to confront a situation that they could do little about as long as Republicans controlled the Senate.This will be the biggest, most bitter political battle we have ever seen in terms of intensity, said Paul Begala, the longtime Democratic strategist.Veteran party leaders predicted they would be inundated with a new wave of volunteers and donors, eager to halt Mr. Trump and the conservative takeover of all three branches of the federal government.This is going to be incredibly motivating for women, said Cecile Richards, the former head of Planned Parenthood, noting that her phone and social media accounts had been blowing up since the afternoon announcement.Women are saying, Im going to do everything I can, she added.But pointing out the 10 Senate Democrats facing re-election in states Mr. Trump carried, Republicans said a confirmation vote before the election would force senators in some of these states to choose between liberals and more Trump-friendly voters. Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, a Republican, invoked Mr. Trumps first pick for the court, Justice Neil M. GorsuchI would suspect if we vote before Election Day and we have a Gorsuch-like nominee, man or woman, I think some of them will wind up voting for that nominee, Mr. Blunt predicted of imperiled Democratic senators.But Mr. Begala said doing so would be political malpractice.I dont think any Democrat is going to go along with a Trump appointee to the Supreme Court, he said. Not if he or she wants to raise any money or have any volunteers.Despite pressure from Senate colleagues and liberal activists during Justice Gorsuchs confirmation, three Democrats who are up for re-election in states Mr. Trump carried voted to confirm the justice: Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia.Mr. Manchin was noncommittal on Wednesday, saying in a written statement that he looked forward to meeting with and evaluating the qualifications of whoever President Trump nominates.Ms. Heitkamp also declined to commit either way on Mr. Trumps potential nominee but did appear to leave the door open to voting yes, and indicated that she did not want to try to drag out the confirmation vote. She said she saw Justice Kennedys retirement as an opportunity for the president to nominate someone who reflects the same qualities embodied by Justice Kennedy of being fair, pragmatic, and empathetic to all.Appearing at a rally in Fargo, N.D., Wednesday night, Mr. Trump pressured her to support his eventual pick and emphasized the stakes of the Senate campaign.Justice Kennedys retirement makes the issue of Senate control one of the vital issues of our time, he said. The most important thing we can do.VideotranscripttranscriptFrom 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 ImagesThe question for Republicans, though, is if their own voters will have enough of a reason to come out if the new justice is already seated by the election.If McConnell forces through a vote in the fall, then the issue disappears for Republicans and just motivates Democrats, Mr. Murphy said.But Steven Law, a top McConnell ally who runs the Senate Leadership Fund, said that the majority leaders main focus was on filling the seat, and that Senate Democrats would feel no pressure to support the nominee if the vote was held after the election.Then you have no leverage at all, Mr. Law said.Within hours of Justice Kennedys retirement, Mr. Law and a coalition of conservative groups had begun planning an expansive campaign to pressure the red-state Democrats who could determine control of the Senate.The campaign was more than a year in the planning and began almost immediately after Mr. Gorsuchs confirmation last April, which cleared the Senate, 54-45, the narrowest margin since Justice Clarence Thomass contested nomination in 1991.The Judicial Crisis Network, an organization whose sole purpose is to push for the nomination and confirmation of conservative jurists, was ready with an ad on Wednesday calling for senators to vote for Mr. Trumps nominee, whoever it is.Like they did before, extremists will lie and attack the nominee, the announcer says as pictures of Democratic senators that are favorite targets of the right flash one by one across the screen: Chuck Schumer of New York, Dianne Feinstein of California, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey, among others.With your help, America will get another star on the Supreme Court, the ad concludes.Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director for the Judicial Crisis Network, said that vulnerable Democratic senators who are thinking of voting against Mr. Trumps nominee needed to be put on notice.These are people who are up for re-election in states President Trump won, she said. Is running to the left really their best bet in those states? Im not sure it is. I know were seeing states where socialists are winning. But Im not so sure that plays well in places like Montana, Indiana and West Virginia.The political network founded by the Koch Brothers is also gearing up. Tim Phillips, president of the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, said in an interview on Wednesday that he anticipated a maximum effort.The ability to reshape the Supreme Court was one of the decisive factors in Mr. Trumps election. Conservatives, who were initially wary of a thrice-married former Democrat who once supported abortion rights, came to accept Mr. Trump in part because he took the unusual step of providing a list of people he said would be on his Supreme Court shortlist.And while the Gorsuch nomination allowed him to make good on that promise, replacing Justice Kennedy will allow him to further solidify his bond with conservatives which could prove important in keeping his base unified heading into the November elections.The biggest thing this does is set us up for a replay of 2016 from the standpoint of voter engagement, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said in an interview. In some of the Senate races where people arent so excited about the candidates, they will overlook them because they are overshadowed by Trump and the Supreme Court.On Wednesday morning, hours before Justice Kennedy announced his retirement, top leaders of the social conservative movement were already texting one another reminders to have their news releases ready in anticipation of their greatest opportunity to tilt the court rightward and potentially even overturn Roe v. Wade.Weve been waiting for this moment for 40 years, more, since 1973, said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group with an active ground game in battleground states, citing the year the court legalized abortion.But Democrats say Republicans do not fully appreciate just how determined many women will be to engage in a campaign where the fate of legal abortion could hang in the balance.The No. 1 issue that I hear about from women is their right to choose and to protect that right, said Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, whose Republican colleague, Dean Heller, is facing a difficult re-election campaign. And at stake now is this administration putting somebody on the court who is going to roll that back. | Politics |
Credit...Dan Balilty/Associated PressMarch 5, 2017JERUSALEM Israel, which has been at the forefront of research into medical marijuana and the drugs commercialization, took a major step on Sunday toward officially decriminalizing its recreational use.At a time when many American states and European countries are loosening marijuana laws, the Israeli cabinet approved a plan that would impose fines rather than criminal penalties on those caught using the drug in public.Growing and selling marijuana, which is widely used here recreationally and medicinally, would remain illegal.On the one hand, we are opening ourselves up to the future, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the cabinet. On the other hand, we understand the dangers and will try to balance the two.The decision still requires the approval of Israels Parliament, the Knesset.Until the decision on Sunday, people charged with marijuana use could face heavy fines and even incarceration, though the official policy in recent years effectively amounted to decriminalization. There were fewer than 200 arrests in 2015.About 25,000 Israelis, in a population of 8.5 million, hold permits to use medical marijuana to ease symptoms of cancer, epilepsy and other diseases, but that number is expected to grow rapidly.Under the new rules, people caught using marijuana publicly a first time would face a fine of about $270 rather than criminal charges. Fines would rise with repeated offenses, with criminal charges filed only after a fourth offense.The new rules were drafted, after much debate, by Gilad Erdan, the public security minister. The governments approval is an important step on the way to implement the new policy, which will emphasize public information and treatment instead of criminal enforcement, he said after the cabinets decision on Sunday.Israel has been active for decades in studying the use of marijuana for medical purposes, and the government and private industry have been working to turn it into a major business, including for export.ICan: Israel-Cannabis, a venture fund and technology incubator for start-ups in the medical marijuana business, praised the decision.This step, although not legitimizing use, is due to reduce the negative perception of the plant as immoral or criminal, increasing openness to its outstanding medicinal and wellness properties, Saul Kaye, a pharmacist and the funds chief executive, said in a statement. The decision will significantly increase entrepreneurship and investment into cannabis in Israel.While marijuana use has long been overlooked by the authorities in Israel, the police have continued enforcement against growers and dealers. A campaign is underway for the law to distinguish between those growing small amounts, particularly for medical purposes, and those growing it commercially. The cabinet decision on Sunday did not address that issue. | World |
Credit...James Hill for The New York TimesFeb. 15, 2014SOCHI, Russia Zbigniew Brodka of Poland won the mens 1,500-meter speedskating event here Saturday, but the continuing story at Adler Arena was the Americans baffling performances. The United States team includes world-record holders and Olympic and world champions. Yet Americans won none of the first 21 speedskating medals at the Sochi Games.For the 1,500, they tried something different by wearing their standard skin suits, but the results were similar. Brian Hansen, who finished seventh, was the top American among the four who competed. His teammate Shani Davis, the two-time gold medalist who holds the world record in the event, finished 11th. You win some, you lose some, Davis said. But I tried my best and simply wasnt good enough today. Brodka and Koen Verweij of the Netherlands had the same time in hundredths, but Brodka was the winner by three-thousandths of a second in 1 minute 45.006 seconds. Denny Morrison of Canada took the bronze.United States coaches, officials and athletes are seeking answers. Was the problem their Batman-like Olympic suits, which cost millions to engineer? A lack of confidence? Unfavorable draws? Better competition? The ice conditions? Altitude training? Or did they all eat the wrong cereal for breakfast? Its hard to say, said Joey Mantia, who finished 22nd. Obviously, we were all underperforming, and none of us were living up to the expectations of what we thought we were going to do. The chief suspect was the Mach 39 suit, which was developed in secrecy in Under Armours lab in Baltimore in a partnership with Lockheed Martin. The suit had not been used by the team in elite competition before the Olympics. Then Hansen finished ninth in the mens 1,000 meters Wednesday. The next day, the American Brittany Bowe, the world-record holder in the womens 1,000, finished eighth, one place behind her teammate Heather Richardson. We dont have any information that supports its the suits, said Ted Morris, U.S. Speedskatings executive director. No data or anything like that. But once something like that gets whispered in somebodys ear, that stuff can spread like wildfire, and it doesnt matter what the data actually shows. Although the team was granted permission to switch to the suits it used for World Cup competition, the Americans still lagged.The Netherlands has amassed 13 long-track speedskating medals, four of them gold. It looked worse because the Dutch are performing so well that it really kind of rubbed it in our faces, Matthew Kooreman, the American coach, said. The Dutch coach, Jillert Anema, said the difference between the Americans suits would translate to only tenths of a second on a lap, which would not be enough to put them on the podium. Another possible culprit and a source of infighting among the American coaches was that many skaters left Utah to prepare for Sochi at altitude in Collabo, Italy. Some officials were quick to point out that they had trained there before other successful international events and that several foreign competitors doing well in Sochi had also trained there. Still, the combination of changes across the board might have rattled some athletes, coaches said. We had something to battle that should not have been in the mix, said Nancy Swider-Peltz, a four-time Olympian who is Hansens coach. And the problem was Collabo. And we came from low land, and three weeks before an Olympics, you dont make that drastic of a change, changing altitude, changing ice, changing wind, changing coldness, you cant feel yourself, throwing in a new skin, throwing in some other factors that should not have been thrown in. The ice was cited as another factor.The ice is very different from what were used to in Salt Lake City, said Anna Ringsred, who was 26th in the womens 3,000 meters last Sunday. A lot of us, myself included, get used to the fast ice and we train on fast ice all the time and its really quite different when you come to slower ice like this. U.S. Speedskating officials said they planned an extensive review of their Sochi performance. But perhaps no one is more disappointed than athletes like Davis, who was eighth in the 1,000. At the end of the day, the paper says Im eighth and the paper says Im 11th, said Davis, 31, probably in his final Olympics. It doesnt say because of a suit or because of a lack of confidence or whatever you had to deal with. It just says eighth and 11th. Thats what I have to live with for the rest of my life. | Sports |
Asia Pacific|Car Slams Into Children Crossing Road in China, Killing 5https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/22/world/asia/china-car-hits-kills-children.htmlNov. 22, 2018HONG KONG Five children were killed on Thursday when a car veered across the centerline of a street and slammed into a group of students and adults in a city in northeastern China, according to Chinese state news media reports.China Central Television reported that in addition to the five killed, 16 children and two adults were also injured. A graphic video that circulated on social media sites showed several children lying sprawled on the road after the car plowed through them.The driver, surnamed Han, did not stop and was arrested two hours later in a rural area outside the city, Huludao, in Liaoning Province Beijing Youth Daily reported. The newspaper published photos online showing police officers surrounding Mr. Han.Peoples Daily, a state-run newspaper, said the 29-year-old suspect was unemployed and had recently been having marital conflicts. It said he drove his car into random targets.The video showed the children had largely crossed to the far side of the road and traffic, which was briefly halted to make way for them, was already opening up again when the approaching car, a black Audi, veered into the oncoming lane and hit them.Many online commenters speculated that it was another case of baofu shehui, or taking revenge on society, a phrase used to describe the motives of people who carry out attacks on random civilians. Such violence is often directed at schoolchildren and usually carried out by individual attackers armed with knives.Last month, 14 kindergartners were slashed by a woman in the southwestern city of Chongqing. In June, two children were killed in a knife attack in Shanghai, and an attacker killed nine students outside a middle school in Shaanxi Province in April.Experts say several factors contribute to such violence, including mental health issues and a desire to retaliate against others over personal problems. | World |
Congressional MEMOThe 116th Congress has lurched through a government shutdown, the impeachment and trial of a president, and the deadliest pandemic in a century.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York TimesJan. 2, 2021WASHINGTON It began with a pair of firsts, one hopeful and one grim: The most diverse Congress in the nations history was sworn in two years ago during the longest government shutdown.And on Sunday, the 116th Congress will end much as it began filled with anticipation yet bitterly divided having lurched through a cycle of once-in-a-generation moments packed into two years under President Trump. The shuttering of the government for more than a month. The impeachment and trial of a president. The deadliest pandemic in a century and a multitrillion-dollar federal response. A Supreme Court confirmation rushed through in the final weeks of the election.We have kind of gone from crisis to crisis, havent we? said Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, who is participating in a coronavirus vaccine trial in part to signal to his constituents that it would be safe to receive one. Obviously, Covid is the biggest issue.Even with a few legislative accomplishments among them, an overhaul of the North American trade agreement, enactment of landmark land conservation legislation and trillions of dollars in emergency economic aid to address the pandemic partisan gridlock forced lawmakers to punt on their hopes that this Congress could be the one to do difficult things. The one that could alter a broken immigration system, overhaul policing and address gun violence and expand health care access and make it affordable.Still, Congress made history of a different kind, ushering in a new era of governing through technology during the pandemic, with the House allowing proxy voting and both chambers adjusting to hearings and negotiations over Zoom.Here are some of the moments that defined the 116th Congress.Swearing In During a ShutdownWith one of the largest classes of newly elected lawmakers in congressional history, Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California became the first person in more than 60 years to reclaim the speakership after having lost it, recovering her distinction as the first woman to hold the post. The chamber where she assumed power better reflected the country in its diversity and youth. House rules were changed to allow head coverings on the floor an adaptation reflecting the arrival of the first Muslim women to be sworn in and the self-titled Squad of young progressive women of color was born.ImageCredit...Erin Schaff for The New York TimesWithin hours of her election as speaker, Ms. Pelosi began calling votes on legislation to reopen government agencies that had been closed since late December 2018, as Mr. Trump demanded more money for the border wall that had been his signature campaign promise.Imagine if youre a new member, Ms. Pelosi later recalled. You come in with a government that is shut down. Then you have an active agenda.But Senate Republicans refused to consider the measure, even before it cleared the House. It set the predicate that would hold firm for most of the Congress: legislation triumphantly shepherded through by House Democrats would rarely be granted a vote on the Senate floor by Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader.ImageCredit...Leigh Vogel for The New York TimesThe shutdown ended after just over a month, with lawmakers in both parties essentially going around Mr. Trump and agreeing to a package that had far less money for the wall than he had demanded. But Mr. Trump would quickly declare a national emergency at the southwestern border, prompting months of bitter division over how to respond to his hard-line immigration policy.An Impeachment, Then an AcquittalMs. Pelosi would spend months pushing back on the notion of impeachment before changing course after the president was accused of wrongdoing.But in late August, an intelligence whistle-blower revealed that during a half-hour phone call in July, Mr. Trump had pressured Ukraines leader to investigate President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., just as the president was withholding millions of dollars in military assistance for the country.Democrats who had resisted impeaching Mr. Trump swung into action, beginning five months of hearings and investigations that would yield additional details about Mr. Trumps pressure campaign on Ukraine and growing calls for his removal. Even as they struck compromises on the overhaul of the North American Free Trade Agreement and a budget agreement, by Christmas, the House had voted to charge Mr. Trump with high crimes and misdemeanors, with Republicans unanimously opposed. It was the third impeachment of an American president in history.No Constitution can protect us if right doesnt matter anymore, and you know you cant trust this president to do whats right for this country, Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the lead impeachment manager for House Democrats, warned during the Senate trial that followed. You can trust he will do whats right for Donald Trump.ImageCredit...Erin Schaff/The New York TimesImageCredit...Erin Schaff/The New York TimesThe outcome in the Senate was never in doubt, as most Republicans including those who conceded the phone call was not as perfect as the president claimed it to be quickly concluded that his actions did not warrant his removal.Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, the lone Republican to find Mr. Trump guilty of abuse of power, deemed the impeachment trial among the moments of great consequence" during his first two years in Congress.There are times when you stand alone those are the moments that are most poignant and in some respects, most revealing to yourself about whether you have the courage of your conviction, he said in an interview. He did not specify whether he was referring to impeachment.Surreal Days in a PandemicEven as senators were spending hours each day sequestered in the chamber, top congressional leaders were beginning to conduct hearings on the spread of the novel coronavirus in China.Within a month of Mr. Trumps acquittal, the House approved what would be the first in a series of relief packages, culminating in the largest stimulus measures in modern American history.As the pandemic spread to the Capitol, lawmakers raced to complete a $2.2 trillion stimulus law, shuttling through darkened hallways devoid of tourists and staff members as states and cities forced businesses and institutions to close their doors in efforts to slow the spread of the virus.ImageCredit...Erin Scott for The New York TimesSurreal is a good way to describe it, said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and one of the lawmakers who spent days huddled in a Senate office building negotiating the creation of relief programs. When youve been in public service, sometimes you think youve seen most things. This was so different.By the end of 2020, nearly 10 percent of Congress had contracted the coronavirus, temporarily hospitalizing at least two lawmakers and forcing a number of lawmakers to quarantine.Democrats moved to allow the House to vote remotely for the first time in the history of the chamber, instituting a system that would allow a lawmaker to have a colleague cast a vote for them by proxy if they were unable to travel.Race to Fill the Supreme CourtAs summer set in, the urgency of the pandemic gave way to deep paralysis on Capitol Hill driven by partisan differences. Efforts to pass another economic relief package stalled as Republicans resisted doing so and attempts to enact a federal overhaul of policing during a nationwide call for racial justice splintered as Democrats pushed for a more aggressive set of changes than Republicans were willing to consider.ImageCredit...Erin Schaff/The New York TimesBut when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in late September, Republicans were determined to quickly fill her seat before an election that could cost Mr. Trump the presidency, or them their Senate majority or both. Abandoning the position that had led them in 2016 to block President Barack Obama from filling a vacancy months before an election, Republicans rushed to push through the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, whom Mr. Trump introduced at a jubilant ceremony in the White House that was later determined to be a superspreader event, causing multiple senators to contract the virus.By the end of the 116th Congress, nearly 150 judges were confirmed to the nations highest court, circuit courts and district courts across the country young, conservative and likely to shape interpretation of the nations laws for decades. Even as some Republicans began to break with Mr. Trump in anticipation of what both parties believed would be a punishing election result for their party, they enthusiastically rallied to support his Supreme Court nominee, a payoff after years of loyalty to the president.A Stimulus Deal Almost DerailedDefying most expectations including their own House Republicans emerged with more than a dozen victories and a record 29 women in their ranks come January, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.It left Mr. Biden, who was declared the victor soon after, with a slim majority in the House and Democratic control of the Senate contingent on the outcomes of two runoff races in Georgia.The political stakes of the contests helped shift the monthslong debate over providing pandemic relief to millions of unemployed Americans, small businesses, schools and hospitals across the country, prodding leaders into negotiations over another package.Shortly after the November election, a group of moderates led by Senators Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, began work on a compromise framework and jolted both chambers into a final round of frenzied negotiations. They finally yielded a $900 billion deal that passed both chambers days before Christmas after several near-misses with the prospect of yet another government shutdown.Still, Mr. Trump threatened not to sign it, plunging the fate of the legislation into uncertainty and holding out the possibility of yet another government shutdown. Four days before the new year began, he signed it into law.I think divided government can be an opportunity, Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said. And how we take that up, how we choose to use it is up to us. | Politics |
Credit...Ken Ruinard/Anderson Independent Mail, via Associated PressDec. 7, 2015LONDON General Electric has called off a deal to sell its century-old appliance division to Electrolux of Sweden for $3.3 billion after the United States Justice Department moved to block the transaction, Electrolux said on Monday.It is the second time in recent years that General Electric has tried to sell the division, which gave birth to the washing machine, the clothes dryer and the toaster oven. The company has shed other units as it refocuses on its core industrial businesses.The all-cash deal would have combined Electroluxs Frigidaire, one of the best-known brands of refrigerators, with General Electrics stable of products, including its Monogram line of luxury appliances. The purchase would have allowed Electrolux to expand its reach in North America, one of the largest markets for home appliances.The companies agreed to the transaction in September 2014. The Justice Department sued to stop the deal in July, saying it would lead to less competition and higher prices for buyers of stoves, ovens and other kitchen appliances.We disagree with the Department of Justices narrow view on a transaction that would have benefited consumers, General Electric said on Monday. The appliances market is dynamic and highly competitive.Electrolux said on Monday in a news release that it had made extensive efforts to obtain regulatory approvals, and regrets that G.E. has terminated the agreement while the court procedure is still pending.Electrolux said reasonable settlement proposals offered to the Justice Department would have addressed competition concerns. Unfortunately, these proposals were rejected, Electrolux said.Shares of Electrolux fell 15 percent to 200 Swedish kronor, or about $23.40, in Stockholm on Monday. General Electric shares fell 0.4 percent.ImageCredit...Angela Shoemaker for The New York TimesUnder the terms of the deal, Electrolux will now have to pay General Electric a termination fee of $175 million.Electrolux said on Monday that it had also incurred transaction and preparatory costs from January to September this year of 402 million kronor. The company said it expected fourth-quarter transaction and integration costs of about 175 million kronor, and expenses of about 225 million kronor related to a loan facility.General Electric, based in Fairfield, Conn., tried to sell the appliance division seven years ago, with Electrolux and the Asian appliance manufacturers Samsung and LG among companies taking part in negotiations. But those talks fell apart with the onset of the financial crisis.The latest transaction would have been the largest ever for Electrolux, which began as a maker of vacuum cleaners in the early 1900s and expanded into home appliances in the 1920s.The unit in question, G.E. Appliances, based in Louisville, Ky., derives more than 90 percent of its revenue from North America. Its products include refrigerators, dishwashers, air-conditioners, washing machines, dryers and water heaters. The division employs about 12,000 people.Electrolux, one of the worlds biggest manufacturers of home appliances and industrial equipment, posted revenue of about $13 billion last year. G.E.s appliance and lighting divisions generated $8.4 billion in revenue in that period.Sales of major appliances in North America accounted for about 30 percent of Electroluxs revenue in 2014, the company said.The groups operations in North America have proved to be strong on its own merits, with good organic growth and a recovery in earnings during 2015, said Keith R. McLoughlin, the Electrolux president and chief executive. He added that the company had a strong presence in the U.S. under the brands Frigidaire and Electrolux, and we are confident that this position will be maintained and strengthened.Electrolux said it would continue to seek ways to expand its operations globally, including through acquisitions.Electroluxs predecessor company, Elektromekaniska, was founded in Stockholm in 1910 and introduced its first vacuum cleaner, the Lux I, two years later. | Business |
On PoliticsJan. 4, 2021Welcome back! Believe me, we are more than ready to say goodbye to 2020 right after we finish up this last bit of business down in Georgia. Its Monday, and this is your politics tip sheet. Sign up here to get On Politics in your inbox every weekday.ImageHere we are, folks. I hope you rested well over the holidays and found some time to put your news alerts on mute. (I know I did.) Four days into 2021, were still waiting to put the 2020 elections fully to bed.The candidates in Georgias two Senate runoff races are trying to eke out what seem likely to be razor-thin wins. And President Trump who still refuses to concede to Joe Biden recently urged Georgia officials to find him exactly 11,780 votes, the number hed need to reverse his loss there.And what about the rest of us? Well, as we enter the first full week of a year that was supposed to be different, well be putting up with this political circus for at least a little longer.And with that, allow me to welcome you back to On Politics! Lisa and I have each enjoyed our time off, but were excited to dive back into the maelstrom. Things will be a little different around here than they were last year: Youll still be hearing from me every morning, Monday through Friday, but we wont send you multiple emails each day (except on special occasions). Lisa will weigh in once a week with a column that will land in your inbox on Saturdays.Now, lets get caught up. In case you missed it, The Washington Post published a recording yesterday of Trumps call with Brad Raffensperger, Georgias Republican secretary of state, and Raffenspergers lawyer, in which the president vaguely threatened that Raffensperger could be prosecuted if he didnt go out and find 11,780 votes to overturn the election results in Georgia. Raffensperger, who has repeatedly stood by the results, flatly refused to help.But Trump is likely to find a more receptive audience today, when he lands in rural North Georgia for one last rally on behalf of Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, the states two Republican senators. More than three million early votes have already been cast in the states runoff elections, in which the senators are facing Democratic challengers, the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff; Election Day is tomorrow.Republicans are openly worrying about the effect that Trumps debunked claims about voting fraud will have on the election.When we spoke last month for an article, the Republican pollster Robert Cahaly told me that Trumps attacks on the credibility of the voting process could well drive down participation among his partys base.If someone believes the election wasnt legit, and that voter then asks the logical question Well, if you want my vote to count, what are you going to do differently? and Republicans dont have an answer for them, it affects their enthusiasm, Cahaly said. My question is, can the Republicans overcome that? Im not sure they can.And Trump has only seemed to double down on his claims in the past few weeks.Polls including those by Cahalys Trafalgar Group are not assuaging Republicans concerns. None of the traditional polling outfits that were used to relying on have conducted surveys ahead of these runoffs (theyre taking a break after a tough year for polling and licking their wounds), but the ones that we do have are a cause for Republicans to worry.In Washington, Trumps inability to accept his defeat has left him increasingly isolated but he still has a posse. No matter what happens tomorrow, the Senates Republican caucus will remain divided by Trumps loyalty tests, and it promises to be an ugly scene on Wednesday, when Congress will convene, one day after the Senate elections, to certify the Electoral College results.A dozen Republican senators have now said that they intend to challenge the election outcome. Thats not nearly enough to successfully overturn the results, particularly since the chambers Republican leadership has already indicated it considers Biden the rightful winner, but its enough to cause a stir.The 12 senators who have indicated they will contest the results on Wednesday are a mixed bunch, but many of them including the relatively young and staunchly pro-Trump senator from Missouri, Josh Hawley, and four lawmakers who were just sworn in yesterday after being elected to the Senate for the first time in November appear to think that their brightest days in politics are still ahead.But what about the several dozen Republican senators who arent heeding the presidents cries? With all eyes on Georgia, he has tried to make the secretary of state there into a villain but Raffensperger, with his conservative track record and his carefully calibrated statements throughout this head-spinning process, just might come out with his credentials burnished.It bears mentioning that the Republicans arent the only party with a unity problem. Whether Biden assumes office with a slim Democratic majority in both chambers or a split Congress, he will have to contend with an increasingly factious party. Immediately after the November election, with Democrats reeling from unexpected losses in down-ballot races across the country and looking ahead to a narrow majority in the House, moderates complained that they had been dragged down by Republicans attacks on left-wing figures like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and by rallying cries like defund the police. But progressives have fired back, saying that it is the left wing of the party that is carrying its most popular messages, and that moderates were the victims of their own poor campaigning.In an interview last month, when pressed, Ocasio-Cortez said she thought it was time for Nancy Pelosi to step down as speaker of the House though she added that doing so without first finding a better alternative could lead to something even worse.Yesterday Pelosi, well known as a steely steward of party unity, managed to win re-election as speaker though a few Democrats defected, and some members simply voted present. Notably, Ocasio-Cortez and other members of the left-leaning Squad backed her.By the appearance of his cabinet and staffing choices, Biden seems to be going just about all-in on a moderate approach: He has filled key White House staff positions with establishment Democratic figures. Many have spent some or all of the past four years in high-powered lobbying positions, and critics on the left have begun to complain audibly that while he has focused on racial and gender diversity in his appointments, he hasnt yet given a position with considerable power to a leader on the partys left wing.Still, Democrats of all stripes agree that those intraparty debates wont be nearly as relevant if the runoffs dont go their way in Georgia.So for at least for another couple days, thats where we find ourselves: bating our breath, waiting for those final returns to come in, before 2020 really vanishes into the rearview at last.Photo of the dayImageCredit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesSpeaker Nancy Pelosi was re-elected on the opening day of the 117th Congress.Could youth turnout tip the scales in Georgia?Young people have not typically been the most reliable voters to turn out, especially in runoffs and other special elections.But Democratic organizers in Georgia heartened by the surge in voter turnout across the board in November that helped Biden flip the state blue are now placing a big bet on these voters. And college Republican groups are fighting vigorously, too.Turnout organizations have used an increasingly diverse array of tech tools to reach these voters, even as the surging pandemic puts a damper on in-person gatherings: TikTok videos, poetry readings, drive-in events with celebrities, phone-banking competitions and even some GOTV efforts using the dating app Tinder.As our correspondent Rick Rojas reports from Atlanta in a new article, few groups have been as vigorously pursued as young voters.And thats saying something: Hundreds of millions of dollars have been poured into the race on each side, making these among the costliest Senate campaigns in history.And the work has shown results. More than 75,000 new voters have registered ahead of the runoffs, as Rick reports, with more than half of them under 35.Indeed, young people on both sides of the aisle have found themselves particularly energized by the countrys spotlight on Georgia politics. I think that young voters have felt so disconnected from politics and their voice was not heard, Bryson Henriott, a University of Georgia student and the political director for the schools College Republicans chapter, told Rick. Theyre the ones door-knocking for these campaigns, they are the ones on social media. Now that young people feel like they have a voice in politics, theyre going to stay focused.On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is there anything you think were missing? Anything you want to see more of? Wed love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected]. | Politics |
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/13/science/space/blue-origin-crew-new-shephard.htmlOct. 13, 2021, 6:01 a.m. ETOct. 13, 2021, 6:01 a.m. ETCredit...Blue Origin, via Associated PressThree other passengers will join Mr. Shatner on Wednesdays flight:Audrey Powers, a Blue Origin vice president who oversees New Shepard flight operations; like Mr. Shatner, she did not have to pay for her seat.Chris Boshuizen, a co-founder of Planet Labs, a company that builds small satellites, also known as CubeSats, that are used by assorted clients for monitoring Earth from orbit.Glen de Vries, a chief executive and co-founder of Medidata Solutions, a company that built software for clinical trials.Fortunately for all three, none will be wearing a red Starfleet uniform during the flight.Dr. Boshuizen or Mr. de Vries are the second and third paying passengers to fly on a Blue Origin flight. The first was Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old man from the Netherlands. The company has not said how much any of these customers paid for their seats on the flights.As ticket-purchasing customers, they are something like early investors in an industry executives hope will one day be cheap enough for a broader swath of the public to take advantage of.Ms. Powers all but flew to space on New Shepard in April, when she and three other company executives were stand-in astronauts for Blue Origins 15th flight of the New Shepard rocket. She and her colleagues essentially performed a dress rehearsal for the missions with astronauts aboard. The executives went through all the motions of getting ready for a launch climbing up the rocket tower, boarding the capsule, closing its hatch and testing out its communications system until about 15 minutes before liftoff when they exited the capsule and left the pad. | science |
TrilobitesCredit...Photographs from Getty ImagesMarch 16, 2017Ask anyone what the nose does, and the reply will most likely be related to smell. We appreciate our noses because they help us experience flowers and fresh-baked cookies.In fact, our honkers have another, more important function: They warm and humidify the air we breathe, helping prevent illness and damage in our airways and lungs. Because of this, scientists have long suspected that nose shape evolved partly in response to local climate conditions. In cold, dry climates, natural selection may have favored noses that were better at heating and moisturizing air.A team led by scientists at Pennsylvania State University has found more evidence of the relationship between the noses we have now and the climates where our ancestors lived.In a study published in PLOS Genetics on Thursday, the researchers found that nostril width differed significantly between populations from different regions around the world. Moreover, the higher the temperature and absolute humidity of the region, the wider the nostril, the researchers found, suggesting that climate very well may have played a part in shaping our sniffers.Physical traits that are in direct contact with the environment often undergo natural selection and evolve faster, said Arslan Zaidi, a postdoctoral scholar in genetics at Penn State and an author of the paper. This is one of the reasons why we looked at nose shape.All in all, Dr. Zaidi and his colleagues measured seven nose traits, including the noses height, protrusion and nostril width, along with skin pigmentation and overall height in men and women whose parents were born in regions that corresponded with their genetic ancestry. They looked at four regions West Africa, East Asia, Northern Europe and South Asia with at least 40 participants in each group.We selected these to maximize the distance across populations, Dr. Zaidi said, adding that his team wants to sample more groups in future research.Between the groups in this study, only nostril width and skin pigmentation showed greater differences than would be expected because of chance accumulations of genetic mutations.Over all, people whose parents and ancestors came from warm, humid climates tended to have wider nostrils, whereas those from cold, dry climates tended to have narrower ones. Correlations between nostril width and climate were strongest for Northern Europeans, the researchers found, suggesting that cold, dry climates in particular may have favored people with narrower nostrils.These findings align with those of previous studies of the skull, which have shown that narrower internal nasal inlets tend to be more efficient at warming and humidifying air, said Katerina Harvati, director of the paleoanthropology department at the University of Tbingen in Germany, who was not involved in this study.Dr. Zaidi and his colleagues also demonstrated that nose shape is a heritable trait. They did this by showing a relationship between shared genes and similarities in nose shape in large groups of unrelated people.This is important because natural selection can act only on characteristics that can be passed from one generation to the next, said Todd Yokley, a biological anthropologist at the Metropolitan State University of Denver, who did not participate in the study.The fact that nose shape is subject to natural selection and showed evidence of varying with climate paints a convincing picture that climate adaptation played some role in the evolution of nostril width, Dr. Zaidi said.He added, however, that nostril width does not seem to correlate with climate as closely as skin pigmentation does. That may indicate that other factors are involved in what kinds of noses are passed down, he said, such as cultural differences in what is considered an attractive nose or not.Its also important to note that less than 15 percent of genetic variation in humans can be attributed to differences between people from different continents, Dr. Zaidi said.In actuality, the genes that differ because of geographic origin, such as those affecting skin color, hair texture and nose shape, are the rare exception, rather than the rule.People are more similar than they are different. What this research does is offer people a view of why were different, he said. Theres an evolutionary history to it that, I think, kind of demystifies the concept of race.Studying how certain traits evolved as environmental adaptations that may no longer be relevant could also help us understand disease risk today, Dr. Zaidi said.We know there are variable risks of respiratory diseases across different populations in the U.S., he said. Can we find an explanation for that in morphology? | science |
Tank Nothing Wrong with Offset Using Term 'Queer' 1/22/2018 TMZ.com Tank is solidly behind Migos rapper Offset for using the term "Queer" on a track, saying the word is not always a slur against gay people. We got Tank Sunday at LAX, and he bristled at the criticism over the track "Boss Life," which features Offset, saying the word is sometimes used in the rap game for people who aren't cool. Fact is ... if you survey people on the word it's safe to say most would tell you it's a pejorative term against gay people. That's certainly the way Kanye West felt 13 years ago when he appeared on MTV. | Entertainment |
Dec. 14, 2015MADRID Portugal faces fresh concerns relating to one of its smaller banks after shares in Banif tumbled Monday amid concerns about its ability to pay back loans it received in a bailout of the countrys banking sector.Banif was one of the smaller banks to receive emergency lending as part of the international bailout of 78 billion euros, or $85.7 billion, that Portugal negotiated in 2011. Banifs ability to repay its share of the bailout has been under particular scrutiny since July, when the European Commission, the competition authority of the European Union, announced that it was investigating whether the subsequent restructuring of Banif included what amounted to illegal state subsidies.Banifs problems provide an early test for the Socialist government of Prime Minister Antnio Costa, who took office last month after a general election that failed to produce a clear-cut winner. Mr. Costa persuaded the Communists and other left-wing parties to form a parliamentary alliance to oust the center-right coalition government that had overseen Portugals three-year bailout program.Mr. Costas administration was already facing another banking headache: how to sell Novo Banco, an institution incorporating the healthy assets of Banco Esprito Santo, which required a 4.9 billion state-led bailout in 2014.The auction of Novo Banco is meant to complete Portugals restructuring and rescue of Banco Esprito Santo, which collapsed after it was forced to disclose unsustainable losses linked to loans it had made to other companies in the Esprito Santo family business empire.As part of the bailout, the Portuguese authorities broke up Banco Esprito Santo and transferred its healthy assets to a new entity, Novo Banco. The plan was to then auction Novo Banco to private investors and to recover as much of the cost of the bailout as possible, but that sale has been delayed.Banif could now be subjected to a similar restructuring, with its toxic assets split off from the rest of the bank, according to some Portuguese news reports, The share price of Banif fell about 35 percent on Monday.Banif issued a statement on Monday in which it denied reports that the government was struggling to prevent the banks collapse. Instead, Banif said, the government plans to sell its 60 percent stake in the bank to a strategic investor.The board reaffirms the ongoing open and competitive process of selling the states stake in Banif, in which several international investors are involved, Banif said in the statement.Banif, whose full name is Banco Internacional do Funchal, reported a net loss of 295 million last year, following a loss of 470 million in 2013. The government injected 1.1 billion of fresh capital into Banif in 2013 to help the bank meet minimum capital requirements.The bank was founded in Funchal, the capital city of Madeira. It has a strong presence there, as well as in the Azores and among Portuguese migrant communities in countries including Canada and the United States.Miguel Albuquerque, the head of Madeiras regional government, said on Monday that he had spoken to Mr. Costa and had received assurances that the banks deposits would be safeguarded. News reports about an imminent collapse of the bank dont correspond to reality, Mr. Albuquerque said.Portugal returned to growth after competing its bailout program on schedule in 2014. Last week, Fitch Ratings issued a relatively positive report about the Portuguese banking sector, despite the delays in selling Novo Banco.Portugals banks are stabilizing, supported by a mildly favorable, but fragile, operating environment, Fitch said. Downside sector risks are, in our view, limited but it will take time before the banks significantly improve their stand-alone financial strength and political uncertainties could dampen reforms to boost investment and growth. | Business |
Business|Stocks Fall More Than 2 Percent in Chinahttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/29/business/international/stocks-fall-more-than-2-percent-in-china.htmlDec. 28, 2015SHANGHAI Chinese stocks tumbled more than 2 percent on Monday, their biggest loss in a month, as a looming overhaul of the way companies will be listed and weak figures for industrial profit weighed on the market.The Shanghai composite index lost 2.6 percent in its biggest one-day percentage fall since Nov 27.Investors are concerned about the effect of imminent changes to the system for initial public offerings, which could involve a move from an approval-based system toward an American-style registration system, potentially increasing the supply of shares.In a major step toward a market overhaul, the Chinese legislature, the National Peoples Congress, approved on Sunday a proposal to change the I.P.O. system, authorizing the government to begin the changes as early as March.The I.P.O. reform is market negative because it puts pressure on stock valuations, said Gu Yongtao, strategist at the Cinda Securities Company. The changes would make listings much easier, potentially reducing the need for backdoor listings, in which a company enters the stock market by taking over an already-listed company, he added.Investors also drew little solace from government figures for November, released on Sunday. They showed a sixth consecutive month of decline in industrial companies profit. Sentiment was also soured by a slump in so-called B shares stocks traded in Shanghai and Shenzhen but denominated in hard currencies.The China Securities Regulatory Commission began speaking in early 2014 of moving away from its current approval-based system seen as distorting the I.P.O. market and encouraging official corruption to a registration system, in which the market decides who gets to list and for how much. | Business |
Science|Letters to the Editorhttps://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/science/letters-to-the-editor.htmlReactionsMarch 28, 2016Nuclear PowerShort-Term ThinkingTO THE EDITOR:Re Amid a Graying Fleet of Nuclear Plants, a Hunt for Solutions, (March 22): The fading of enthusiasm for nuclear power in the United States is part of the pattern of our abysmal failure to address climate change. It is a function of markets that are distorted to reward the very short term and to neglect indirect costs. The biggest competitor to nuclear, and to unsubsidized wind and solar, is natural gas. Cheap now, but costly in greenhouse gases emitted. While some regions are finally getting the message, providing potential subsidies to keep their nuclear units running, it is far from adequate.Theodore M. Besmann Columbia, S.C.The writer is a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of South Carolina.AppendicitisMerits of AntibioticsTO THE EDITOR: Re A Choice for Treating Appendicitis, March 22: As a Hospital Corpsman in the Navy in 1945, I was already aware of the use of antibiotics in the treatment of appendicitis. If a Corpsman had the responsibility of treating a person with appendicitis while out at sea, it was preferable to use penicillin (available at that time to the armed forces) and local freezing rather than attempt to do an operation for which we were inadequately prepared.Dr. Sheldon Lichtblau, Fort Lee, N.J.TO THE EDITOR:I had an intelligent patient in my office, just yesterday, who related that his appendix had ruptured last September, while his providers had put him on antibiotics, as they watched and waited. He volunteered that, if he had not been able to reach the hospital rapidly after his symptoms suddenly took a turn for the worse, he may have died. Before CT scans and M.R.I.s, before antibiotics, surgeons knew, not to let the sun set on an acute abdomen and that, if the surgical pathology report did not come back negative for appendicitis 5-10 percent of the time (upon which, todays plaintiffs lawyers would pounce), the surgeon was underoperating. This meant that the surgeon was, therefore, missing life-threatening cases of true appendicitis. Contrary to Ms. Brodys contention, this was not a matter of surgeons greed, it was a matter of saving lives.Barry Miles Belgorod, M.D.New YorkParrotsA Special BirdTO THE EDITOR:Re Parrots Are a Lot More Than Pretty Bird, (March 22): Having lived in Venezuela for many years, I had close contact with these uniquely beautiful creatures. A baby parrot I brought up after it fell from the nest was bilingual and loved only me and greeted me with outspoken affection: Hola and then Goodbye when I left; in short, imprint marked our relationship. It would fly in and out of its large cage and one day did not return. I chose to think it had found a mate that surpassed me.Mara Arreaza-CoyleRockford, Ill. | science |
Credit...Pool photo by Nyein Chan NaingApril 5, 2016YANGON, Myanmar Myanmars democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, foiled by military leaders in her bid to become president, would become state counselor under a measure approved on Tuesday by Parliaments lower house. The newly created role could give her authority exceeding the presidents.Military members of Parliament denounced the measure as an unconstitutional power grab, stood up in the chamber in protest and boycotted the vote.The measure, approved last week by Parliaments upper house, will now go to President Htin Kyaw for his signature. The president is a close ally of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi whom she chose for the job.While campaigning before elections in November, she pledged to be above the president if her party, the National League for Democracy, was victorious. It swept the elections and now controls both houses of Parliament with large majorities.The military-drafted Constitution bars Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace laureate, from becoming president because her children are British citizens.VideotranscripttranscriptChina and Myanmar Ease RelationsChinas foreign minster, Wang Yi, met with Myanmars foreign minister, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, in Naypyidaw to congratulate Myanmar's new government and to build better relations.ASSOCIATED PRESS AP TELEVISION - AP CLIENTS ONLY // Naypyitaw - 5 April 2016 // SOUNDBITE (Burmese) Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmars new Foreign Minister: The reason the minister comes to Myanmar is to congratulate the new government and we talked about building better relations between our two countries, thats all. We did not discuss in detail any other matters. // SOUNDBITE (Burmese) Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmars new Foreign Minister: I havent reviewed all the contracts and projects from the previous government but I plan to let people know about what we do with it. // REUTERS Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar - April 5, 2016 // Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi shaking hands with Myanmars Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi, posing for photos // SOUNDBITE (Chinese) Wang Yi, Chinese Foreign Minister: Ive come to send out a very clear signal to the international community that China is pleased to stand by Myanmar and continue to be a good neighbor, a good friend and a good partner of Myanmar after it has opened a new page in its annuals.Chinas foreign minster, Wang Yi, met with Myanmars foreign minister, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, in Naypyidaw to congratulate Myanmar's new government and to build better relations.CreditCredit...Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesThe position of state counselor would allow her to coordinate the activities of Parliament and the executive branch. She also holds the positions of minister of the presidents office and foreign minister.Last week, she took on two more ministerial positions education and energy but she gave up those posts this week.The combination of jobs means that she will oversee the presidents office, determine foreign policy and coordinate decision-making between the executive branch and parliamentary leaders. It is unclear what responsibilities that will leave for the president.U Yan Myo Thein, a political commentator in Yangon, the countrys major city, said that it was not surprising Ms. Aung San Suu Kyis party and the military would clash but that he had not expected a dispute so soon. He said it could jeopardize relations between the military and civilian leaders in the coming years.But U Tun Tun Hein, a National League for Democracy parliamentary leader and chairman of the lower houses bill drafting committee, played down the disagreement.I dont see the discussion and debate from the bill as a problem between the N.L.D. and the military, he said. It is the beginning of democracy in practice. There will be agreement and disagreement.U Kyaw Win, a Yangon writer, said that he was disappointed by the dispute and that he feared it could slow progress in reducing the militarys role in politics.How could we hold dialogue with the military with this tension? he asked. Politicians should maneuver strategically in dealing with the military, since we cant send them back to the barracks overnight.The military, known as the Tatmadaw, ruled the country for more than half a century, and only in the last few years has it allowed democracy to emerge.The military dictatorship kept Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for 15 years and ensured that she could not serve as president by including the constitutional prohibition effectively disqualifying her.The Constitution gives the military a quarter of the seats in Parliament and assigns it the role of protecting the Constitution.Col. Aung Thiha, one of the military members of the lower house, objected to the bill giving Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi new authority, in part because it identified her by name.The bill goes against separation of powers and violates the Constitution, he said. Although this is a multiparty system, the bill is about a party leader. If our Tatmadaws voices are not considered and accepted, we wont join in voting on the bill.The former president, U Thein Sein, who stepped down last week after paving the way for the historic change in power, shaved his head, put on a robe and became a monk on Monday for five days, according to the Ministry of Information. It is common in Myanmar for Buddhists to enter a monastery for short periods. | World |
Credit...Associated PressMarch 12, 2017ISTANBUL Turkeys quarrel with Europe worsened over the weekend after the Turkish president accused the Dutch government of Nazism, and Turkish politicians were barred or disinvited from events in two European countries, amid tensions ahead of a tight referendum on a new Turkish Constitution.Having criticized German officials for barring their Turkish counterparts from campaign events this month, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan turned his ire on the Netherlands after the Dutch stopped the Turkish foreign minister from landing there for a rally on Saturday, and then escorted the Turkish family minister out of the country early on Sunday, citing risks to public order and security.It was an unusually strong reaction from the Dutch, who have generally taken an open stance toward diverse points of view, but who are in the midst of an election campaign in which immigration and integration are major topics.When those incidents began, I said those are fascistic measures, Mr. Erdogan said in a speech on Sunday afternoon. I said Nazism had risen from the dead. And then I added: I thought Nazism was over, but I was wrong.The anti-Dutch remarks from Turkey inflamed tensions among the Turkish community in the Netherlands, who protested in Rotterdam until the early hours of Sunday, when they were dispersed by police officers wielding batons and water cannons. The police arrested 12 people, and seven were injured, including a policeman, whose hand was broken.Though Turkish law technically bars the practice, Turkish ministers are touring Europe to persuade the Continents sizable Turkish diaspora to vote yes to an expansion of Mr. Erdogans powers, amid fears that the no campaign may hold the edge in the April referendum.But this campaign has collided with closely fought local elections in the Netherlands and France, where right-wing politicians have sought political capital from stoking tensions with the Turks. The push for votes also comes at a time of increased European alarm over Turkeys democratic backslide and rising concerns over immigration and integration.The Dutch government said it refused to allow the Turkish foreign ministers plane to land after the Turkish government publicly called on Dutch nationals of Turkish origin to turn out in great numbers.The two countries were negotiating over finding a smaller venue like the Turkish Consulate to hold the meeting, but before these talks had been concluded, Turkey publicly threatened the Netherlands with sanctions making a reasonable compromise impossible, the Dutch Foreign Ministry said.Elsewhere in Europe, the Danish prime minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, canceled a meeting with his Turkish counterpart, Binali Yildirim, in protest of Turkeys rhetorical attacks.In Sweden, a lawmaker from Mr. Erdogans party, Mehdi Eker, rearranged a campaign event after the meetings initial hosts backed out for safety reasons.In France, two right-wing candidates, Franois Fillon and Marine Le Pen, criticized the decision to allow the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, to proceed with a rally in France.Switzerland and Austria have previously made it clear that Mr. Erdogans campaign is unwelcome there.In the Netherlands, both the conservative prime minister, Mark Rutte, and his far-right opponent, Geert Wilders, hoped to benefit from the dispute, though it was not immediately clear if either would see appreciable gains. The election is on Wednesday, and while it was Mr. Wilders who first elevated the issue publicly, Mr. Rutte could get credit for barring the Turkish ministers.Rutte now has premier bonus, said Bianca Pander, a political strategist at BKB, which works on campaign strategy, referring to his status as prime minister. He can now show what leadership means.ImageCredit...Associated PressHe is also benefiting from nearly constant news media coverage on the issue. Rutte is in the picture now: Hes on every TV show, and on every newspaper, Ms. Pander said.Mr. Rutte said the pejoratives leveled at the Dutch were bizarre and that the Turkish republic is moving in the wrong direction for a democracy.In response, Mr. Erdogan accused the center-right Dutch government of playing to a domestic audience by blocking his ministers. Holland, if you are sacrificing Turkey-Holland relations because of the election on Wednesday, you will pay the price, Mr. Erdogan said Sunday.Inside Turkey, Mr. Erdogan, too, was accused of trying to curry favor with the countrys voters. With the referendum result in doubt, some of the presidents critics argued that he was manufacturing fights with Europe to win the support of nationalists in Turkey who were undecided about whether to back the expansion of his mandate.Turkish foreign policy today whatever it is, wherever it is, from Syria all the way to the Netherlands and Germany is related to the domestic political agenda, said Cengiz Candar, a veteran Turkish columnist and academic.There is no Turkish foreign policy now, Mr. Candar added in a telephone interview. Turkish foreign policy is related to Mr. Erdogans referendum campaign.But others supported Mr. Erdogans stance. The leader of the main Turkish opposition party, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who is against the proposed Constitution, called on Mr. Erdogan to suspend relations with the Netherlands. A small crowd of pro-Erdogan protesters gathered outside the Dutch Consulate in Istanbul, while an unknown intruder briefly managed to replace the consulates Dutch flag with a Turkish one.In a province west of the city, another crowd of protesters squeezed a series of oranges, in a theatrical gesture apparently intended to insult the Dutch, whose national color is orange.Arriving back in Turkey after her deportation, the Turkish family minister, Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya, accused the Netherlands of hypocrisy for claiming to stand up for human rights while restricting her own. We faced a very inhumane, unethical treatment, she said at Istanbuls main airport, according to Anadolu Agency, a state-run news wire. We had a really very painful night in Holland, which talks about democracy, freedoms, freedom of speech.In addition to targeting wavering members of Mr. Erdogans own party, some analysts said the Turkish governments movements in Europe were particularly aimed at supporters of the countrys largest nationalist movement, the Nationalist Movement Party, which is known in Turkey as the M.H.P.The M.H.P. has traditionally been wary of Mr. Erdogan, but its leadership now supports giving him more power, in the private expectation that its own cadres will subsequently be rewarded with more influence.While an estimated three million German residents are of Turkish origin, as well as about 400,000 Dutch residents, the number of people in Germany and the Netherlands who are eligible to vote in the Turkish elections is far lower, said Alexander Clarkson, a specialist on the Turkish diaspora at Kings College London. Mr. Erdogans recent gestures were therefore primarily targeted at the M.H.P.s rank and file in Turkey, many of whom are skeptical of their leaderships alliance with Mr. Erdogan, Mr. Clarkson said.The audience isnt really the diaspora; the audience is at home, Mr. Clarkson said of the governments stance toward the Netherlands and Germany.The heated language helps achieve this goal, Mr. Clarkson said, since it enables Erdogan and the A.K.P. to say: We are out there protecting the rights of Turks abroad. The A.K.P. is an acronym for Mr. Erdogans group, the Justice and Development Party.Mr. Erdogan was accused of hypocrisy for criticizing Europes perceived authoritarianism while overseeing a sweeping crackdown on dissent in his country. Since a failed coup in July, Mr. Erdogans government has ruled mostly by decree, allowing it to suspend or fire more than 120,000 government employees, and arrest an estimated 45,000 people suspected of being dissidents or rebels. The detainees come from a broad section of public life and include soldiers, police officers, teachers, judges, academics, journalists and lawmakers.He is the president of a country, Mr. Candar said of Mr. Erdogan, where more than 150 journalists, op-ed writers, columnists, opinion makers are in prison. And the leaders of the third-largest caucus in the Turkish Parliament as well as 12 other members of Parliament who belong to it are also in prison.Turkey, Mr. Candar argued, has transformed into a republic of fear. | World |
Credit...Tom Brenner/The New York TimesJune 6, 2018WASHINGTON Students, parents and educators urged the federal officials charged with preventing the next school shooting to pour more mental health resources and school support staff into the nations elementary and secondary schools not more guns.The first public forum of the federal commission on school safety, convened by President Trump after the February school shooting in Parkland, Fla., drew dozens of speakers from across the country to the Department of Education on Wednesday. But neither Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, the commissions chairwoman, nor the other three cabinet secretaries appointed to the panel were in attendance.On Tuesday, Ms. DeVos told senators that the commission would not wade into the gun control debate, but panel officials said they would follow Mr. Trumps order to examine age restrictions on some weapons.Alessia Modjarrad, a recent graduate of a Montgomery County, Md., high school, criticized what she called the commissions complicit stance on the role of guns in school safety.I dont want to be scared. I dont want to think that at any moment someone with a gun could walk in and hurt us all, Ms. Modjarrad said. Please consider the possibilities that guns are the most important aspect of the purview of this commission.The speakers demands largely echoed the responses that liberal advocacy groups have pointed to since the Feb. 14 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School: more anti-violence programs, more mental health resources and better coordination between school and law enforcement officials in trying to identify at-risk students.But the hearing provided a platform for voices from outside Washington who have dealt directly with violence inside and outside school buildings. They offered insight into the most divisive issues facing the commission: guns and the increased presence of law enforcement in schools.Advocates and educators have worried that the Trump administrations push toward hardening schools with weapons and law enforcement officers will worsen outcomes for minority students, who already are arrested at school at higher rates than their white peers. According to the Education Departments most recent civil rights data, black students were 15 percent of all students in the 2015-16 school year but accounted for 31 percent of arrests or referrals to police, a disparity that had widened by five percentage points since 2013-14.Amina Henderson-Redwan, a 20-year-old with Voices of Youth in Chicago Education, urged the commission to keep students like her in mind. She has struggled with mental illness, was arrested at school after having an anxiety attack and had her head pushed into a chalkboard by a security guard. She lost her best friend to gun violence in February.Ms. Henderson-Redwan said that while she appreciated Mr. Trumps commission, she feared that it would look to solutions like arming staff and increasing law enforcement, which would exacerbate experiences like hers.For students like us, this is not what safety means, Ms. Henderson-Redwan said. Safety means to get the root causes of a students misbehavior.In Georgia, minority students are not emotionally safe in the presence of school police, said Marlyn Tillman, a board member of the suburban Atlanta parent group Gwinnett Stopp. In Gwinnett County public schools, she said, the district had a contact quota for school security officers. And she said she had personally heard troubling statements about students of color in diversity trainings with officers.While shootings at schools are primarily committed by white students at white schools, schools with a large black and brown population get the brunt of school police and buildings that resemble and function like prisons, Ms. Tillman said. There is no evidence that police make schools safer.But Audrae Erickson, who introduced herself only as the parent of three school-age children, asked the commission to ensure that school security officers, who sometimes have condensed schedules, are stationed in buildings five days a week so they are not leaving our students vulnerable if a tragedy should unfold on their day off.In addition to full police coverage of schools, Ms. Erickson suggested measures such as school-based tip lines, school safety plans and unannounced, random backpack checks, as well as metal detector screenings.Abbey Clements, a former teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., the site of one of the most horrific school shootings in history, told the commission how she was preparing to make snowflakes for a Parent Teacher Association luncheon on Dec. 14, 2012, when she heard a crash that she thought was falling folding chairs. A gunman had shot through the schools door and went on to murder 20 children and six adults with a military-style assault rifle.I would like to make something perfectly clear: Had school employees been carrying guns at Sandy Hook school, it would not have made us safer, our children safer, Ms. Clements said.Ms. Clements said she and other teachers could not fathom navigating the bullets and chaos to engage a gunman.A wide-ranging survey of nearly 400 school police officers published by Education Week this week found that one in five officers said their school was not prepared for a gunman.Trained, armed resource officers arent even proven to be effective during school shootings, and their only job is to protect, Ms. Clements said. This is not the movies. This is school. | Politics |
VideotranscripttranscriptTrump and Cruz: Friends? Enemies? Frenemies?Legislation by Senator Ted Cruz countering the Trump administrations policy on families at the border was the latest twist in a hot-and-cold relationship.All of us who are seeing these images of children being pulled away from moms and dads in tears, were horrified. Ted Cruz has proposed emergency legislation to end the Trump administration policy of separating families that cross the border illegally, a policy facing increasingly bipartisan criticism. This has to stop. This is not the first time Cruz and Donald Trump have found themselves at odds with each other. Donald, youre a sniveling coward. This guys a liar. There was not much that Cruz and Trump left unsaid in the lead-up to the 2016 election. Donald is a bully. Lyin Ted. Lyin Ted. Lyin Ted Cruz. This man is a pathological liar. Nobody likes him. Utterly amoral. A little bit of a maniac. Donald, relax. Go ahead, Im relaxed. Youre the basket case. It all came to a spectacular showdown at the Republican National Convention when Cruz refused to endorse Trump. Vote your conscience. Even as the crowd turned up the heat. Endorse Trump! Endorse Trump! But then, shortly before the election, he did a full 180, voicing his support for Trump after all. Since then, the epic feud has been lost in the annals of history, as Cruz aligned himself with the president. This is an all-star cabinet. You look at Judge Gorsuch. And then you look at the executive action. Or on the economic side. I think weve seen a lot of strong substance in this opening month. Fast forward to now. Cruzs main rival is no longer Donald Trump, but Representative Beto ORourke, a Democrat now gunning for Cruzs Senate seat. ORourke is breaking Texas Democratic fund-raising records and seeking to ride a wave anti-Trump furor all the way to Washington. No wall is needed. The U.S.-Mexico border has never been safer than it is today. If ORourke won in the November midterms, he would be the first Democratic senator from Texas to be elected in over two decades. Texans dont want to see a return to the high-tax, high-regulation, high-spending days of Barack Obama. And while Cruz still has a significant lead in the latest polls, the race has been closer than expected and Republicans have taken notice. So after Cruz extended a hand into the future in a radio interview with Breitbart in April Trump also let go of any bad blood on his side. Full endorsement for this man. Ted Cruz. Wheres Ted? [crowd cheers] And this is how, with their eyes set on the prize, even two old rivals seem to have seen the ancient wisdom in party loyalties and pragmatic alliances. What remains to be seen, is whether their alliance can survive this latest controversy.Legislation by Senator Ted Cruz countering the Trump administrations policy on families at the border was the latest twist in a hot-and-cold relationship.CreditCredit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesJune 21, 2018SAN ANTONIO Senator Ted Cruz had an idea: legislation to keep immigrant families together at the border stanching a political crisis created by President Trump while also adding judges to speed up asylum requests.Mr. Trump had a different impulse: make Mr. Cruzs life exceedingly complicated.This was not a first.We have to have a real border, not judges, Mr. Trump said in a speech on Tuesday, mocking the proposal one day before issuing an executive order to end the separations. What country does this?Over the last three years of a many-chaptered political life, some things have changed for Mr. Cruz Mr. Trump, in the Texas senators estimation, has gone from terrific to pathological liar to pretty O.K. after all and some things have stayed the same. The main constant: the president disrupting his best laid plans.After conceding defeat to Mr. Trump in a vicious 2016 presidential primary, Mr. Cruz, 47, is now facing career mortality in a re-election fight back home, even as he takes care to keep a foothold in the national conversation.He is one of several ambitious conservatives, and perhaps the most ambitious and most conservative, feeling his way through a Republican metamorphosis under Mr. Trump that a colleague, Senator Bob Corker, recently compared to cultish behavior.Mr. Trump wiped out a generation of Republican talent on the way to his 2016 victory, including Mr. Cruz and Senate peers like Marco Rubio and Rand Paul. And as he stands for re-election through midterm headwinds, Mr. Cruz as much as any leader in his party is straining to straddle the boundary between this political moment and the next one, whatever it might look like: He recognizes that popularity with the partys base requires intense loyalty to Mr. Trump, a man he once called erratic and dangerous. He also hopes to be around long after Mr. Trump is gone.Its like asking Tom Brady if he wants to win the Super Bowl, Steve Deace, a conservative commentator and a friend of Mr. Cruz, said of the senators desire to run for president again. Hed like to. Whether you can or not, what the future holds who knows?ImageCredit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesFor now, Mr. Cruz is still considered a solid favorite for re-election, but a swell of anti-Trump activism, even in this signature Republican state, has raised the degree of difficulty. Representative Beto ORourke, his Democratic opponent, has outpaced him in fund-raising and attracted wide-scale media attention. And that was before the Trump administrations policy of separating immigrant families at the border became the latest minefield in the race.Mr. Cruz had initially defended the approach, calling the images of despairing children heartbreaking but adding that illegal immigration produces human tragedies. After reversing himself in his legislative proposal and hearing Mr. Trumps dismissive response on Tuesday Mr. Cruz defended his plan as a lot more than just judges.Democrats have focused on a piece of Mr. Cruzs bill stipulating that asylum requests be heard within 14 days insufficient time to prepare a proper case, critics say. Mr. ORourke, who called the family separations torture, seems likely to keep immigration policy central to his campaign.This is America right now, Mr. ORourke said last weekend outside a temporary facility for children, before hinting at his own run. We get to decide which version of America we are.This is also still Texas. Most polls show Mr. Cruz with a clear lead, as high as double digits. And compared with competitive races for Republican-held Senate seats in Nevada, Arizona and Tennessee, Democrats in Washington view this contest as a less promising prospect, despite their enthusiasm for Mr. ORourke.In a 40-minute interview here last week at the Texas Republican Convention, Mr. Cruz said he was taking the race deadly seriously.These are strange and volatile times, he said, before grousing about news accounts that have referred to Mr. ORourke, who is toothy and tall, as Kennedy-esque. (At a booth for Mr. Cruzs campaign at the convention center here, a cardboard cutout of Mr. ORourke understated his height by several inches, leaving him shorter than the senator.)Mr. Cruzs perceived advantage in the race owes, in large measure, to his reputational repair work since the 2016 Republican National Convention, when he pointedly refused to endorse Mr. Trump, to ferocious booing.ImageCredit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesWhile many Republicans have changed their minds on the president, few have swerved with Mr. Cruzs performative zeal consistent with a career that has included a recitation of Green Eggs and Ham on the Senate floor and the selection of a running mate, Carly Fiorina, six days before dropping out in 2016.He began that presidential primary by wrapping Mr. Trump in a strategic bear hug, as he once told donors, pouring on the praise. He ended it after Mr. Trump suggested Mr. Cruzs wife was unattractive and insinuated without evidence that his father was involved in the Kennedy assassination by unburdening himself to reporters hours before quitting the race.Mr. Trump, he said then, was a pathological liar and a serial philanderer, an utterly amoral conspiracy-monger and a peerless narcissist. (Asked in the interview last week if he had said anything untrue that day, Mr. Cruz sidestepped the question. But he did not take anything back. I dont intend to revisit those comments, he said.)Mr. Cruzs convention speech in 2016, during which he urged Republicans to vote your conscience, disappointed even some longtime supporters in Texas. At a breakfast the next morning, several delegates from the state jeered him; one held a Clinton-Cruz 2020 sign. Mr. Cruz told the crowd he would not be a servile puppy dog in service of party unity. He endorsed Mr. Trump two months later.Mr. Cruz and White House officials now speak with mutual warmth, recounting their work together on tax legislation, disaster relief for Texas after Hurricane Harvey and the pardon granted Dinesh DSouza, the conservative author and filmmaker.Surprisingly good, Mr. Cruz said of their relationship.Last month, Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Cruz at the National Rifle Association convention in Dallas.Youre looking at allies, said Kellyanne Conway, the White House counselor, who herself supported Mr. Cruz for president before joining Mr. Trump.In interviews with Republican activists and voters, few seemed to hold a grudge against Mr. Cruz for his 2016 speech.Everybody was a little ticked, said Elizabeth Walters, a delegate from Burnet, Tex. Id say hes quite forgiven.In his address at the Texas convention last week no boos this time Mr. Cruz warned Republicans not to underestimate left-wing energy. They hate the president, he thundered from the stage. And theyre coming for Texas.The gathering also laid bare the full measure of Mr. Trumps party takeover, his likeness and vocabulary infusing every inch of this festival of glimmering red cowboy hats and conservative swagger.Is he awesome or what? said Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor.Isnt it great to see a president working hard to make America great again? asked George P. Bush, the Texas land commissioner and son of Jeb Bush, once Mr. Trumps favorite target.ImageCredit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesSenator John Cornyns tribute came with production value. His team aired a video demonstrating the bond between Big Don and Big John, with It Takes Two playing over a reel of policy accomplishments.Asked if he feared the party had become defined more by fealty to Mr. Trump than conservative ideology as Mr. Corker, the Tennessee senator, and Representative Mark Sanford of South Carolina, who recently lost his House primary, have suggested Mr. Cruz did not answer directly. He did allude to the assassination of Julius Caesar.There are always raw emotions in the ups and downs of politics, he said. That was true on the Ides of March, and its true today.Mr. Cruz seems determined to find the political ups and an audience wherever he can, leaning into his national reputation for villainy among liberals. His most recent bid for wide exposure came last Saturday, in a charity basketball game against Jimmy Kimmel, the left-leaning late-night host.ImageCredit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesThe event was hatched in an after-hours Cruz tweet challenging Mr. Kimmel, who had mocked the senators appearance.The result was nearly two hours of limb-splayed wheeze-grunting from two very middle-aged men with few athletic strengths but a weakness for spectacle. Mr. Cruz won, 11-9, and pledged never to pursue a rematch for the sake of basketball.Two guys who never work out really, not in great shape, said Ralph Sampson, a Hall of Fame player who coached Mr. Kimmel. It was the best they could do.The comedians aim was sharper in his chosen field. Turning to Mr. Cruzs young daughter afterward, Mr. Kimmel observed that at last, You got to see your daddy win something.Then there was the question he floated mid-game, sweat dribbling off them both: Whos harder to defend: me or Trump?ImageCredit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times | Politics |
DealBook|Gordon Brown and Ben Bernanke to Sit on Pimco Advisory Boardhttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/business/dealbook/gordon-brown-and-ben-bernanke-to-sit-on-pimco-advisory-board.htmlCredit...Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images; Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesDec. 7, 2015Pimco, the global bond giant, said on Monday that it was setting up a global advisory board featuring luminaries like Ben S. Bernanke, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Gordon Brown, the onetime British prime minister.Mr. Bernanke, who was hired by Pimco as a senior adviser in April, will be chairman of the advisory board. Other board members are Jean-Claude Trichet, the former president of the European Central Bank; Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former top official at the State Department; and Ng Kok Song, who previously was the chief investment officer for Singapores sovereign wealth fund.Pimco said the five experts would provide advice on global politics and economics to the firms team of portfolio managers, meeting several times a year at the companys headquarters in Newport Beach, Calif., as well as in other Pimco offices around the world.They are also expected to feature prominently at the firms so-called secular forum, a talking shop held every May and lasting several days, in which Pimco economists and bond managers develop long-range investing themes.While Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Trichet have maintained fairly active profiles in global policy and investment circles, Mr. Brown, quite a private man for a politician, has been less frequently seen except for his star turn in lobbying for Scotland to stay in Britain in 2014.Nevertheless, as former heads of governments go, Mr. Brown, who also served as chancellor of the Exchequer under Prime Minister Tony Blair, is as expert as they come in terms of international economics. Analysts have long thought that the ideal post-political job for him would be leading a global policy institution, like the International Monetary Fund.The global advisory board is an unrivaled team of macroeconomic thinkers and former policy makers, whose insights into the intersection of policy and financial markets will be a valuable input to our investment process, said Dan Ivascyn, Pimcos chief investment officer. | Business |
Growers in northern states are combating virulent outbreaks of a disease as seasons grow warmer, orchards have been reconfigured for higher yields and new varieties may be more vulnerable. Credit...Kayana Szymczak for The New York TimesPublished Dec. 2, 2019Updated Dec. 4, 2019GENEVA, N.Y. Across the country, hundreds of kinds of apples were meticulously developed by orchardists over the last couple of centuries and then, as farms and groves were abandoned and commercial production greatly narrowed the number of varieties for sale, many were forgotten.Some of this horticultural biodiversity, though, has been nurtured by dedicated growers who want to preserve the forgotten flavors and other traits of apples from the past. For example, some of the best apples ever developed for baking pies are no longer grown commercially, experts say, but are still thriving in heirloom orchards.They are a piece of our history as a variety and part of our cultural identity, said Mark Richardson, director of horticulture at the Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Boylston, Mass. But also some of these varieties may be important for breeding the next generation. They are an insurance policy against a catastrophe.A burgeoning threat is coming for apples, though, both of the historical varieties and the popular ones grown in the orchards today. A disease called fire blight, easily managed for a long time in apple and pear orchards, is becoming more virulent as the climate changes and as growers alter the way the trees are configured to produce higher yields. Some researchers say newer varieties may be more vulnerable, too. It is another example of threats to the nations fruit crops, as citrus greening has hammered Floridas orange groves and a fungus called Tropical Race 4 has devastated the worlds banana plantations.Commercial apples are getting hit fairly hard by fire blight, said Kerik D. Cox, a plant pathologist who has studied the disease for a decade at Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Sciences here. And the intensity of it appears to be new.As they walk down a row of small and thin apple trees, with large dark red apples hanging on them like Christmas bulbs, Dr. Cox and a graduate student, Anna Wallis, point out a shriveled, dark brown branch on one of them.ImageCredit...Heather Ainsworth for The New York TimesImageCredit...Heather Ainsworth for The New York TimesImageCredit...Heather Ainsworth for The New York TimesThe blight caused by the bacterium Erwinia amylovora is native to the United States and predates the introduction of apple trees to North America. Apple and pear growers have long managed the disease, by trimming dead branches and in recent decades, spraying antibiotics like Streptomycin. But the blight is becoming resistant to the antibiotics, some say, and has become more aggressive, wiping out hundreds or even thousands of trees in some places.The blight is spreading to places where it had not been seen before, into New Yorks Champlain Valley and parts of Maine for example.Tower Hill Botanic Garden was forced in November to raze its orchard of 238 heirloom trees two each of 119 antique varieties. The orchard is dedicated to apples developed in this country, Europe and elsewhere long ago.One of the varieties, the Roxbury Russet, dates back to the mid-17th century, and is believed to be the oldest apple variety cultivated in the United States.In an effort to keep the ancient lineage of the orchard from disappearing, the scionwood cuttings from recent aboveground growth was grafted onto new blight-resistant root stock. The new tree grafts will grow for a year at an orchard in Maine, and then will be returned for planting in 2021.Orchards like the one at Tower Hill there are fewer than a dozen in the country, experts say have been likened to the Svarlbard Global Seed Vault, a concrete facility storing nearly one million seed species on the side of a mountain on a Norwegian island.The genetics of these trees may exist nowhere else and could someday be used to create new commercial varieties because of their flavor or resistance to disease and pests. Keeping the actual trees alive by growing successive generations through cloning and grafting is the only way to assure their lineage. That is because a seed from a particular tree may not contain all of the traits of the variety because one of the parents is unknown.ImageCredit...Heather Ainsworth for The New York TimesImageCredit...Heather Ainsworth for The New York TimesTower Hill had never seen fire blight during the bloom season, which provides a potent pathway for infection, until 2011. We get a combination of weird and tragic weather, these days, variable and unpredictable, Dr. Cox said.Unusual spikes in temperature and more wet weather form ideal conditions for the bacterium. While May temperatures in this part of the Northeast used to rise more gradually and more uniformly, that dynamic started changing about 20 years ago and now some days in that month can spike into the 70s, Dr. Cox said. In May 2010, temperatures soared into the 80s.Fire blight enters the tree through the flower and if it lands on a flower in bloom with temps in the 60s, it cant enter, Mr. Richardson of Tower Hill said. But if its over 75, the conditions are right for the spore to enter the flower and get into the vascular system and it moves through the orchard faster.Honey bees and other insects then spread the disease as they pollinate apple blossoms. At warmer temperatures, fire blight is much more virulent. It has the ability to kill a tree in a single season, Mr. Richardson said.We have a lot of trees that have been mutilated, he added. And they are succumbing to old age because of the presence of fire blight, which weakens them. At optimum temperatures, the bacteria double in volume every 20 minutes, Dr. Cox said.I never thought about fire blight, it was an issue for the South, said John P. Bunker, a long time apple grower farther north in Palermo, Maine, who identifies and preserves forgotten heirloom varieties across the country. But 10 years ago, there was a big fire blight outbreak and suddenly it was here. I have preservation orchards all over my property, hundreds of trees and I had never, ever seen it and all of a sudden I was seeing it.What makes the ecology of the disease even more challenging to solve and address is that while a warmer world is a big part of the emerging problem, there are other factors that may be contributing to ideal conditions for an outbreak.Apple orchards these days are a very different creature than they used to be. People climbing apple trees and harvesting fruit with ladders, thats gone, Dr. Cox said. Its now about making an apple like a grape, where you can walk by and pick the fruit right off the tree.Many modern commercial apple trees are planted in whats called a high density trellis system. They top out at about six to eight feet and are narrow, like a sapling. Yet, fertilizers can push this waifish modern tree to grow about 50 full-size apples, compared to as many as 300 or so on the old-style trees. But instead of some 300 trees to an acre spaced about 10 feet apart, trees are planted 18 to 24 inches apart and there are 1,500 or so trees to an acre.The trellis-style orchard increases product and profit. Many more premium apples are produced in the new-style orchard, some experts say. A few decades ago, apple growers harvested 200 to 300 bushels of apples to the acre and about 25 bushels were the highest grade. The goal now is 2,000 bushels an acre of premium apples, Dr. Cox said.ImageCredit...Kayana Szymczak for The New York TimesImageCredit...Kayana Szymczak for The New York TimesImageCredit...Kayana Szymczak for The New York TimesThe trellis configuration makes it difficult to manage fire blight. The old-style trees that we used to grow were big and had tons of branches and the bacteria couldnt move through the tree very well, said George Sundin, a plant pathologist at Michigan State University, where fire blight is also a growing problem. In these new trees, the branches are smaller and its a short distance from the branch to the tree and down to the roots.Managed by cutting out infection, fire blight rarely killed trees in the old days, but now can wipe out hundreds or thousands in a month or two. It can spread from orchard to orchard through the wind or by insects carrying the disease.Another contributing factor may be that the new apple trees are not as resistant to disease. They are the equivalent of a caged chicken, planting them in crowded conditions and pushing them with nutrients to grow 50 or more apples to a tree, Dr. Cox said.And because many more trees are being planted, tree growers are rushing to fill orders. Nurseries cant grow trees fast enough and quality is compromised, Dr. Cox said.Moreover, modern varieties may also play a role. So is it primarily climate change, or is it that they are packed together? Dr. Cox asked. Or is it the new varieties such as Evercrisp and Gala which may be more susceptible? Thats what we are trying to find out.One answer may be growing in the National Apple Collection, not far from Dr. Coxs research grove. Managed by the Department of Agriculture, it is the largest collection of apple genetics on the planet. There are some 6,000 trees, wild and domestic, with 55 species and hybrids from around the world, including Central Asia where the apple originated.These genes are so critical to the future of apples that cuttings from the trees are shipped to the National Laboratory for Genetic Resources Preservation in Fort Collins, Colo., where they are preserved in liquid nitrogen and stored in a vault.One of the ways these trees may earn their keep is by helping out in the battle against fire blight.We are looking at genes from wild species for fire blight resistance, said Awais Khan, a plant pathologist at Cornell who is doing this work. It might take 25 years of breeding to create fire blight resistant apple trees, he said, but there are ways we can speed up the process, so maybe 10 or 15 years.ImageCredit...Kayana Szymczak for The New York Times | science |
Credit...Sylvia Jarrus for The New York TimesThe Great ReadIn what may be the first known case of its kind, a faulty facial recognition match led to a Michigan mans arrest for a crime he did not commit.This is not me, Robert Julian-Borchak Williams told investigators. You think all Black men look alike?Credit...Sylvia Jarrus for The New York TimesPublished June 24, 2020Updated Aug. 3, 2020Note: In response to this article, the Wayne County prosecutors office said that Robert Julian-Borchak Williams could have the case and his fingerprint data expunged. We apologize, the prosecutor, Kym L. Worthy, said in a statement, adding, This does not in any way make up for the hours that Mr. Williams spent in jail.Listen to This ArticleAudio Recording by AudmTo hear more audio stories from publishers like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.On a Thursday afternoon in January, Robert Julian-Borchak Williams was in his office at an automotive supply company when he got a call from the Detroit Police Department telling him to come to the station to be arrested. He thought at first that it was a prank.An hour later, when he pulled into his driveway in a quiet subdivision in Farmington Hills, Mich., a police car pulled up behind, blocking him in. Two officers got out and handcuffed Mr. Williams on his front lawn, in front of his wife and two young daughters, who were distraught. The police wouldnt say why he was being arrested, only showing him a piece of paper with his photo and the words felony warrant and larceny.His wife, Melissa, asked where he was being taken. Google it, she recalls an officer replying.The police drove Mr. Williams to a detention center. He had his mug shot, fingerprints and DNA taken, and was held overnight. Around noon on Friday, two detectives took him to an interrogation room and placed three pieces of paper on the table, face down.Whens the last time you went to a Shinola store? one of the detectives asked, in Mr. Williamss recollection. Shinola is an upscale boutique that sells watches, bicycles and leather goods in the trendy Midtown neighborhood of Detroit. Mr. Williams said he and his wife had checked it out when the store first opened in 2014.The detective turned over the first piece of paper. It was a still image from a surveillance video, showing a heavyset man, dressed in black and wearing a red St. Louis Cardinals cap, standing in front of a watch display. Five timepieces, worth $3,800, were shoplifted.Is this you? asked the detective.The second piece of paper was a close-up. The photo was blurry, but it was clearly not Mr. Williams. He picked up the image and held it next to his face.No, this is not me, Mr. Williams said. You think all black men look alike?Mr. Williams knew that he had not committed the crime in question. What he could not have known, as he sat in the interrogation room, is that his case may be the first known account of an American being wrongfully arrested based on a flawed match from a facial recognition algorithm, according to experts on technology and the law.A faulty systemA nationwide debate is raging about racism in law enforcement. Across the country, millions are protesting not just the actions of individual officers, but bias in the systems used to surveil communities and identify people for prosecution.Facial recognition systems have been used by police forces for more than two decades. Recent studies by M.I.T. and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, have found that while the technology works relatively well on white men, the results are less accurate for other demographics, in part because of a lack of diversity in the images used to develop the underlying databases.Last year, during a public hearing about the use of facial recognition in Detroit, an assistant police chief was among those who raised concerns. On the question of false positives that is absolutely factual, and its well-documented, James White said. So that concerns me as an African-American male.This month, Amazon, Microsoft and IBM announced they would stop or pause their facial recognition offerings for law enforcement. The gestures were largely symbolic, given that the companies are not big players in the industry. The technology police departments use is supplied by companies that arent household names, such as Vigilant Solutions, Cognitec, NEC, Rank One Computing and Clearview AI.Clare Garvie, a lawyer at Georgetown Universitys Center on Privacy and Technology, has written about problems with the governments use of facial recognition. She argues that low-quality search images such as a still image from a grainy surveillance video should be banned, and that the systems currently in use should be tested rigorously for accuracy and bias.There are mediocre algorithms and there are good ones, and law enforcement should only buy the good ones, Ms. Garvie said.About Mr. Williamss experience in Michigan, she added: I strongly suspect this is not the first case to misidentify someone to arrest them for a crime they didnt commit. This is just the first time we know about it.In a perpetual lineupImageCredit...Sylvia Jarrus for The New York TimesMr. Williamss case combines flawed technology with poor police work, illustrating how facial recognition can go awry.The Shinola shoplifting occurred in October 2018. Katherine Johnston, an investigator at Mackinac Partners, a loss prevention firm, reviewed the stores surveillance video and sent a copy to the Detroit police, according to their report.Five months later, in March 2019, Jennifer Coulson, a digital image examiner for the Michigan State Police, uploaded a probe image a still from the video, showing the man in the Cardinals cap to the states facial recognition database. The system would have mapped the mans face and searched for similar ones in a collection of 49 million photos.The states technology is supplied for $5.5 million by a company called DataWorks Plus. Founded in South Carolina in 2000, the company first offered mug shot management software, said Todd Pastorini, a general manager. In 2005, the firm began to expand the product, adding face recognition tools developed by outside vendors.When one of these subcontractors develops an algorithm for recognizing faces, DataWorks attempts to judge its effectiveness by running searches using low-quality images of individuals it knows are present in a system. Weve tested a lot of garbage out there, Mr. Pastorini said. These checks, he added, are not scientific DataWorks does not formally measure the systems accuracy or bias.Weve become a pseudo-expert in the technology, Mr. Pastorini said.In Michigan, the DataWorks software used by the state police incorporates components developed by the Japanese tech giant NEC and by Rank One Computing, based in Colorado, according to Mr. Pastorini and a state police spokeswoman. In 2019, algorithms from both companies were included in a federal study of over 100 facial recognition systems that found they were biased, falsely identifying African-American and Asian faces 10 times to 100 times more than Caucasian faces.Rank Ones chief executive, Brendan Klare, said the company had developed a new algorithm for NIST to review that tightens the differences in accuracy between different demographic cohorts.After Ms. Coulson, of the state police, ran her search of the probe image, the system would have provided a row of results generated by NEC and a row from Rank One, along with confidence scores. Mr. Williamss drivers license photo was among the matches. Ms. Coulson sent it to the Detroit police as an Investigative Lead Report.This document is not a positive identification, the file says in bold capital letters at the top. It is an investigative lead only and is not probable cause for arrest.This is what technology providers and law enforcement always emphasize when defending facial recognition: It is only supposed to be a clue in the case, not a smoking gun. Before arresting Mr. Williams, investigators might have sought other evidence that he committed the theft, such as eyewitness testimony, location data from his phone or proof that he owned the clothing that the suspect was wearing.In this case, however, according to the Detroit police report, investigators simply included Mr. Williamss picture in a 6-pack photo lineup they created and showed to Ms. Johnston, Shinolas loss-prevention contractor, and she identified him. (Ms. Johnston declined to comment.)I guess the computer got it wrongImageCredit...Sylvia Jarrus for The New York TimesMr. Pastorini was taken aback when the process was described to him. It sounds thin all the way around, he said. Mr. Klare, of Rank One, found fault with Ms. Johnstons role in the process. I am not sure if this qualifies them as an eyewitness, or gives their experience any more weight than other persons who may have viewed that same video after the fact, he said. John Wise, a spokesman for NEC, said: A match using facial recognition alone is not a means for positive identification.The Friday that Mr. Williams sat in a Detroit police interrogation room was the day before his 42nd birthday. That morning, his wife emailed his boss to say he would miss work because of a family emergency; it broke his four-year record of perfect attendance.In Mr. Williamss recollection, after he held the surveillance video still next to his face, the two detectives leaned back in their chairs and looked at one another. One detective, seeming chagrined, said to his partner: I guess the computer got it wrong.They turned over a third piece of paper, which was another photo of the man from the Shinola store next to Mr. Williamss drivers license. Mr. Williams again pointed out that they were not the same person.Mr. Williams asked if he was free to go. Unfortunately not, one detective said.Mr. Williams was kept in custody until that evening, 30 hours after being arrested, and released on a $1,000 personal bond. He waited outside in the rain for 30 minutes until his wife could pick him up. When he got home at 10 p.m., his five-year-old daughter was still awake. She said she was waiting for him because he had said, while being arrested, that hed be right back.She has since taken to playing cops and robbers and accuses her father of stealing things, insisting on locking him up in the living room.Getting helpImageCredit...Sylvia Jarrus for The New York TimesThe Williams family contacted defense attorneys, most of whom, they said, assumed Mr. Williams was guilty of the crime and quoted prices of around $7,000 to represent him. Ms. Williams, a real estate marketing director and food blogger, also tweeted at the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, which took an immediate interest.Weve been active in trying to sound the alarm bells around facial recognition, both as a threat to privacy when it works and a racist threat to everyone when it doesnt, said Phil Mayor, an attorney at the organization. We know these stories are out there, but theyre hard to hear about because people dont usually realize theyve been the victim of a bad facial recognition search.Two weeks after his arrest, Mr. Williams took a vacation day to appear in a Wayne County court for an arraignment. When the case was called, the prosecutor moved to dismiss, but without prejudice, meaning Mr. Williams could later be charged again.Maria Miller, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor, said a second witness had been at the store in 2018 when the shoplifting occurred, but had not been asked to look at a photo lineup. If the individual makes an identification in the future, she said, the office will decide whether to issue charges.A Detroit police spokeswoman, Nicole Kirkwood, said that for now, the department accepted the prosecutors decision to dismiss the case. She also said that the department updated its facial recognition policy in July 2019 so that it is only used to investigate violent crimes.The department, she said in another statement, does not make arrests based solely on facial recognition. The investigator reviewed video, interviewed witnesses, conducted a photo lineup.On Wednesday, the A.C.L.U. of Michigan filed a complaint with the city, asking for an absolute dismissal of the case, an apology and the removal of Mr. Williamss information from Detroits criminal databases.The Detroit Police Department should stop using facial recognition technology as an investigatory tool, Mr. Mayor wrote in the complaint, adding, as the facts of Mr. Williamss case prove both that the technology is flawed and that DPD investigators are not competent in making use of such technology.Mr. Williamss lawyer, Victoria Burton-Harris, said that her client is lucky, despite what he went through.He is alive, Ms. Burton-Harris said. He is a very large man. My experience has been, as a defense attorney, when officers interact with very large men, very large black men, they immediately act out of fear. They dont know how to de-escalate a situation.It was humiliatingMr. Williams and his wife have not talked to their neighbors about what happened. They wonder whether they need to put their daughters into therapy. Mr. Williamss boss advised him not to tell anyone at work.My mother doesnt know about it. Its not something Im proud of, Mr. Williams said. Its humiliating.He has since figured out what he was doing the evening the shoplifting occurred. He was driving home from work, and had posted a video to his private Instagram because a song he loved came on 1983s We Are One, by Maze and Frankie Beverly. The lyrics go:I cant understandWhy we treat each other in this wayTaking up timeWith the silly silly games we playHe had an alibi, had the Detroit police checked for one.Listen to The Daily: Wrongfully Accused by an AlgorithmIn what may be the first known case of its kind, a faulty facial recognition match led to a Michigan mans arrest for a crime he did not commit.transcripttranscriptListen to The Daily: Wrongfully Accused by an AlgorithmHosted by Annie Brown, produced by Lynsea Garrison, Austin Mitchell and Daniel Guillemette, and edited by Lisa Tobin and Larissa AndersonIn what may be the first known case of its kind, a faulty facial recognition match led to a Michigan mans arrest for a crime he did not commit.michael barbaroFrom The New York Times, Im Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.[music]Today: Facial recognition is becoming an increasingly popular tool for solving crimes. The Dailys Annie Brown speaks to Kashmir Hill about how that software is not treating everybody equally.Its Monday, August 3.kashmir hillIm just going the tape record with an app that I use. Do you guys have any questions or concerns before we start talking about what happened?robert williamsNo.melissa williamsNo.annie brownOK. So where do you think we should start the story of this case, Kashmir?kashmir hillThe story started, for the Williams family, in January of 2020.robert williamsMelissa got the call first. I got the call from her.kashmir hillIts a Thursday afternoon in Farmington Hills, Michigan, which is just outside of Detroit.melissa williamsSo I picked up Julia from school. Regular Thursday.kashmir hillAnd Melissa Williams, a realtor, is driving home from work. Shes picking up her daughter.melissa williamsAnd so it was right around, like, 4 oclock. And I got a call.kashmir hillAnd she gets a call from somebody who says theyre a police officer.melissa williamsThey immediately said, were calling about Robert from an incident in 2018. He needs to turn himself in. So I was confused off the bat.kashmir hillShe is white. And her husband, Robert Williams, is Black.melissa williamsAnd they said, we assume youre his baby mama or that youre not together anymore. And kashmir hillWhat?melissa williamsYeah. I said, thats my husband. And what is this regarding? And they said, we cant tell you. But he needs to come turn himself in. And I said, well, why didnt you call him? And they said, cant you just give him a message?annie brownWait. So why is this officer calling her?kashmir hillShe doesnt know why the officer is calling her. All she knows is that the police want to be in touch with her husband. So she gives the officer her husbands number. And then she calls Robert.melissa williamsAnd I said, I just got a really weird call. I was like, what did you do? Like, what is this about?kashmir hillAnd while theyre talking, Robert Williams gets a call from the police department.robert williamsOf course, I answered the other line. And he said he was a detective from Detroit and that I need to come turn myself in. So of course Im like, for what? And hes like, well, I cant tell you over the phone. So Im like, well, I cant turn myself in then.kashmir hillIt was a couple of days before his birthday. So he thought maybe it was a prank call. But it became pretty clear that the person was serious.robert williamsAbout, uh, probably ten minutes later, I pull in the driveway.kashmir hillAnd when he pulls into his driveway, a police car pulls in behind him, blocking him in. And two officers get out.robert williamsYeah. So I get out of the car. And the driver, like, runs up. And hes like, are you Robert Williams? Im like, yeah. Hes like, youre under arrest. Im like, no Im not. And the guy comes up with, like, a white sheet of paper. And its said felony warrant on the top, larceny. And Im confused, like, isnt larceny stealing?kashmir hillHis wife comes out with his two young daughters. And his oldest daughter, whos 5, is watching this happen.robert williamsI said, Juju (ph), go back in the house. Ill be back in a minute. Theyre just making a mistake. The guy, the other cop, is behind me with his handcuffs out already. So hes like, come on, man. You already you know the drill. And Im like, what?kashmir hillThe officers arrest him. They have to use two pairs of handcuffs to get his hands behind his back, because hes a really big guy.robert williamsWe started moving seats around, trying to get me in the back of this little bitty Impala. And off we go.kashmir hillAnd then they drive to the detention center.[music]robert williamsI took fingerprints. I took kashmir hillYour mug shot.robert williamsMug shot pictures.kashmir hillThen hes put in a cell to sleep overnight.robert williamsAt this point, Im in a holding cell with two other guys. And theyre like, what you in here for? And Im like, I dont know.kashmir hillSo when do you actually find out why youve been arrested, beyond this kind of vague larceny?robert williamsUm, so well, maybe like noon the next day.kashmir hillAround noon the next day, he is taken to an interrogation room. And theres two detectives there. And they have three pieces of paper face down in front of them. And they turn over the first sheet of paper. And its a picture from a surveillance video of a large Black man standing in a store, wearing a red Cardinals cap and a black jacket. And the detectives ask, is this you?robert williamsI laugh a little bit, and I say, no, thats not me. So then he turns over another paper.kashmir hillAnd they turn over a second piece of paper, which is just a close up of that same guys face.robert williamsAnd he says I guess thats not you either. And I said, no. This is not me.kashmir hillSo Robert picks the piece of paper up, holds it next to his own face robert williamsI was like, what you think, all Black men look alike?kashmir hill and says, do all Black men look the same to you?annie brownSo whats your understanding, Kashmir, of what happened to bring Robert Williams into that police department?kashmir hillSo Robert Williams had no idea what was happening. But two years earlier, in October 2018, a man who was not him walked into a Shinola store in downtown Detroit. And Shinola is kind of like a high-end store that sells expensive watches and bikes. So this man came in. He was there for a few minutes. He stole five watches worth $3,800 and walked out. None of the employees there actually saw the theft occur. And so they had to review the surveillance footage. And they found the moment it happened. So they sent that surveillance footage picture that Robert Williams had been shown to the Detroit police. And the police turned to what a lot of police turn to these days when they have a suspect that they dont recognize a facial recognition system. So they ran a search on this, what they call a probe image, this picture for the surveillance video, which is really grainy. Its not a very good photo. And the way these systems work is that they have access not just to mug shots but also to drivers license photos. You get a bunch of different results. And theres a human involved who decides which of the results looks the most like the person who committed the crime.annie brownMm. So youre saying the facial recognition algorithm basically created a lineup of potential suspects. And then from that lineup, someone picks the person that they think looks the most like the man in the surveillance video.kashmir hillRight. And so that is how they wound up arresting Robert Williams.[music]So back in this room, the two detectives now have the real Robert Williams in front of them. And he doesnt look like this guy.robert williamsYou know, they sat back and looked at each other and was like, with the oops face, right? Says, so I guess the computer got it wrong too.kashmir hillAnd so they kind of leaned back and said, I guess the computer got it wrong.robert williamsWell, the computer got it wrong is what threw me off. And Im like, computer got it wrong?annie brownAnd what is the significance of that statement, that the computer got it wrong?kashmir hillSo this was an admission by the detectives that it was a computer that had pointed the finger at Robert Williams. And thats significant, because this is the first documented case of an innocent person being arrested because of a flawed facial recognition match.[music]annie brownAnd just to put all of this into context for a second, the last time that you and I talked, Kashmir, we were talking about a different development in facial recognition this new algorithm being used by some police departments that drew from pictures all over social media and all over the internet to make a kind of super algorithm. But the fear wasnt that it wasnt accurate. It was almost that it was too accurate, that it knew too much. But what youre describing is something altogether different. Right?kashmir hillSo when we talk about facial recognition, we often think of it as a monolith, that theres kind of one facial recognition. But in fact, theres a bunch of different companies that all have their own algorithms. And some work well. And some dont work well. And some work well sometimes. Like, identifying a really clear photo is a lot easier than identifying surveillance footage.annie brownAnd why wouldnt police departments be using the most sophisticated, the most kind of up-to-date version of this software?kashmir hillI mean, this is where you run into just bureaucracy. Right? You have contracts with companies that go back years and just a lot of different vendors. And so in this case, I tried to figure out exactly whose algorithms were responsible for Robert Williams getting arrested. And I had to really dig down. And I discovered the police had no idea. You know, they contract out to a company called DataWorks Plus. And DataWorks Plus contracts out to two other companies called N.E.C. and Rank One that actually supply the algorithm. Its this whole chain of companies that are involved. And there is no standardized testing. Theres no one really regulating this. Theres just nobody saying which algorithms, you know, pass the test to be used by law enforcement. Its just up to police officers, who, for the most part, seem to be just testing it in the field to see if it works, if its identifying the right people.But the really big problem is that these systems have been proven to be biased.[music]michael barbaroWell be right back.annie brownSo, Kashmir, help me understand how an algorithm can become biased.kashmir hillWell, the bias tends to come from how the algorithm is trained. And these algorithms tend to be trained by basically feeding them with a bunch of images of people. But the problem with the algorithms is that they tended to be trained with non-diverse data sets.annie brownMm.kashmir hillSo one good example is that many of the algorithms used by law enforcement in the U.S., by government in the U.S., are very good at recognizing white men and not as good at recognizing Black people or Asian-Americans. But if you go to an algorithm from a company in China, where they fed it with a lot of images of Asian people, theyre really good at recognizing Asian people and not as good at recognizing white men. So you can just, you can see the biases that come in from the kind of data that we feed into these systems.annie brownAnd is this a widely agreed upon reality that because of these methods, the algorithms used in the U.S. are just worse at identifying faces that arent white men?kashmir hillYeah. A few years ago, an M.I.T. researcher did this study and found that facial recognition algorithms were biased to be able to recognize white men better. And shortly after that, NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, decide to run its own study on this. And it found the same thing. It looked at over 100 different algorithms. And it found that they were biased. And actually, the two algorithms that were at the heart of this case the Robert Williamss case were in that study.annie brownSo the algorithm that was used by this police department was actually studied by the federal government and was proven to be biased against faces like Robert Williams.kashmir hillExactly.annie brownSo given these widely-understood problems with these algorithms, how can police departments justify continuing to use them?kashmir hillSo police departments are aware of the bias problem. But they feel that face recognition is just too valuable a tool in their tool set to solve crimes. And their defense is that they never arrest somebody based on facial recognition alone, that facial recognition is only what they call an investigative lead. It doesnt supply probable cause for arrest.So what police are supposed to do is they get a facial recognition match, and youre supposed to do more investigating. So you could go to the persons social media account and see if there are other photos of them wearing the same clothes that they were wearing on the day they committed this crime. Or, you know, you can try to get proof that they were in that part of town on the day that the theft occurred. You know, try to get location data. Basically, find other evidence that this person is the person that committed the crime.The detectives just went to the woman who had spotted the theft on the video and showed her a photo of six people they call it a six pack. And she said Robert Williams looked the most like the person that was in the video.annie brownMm. So theyre supposed to use the facial recognition match as a kind of clue. And then the protocol calls for them to do more police work to verify it. But in this case, they basically just had someone watch the video and then identify Robert Williams as the one who looks most like the guy in the video.kashmir hillYeah, they just did facial recognition a second time, but with a human whos not actually trained. And they didnt do any other investigating. Based on that, they went out and they arrested Mr. Williams.annie brownBut if the police had done their job correctly if they had looked into his social media accounts, if they had tried to get his location data from his phone records, essentially surveilling him more closely wouldnt that be its own sort of violation? Just because their technology wrongfully identified this man, he gets more closely watched by the police without his knowledge.kashmir hillRight. And this is actually what police asked the facial recognition vendors to do. They want to have more, what you call false positives, because they want to have the greatest pool of possible suspects that they can, because they want to find the bad guy.annie brownHuh.kashmir hillBut theres a real toll from that.annie brownHmm.kashmir hillI just, you know, as a person whos been reporting on technology for a decade, I just think people trust computers. And even when we know something is flawed, if its a computer telling us to do it, we just think its right. And this is why we always used to see, for a long time, when mapping technology was first being developed and it wasnt that great, you know, people would drive into lakes. They would drive over cliffs, because a mapping app said, youre supposed to go straight here.annie brownRight.kashmir hillAnd even though they could look and see that their life is going to be in danger, they would think, well, this app must know what its talking about. Thats facial recognition now. And when I was reporting this story, all the experts I talked to said this is surely not the first case where somebody has been mistakenly an innocent person has been mistakenly arrested because of a bad face recognition match. But usually people dont find out about it. Police dont tell people that theyre there because of face recognition.annie brownHmm.kashmir hillUsually, when they charge them, theyll just say they were identified through investigative means. Its kind of a vague, There were clues that pointed at you. In that way, Roberts case was unusual, because there was so little evidence against him. They basically had to tell him that they used facial recognition, you know, to put him there.annie brownRight. They showed him what most people dont get to see, which is this false match between his photo and the photo of the crime.kashmir hillRight.annie brownAnd whats happened since Robert was arrested?kashmir hillSo Robert had to hire a lawyer to defend himself. But when he went to the hearing, the prosecutor decided to drop the case. But they dropped it without prejudice, which meant that they could charge him again.annie brownFor the same crime?kashmir hillWith the same crime. So as I was reporting out the story, you know, I went to the prosecutors office. I went to the Detroit Police Department. And I said, you know, what happened here? Did you have any other evidence? This just seems like a clear misfire and misuse of facial recognition. And everyone involved was pretty defensive and said, well, you know, there might be more evidence that proves that Robert Williams did it.But after the story came out, everybodys tune changed dramatically. Prosecutors office apologized, said that Robert Williams shouldnt have spent any time in jail. The Detroit Police Department said this was a horrible investigation. The police officers involved just did this all wrong. This isnt how its supposed to work. And they said that Robert Williams would have his information expunged from the system his mug shot, his DNA. And they personally apologized to the Williams family, though the Williams family told me that no one ever actually called them to personally apologize.annie brownBut he can no longer be charged in the future for this crime?kashmir hillThats exactly right.annie brownAnd what about their use of facial recognition software? Has there been any change there?kashmir hillSo one thing the Detroit Police Department said was, well, this was a case that predates this new policy we have that says, you know, were only supposed to be using facial recognition for violent crimes.annie brownHmm. And what do you make of that? Why only use this tool for that?kashmir hillWell, their justification is that when it comes to violent crimes, when it comes to murder, you know, rape, they need to solve these cases. And theyll use any clue they can to do it, including facial recognition. But I think about something that Roberts wife said.melissa williamsWhen they pulled up to our house, they were already combative on the phone. They were aggressive in the doorway to me. What if he had been argumentative? If hed been defensive, if he hadnt complied, you know, what could that have turned into in our yard? Like, it could have went a different way. And the recent news has shown us that it definitely could have went a different way.[music]kashmir hillDo you feel like theres a shame to this, that the police arrested you even though you did nothing?robert williamsIts a little humiliating. You know, its not something that easily rolls off the tongue, like, oh yeah, and guess what? I got arrested.[music]annie brownAnd what about for Robert himself? What has life been like for him after the arrest?kashmir hillSo this was very embarrassing for him and kind of painful in some ways. So he had a perfect attendance at work until that day that he was arrested. And his wife had to email his boss and say that they had a family emergency and that he couldnt show up that day. Once he did tell his boss what happened, his boss said, you know, you dont want to tell other people at work. You know, it could be bad for you. The night he got home, his daughter his 5-year-old was still awake.robert williamsJulia was still up. And I was like, what are you doing up? And she was like, Im waiting for you. And I was like, I told you Ill be right back. And she was like, you didnt come right back though. So I just kept telling her that they made a mistake. And it just took longer than we expected. But kashmir hillShe started wanting to play cops and robbers. And she would always pretend like he was the robber who stole something, and she would need to lock him up in the living room.annie brownHmm.melissa williamsOh yeah. She told us that she told one of her Jackson, her friend at school. And we werent sure, did she tell her teacher? Did she tell her friends? We were not sure. And we didnt know what to say to people. Like, just bring it up out of nowhere, like, oh yeah, in case anyone mentioned it, he was arrested, but he didnt do anything.kashmir hillHas this made you look back to see where you like, where you were October 2018?robert williamsYeah. I pulled it up. At the time, I was on my Facebook or on my Instagram Live.kashmir hillHe has since looked back and realized that he had posted to Instagram at basically the same time as the shoplifting was occurring. He was driving home from work, and a song came on the radio that his mother loved: the song We Are One by Maze and Frankie Beverly.robert williamsI was singing songs on my way home in the car.annie brownSo if the cops had looked in to his social media, if they had tried to verify that it was possible that he could have committed this crime, they could have found this video.kashmir hillRight. If the police had done a real investigation, they would have found out he had an alibi that day.archived recording[WE ARE ONE PLAYING]annie brownKashmir, thank you so much.kashmir hillThank you.[music]michael barbaroWell be right back.Heres what else you need to know today. Federal unemployment benefits have expired for tens of millions of Americans after Congress failed to reach a deal to renew them last week.archived recordingSo what do you say to those 30 million Americans who are now without federal unemployment help?archived recording (nancy pelosi)I say to them, talk to President Trump. Hes the one who is standing in the way of that. We have been for the $600. They have a $200 proposal, which does not meet the needs of Americas working families. And michael barbaroIn interviews on Sunday with ABCs This Week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blamed Republicans for demanding a drastic cut in the weekly benefit, while Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin claimed that the $600 payments risked overpaying unemployed workers.archived recordingSo you do think it is a disincentive to find a job if you have that extra $600?archived recording (steven mnuchin)Theres no question. In certain cases where were paying people more stay home than to work, thats created issues in the entire economy.michael barbaroAnd The Times reports that July was a devastating month for the pandemic in the U.S. The country recorded nearly 2 million new infections, twice as many as any previous month.archived recording (deborah birx)I want to be very clear. What were seeing today is different from March and April. It is extraordinarily widespread. Its into the rural as equal urban areas.michael barbaroIn an interview on Sunday with CNN, Dr. Deborah Birx, a top White House adviser on the pandemic, acknowledged that the United States has failed to contain the virus.archived recording (deborah birx)And to everybody who lives in a rural area, you are not immune or protected from this virus. And thats why we keep saying, no matter where you live in America, you need to wear a mask and socially distance. Do the personal hygiene michael barbaroThats it for The Daily. Im Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.[music]Aaron Krolik contributed reporting. | Tech |
Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesFeb. 18, 2014KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia Yankees-Red Sox. North Carolina-Duke. Real Madrid-Barcelona.There are fierce rivalries throughout sports, but when it comes to cross-country skiing, nothing tops Norway-Sweden. The two powerhouses have battled for decades for supremacy on the trails, and for many years the Norwegians have come out on top. It is their national sport, and they take particular pride in beating their bigger Scandinavian cousin.But a strange thing has been taking place here the last 10 days: Sweden has been beating Norway, sometimes badly, including in the all-important team relays over the weekend a kind of Super Bowl of cross-country skiing in which Sweden won both golds and Norway was shut out of the medals.With four cross-country events left, Sweden has won nine medals to Norways seven. (Every other nation combined has eight.) Norwegian news outlets have used words like catastrophe and disaster. Social media in the country are abuzz with calls for answers.The turning of the tables has the Norwegian skiers and their handlers looking for scapegoats, starting with the wax that is critical to providing traction or glide on the trails. Norways wax technicians, considered some of the best, have been unable to find the right mix for the warm weather here.Ive been working very hard for many years to do well here, said Chris Andre Jespersen, part of Norways 4x10-kilometer mens relay team, which finished a distant fourth. When the skis are that bad, its just awful. Its not fun to race when its like this.After a disastrous weekend, Norways waxing chief, Knut Nystad, said during an unusually long news conference Monday that the inability to find the right wax for his teams skis was a crisis, deepening the feeling that the team was rattled.He also caused a kerfuffle when he said a wax supplier that he declined to identify had been sharing its stashes with other nations, but not with Norway. Talk of a so-called superwax also circulated. Suppliers were not pleased.If we did that, we would lose all credibility as a wax supplier, said Ulf Bjerknes, the chief executive of Swix Sport, a Norwegian company that supplies wax to many teams in Sochi. Cross-country skiing in Norway is a cult or religion, and when the Norwegian team lost two relays in a row, he was under a lot of pressure, he said of Nystad.Bjerknes added, There are just some teams that have tackled the conditions better than other teams, and there is no superwax.There is no evidence that the shifting balance of power in cross-country skiing will undermine the otherwise friendly relations between the Nordic neighbors. But it has, at least for now, caused so much of a stir in Norway that Prime Minister Erna Solberg weighed in on the teams losses to Sweden.The Swedes are not gloating. But they dismissed any notion that wax was to blame for Norways performance.Theres no secret, just really hard work, said Johan Olsson, a member of Swedens relay team. We made the race our own, we set the pace, and we knew we were the strongest team.Looking at the medal tables, it may be hard to see what the fuss is about. Through Tuesday, Norway had won 18 medals, behind 19 for Russia and 20 for the United States and the Netherlands. Stars like Marit Bjorgen in cross-country and up-and-comers like Kjetil Jansrud in Alpine skiing and Tiril Eckhoff in the biathlon have grabbed medals. On Tuesday, Norway won a Nordic combined and a biathlon event.But Norway will have to pick up the pace if it hopes to reach its goal of breaking its record of 26 Winter Games medals, set on its home turf in Lillehammer in 1994. Along with Norways cross-country flops, its top Alpine skier, Aksel Lund Svindal, left without a medal. The mens hockey team finished 12th out of 12 teams in the first round and was bounced from the tournament by Russia on Tuesday. The mens ski jumpers finished sixth in the team event, and the mens curlers were eliminated Tuesday.ImageCredit...Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesWell have to see on Sunday whether we get 26, but more than 20 is O.K., said Inge Andersen, the secretary general of the Norwegian Olympic Committee. The lack of medals in cross-country has been difficult for people at home, but it says everything about the interest.Interest remains high, but so does the frustration with the dozen or so cross-country technicians who have been unable to find the right balance of waxes to give their skiers an edge. With a mix of science and alchemy, technicians must gauge the condition of the snow hours before a race. Different race styles require different waxes.In wax cabins hidden from public view, workers try to find the right mix. It is messy work that requires bronze brushes, cork with sandpaper, scrapers, waxing irons and surgical masks. Glide waxes are chosen based on the estimated temperature, humidity and moisture of the snow. Kick wax, a sticky material, provides traction on the uphill portions of the course.The warm weather here has produced more moisture in the snow, and rapidly changing temperatures in a location where few Olympic teams have raced have complicated matters.It has been tricky conditions for sure, said Peter Johansson, the head wax technician for the United States cross-country team. Other teams have problems, but for the Norwegians, its such a big sport, and its closely watched they are under the eye all the time.Andersen, of the Norwegian Olympic Committee, said that perhaps Norways waxers, armed with the latest technology and a big budget, might be overthinking matters and might need to get back to basics. Sometimes, he said, we make it too complicated.Norway still has a chance to even the tally with Sweden, starting with the team sprint classic on Wednesday, in which Norway is favored. All the Norwegians are blaming their skis, but they have some mental problems, said Tomas Pettersson, a columnist who writes about cross-country skiing for the Swedish newspaper Expressen. Theyre used to being No. 1, and theyre not used to being in this position. | Sports |
March 17, 2017WASHINGTON Near the end of his meticulously formal, utterly impersonal news conference with Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Trump finally sought a sliver of common ground with his guest: They both, he said, had been wiretapped by former President Barack Obama.Ms. Merkel did a barely perceptible double take, busying herself by shuffling her notes. She smiled thinly and said nothing, as if she had resolved not to get drawn into Mr. Trumps political dramas.It was like that throughout Mr. Trumps first meeting with Ms. Merkel on Friday, an awkward encounter that was the most closely watched of his young presidency and took on an outsize symbolism: the great disrupter confronts the last defender of the liberal world order.Worlds apart in style and policy, Mr. Trump and Ms. Merkel made a show of working together, as they stood side by side in the East Room of the White House. But they could not disguise the gulf that separates them on trade, immigration and a host of other thorny issues.Well, people are different, Ms. Merkel said, when asked to comment on Mr. Trumps style. Sometimes its difficult to find compromises, but thats what weve been elected for. If everything just went like that without a problem, well, you dont need politicians to do these jobs.Mr. Trump, who ran for office as the antithesis of a conventional politician, smiled at that line. It was one of his only smiles during a news conference in which he demanded that Americas NATO allies pay back vast sums of money from past years and vowed that the United States would no longer be out-negotiated on trade deals by Germany.VideoPresident Trump held his first meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany at the White House on Friday. At a subsequent press briefing, he was asked about recent wiretapping claims and made a joke that seemingly referred to reports that the United States had bugged Ms. Merkel's phone during the Obama administration.CreditCredit...Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesRight now, I would say that the negotiators for Germany have done a far better job than the negotiators for the United States, Mr. Trump said. But hopefully we can even it out.Ms. Merkel pointed out that Germany does not actually negotiate its own trade deals with the United States. As a member of the European Union, it delegates that authority to Brussels. As for NATO, she said Germany had committed to increasing its military spending, but noted that the alliance had other vital missions, like security and development in Africa.Ms. Merkel has consciously avoided becoming Mr. Trumps adversary. She dismissed efforts in Germany to portray her as a bulwark against his populist movement. Mr. Trump was harshly critical of Ms. Merkel during the campaign for allowing refugees into Germany, but he has moderated his words since taking office. He welcomed the chancellor to the White House for a full schedule of events that included an Oval Office meeting, lunch and a round-table discussion with German and American chief executives.Still, both leaders advocated unapologetically for their worldviews. Mr. Trump appeared to go further than he has in the past on the need for burden-sharing in NATO. He demanded not just that members increase their military spending as a percentage of gross domestic product, but also that they make reparations for past American contributions.Many nations owe vast sums of money from past years, and it is very unfair to the United States, he said. These nations must pay what they owe.Mr. Trump also said he believed that Germany, like China and other trading partners, had taken advantage of the United States. Its not exactly good for our workers, he said, adding that they had been screwed. The president said his America First approach had begun reversing that trend, luring factories back to Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states that had lost manufacturing jobs to foreign countries.Though Mr. Trump did not mention his executive order banning travel from six predominantly Muslim countries, he did say that immigration is a privilege, not a right, and the safety of our citizens must always come first, without question.Ms. Merkel offered a vision of what she called open-minded globalization. Refugees, she said, needed opportunities to improve their lives, in part to stabilize their countries and prevent them from sliding into civil war. She extolled freedom of movement as one of the great strengths of the European Union. Germanys success, she said, was inextricably tied to the success of the European Union.VideoAngela Merkel and Donald Trump couldn't be more different. They disagree on immigration, NATO, the European Union and trade. As they meet for the first time as world leaders, here are the factors that may shape their relationship.CreditCredit...Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesThats something of which Im deeply convinced, Ms. Merkel said. And Im not only saying this back home. Im saying it in the United States and also here in Washington, in my talks with the president.Mr. Trump has rooted openly for the dissolution of the European Union. His meeting in January with Prime Minister Theresa May, who is leading Britains exit from the union, was considerably warmer than the one with Ms. Merkel, though that came before the diplomatic rupture between the United States and Britain over Mr. Trumps claims that British intelligence was involved in wiretapping Trump Tower.An intellectual who shuns emotional displays, Ms. Merkel would never be comfortable holding hands with Mr. Trump, as Ms. May did (the chancellor recoiled when President George W. Bush gave her an impromptu shoulder massage at a summit meeting in 2006). But Ms. Merkel, who has been in power for 11 years, has experience dealing with a long line of impulsive strongmen, from Silvio Berlusconi of Italy to Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. She prepared for this meeting by reading Mr. Trumps speeches and watching videos of him. And she seemed at ease, even as the president veered wildly off script.To drive home the point that trade with Germany benefits American workers, Ms. Merkel brought a delegation of chief executives from BMW, Siemens and other German companies with extensive American operations.Mr. Trump, buttressed by his own contingent of chief executives from Dow Chemical, IBM and Salesforce.com, used the round table to promote apprenticeships, a job-training philosophy that is highly successful in Germany and that German companies are trying to transplant here.Whatever their differences, both leaders reaffirmed that Germany and the United States must find a way to continue talking. Alluding to Mr. Trumps gibes about her, and the presumption that she must feel equally chilly toward him, Ms. Merkel said, Ive always said its much, much better to talk to one another, and not about one another.Still, she could not resist one last jab at her host. Historically, she noted, Germans were more hostile to trans-Atlantic trade agreements than Americans. With the election of Mr. Trump and his anti-free-trade views, however, German sentiment had swung in favor of these deals.Gazing at Mr. Trump, she said, I am very glad to note that apparently the perspective on that has changed a little bit at least in Germany, too. | World |
News AnalysisCredit...Tannen Maury/European Pressphoto AgencyDec. 20, 2015Fire or ice?When expansions end and the economy tips into recession, one or the other is usually to blame.In the past, the culprit has frequently been fire an overheating economy and rising inflation that prompted the central bank to push up interest rates until they ultimately choked off growth. Ice is more unusual, at least in the United States, but often more painful, as excess capacity, weak demand and falling prices foster a deflationary slump that can prove difficult to escape.As the Federal Reserve embarks on a new chapter in monetary policy, having raised rates on Dec. 16 for the first time in nearly a decade, policy makers are acutely aware of the risks posed by either possibility.Raising rates the first time may have been the easy part; now comes the challenging part, said Mike Ryan, chief investment strategist for UBS Wealth Management Americas.Fed officials do not have to look far for real-world examples of what can go wrong.European central bankers raised rates twice in 2011, killing off a nascent recovery and plunging the eurozone into a double-dip recession that it is still struggling to overcome.But being too slow to tighten the reins of monetary policy can prove perilous, too.A series of steady quarter-point rate increases by the Fed between 2004 and 2006 seemed prudent at the time, but in hindsight the central bank has been blamed for moving too slowly, failing to head off the economic catastrophe that followed the implosion of the housing bubble in 2007.The biggest problem is that higher interest rates do not bite in predictable ways. Not only do they take time to percolate through the real economy, but there is also a difficult-to-foresee threshold at which the impact can suddenly shift from mild to severe.Im sure there is a tipping point, Mr. Ryan said. Its just hard to know in advance precisely where that is.At least for now, though, few analysts expect the Feds initial moves to bring the nations six-and-a-half-year-old expansion to an abrupt end.The rate hike this month and those next year may not really be felt until 2017, said Michael Hanson, senior United States economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Evidence from past cycles suggests it could take a year, rather than the next quarter or two.The Feds task this time is even more complicated because other central banks are leaning in the opposite direction.With growth in Europe still sputtering, the European Central Bank has belatedly turned to the tools embraced by the Fed several years ago, buying up securities and pumping money into the financial system. But even with some interest rates there in negative territory, Mario Draghi, president of the E.C.B., is under pressure to loosen monetary policy further.In Asia, the Peoples Bank of China is also in easing mode, as officials try to cushion what looks like an increasingly hard landing for the economy there, the worlds second-largest. Similarly, Japans central bank is keeping interest rates at rock-bottom levels to encourage growth.The combination of lower rates abroad and rising ones at home is making the United States dollar surge against other currencies. While that might be good for American tourists heading overseas, it hurts American manufacturers seeking export markets and makes imported goods more competitive, undermining the countrys trade balance.For now, most economists say the danger of too little inflation outweighs the risk of too much: Ice, in effect, may be more of a worry than fire.ImageCredit...Scott Olson/Getty ImagesThe risk is skewed toward moving too fast, said Michael Gapen, chief United States economist at Barclays. Thats especially true as the strong dollar and lower-priced imports keep inflationary pressures at bay in the United States.Although Mr. Gapen, like most seers on Wall Street, is generally upbeat about the economys prospects next year, some of his colleagues elsewhere are less sanguine. David Levy, a longtime private economist, is warning clients that the Fed may be forced to reverse course as weakness in China and emerging markets redounds to the United States.The Feds rate increase on Wednesday, Mr. Levy cautioned, may well mark a high point in economic expectations for 2016.In its statement Wednesday about the decision to raise rates, the Fed itself noted there had been a shortfall in terms of actual inflations not measuring up to the central banks 2 percent goal, which it considers helpful in supporting a more robust economy.Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West in San Francisco, believes the reference to stubbornly low inflation is significant. This is new language, he said. The doves on monetary policy are saying they will go along with the rate hike now, but want to see some acknowledgment that low inflation is still a concern.For his part, Mr. Anderson expects the economy to continue to grow at a moderate annual pace of about 2.4 percent in 2016. If that forecast for growth is correct, he predicts the Fed will raise rates three times next year, lifting the benchmark rate to a range of 1 to 1.25 percent by the end of 2016.Consumers are cautious but they still have the capacity to spend, Mr. Anderson added. Jobs and incomes are growing, debt levels are low and gas at about $2 a gallon should help. When people realize the sky isnt falling because the Fed is raising rates, they will go back to their usual spending habits and save the day.A growth rate of about 2 percent would be in line with the steady, but disappointing, advance that has characterized the current recovery since it began in mid-2009. By contrast, the economy grew by 3.8 percent in 2004 when the last tightening cycle began, and by 4 percent in 1994 when an earlier round of rate hikes got underway.The comparatively weak recovery, which has left most Americans struggling to maintain their standard of living, is the principal reason the Fed has promised to move more slowly during this tightening cycle than in past ones.In the mid-2000s, the Fed raised rates by 0.25 percentage point at every meeting between June 2004 and June 2006, 17 straight increases that lifted rates by more than four full percentage points over two years.The tightening campaign in the 1990s was even steeper, as rates moved up three points in one year. Although that wreaked havoc on the stock and bond markets in 1994, the move may have helped slow growth to a sustainable pace and set the stage for the 1990s expansion to extend for a full decade.Many analysts say that the current expansion could display that kind of longevity.Expansions dont die of old age, Mr. Ryan of UBS said, echoing comments by the Fed chairwoman, Janet L. Yellen, at her news conference on Wednesday. They die from exhausted demand, but consumers arent exhausted.And the backdrop of low inflation wont force the Fed into an aggressive stance, he predicted. This expansion can go on for a while. | Business |
Jay-Z I'm Taking Off with Paper Planes ... See Ya in Cyberspace! 1/31/2018 Jay-Z's trying to expand his aviation enterprise ... the one made of 'paper,' that is. Jay's company, S. Carter Enterprises, just filed legal docs to secure the rights to their clothing brand, Paper Planes, in a number of different sales-type vehicles. According to the trademark application, obtained by TMZ, the Carter operation is looking to expand the plane logo -- created by Jay's business partner, Emory Jones -- into more of a retail environment and beyond ... like department stores, an online shopping site and even into musical recordings. They're also looking to presumably hawk gear like athletic gym bags, tour books, jewelry as well as a cosmetic line ... all featuring the Paper Plane image. Prepare for takeoff, ya'll. | Entertainment |
Credit...Dennis M. Rivera-Pichardo for The New York TimesDec. 24, 2015Puerto Ricos beleaguered electric utility announced progress in its continuing efforts to avoid a default on as much as one-eighth of the islands total debt of $72 billion.Officials said that two bond insurers had agreed late Wednesday to take part in a five-year restructuring plan for the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, an islandwide monopoly. The insurers involvement signaled that Prepa had found a way to satisfy its bondholders, who expect to be paid about $177 million on Jan. 1, without having to part with that much cash itself.Prepa is one of 13 branches of the Puerto Rican government scheduled to make bond payments on Jan. 1, for a total of around $902 million.Cash is in short supply, and Gov. Alejandro Garca Padilla has warned that if he must choose between paying bondholders and providing essential public services, he will provide the services. His warnings have given rise to intense speculation as to which types of bond debt may be paid, and which may not.At the same time, the governor announced that public workers and retirees would be paid their customary Christmas bonuses this year, for a total government outlay of about $120 million.The bond insurers now participating in the restructuring deal are Assured Guaranty and National Public Finance Guarantee. An official with knowledge of the negotiations said a third bond insurer with a smaller exposure, Syncora Guarantee, might join the process later.Until now, the bond insurers had held back from Prepas restructuring talks, because the deal taking shape would involve reductions of bond principal and interest, and for the insured bonds the insurers would have to cover investors losses. Only about $2.5 billion of Prepas $9 billion of debt is insured, however.The chief executive of Assured Guaranty, Dominic J. Frederico, said Thursday that he was committed to continue working cooperatively with Prepa and other stakeholders to implement the terms of Prepas recovery plan. High hurdles still remain, but Mr. Frederico said that if the deal were successful it could help Prepa modernize its antiquated generating plants while keeping electricity rates sustainable.On Jan. 1, the terms call for the two bond insurers to purchase $50 million of new revenue bonds from Prepa; members of a creditors committee known as the Ad Hoc Group will purchase an additional $65 million worth of bonds. Those purchases will give Prepa $115 million of fresh cash, which it can use to honor a large part of its scheduled bond payment due that day. Prepa is expected to make the rest of the payment out of its own resources, according to people familiar with the talks.In other respects, the restructuring plan resembles terms that were made public earlier this year.They include a five-year payment moratorium, lower interest rates and a permanent reduction of Prepas outstanding bond principal by more than $600 million. This would be accomplished through a debt exchange, in which the holders of Prepas current, junk-rated bonds could turn them in and receive new investment-grade bonds.Lisa J. Donahue, Prepas chief restructuring officer, said that to make sure the new bonds qualify for investment-grade ratings, the two bond insurers had agreed to backstop them by posting a type of financial guarantee, called a surety. The idea is to make investors want to exchange their shaky old bonds for the new ones, despite the lower face value, by making the new bonds a better credit risk.Assured Guaranty said in a statement that the surety would be issued in exchange for a market premium.The debt exchange is not expected to take place until next summer, and until then the negotiators must steer the deal around a number of obstacles. The first will fall no later than Jan. 23 a deadline for the Puerto Rican legislature to pass enabling legislation for the deal. Legislators have so far shown little appetite for this, because they would also have to request a rate increase for Prepa.Elected officials anywhere would be reluctant to authorize a rate increase in an election year, but in Puerto Rico the increase would come in addition to new taxes imposed because of the financial crisis, school and hospital closings, water rationing and other painful austerity measures.Furthermore, a large number of Prepas bondholders continue to stay aloof from the restructuring talks, perhaps hoping an even better deal might appear later.The creditors on board so far represent about 70 percent of Prepas $9 billion debt; they include the Government Development Bank for Puerto Rico, mutual funds, hedge funds, and banks that finance Prepas fuel purchases.The holders of the remaining 30 percent of the debt have not yet signed on to the deal, and it is not clear whether enough of them ever will, at least under the incentives proposed by the current deal. But one more factor is expected to come into play in the first half of 2016: There are signs that Congress is preparing to make some form of bankruptcy protection available to Puerto Rico.Currently, none of the islands government bodies have any legal standing to take shelter in Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy. But that could change soon, and the bankruptcy laws include what are known as cramdown provisions, which make it possible for a bankruptcy judge to force holdout creditors to accept a deal. | Business |
DealBook|AstraZeneca to Acquire Majority Stake in Acerta Pharmahttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/business/dealbook/astrazeneca-to-acquire-majority-stake-in-acerta-pharma.htmlCredit...Phil Noble/ReutersDec. 17, 2015LONDON The British drug maker AstraZeneca said on Thursday that it had agreed to acquire a majority stake in Acerta Pharma, a privately-held cancer drug developer with operations in the Netherlands and in California, for $4 billion.The deal gives AstraZeneca the option to buy the remainder of the company for $3 billion more and would further bolster its line of cancer treatments.Transactions in the health care sector have helped make 2015 a record year for global mergers and acquisitions.Drug makers have used mergers and strategic investments to acquire promising treatments in late-stage development, hoping to claim the next blockbuster.The investment is consistent with our focus on long-term growth and reflects the role targeted business development plays in our business model, Pascal Soriot, the AstraZeneca chief executive, said in a news release about the Acerta Pharma deal.We are boosting a key area in our comprehensive oncology portfolio with a late-stage, potential best-in-class medicine that could transform treatment for patients across a range of blood cancers, he added.Under the terms of the deal, AstraZeneca would acquire a 55 percent stake in Acerta for an initial payment of $2.5 billion. It would then pay $1.5 billion when acalabrutinib, Acertas treatment for blood cancer, receives regulatory approval in the United States or by the end of 2018.It would then have the option to buy the remainder of the company after the approval of the drug in Europe and the United States, and other milestones.AstraZeneca said that an extensive development program for acalabrutinib was underway and that it might be able to take the first steps toward regulatory approval of treating patients with certain types of blood cancer in the second half of 2016.The top yearly sales of the drug could exceed $5 billion globally, AstraZeneca said.AstraZeneca announced on Monday that the companies were exploring potential strategic options.AstraZeneca has said it would target similar small or midsize deals as it looks to bolster its drug pipeline after it fought off a $119 billion takeover bid by Pfizer last year, which would have created the worlds largest pharmaceutical company.In November, AstraZeneca agreed to acquire ZS Pharma, a California-based biopharmaceutical company, for $2.7 billion in cash. This week, AstraZeneca also announced that it would acquire the core respiratory business of the Takeda Pharmaceutical Company of Japan for $575 million. | Business |
New research aims to shed light on the social habits of the popular, but often misunderstood, animal.Researchers hope that a deeper appreciation of groundhog sociality may help people become more sympathetic to them.Credit...Brandon KeimPhotographs by Greta RybusPublished Feb. 1, 2022Updated Feb. 3, 2022FALMOUTH, Maine Groundhog Day may be a tongue-in-cheek holiday, but it remains the one day earmarked in the United States for an animal: Marmota monax, the largest and most widely distributed of the marmot genus, found munching on flowering plants or, at this time of year, snuggling underground from Alabama to Alaska.Yet, for all their cultural prominence, groundhogs remain, as it were, in a bit of a shadow. Relatively little is known about their social life. They are thought of as solitary, which is not precisely wrong, but neither is it entirely accurate.These guys are much more social than we thought, said Christine Maher, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Southern Maine and one of the few scientists to study groundhog behavior.Dr. Maher arrived in Maine in 1998 with a keen interest in animal sociality. Marmots, a genus spanning 15 species of varying sociality including alpine marmots living in multigenerational family groups, semi-social yellow-bellied marmots and ostensibly antisocial groundhogs were a natural subject.She found an ideal study site at the Gilsland Farm Audubon Center, a 65-acre sanctuary of rolling meadows and forests on the coast of Falmouth, Maine. There, she has tagged no fewer than 513 groundhogs, following their fates and relationships in fine-grained detail.The resulting family trees and territorial maps, along with the records of their interactions and daily activities, are singular. Nobody had looked at them over time as individuals, Dr. Maher said.ImageGilslands groundhogs wont emerge until late February, but one morning last summer, Dr. Maher was out setting peanut butter-baited live traps around a shrub-hidden burrow beside the visitor center. The peanut butter soon proved irresistible.The trap afforded a rare up-close view of a groundhog: sleekly sturdy, with small, serious eyes, delicate whiskers and fur that shaded from auburn on her broad chest to a mlange of chestnut, straw and russet across the rest of her body. One round ear bore a tiny bronze tag inscribed with the number 580.This is Torch, said Dr. Maher, who names each of her study subjects. Torch was a first-time mother. Dr. Maher deftly transferred her to a thick bag to allow for safe weighing. She also took a hair sample for later DNA analysis and measured how much Torch wriggled during several 30-second intervals a simple test of personality.After returning Torch, irritated but unharmed, to her burrow, Dr. Maher started a circuit of Gilsland. She checked several still-empty traps for Barnadette, who was raising her pups beneath an old barn. Near the barn was a sprawling community garden and the smorgasbord of their compost pile.As anyone whose vegetable garden is visited by groundhogs can attest, the arrangement created a certain tension. Charles Kaufmann, one of the gardens coordinators, acknowledged that conflicts with gardeners had occurred, but had been resolved peacefully. Among their peacekeeping tools are floppy fences that groundhogs struggle to climb.Audubon is for the preservation and appreciation of the natural world, Mr. Kaufmann said. We feel bound to live within that perspective and philosophy. Also, groundhog pups are just the cutest things in the world.A coterie of groundhogsAlong a freshly mowed path leading from the gardens into a meadow, Dr. Maher spotted a groundhog. Through her scope she identified Athos, a yearling and a sibling to Porthos and Aramis.She named them after the Three Musketeers, which was a trick to help her remember them but it was also fitting. A few days prior, she had observed them hanging out together at the burrow where they were born.Such interactions belie the species solitary reputation, and conventional wisdom holds that juvenile groundhogs leave home to seek new territories just a few months after they are born. At Gilsland, Dr. Maher has found that roughly half the juveniles remain for a full year in the territory of their birth. When they finally depart, they often stay nearby.It depends on whether they can strike an agreement with their mother, Dr. Maher said. Some moms are willing to do that. Others are not. Mothers may even bequeath territories to their daughters. Dr. Maher suspected that Athoss mom had left Athos the family burrow.As groundhogs mature, their interactions become less amicable the Three Musketeers most likely would not lounge together for much longer but neither are they entirely antagonistic. Dr. Maher has also found her groundhogs to be friendlier to relatives than to unrelated individuals.The result is a community of related groundhogs whose territories overlap. Some individuals do venture farther afield or arrive from afar, which helps keep the gene pool fresh but a kinship-based structure remains. Gilsland Farms groundhogs could be understood as living in something like a loose-knit clan, its members keeping their distance but still crossing paths and maintaining relations.You have these whole networks of sisters living together, aunts, cousins, extending outward, Dr. Maher said. This had been hinted at, but I dont think people knew just to what extent it was happening.Daniel Blumstein, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who leads a long-term study of yellow-bellied marmots at Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, said that Dr. Mahers data was increasing our understanding of the benefits of having subtle social relationships. He added, She is allowing us to appreciate more the nuanced complexity of less in-your-face social relationships.An open question is whether the patterns Dr. Maher sees at Gilsland Farm are common in other groundhog populations. Their behaviors may vary depending on local circumstance, she said.Gilsland Farms groundhogs live on what amounts to a habitat island; to the west is an impassable estuary, to the east is a dangerous highway. North and south are suburban neighborhoods rich in potential habitat but bristling with unwelcoming homeowners. Theyre seen as varmints, Dr. Maher said of the groundhogs. People dont seem to give them much thought.An ancestral stateWhen young groundhogs do leave Gilsland Farm, they tend to end up run over or shot. So there are advantages to staying home, provided there is enough food. There are also mutual benefits to be shared: For example, a whistle of alarm occasioned by an approaching fox would be heard by all nearby.From the birds-eye vantage of evolution, the genes of somewhat-social groundhogs spread more readily than more solitary ones, and Dr. Maher thinks that it actually represents a return to something like an ancestral state. Before European colonization, groundhogs would have lived in clearings created by fires, storms, beaver activity and Indigenous practices separated by inhospitable forests.They were forced to live closer together, so they were more tolerant of each other and more social, she said. When Europeans cleared all that forest, they actually increased the amount of habitat available for groundhogs. Perhaps they became less social because they could spread out.The neighborhoods dont have to be dangerous, though. Dr. Maher hopes that a deeper appreciation of groundhog sociality may help people become more sympathetic to them and even graciously share the suburban landscape with them, the way the Gilsland Farm gardeners do.Her work also intersects with some nonscientific efforts, such as the social media presence of Chunk the Groundhog followed by more than 500,000 people on Instagram and the amateur naturalists whose 15 years of backyard observations yielded the uniquely intimate accounts of Woodchuck Wonderland.People dont usually have that insight into the way they live, said John Griffin, director of Urban Wildlife Programs at the Humane Society of the United States. In his own work, Mr. Griffin often encounters a sense of groundhogs as intruders. He thinks that a lack of familiarity for all their ubiquity, groundhogs are often glimpsed only along roadside verges or dashing for cover leads to intolerance or an exaggerated sense of risk.Appreciating that animals have social lives can change how they are perceived, Mr. Griffin said. I dont know how to quantify it, but I think its valuable, he said. Conflict resolution is all about perspective.Tolerance would benefit more than groundhogs. Their digging helps aerate and enrich soil, Dr. Maher said, and many other creatures use their burrows. Groundhog burrows may even create hot spots of local biodiversity.Athos, at least, would be spared the suburban gauntlet. The fact that she hasnt left yet makes me think shell stick around, Dr. Maher said.Athos moved slowly along the path, eating the clover and dandelions that would sustain her through the coming winter. Every so often she stood on two legs and looked around. Dr. Maher noted her activities on a hand-held computer.When an approaching pedestrian sent Athos scurrying into the tall grass, Dr. Maher explained how the system worked. I just key in two-letter codes for their behavior, she said. Feed. Walk. Alert. Run. Groom. Dig, occasionally. They dont have a huge repertoire.She sounded slightly self-conscious about this. Passers-by, she admitted, are sometimes amused that she spends so much time watching seemingly boring creatures.With a rustle Athos returned to the path. Oh, there she is! Dr. Maher exclaimed, the enthusiasm in her voice suggesting that, after all these years, she still finds groundhogs quite interesting indeed. | science |
Dominic Monaghan Sues You Screwed Up My Yard And You Didn't Have a License to Do It! 1/22/2018 Dominic Monaghan had some landscaping done at his place by a guy he thought was qualified to do the job -- but turned out to be far from it ... this according to a new lawsuit. The "Lord of the Rings" and "Lost" star just filed suit against Bruce De Luis, who Monaghan says presented himself as a contractor last year and agreed to do some work on his L.A. property -- installing steps and a stone patio, as well as general landscaping. Monaghan claims he shelled out a total of $53,840 for the job, but eventually came to find a bunch of defects and a substandard end product. He says he got a new estimate from a licensed contractor for the repairs, which came out to about $21,000. When he went back to De Luis -- who Monaghan claims didn't have a contractor's license to begin with -- the actor says the guy told him to get lost ... refusing to reimburse him for the alleged sloppy work. Monaghan's asking a judge to force De Luis to fork over his original expenses and other damages. | Entertainment |
Fair GameCredit...Eduardo Munoz/ReutersDec. 18, 2015Scores of investors, in a fistful of comments, have told the Securities and Exchange Commission that they want to be able to trade stocks on a more level playing field. So why hasnt the commission, known as the Investor Advocate, given the green light to an operation that would enable it?That question arises because the S.E.C., it turns out, has asked for an additional 90 days to decide whether to allow the Investors Exchange, an upstart market trading platform, to become a registered national securities exchange.The commission originally set a deadline of Dec. 21 to move on the application. The extension suggests that a handful of IEXs critics high-frequency trading outfits and exchanges that compete with IEX are making headway with decision makers at the S.E.C. IEXs application has received overwhelming support from small and large investors alike.The S.E.C. declined to comment on the status of the application. So did IEX. But in a letter posted Dec. 18 on the S.E.C.s website, IEX granted the commission an extension on the application until March 21, 2016.IEX is a trading platform created in October 2013 by Bradley Katsuyama, a former head of electronic sales and trading at a unit of Royal Bank of Canada, and eight co-founders. IEX aims to offer investors an alternative to exchanges that provide information advantages to participants prepared to pay a hefty fee for an inside track.One advantage comes in the form of proprietary data about trading action in stocks. The other is something known as co-location, which cuts down on the time it takes to transmit a buy or sell order for execution. Both systems allow preferred investors to react ahead of others.IEX, which currently operates as an alternative trading system, is already a place where investors can meet with minimal interference from middlemen. The company came to prominence in March 2014 after the publication of Flash Boys, a book by Michael Lewis about high-frequency trading.The company has received praise, and business, from institutional investors concerned that their trades are being disadvantaged on other systems. While still small when compared with the New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq, IEX has increased its trading volumes significantly. This month, it clocked average daily volume of 127 million shares, up from five million in December 2013. It recently handled just under 2 percent of daily stock trades nationally.IEXs volume would most likely grow even faster if it were to become an exchange. For example, if IEX were offering the best price on a stock, buyers and sellers would have to execute their trades there. In its current form, traders can skirt IEX even when it posts the best bid or offer on its system.Last summer, IEX applied to the S.E.C. to become a recognized exchange. Under its plan, IEX would operate an electronic order book matching buyers and sellers of stocks. The orders would come from its brokerage firm members.In correspondence with the S.E.C., IEX said that it sought exchange status to protect investors from practices on the dominant exchanges that unduly focus on the speed of quoting and trading, and unduly rely on ever-increasing fees for both access and market data that their members are effectively required to pay in order to trade for themselves and to seek best execution of their customers orders.The crucial difference between IEX and others involved in trading stocks is the speed bump it imposes, delaying all participants trades by 350 microseconds. Imposing such a delay on IEX customers means that none will be able to trade on IEX in reaction to price movements that may appear elsewhere but that have not yet been recorded on the exchange.David L. Brooks, head of global equity trading at the Boston Company Asset Management, an investment boutique of BNY Mellon, praised the speed bump.Weve looked at the quality of executions that were getting back from IEX and we see some real advantages versus some other venues we trade at, Mr. Brooks said in an interview. The central part of their design is specifically geared to taking out that structural speed advantage for some participants.On Sept. 15, the commission published the application and solicited comments from market participants. Among those objecting to the IEX proposal was the New York Stock Exchange, which wrote a letter saying the IEX exchange would be unfair, complex and opaque. Nasdaq also questioned IEXs proposed structure and urged the S.E.C. to delay the application so that IEX could provide answers.But the vast majority of comments were in support of IEX. Professional money managers overseeing $1 trillion in assets are among them.W. Douglas Schrank, senior trader and principal at Southeastern Asset Management, is a supporter. He said in an interview that granting the IEX application would benefit long-term investors.IEX presents a free-market and competitive solution that is really meant to put all market participants on a level playing field, Mr. Schrank said. The incumbent exchanges are no longer in the game of matching buyers and sellers to earn a straightforward fee. They enable one class of trader to pay more for enhanced and exclusive market data as well as closer and faster access to the exchanges matching engine.This strikes me, Mr. Schrank added, as being in direct opposition to the purpose of the capital markets.Many individual investors have also written to the S.E.C. saying that granting the application is a matter of market fairness. Edwin James Boyce, an individual investor in North Carolina, was particularly colorful in his commentary: We have a life boat in IEX in the rough seas filled with sharks.A clue to why established exchanges arent keen on the IEX application can be found in a recent initial public offering statement filed by BATS Global Markets.BATS, which tried to go public in 2012 but withdrew its I.P.O. after a software glitch caused its shares to collapse on the first day of trading, cited competition from IEX and others as a risk factor in its latest I.P.O. filing: Newer market entrants with different models may seek status as national securities exchanges, further competing with our exchange business.When the S.E.C. devised new rules to modernize the national market system a decade ago, it said that it hoped to benefit all investors by expanding automated trading in exchange-listed stocks. It also acknowledged that the interests of long-term investors would not always be aligned with those of short-term traders.When those interests conflicted, the S.E.C. said at the time, the commission believes that its clear responsibility is to uphold the interests of long-term investors.So what is the S.E.C. waiting for? Thats what Vincent Bohr, an investor based in Paris, wants to know. It is high time, he said in his comment on the IEX application, to have a non-rigging exchange. | Business |
Credit...Nicholas Albrecht for The New York TimesBitcoin owners are getting rich because the cryptocurrency has soared. But what happens when you cant tap that wealth because you forgot the password to your digital wallet?Stefan Thomas, a programmer in San Francisco, owns 7,002 Bitcoin that he cannot retrieve because he lost the password to his digital wallet.Credit...Nicholas Albrecht for The New York TimesPublished Jan. 12, 2021Updated Jan. 14, 2021Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publishers like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is worth, as of this week, about $220 million.The password will let him unlock a small hard drive, known as an IronKey, which contains the private keys to a digital wallet that holds 7,002 Bitcoin. While the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply on Monday, it is still up more than 50 percent from just a month ago, when it passed its previous all-time high of around $20,000. The problem is that Mr. Thomas years ago lost the paper where he wrote down the password for his IronKey, which gives users 10 guesses before it seizes up and encrypts its contents forever. He has since tried eight of his most commonly used password formulations to no avail.I would just lay in bed and think about it, Mr. Thomas said. Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldnt work, and I would be desperate again.Bitcoin, which has been on an extraordinary and volatile eight-month run, has made a lot of its holders very rich in a short time, even as the coronavirus pandemic has ravaged the world economy.But the cryptocurrencys unusual nature has also meant that many people are locked out of their Bitcoin fortunes as a result of lost or forgotten keys. They have been forced to watch, helpless, as the price has risen and fallen sharply, unable to cash in on their digital wealth.Of the existing 18.5 million Bitcoin, around 20 percent currently worth around $140 billion appear to be in lost or otherwise stranded wallets, according to the cryptocurrency data firm Chainalysis. Wallet Recovery Services, a business that helps find lost digital keys, said it had gotten 70 requests a day from people who wanted help recovering their riches, three times the number of a month ago.Bitcoin owners who are locked out of their wallets speak of endless days and nights of frustration as they have tried to get access to their fortunes. Many have owned the coins since Bitcoins early days a decade ago, when no one had confidence that the tokens would be worth anything.Through the years I would say I have spent hundreds of hours trying to get back into these wallets, said Brad Yasar, an entrepreneur in Los Angeles who has a few desktop computers that contain thousands of Bitcoin he created, or mined, during the early days of the technology. While those Bitcoin are now worth hundreds of millions of dollars, he lost his passwords many years ago and has put the hard drives containing them in vacuum-sealed bags, out of sight.I dont want to be reminded every day that what I have now is a fraction of what I could have that I lost, he said.The dilemma is a stark reminder of Bitcoins unusual technological underpinnings, which set it apart from normal money and give it some of its most vaunted and riskiest qualities. With traditional bank accounts and online wallets, banks like Wells Fargo and other financial companies like PayPal can provide people the passwords to their accounts or reset lost passwords.ImageCredit...Nicholas Albrecht for The New York TimesBut Bitcoin has no company to provide or store passwords. The virtual currencys creator, a shadowy figure known as Satoshi Nakamoto, has said Bitcoins central idea was to allow anyone in the world to open a digital bank account and hold the money in a way that no government could prevent or regulate.This is made possible by the structure of Bitcoin, which is governed by a network of computers that agreed to follow software containing all the rules for the cryptocurrency. The software includes a complex algorithm that makes it possible to create an address, and associated private key, which is known only by the person who created the wallet.The software also allows the Bitcoin network to confirm the accuracy of the password to allow transactions, without seeing or knowing the password itself. In short, the system makes it possible for anyone to create a Bitcoin wallet without having to register with a financial institution or go through any sort of identity check.That has made Bitcoin popular with criminals, who can use the money without revealing their identity. It has also attracted people in countries like China and Venezuela, where authoritarian governments are known for raiding or shutting down traditional bank accounts.But the structure of this system did not account for just how bad people can be at remembering and securing their passwords.Even sophisticated investors have been completely incapable of doing any kind of management of private keys, said Diogo Monica, a co-founder of a start-up called Anchorage, which helps companies handle cryptocurrency security. Mr. Monica started the company in 2017 after helping a hedge fund regain access to one of its Bitcoin wallets.Mr. Thomas, the programmer, said he was drawn to Bitcoin partly because it was outside the control of a country or company. In 2011, when he was living in Switzerland, he was given the 7,002 Bitcoin by an early Bitcoin fanatic as a reward for making an animated video, What is Bitcoin?, which introduced many people to the technology.That year, he lost the digital keys to the wallet holding the Bitcoin. Since then, as Bitcoins value has soared and fallen and he could not get his hands on the money, Mr. Thomas has soured on the idea that people should be their own bank and hold their own money.This whole idea of being your own bank let me put it this way: Do you make your own shoes? he said. The reason we have banks is that we dont want to deal with all those things that banks do.Other Bitcoin believers have also realized the difficulties of being their own bank. Some have outsourced the work of holding Bitcoin to start-ups and exchanges that secure the private keys to peoples stashes of the virtual currency.Yet some of these services have had just as much trouble securing their keys. Many of the largest Bitcoin exchanges over the years including the onetime well-known exchange Mt. Gox have lost private keys or had them stolen.Gabriel Abed, 34, an entrepreneur from Barbados, lost around 800 Bitcoin now worth around $25 million when a colleague reformatted a laptop that contained the private keys to a Bitcoin wallet in 2011.Mr. Abed said this did not dim his enthusiasm. Before Bitcoin, he said, he and his fellow islanders had not had access to affordable digital financial products like the credit cards and bank accounts that are easily available to Americans. In Barbados, even getting a PayPal account was almost impossible, he said. The open nature of Bitcoin, he said, gave him full access to the digital financial world for the first time.The risk of being my own bank comes with the reward of being able to freely access my money and be a citizen of the world that is worth it, Mr. Abed said.For Mr. Abed and Mr. Thomas, any losses from mishandling the private keys have partly been assuaged by the enormous gains they have made on the Bitcoin they managed to hold on to. The 800 Bitcoin Mr. Abed lost in 2011 were a small fraction of the tokens he has since bought and sold, allowing him to recently buy a 100-acre plot of oceanfront land in Barbados for over $25 million.Mr. Thomas said he also managed to hold on to enough Bitcoin and remember the passwords to give him more riches than he knows what to do with. In 2012, he joined a cryptocurrency start-up, Ripple, that aimed to improve on Bitcoin. He was rewarded with Ripples own native currency, known as XRP, which rose in value.(Ripple has recently run into legal troubles, in part because the founders had too much control over the creation and distribution of the XRP coins.)As for his lost password and inaccessible Bitcoin, Mr. Thomas has put the IronKey in a secure facility he wont say where in case cryptographers come up with new ways of cracking complex passwords. Keeping it far away helps him try not to think about it, he said.I got to a point where I said to myself, Let it be in the past, just for your own mental health, he said. | Tech |
Credit...Larissa LacherApril 7, 2016The computer models that predict climate change may be overestimating the cooling power of clouds, new research suggests. If the findings are borne out by further research, it suggests that making progress against global warming will be even harder.The new paper, in the journal Science, focuses on what are known as mixed-phase clouds, which are found around the world and contain both cooled water and ice crystals.The balance of water and ice in clouds affects the impact that carbon dioxide levels have on atmospheric temperatures, a factor known as equilibrium climate sensitivity. A higher sensitivity would mean that carbon dioxide levels would cause more warming than previously thought.Using data from instruments aboard the Calipso satellite, which monitors clouds and particles suspended in the atmosphere, the researchers determined that mixed-phase clouds contain more water and less ice than expected.Water droplets reflect more solar radiation back into the sky than ice crystals do. As the atmosphere warms, clouds tend to have more water and less ice in them, and the more watery clouds prevent solar radiation from reaching the earth. Warming is slowed.With less ice in the mix to start, however, there is less capacity for water to replace ice, said Ivy Tan, an author of the paper and a graduate student at the department of geology and geophysics at Yale University. The result, she said, is more warming.Other recent studies have suggested that climate models may not be accurately assessing the balance of water and ice in clouds in some circumstances.The new paper suggests the effects of a flaw in the model could be serious: Based on its analysis of one model of climate change, the cloud error could mean an additional 1.3 degrees Celsius of warming than expected.Negotiators at last years climate talks in Paris approved a target of keeping temperatures from rising by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius over average temperatures in the preindustrial era. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that keeping global average temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) could prevent some of the disastrous effects of climate change from occurring.The new paper, then, if proved correct, would narrow the range left for the climate panels goal to 0.7 degree, and the Paris target to just 0.2 degree Celsius.Unfortunately, it means staying below 2 degrees is going to be even harder, said Trude Storelvmo, an atmospheric scientist and another author of the paper, and an associate professor in the Yale department of geology and geophysics. We have to emit even less CO2 to stay below those limits.Ms. Tan, who is a student of Dr. Storelvmo, warned that focusing too much on the studys figure of 1.3 degrees would be a mistake because repeating the study with other climate models can lead to different results.The 1.3 degree figure, she said, has to be taken with a grain of salt.Every model will react differently: It could be higher, it could be lower than 1.3 degrees, she said. The point is, its going to result in a significant amount of warming.Other climate researchers said that although the new study is valuable, it should be seen in the broader context of other areas of uncertainty that climate scientists are working through.Gavin A. Schmidt, the director of NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said that the study was in line with other recent papers that find potential issues with models.Generally speaking, these lead to numbers that are on the higher end, he said, adding that headlines that scream Scientists say sensitivity higher than thought! will not be justified.Instead, he said, this is one extra ingredient that needs to go into the hopper.Kevin Trenberth, distinguished senior scientist at the climate and global dynamics laboratory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said the new paper is fine as a first step, but it is not the last step, and much more is needed to establish how clouds change as the climate changes.His work, he added, suggests that the centers model has too strong a climate sensitivity rather than too small because of clouds.Having less room to maneuver in reaching climate goals could lead people to think fighting climate change is futile, Professor Storelvmo said. But that is not the intent of the researchers.The hope, she added, is that instead of giving up, people get the sense of urgency in this, and in terms of emissions cuts, this leads to more action and less talk instead of despair, that this triggers action. | science |
Credit...Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/ReutersApril 3, 2016GAZA Israel on Sunday expanded the Palestinian fishing zone off the southern portion of Gazas coast to nine nautical miles from six, allowing fishing in areas that had been off limits for a decade.Palestinian officials welcomed the decision, which they said applied to about 60 percent of Gazas Mediterranean coastline.I can see hundreds of fishermen and boats we are excited, said Zakaria Baker, the Gaza-based head of the fishermens committee of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees. He spoke by telephone from the small seaport in Gaza shortly before 3 p.m., when the expansion was scheduled to take effect.But Mr. Baker questioned whether there would be proper protection for the fishermen in the expanded zone, complaining that Israeli naval forces sometimes opened fire on boats even within the permitted area. He said most Gaza fishermen used GPS equipment to measure their distance from shore.The Israeli military enforces a naval blockade on the Palestinian coastal enclave of Gaza, which is controlled by the militant group Hamas. Israel says the blockade is necessary to prevent weapons smuggling.Ismail al-Shrafi, 62, a fisherman, said Sunday that he was unable to join his friends who were preparing their boats because the Israelis had confiscated his boat five months ago and taken it to the Israeli port of Ashdod. Mr. Shrafi said that his boat had been fired on and impounded within four nautical miles of Gazas coast and that his son, fishing with him, had been injured by the Israeli fire.Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli military, had no comment on the case involving Mr. Shrafi. Colonel Lerner denied that naval forces had fired at boats within the permitted fishing zone. But he said, Anybody who breaches the limit is stopped or arrested, and those who dont comply with the navy forces calls to turn back then, yes, their boats can be impounded.Over the weekend, the Israeli Navy sank a suspected smuggling boat that was approaching Gaza from Egypt. Naval forces fired warning shots, and the boats crew threw suspicious cargo overboard and jumped into the sea before the vessel was sunk, the military said.Under the Oslo peace accords, the fishing zone was supposed to extend to 20 nautical miles, but it has shrunk over the years as Israel has imposed greater restrictions, citing security concerns. In the years before 2006, fishermen could go out 10 to 12 nautical miles, but from 2006 until 2012 the zone was limited to three nautical miles.A cease-fire agreement that ended 50 days of fighting between Israel and Hamas in the summer of 2014 restored the six-mile zone, which Israel agreed to in 2012 but later cut back.Israeli officials said the Israeli Navy and the office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, known as Cogat, the Israeli agency that serves as a liaison with the Palestinians on civilian affairs, had decided on Sundays expansion to coincide with the opening of the fishing season.Gazas farmers are restricted from farming in a buffer zone along the border with Israel, and the fishing restrictions have added to the challenges facing Gazas people, about 80 percent of whom receive some form of food aid. Egypt, Gazas neighbor to the south, also tightly restricts movement to and from Gaza across its border.The expansion of the fishing zone is expected to add 400,000 shekels, or nearly $106,000, to the 6 million shekels in annual revenue generated by Gazas fishing industry, according to Cogat. The waters farther out offer greater quantities of fish and different varieties.Cogat officials said the expansion was part of a policy of loosening restrictions on the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza to improve the economy and foster stability. | World |
Moncef Slaoui, a former pharmaceutical executive, is now overseeing the U.S. initiative to develop coronavirus treatments and vaccines. His financial interests and corporate roles have come under scrutiny.Credit...Samuel Corum for The New York TimesMay 20, 2020The chief scientist brought on to lead the Trump administrations vaccine efforts has spent the last several days trying to disentangle pieces of his stock portfolio and his intricate ties to big pharmaceutical interests, as critics point to the potential for significant conflicts of interest.The scientist, Moncef Slaoui, is a venture capitalist and a former longtime executive at GlaxoSmithKline. Most recently, he sat on the board of Moderna, a Cambridge, Mass., biotechnology firm with a $30 billion valuation that is pursuing a coronavirus vaccine. He resigned when President Trump named him last Thursday to the new post as chief adviser for Operation Warp Speed, the federal drive for coronavirus vaccines and treatments.Just days into his job, the extent of Dr. Slaouis financial interests in drug companies has begun to emerge: The value of his stock holdings in Moderna jumped nearly $2.4 million, to $12.4 million when the company released preliminary, partial data from an early phase of its candidate vaccine trial that helped send the markets soaring on Monday.Dr. Slaoui sold his shares on Tuesday, and the administration said he would donate the increased value to cancer research.But the Moderna stock is just one piece of his pharmaceutical portfolio, much of which is not public. And some ethics and financial securities experts have voiced concerns about the arrangement Dr. Slaoui struck with the administration.In agreeing to accept the position, Dr. Slaoui did not come on board as a government employee. Instead, he is on a contract, receiving $1 for his service. That leaves him exempt from federal disclosure rules that would require him to list his outside positions, stock holdings and other potential conflicts. And the contract position is not subject to the same conflict-of-interest laws and regulations that executive branch employees must follow.Dr. Slaoui, an expert in molecular biology and immunology, is not the first Trump administration official with close relationships to drug and health care companies. His immediate boss, Alex M. Azar II, the health and human services secretary, is a former Eli Lilly executive. And the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, has moved in and out of government twice, and divested of his interests immediately upon assuming the F.D.A. job in 2017.Dr. Slaoui, 60, has spent his career developing vaccines and biotechnology businesses, and he has the investments and board seats to prove it. He still holds just under $10 million in GlaxoSmithKline stock and remains a partner in Medicxi, a venture capital firm that specializes in investing in biotech concerns, with several companies engaged in the global race to develop treatments or vaccines to stanch the coronavirus pandemic. GSK and Sanofi have become partners in creating a vaccine candidate against the coronavirus.The administration has reviewed Dr. Slaouis affiliations with several companies and concluded in several instances that there were no conflicts because his advisory roles were unrelated to coronavirus research or treatments, and in some cases the corporations had no products against the virus in production, according to a senior official with the Department of Health and Human Services.The new group of which Dr. Slaoui is lead scientist will vet candidates for vaccines and treatments, to decide whether they should receive federal financial backing and additional support.In an interview, Dr. Slaoui said he was determined to avoid conflicts and would re-evaluate any remaining associations if his financial interests stood to gain more from his new post overseeing the governments push to encourage speedy development of treatments or vaccines.He did not say how much his GSK shares were worth. When he left the company in 2017, he held about 240,000 shares and share equivalents, according to the drug companys annual report and an analysis by the executive compensation firm Equilar.He said he told administration officials that he did not want to sell his company stock.I have worked for 29 years for GSK, Dr. Slaoui said. I have never sold a single share of any company in my life. This is my retirement. What I said regarding the GSK shares, I said I cannot take the job if I have to sell them. Advanced Decision Vectors, which regularly contracts with the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies, will pay Dr. Slaouis living expenses when he stays in Washington away from his home in the Philadelphia area.Without public disclosure, some ethics experts called his contract an end-run around the rules.This is basically absurd, said Virginia Canter, who is chief ethics counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. It allows for no public scrutiny of his conflicts of interest.Ms. Canter also said federal law barred government contractors from supervising government employees.But others noted the lengths to which Dr. Slaoui was already distancing himself. Joseph Grundfest, a Stanford law professor and a former commissioner on the Securities and Exchange Commission, said conflicts of interest involving scientific experts were hardly rare.The challenge is to manage them appropriately, because if you try to avoid them altogether you often wont be able to get the best people for the job, Mr. Grundfest said.And obviously there will be appropriate recusals on a situational, going-forward basis, as is common, he added. What more do you want the guy to do?Dr. Slaoui has stepped away from other commitments: He resigned last week from Lonza, which will manufacture Modernas vaccine if it goes into production. And he said he left his position as an adviser to a company that works with Chinese businesses to develop therapies against the virus.ImageCredit...Tony Luong for The New York TimesDr. Slaoui also said that if the value of GlaxoSmithKline accrues higher than that of the pharmaceutical sector of the S&P 500 Index by the time he leaves the job, and if GSK has received any investment from the government for the Covid-19 program, he will donate the difference in his stock value to the National Institutes of Health, for research.Michael R. Caputo, assistant secretary for public affairs at H.H.S., said that the agencys ethics office had cleared Dr. Slaoui to hold onto his GSK investment and that he had agreed not to trade other coronavirus-related stocks. He added that Dr. Slaouis contract now included an ethics addendum, but could not provide details.Mr. Caputo said Dr. Slaouis role would be to recommend decisions that would be considered by government officials, including the chief operating officer Gen. Gustave Perna and others supervising the project.Ms. Canter, a former ethics lawyer in the Obama and Clinton administrations, the Securities and Exchange Commission and other agencies, pointed out that GSKs vaccine candidate with Sanofi could wind up competing with other manufacturers vying for government approval and support.If he retains stock in companies that are investing in the development of a vaccine, and hes involved in overseeing this process to select the safest vaccine to combat Covid-19, regardless of how wonderful a person he is, we cant be confident of the integrity of any process in which he is involved, Ms. Canter said.In addition, his affiliation with Medicxi could complicate matters: Two of its investors are GSK and a division of Johnson & Johnson, which is also developing a potential vaccine.Moderna has already received nearly $500 million from the government to help scale up production.In stepping down from Modernas board, Dr. Slaoui also gave up the potential for future stock gains. Equilar estimated that he stood to forfeit 73,000 options to buy shares valued at $4.2 million.In the past, he also worked for a company with extensive dealings in China, which has become a target of the presidents criticism during the pandemic. Mr. Trump and others have questioned whether China did enough to contain the coronavirus and assist other countries in controlling its spread.The company, Brii Biosciences, where Dr. Slaoui was an adviser until Friday, has ties to Chinas top business leadership.The companys high-profile list of investors includes Boyu Capital, the private equity firm where Jiang Zhicheng, the grandson of the former Chinese president Jiang Zemin, was a partner until January of this year, according to corporate filings. Sequoia Capital and Yunfeng Capital, the private equity fund of Jack Ma, the co-founder of Alibaba, are also investors.In April, Brii, which has offices in Durham, N.C., announced a partnership and licensing deal over its Covid antibody research with Tsinghua University and the 3rd Peoples Hospital of Shenzhen.In a statement, Brii said Dr. Slaoui received compensation consistent with his service and left with a small amount of stock options. The company added that Dr. Slaoui was not involved in Briis coronavirus work in China.Dr. Slaoui said he would resign from the boards of Clasado and Artizan Biosciences, both companies that work on treatments for intestinal problems. He said he would remain on the board of SutroVax, which recently raised $110 million from investors and is developing vaccines for pneumonia. He will also continue on the boards of Divide & Conquer, and Monopteros, which work on cancer treatments.At his first appearance in the White House Rose Garden, Dr. Slaoui divulged that he had recently seen early data from a clinical trial with a coronavirus vaccine, and these data made me feel even more confident that we will be able to deliver a few hundred million doses of vaccine enough to inoculate much of the United States by the end of 2020.While he did not mention Moderna specifically, the company did release partial data the following Monday morning, saying that its vaccine candidate appeared safe and had provoked an immune response in eight of 45 people.Some researchers and ethicists criticized the companys decision to publicize only a piece of a study that had not been published in a peer-reviewed journal. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the agency led by Dr. Anthony Fauci and Modernas partner on the vaccine, has not commented.Moderna has yet to produce any successful vaccine and has a lot riding on its Covid-19 project. Its technology, which uses genetic material from the virus called mRNA, is relatively new and unproven. And many vaccine candidates fail after showing preliminary promise, or cause serious side effects in later human trials.By late Monday, Moderna kicked off a big stock offering in which it hopes to raise $1.34 billion with the sale of 17.6 million shares. The company, which expected to close the offering on Thursday, is looking to raise capital to help bankroll vaccine development.The company went public in 2018 with a $600 million initial public offering, the biggest to date for a biotech company. Its board includes several members of venture capital firms Flagship Pioneering and General Catalyst. Flagship was one of the early backers of Moderna and owns 17 percent of its stock. Another large shareholder is the pharma company AstraZeneca. Until late last year, the big hedge fund Viking Global was a sizable investor in Moderna, but it slashed its holdings at the end of 2019, according to regulatory filings.Modernas chief executive, Stphane Bancel, owns 8.7 percent of outstanding stock and last year received a compensation package worth $8.9 million.The company has approval to begin a second-phase trial involving 600 people, and said it was moving on an accelerated timetable to begin the third phase in July with thousands of people.Many public health experts continue to say it is unlikely that a vaccine will be ready for mass production before next year.Cao Li contributed research. | Health |
Credit...Keith Srakocic/Associated PressMarch 31, 2009SARASOTA, Fla. No radar gun readings are posted at sleepy Ed Smith Stadium, which the Cincinnati Reds will vacate for Goodyear, Ariz., after one more game. Joba Chamberlain did not need a scoreboard to tell him he was throwing hard on Tuesday, anyway.I could just feel it out of my hand, he said. It felt better. There are some that youre trying to force in, and theres others that just come out of your hand great. There were some that came out of my hand as swings-and-misses with my fastball. I hadnt gotten many of those in spring training.Chamberlain had 12 swings-and-misses in the Yankees 6-3 victory, and he reached 96 miles an hour on the radar gun of a scout behind the plate. By the sixth inning, as his pitch count reached 87, Chamberlain was still throwing 93 and 94 m.p.h.That is what the Yankees want now that Chamberlain is a full-time starter. He worked five shutout innings Tuesday but struggled in the sixth, when he got one out, walked two and allowed two hits and two runs. He had six strikeouts over all.He was throwing pretty much all his pitches for a strike, said Jorge Posada, who caught Chamberlain for the first time this spring. We wanted to work on his changeup a little bit, but mainly we wanted to throw a lot more fastballs than hes been. I dont know how many fastballs hes been throwing, but I wanted to pound the zone with fastballs today, and he did that.That will be important for Chamberlain, who must keep his pitch count down to avoid long innings that lead to short starts. The Yankees will give Chamberlain extra days of rest now and then, but for the first few months, Manager Joe Girardi said, Chamberlain will not have strict pitch counts.Were going to let the games play out, for the most part, Girardi said. Come August and September, well have to see.By then, if Chamberlain is nearing his innings limit, he could be put back in the bullpen. Posada was among those who first hoped Chamberlain would stay a reliever, but now he is a convert.Give him credit, because he was so good out of the pen, Posada said. Having seen him as a starter, hes been showing me. Hes been proving me wrong. Im happy about that. The Yankees say Chamberlains stuff makes him a potential No. 1 starter, a hard commodity to find. Relievers typically use only two pitches, but Chamberlain has four: fastball, slider, curveball and changeup.The changeup is the least refined, but Chamberlain tested it Tuesday, throwing it with a 1-2 count to a dangerous hitter, Joey Votto. Posada said he would have suggested a different pitch in the regular season; Votto pulled it for a line-drive single.He wants to see if its another pitch for him that can get people out, Posada said. I dont have a problem with it.Chamberlain was a starter in college and in the minor leagues, but at 23 he is still learning the starters mind-set. He had an uneven spring training, with a 5.85 earned run average including a game against Canada, but he said he improved by emphasizing his bullpen session between starts.Chamberlain kept using the word attack, and Girardi said he needed that mentality. It will help his efficiency if hitters know that Chamberlain will consistently throw strikes.With his slider, guys arent going to want to get behind, Girardi said. If hes 0-1, 0-2 all the time, you have the chance to get some quick outs. You have to earn that reputation. They have to know you have the capability to do that.This is a busy week for Chamberlain, who was scheduled to fly to Nebraska after the game for his arraignment Wednesday on drunken-driving charges from an incident Oct. 18. The arraignment was postponed four times.Im going to show up and well take care of business, he said.Chamberlain will then fly to New York to work out with the team at the new Yankee Stadium before two exhibition games. After pitching in a minor league game Sunday in Tampa, he will rejoin the Yankees for their opener in Baltimore the next day.INSIDE PITCHThe Yankees cut all of their long-relief candidates and told Jonathan Albaladejo that he had made the team. That means Brett Tomko, Dan Giese and Alfredo Aceves will pitch for Class AAA Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Tomko, who does not have an out clause in his contract until June, will pitch out of the bullpen in Scranton with Giese. The Class AAA rotation will include Phil Hughes, Ian Kennedy, Kei Igawa, Jason Johnson and Aceves. ... Paul Olden, a former Yankees broadcaster, will replace Bob Sheppard as the public-address announcer for this weeks exhibition games at Yankee Stadium. Sheppard is still recovering from the bronchial infection that caused him to miss last season and will sideline him for the home opener April 16. ... Alex Rodriguez spoke with Joe Girardi on Sunday and said that he had started throwing as part of his recovery from hip surgery in Colorado. General Manager Brian Cashman said Rodriguez would return to Tampa by the time the Yankees played a three-game series with the Rays starting April 13. Rodriguez is likely to be activated in mid-May. Everythings gone very well, Cashman said. Hes working extremely hard and everythings going as planned, which is good news. | Sports |
AdvertisingDec. 20, 2015It has been seen countless times, yet it may be the advertising industrys best-kept secret. What exactly is that small turquoise triangle, often in the upper right corner, that appears in many online ads?It is the logo for AdChoices, and the idea is that if consumers do not like the personalized ads they are seeing those that pop up based on information gathered from their browsing history or habits they can click on the symbol, and it will take them to a page that explains how they can opt out of seeing them.The Digital Advertising Alliance, the organization behind AdChoices, likes to boast that the AdChoices logo is seen more than a trillion times every month and that it is a great, effective program thats one of its kind, said Lou Mastria, executive director of the organization. He added that there have been eight million unique opt-outs since AdChoices began.But a study this year by the advertising agency Kelly Scott Madison found that while 26 percent of web users said they were familiar with the AdChoices logo, only 9 percent of those understood what it meant.I think the intent of AdChoices was really good, and the purpose was very well intentioned, but the consumer education piece never happened, said Kay Wesolowski, digital media director of Kelly Scott Madison.The AdChoices program was started in 2010 by the alliance, a group of more than 400 organizations and companies involved in the advertising industry.Opting out does not necessarily stop companies from tracking users information, but it does stop them from targeting those users with what are known as interest-based ads.Privacy groups say the program is flawed.It puts the burden on consumers, its hard to use, and most people dont know what it does, said Claire Gartland, a consumer protection lawyer for the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center.The reality is that most consumers are ambivalent: They want content to be free, which ads allow for, and many like targeted ads that speak to their interests. On the other hand, web users in general are very nervous and unclear about what information is being collected about them, Ms. Wesolowski said.The idea behind AdChoices is that it provides an option to forgo the targeted ads.It works like this: A user searches for, say, the best ice cream in New York. Up comes a Yelp page that also features an ad for Macys, because the ice cream lover recently bought something online from the department store.If users want to get rid of these targeted ads, they can click on the triangle its size is small so that it does not use up too much valuable ad real estate and will then be taken to a page from the advertising network that Macys paid to place the ad. This page explains what AdChoices does and how to opt out of targeted ads.There is also a page that tells users how many advertising networks are following them often many more than expected. A way to opt out of these networks is provided.There is a technical hitch, though. If users decide at any point to delete all their cookies the small text files used to track web preferences then the AdChoices opt-out function, which is also a cookie, will be deleted. One way to ensure the opt-out stays on a browser is to click Protect My Choices on the choices page.For some, the process seems too complicated.It should take the average consumer a millisecond to opt out, rather than having to look around for the appropriate icon, said Julia Zukina, a lawyer who published a paper on the issue.The Digital Advertising Alliance did offer a public education program a few years ago that largely emphasized the benefits of targeted ads; the ad campaign the group ran in 2012 and 2013 used the slogan Will the right ads find you?Mr. Mastria said his organization would begin a new education initiative next year. It offers an AdChoices app called AppChoices, which is available in English and Spanish.He also pointed to another study released this year by Truste, a company that certifies websites for compliance with privacy standards. The study said that 37 percent of web users were aware of the AdChoices icon and that 19 percent of those aware of the icon (or 7 percent of the total) had clicked on it.Tracking companies are collecting information primarily about hobbies and shopping tendencies, and not identifiable personal or financial information, Mr. Mastria said. Often, in fact, the tracker does not even know if someone bought a specific item from a retailer that is why people are sometimes shown ads for items they have already purchased.But Ms. Gartland, the consumer protection lawyer, said the United States needed a system more like the European Unions, in which customers are notified that a website is using cookies to track them and the user needs to opt in. She said advertisers opposed an opt-in program because they would lose revenue, while Mr. Mastria said most consumers in the United States would not want the European model because they preferred targeted ads over more general ones and liked the convenience of the American system.Consumers can install a plug-in in their browser that sends a signal to a website telling it not to track them, but not all websites honor that request, Ms. Gartland said.Although AdChoices has many critics, At least now when people say, Im tired of having ads following me around how do I get rid of them? we have an answer, said JC Cannon, who worked for Microsoft for 16 years and is now an independent online-privacy consultant. We didnt have an answer 10 years ago. For the average consumer, this is the best available today. | Business |
Credit...Odd Andersen/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesDec. 9, 2015WOLFSBURG, Germany It was the corporate equivalent of saying never mind.Volkswagen, which has been on a public relations losing streak in recent months, said Wednesday that one of its admitted sins was not as egregious as the company had originally confessed.The automaker said Wednesday that it had overstated things last month when it announced an auto emissions problem that regulators had not yet detected that it had misled the public about the fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions of 800,000 vehicles in Europe. The number, Volkswagen said on Wednesday, was only a small fraction of that no more than 36,000.German transportation regulators have not yet confirmed the revised, smaller number. But if it is accurate, it means that Volkswagen would have to repay only a small fraction of the 2 billion euros, or $2.2 billion, in tax incentives that the company originally estimated customers in Europe had improperly received from their governments for driving cars with low emissions of greenhouse gases.The tax breaks were granted by governments on the basis of the low emissions and good fuel economy that Volkswagen had initially reported for the cars and that the company on Wednesday said it could once again vouch for, in most cases.Whether 2 billion, or a much smaller figure, the money is only a portion of the many billions of dollars Volkswagen could end up spending in repairs, fines and lawsuit settlements over the much bigger scandal it has not been able to explain, or explain away. That is the problem of deceptive software it has admitted installing in more than 11 million diesel cars that was designed to let the cars cheat on emissions tests.If the scaled-back admission on Wednesday holds up, it might be a rare, if minor, piece of good news for the company. But it also raises questions about why the company announced the 800,000 figure and whether Volkswagen still has a public communications problem.Volkswagen said on Wednesday that it had chosen to err on the side of caution when it disclosed the new problem and gave the figure of 800,000 cars. The company said that after retesting the vehicles, it concluded that its original measurements of fuel economy and carbon dioxide emissions were accurate for the vast majority of the vehicles.And even for 36,000 or fewer of the vehicles, Volkswagen said, the fuel economy and emissions discrepancies might be small enough that the company may not have to reimburse any tax breaks. The fuel data was off by the equivalent of less than two miles per gallon, the company said, and the carbon dioxide-emission figures were off by a few grams per 100 kilometers, or about 60 miles, traveled.Volkswagens bigger issue remains the diesel cheating scandal involving 11 million cars. Most are in Europe but about 500,000 of them are in the United States, where regulators disclosed the deception in September.On Thursday here in Wolfsburg, Matthias Mller, the Volkswagen chief executive, will hold his first news conference since the wrongdoing came to light and he was promoted to replace Martin Winterkorn, who resigned a few days after the deception was exposed.Mr. Mller is expected to provide an interim report on the companys own investigation of who was responsible for the diesel cheating. How forthcoming the company is able to be will be a test of its campaign to restore credibility.Volkswagen said late last month that it would be able to make diesel vehicles in Europe compliant with clean air rules by reprogramming the software. For some engines, Volkswagen said it would install a simple plastic part to improve the flow of air into the engine and reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides the gases that the deceptive software was meant to reduce during testing, but would allow at much higher levels during on-the-road driving.Though Volkswagen has yet to indicate how it will fix its diesel vehicles in the United States, where emissions standards are stricter, the remedial actions announced for Europe were much simpler and cheaper than expected.In Europe, Volkswagen has mostly gotten the risks out of the way, said Ferdinand Dudenhffer, a professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen who specializes in the auto industry and is a prominent critic of Volkswagen.But he said the company was also benefiting from light enforcement of regulations in Germany. The Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt, the regulatory agency for motor vehicles in Germany, is deliberately starved for resources by political leaders eager to protect the countrys powerful automakers, Mr. Dudenhffer said Wednesday. As a result, he said, the agency does not have the capacity to challenge Volkswagens technical findings.Under European Union rules, approval by German regulators automatically confers approval in the blocs other countries.Volkswagen also said Wednesday that it had replaced an executive who had earlier been suspended in connection with the diesel emissions cheating. The executive, Heinz-Jakob Neusser, will give up his duties as head of development for the Volkswagen brand and be replaced by Frank Welsch, the company said.Mr. Neusser will remain with the company and is available to take on other responsibilities, Volkswagen said.Last week, Ulrich Hackenberg, who like Mr. Neusser played a top role in developing Volkswagen engines in recent years, resigned his post at the company. Six other executives have also been suspended, but as far as is known they remain on the payroll.There is little political will in Germany to punish Volkswagen, which is one of the countrys largest employers. But Volkswagen still faces intense pressure in the United States from the Environmental Protection Agency, and there are customers and dealers who have filed hundreds of lawsuits.There is still the United States, Mr. Dudenhffer said. | Business |
Nets 93, Pelicans 81Credit...Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesFeb. 9, 2014One by one, they came off the bench late in the first quarter at Barclays Center, building on the Nets early lead and waking up the crowd with their play. Not the All-Star guard Joe Johnson, or Paul Pierce, or Kevin Garnett. These were the substitutes.This was the depth the Nets were supposed to have but did not for the first 45 games or so of the season. On Sunday, at least, they were flipping up alley-oops throughout the second and fourth quarters of the Nets 93-81 win over the New Orleans Pelicans.It was not the first time this season that the Nets had a full roster (minus center Brook Lopez, who is out for the season). It was not the first time the starters seemed to take a back seat to the reserves.But the combination of health and depth synchronized so nicely Sunday that the starters, well, they had good seats to a good show. The Nets starters were outscored, 59-34, by their backups the first time in franchise history that none of the starters scored in double figures, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. In the locker room after the game, only two of the five Johnson and Shaun Livingston stayed to speak with reporters. In other words, they let the bench guys do most of the playing and the talking.We have to continue to get better as a unit, as a bench, point guard Jason Terry said. Theyre going to need us, especially down the stretch. Theres going to be some games where were going to be called upon to make shots, get stops, just make an impact on the game.The previous two home games, before Fridays loss at Detroit, included embarrassing performances by the bench, Terry said. Pierce noted as much a week ago when he stated matter-of-factly after Mondays win against Philadelphia that our bench has to play better.Terry agreed. We were disappointed, he said. What changed Sunday was not a matter of tactical adjustments; it was better execution.ImageCredit...Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesWere put in the game to execute, run our sets, play defense and get stops, Terry said. I thought tonight we did an excellent job of that.The Nets did seem to have more players than they knew what to do with. They answered the Pelicans youth with, well, youth or at least the one pair of youthful legs the Nets roster has. That would be the rookie center Mason Plumlee, who hopped his way through the second quarter as if he had been downing espresso shots on the bench.Plumlee scored 14 points, with five rim-rattling dunks, and had seven rebounds and two blocks in his first 16 minutes. He finished with a season-high 22 points and matched his season best in rebounds with 13. The crowd fed off his energy. New Orleans did not seem to know how to put a body on him.I think I was doing the same thing Ive been doing; they just didnt guard the rim as well, Plumlee said, adding that his teammates Terry and Alan Anderson drew two off their screen-and-roll and found me at the rim.With Mirza Teletovic who finished the game with 13 points and 11 rebounds and Terry playing well, the Nets first-half lead grew to 27. There seemed no reason to put the starters back in. So Coach Jason Kidd elected to leave most of them out, sending Deron Williams back in for the final 68 seconds of the opening half.The Pelicans 28 points were the fewest by a Nets opponent in a first half since 2005.They executed, and I think they gave the starters a big lift, Kidd said.When the Nets starters returned to start the third quarter, New Orleans went on a 24-10 run, cutting its deficit to single digits. The Pelicans scored more points in the third quarter (32) than they had in the first half. But Williamss runner in the lane at the buzzer kept the Nets ahead by 11.Back came the reserves in the fourth, and instead of another letdown, they kept New Orleans from creeping back in. Teletovic kept shooting. Terry kept passing. Plumlee kept leaping.Were going to need our bench, Livingston said. We need everybody. It cant just be the bench, or just the starters, or just some of the main players. Its got to be everybody.REBOUNDSNets center Brook Lopez addressed reporters at halftime Sunday for the first time since having season-ending surgery to repair the fifth metatarsal of his right foot Jan. 4. The operation was his third on that area of the foot since 2011, but Lopez remained resolute about returning by the start of next season. Im not scared at all, he said. The procedure, called a metatarsal osteotomy, involved repositioning another bone in the foot in an effort to prevent re-injury a route considered riskier but with potentially higher rewards. Lopez said he had already been sized for different shoes. | Sports |
John Legend Trump and Lots of Republicans A Bunch of Racists 1/22/2018 TMZ.com John Legend didn't hold back Sunday, saying Donald Trump's not the only racist in D.C. ... a bunch of Republicans are in his lily white boat. John was strolling down a street at the Sundance Film Festival and he's praising Democrats for holding the line in the budget war that caused a government shutdown, saying they need to stand up to the man who referred to countries in Africa as well as Haiti as "shithole" countries. Legend doesn't paint all Republicans with a racist brush, but he says there's a contingent that is squarely behind Trump's appalling comments. | Entertainment |
Steve Clark, a senior vice president for the city-owned utility in Chattanooga that offers a fiber-optic Internet service to residents, which transfers data at one gigabit per second. Gig City, as Chattanooga is sometimes called, has what city officials and analysts say was the first and fastest and now one of the least expensive high-speed Internet services in the United States.Credit...Tami Chappell for The New York TimesSlide 1 of 6 Steve Clark, a senior vice president for the city-owned utility in Chattanooga that offers a fiber-optic Internet service to residents, which transfers data at one gigabit per second. Gig City, as Chattanooga is sometimes called, has what city officials and analysts say was the first and fastest and now one of the least expensive high-speed Internet services in the United States.Credit...Tami Chappell for The New York TimesFeb. 3, 2014CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. For thousands of years, Native Americans used the river banks here to cross a gap in the Appalachian Mountains, and trains sped through during the Civil War to connect the eastern and western parts of the Confederacy. In the 21st century, it is the Internet that passes through Chattanooga, and at lightning speed.Gig City, as Chattanooga is sometimes called, has what city officials and analysts say was the first and fastest and now one of the least expensive high-speed Internet services in the United States. For less than $70 a month, consumers enjoy an ultrahigh-speed fiber-optic connection that transfers data at one gigabit per second. That is 50 times the average speed for homes in the rest of the country, and just as rapid as service in Hong Kong, which has the fastest Internet in the world.It takes 33 seconds to download a two-hour, high-definition movie in Chattanooga, compared with 25 minutes for those with an average high-speed broadband connection in the rest of the country. Movie downloading, however, may be the networks least important benefit.It created a catalytic moment here, said Sheldon Grizzle, the founder of the Company Lab, which helps start-ups refine their ideas and bring their products to market. The Gig, as the taxpayer-owned, fiber-optic network is known, allowed us to attract capital and talent into this community that never would have been here otherwise.Since the fiber-optic network switched on four years ago, the signs of growth in Chattanooga are unmistakable. Former factory buildings on Main Street and Warehouse Row on Market Street have been converted to loft apartments, open-space offices, restaurants and shops. The city has welcomed a new population of computer programmers, entrepreneurs and investors. Lengthy sideburns and scruffy hipster beards not the norm in eastern Tennessee are de rigueur for the under-30 set.This is a small city that I had never heard of, said Toni Gemayel, a Florida native who moved his software start-up, Banyan, from Tampa to Chattanooga because of the Internet speed. It beat Seattle, New York, San Francisco in building the Gig. People here are thinking big.But so far, it is unclear statistically how much the superfast network has contributed to economic activity in Chattanooga over all. Although city officials said the Gig created about 1,000 jobs in the last three years, the Department of Labor reported that Chattanooga still had a net loss of 3,000 jobs in that period, mostly in government, construction and finance.EPB, the city-owned utility formerly named Electric Power Board of Chattanooga, said that only about 3,640 residences, or 7.5 percent of its Internet-service subscribers, are signed up for the Gigabit service offered over the fiber-optic network. Roughly 55 businesses also subscribe. The rest of EPBs customers subscribe to a (relatively) slower service offered on the network of 100 megabits per second, which is still faster than many other places in the country.Some specialists say the low subscriber and employment numbers are not surprising or significant, at least in the short term. The search for statistical validation of these projects is not going to turn up anything meaningful, said Blair Levin, executive director of Gig.U, a high-speed Internet project that includes more than three dozen American research universities. Mr. Levin cited Solows paradox, the 1987 observation by Robert M. Solow, a recipient of the Nobel in economic science who wrote that you can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.Such is the case with many new technologies, Mr. Levin said. No one is going to design products that can run only on a one-gigabit-per-second network if no such networks exist, he said. But put a few in place, he added, and soon the supply of applications will drive a growing demand for the faster connections.Chattanoogas path to Gig City is part of a transformation that began long before most Americans knew the Internet existed. Named Americas most-polluted city in 1969 because of largely unregulated base of heavy manufacturing, Chattanooga has in the last two decades cleaned its air, rebuilt its waterfront, added an aquarium and become a hub for the arts in eastern Tennessee. In more recent years, an aggressive high-tech economic development plan and an upgrade of the power grid by EPB moved Chattanooga toward the one-gigabit connection.In 2009, a $111 million federal stimulus grant offered the opportunity to expedite construction of a long-planned fiber-optic network, said David Wade, chief operating officer for the power company. (EPB also had to borrow $219 million of the networks $330 million cost.) Mr. Wade said it quickly became apparent that customers would be willing to pay for the one-gigabit connection offered over the network.Chattanooga has been joined in recent years by a handful of other American cities that have experimented with municipally owned fiber-optic networks that offer the fastest Internet connections. Lafayette, La., and Bristol, Va., have also built gigabit networks. Google is building privately owned fiber systems in Kansas City, Kan.; Kansas City, Mo.; and Austin, Tex., and it recently bought a dormant fiber network in Provo, Utah.The systems are the leading edge of a push for ever-faster Internet and telecommunications infrastructure in a country that badly lags much of the world in the speed and costs of Web connections. Telecommunications specialists say that if the United States does not keep its networks advancing with those in the rest of the world, innovation, business, education and a host of other pursuits could suffer.Even so, few people, including many who support the systems, argue that everyone in the country now needs a one-gigabit home connection. Much of the public seems to agree. According to Federal Communications Commission statistics, of the households where service of at least 100 megabits per second was available (one-tenth as fast as a gigabit), only 0.12 percent subscribed at the end of 2012. In Chattanooga, one-third of the households and businesses that get electric power from EPB also subscribe to Internet service of at least 100 megabits.But just as few people a decade ago thought there would be any need for one terabyte of data storage on a desktop computer (more than 200 million pages of text, or more than 200 movies), even the most prescient technology gurus have often underestimated the hunger for computer speed and memory.Fiber-optic networks carry another benefit, which is the unlikelihood that a potentially faster network will come along soon. Fiber optics can transmit data at close to the speed of light, and EPB officials say the technology exists for their network to carry up to 80 connections of 10 gigabits per second at once.Those who use Chattanoogas one-gigabit connection are enthusiastic. Mr. Gemayel, the Florida native who moved Banyan here from Tampa, first passed through Chattanooga in 2012, when he heard about an entrepreneurial contest sponsored by The Company Lab with a $100,000 prize. Banyan, which was working on a way to share real-time editing in huge data files quickly among far-flung researchers, won the contest. Mr. Gemayel returned to Tampa with his check.But once there he discovered that his low-bandwidth Internet connection was hampering the development of his business. By the beginning of 2013, he had moved to Chattanooga.Other companies have become Gig-related successes. Quickcue, a company that developed a tablet-based guest-management system for restaurants, began here in 2011 and over the next two years attracted about $3 million in investments. In December, OpenTable, the online restaurant reservations pioneer, bought Quickcue for $11.5 million.Big technology dreams do not always pan out, of course, and Chattanooga is familiar with failed experiments. The city spent millions of dollars in the last five years to build a citywide Wi-Fi network, known as the wireless mesh, intended for use by residents and city agencies. It sits largely unused, and its utility has largely been usurped by 4G wireless service.Few people here would say that the Gig has even begun to be used to its fullest. The potential will only be capped by our selfishness, said Miller Welborn, a partner at the Lamp Post Group, the business incubator where Banyan shares office space with a dozen other start-ups. The Gig is not fully useful to Chattanooga unless a hundred other cities are doing the same thing. To date, the best thing its done for us is it put us on the map.For all the optimism, many boosters are aware there are limits to how far the Gig can take the city, particularly as it waits for the rest of the country to catch up.We dont need to be the next Silicon Valley, Mayor Andy Berke said. Thats not who were going to be, and we shouldnt try to be that. But we are making our own place in the innovation economy. | Tech |
Credit...Itsuo Inouye/Associated PressNov. 2, 2018SYDNEY, Australia The Western Pacific nation of Palau has become the first country to ban many kinds of sunscreen, in a move to protect its coral reefs from chemicals that scientists say cause significant damage.Under the ban, which will take effect in 2020, reef toxic sunscreen defined as containing one of 10 prohibited chemicals, a list that could grow later can be confiscated from tourists when they enter the country, and retailers who sell it can be fined up to $1,000.Damage to coral reefs worldwide from climate change has been widely reported, but scientists say there is growing evidence that chemicals from sunscreen, which washes off swimmers or enters the ocean through sewer systems, also causes grave harm.Palau passed the ban into law last week. President Tommy Remengesau called it especially timely, saying that a major impetus was a 2017 report that found sunscreen products to be widespread in Jellyfish Lake, one of the countrys Unesco World Heritage sites.What threat does sunscreen pose to coral?It has been estimated that 14,000 tons of sunscreen are deposited in the worlds oceans each year, and scientists say a number of studies have shown the products adverse effects on coral reefs.Researchers found that even a low concentration of sunscreen in the water can hinder the development of young coral, said Dr. Selina Ward, a lecturer in coral reef ecology and physiology at the University of Queensland in Australia. Studies have also shown that chemicals in sunscreen can cause localized coral bleaching, and can disrupt the reproduction of fish by interfering with their hormonal systems, Dr. Ward said.Chemicals in sunscreen can be bigger than climate change in causing damage to reefs, Craig Downs, the executive director of the Haereticus Environmental Laboratory in Virginia, said this year. In 2015, Mr. Downs led a team that found that oxybenzone, which is commonly used in sunscreen, stunts coral growth and is toxic for the algae that live within reefs, providing their color and performing other vital functions.Have there been other sunscreen bans?In May, Hawaii became the first state to ban the sale of sunscreen containing oxybenzone or octinoxate, another chemical that scientists say is damaging to coral. The ban is scheduled to go into effect in January 2021.Nonbiodegradable sunscreen is banned in some parts of Mexico. At Xel-H, a tourist development on the Riviera Maya, visitors can swap banned sunscreen for more coral-friendly varieties and get their own back when they leave.What are the alternatives?Not all sunscreens are reef toxic. But some of the sunscreens without these chemicals are quite expensive, which is a disincentive, Dr. Ward said. Im sure someone will get it soon, and put out these products at an affordable rate.The most common commercial sunscreen brands contain oxybenzone, Dr. Ward said. But she also warned against mineral-based sunscreens containing zinc oxide. They were once considered safer for coral, she said, but a recent study found that zinc oxide can cause coral bleaching as well as microbial enrichment, causing more bacteria to form in the water.I think wearing fabrics on your body is the best alternative to sunscreen, she said. We have stinger suits in the summer, when its too hot for a wet suit. Cover your whole body in Lycra an attractive look, if you can imagine.She noted that reefs are under threat from major, global phenomena, including global warming and pollution of the oceans. By comparison, she said, sunscreen is the one that we can solve.What do others say?Sunscreen manufacturers, not surprisingly, opposed the Hawaii ban. But they arent alone in arguing that commercial sunscreens do more good than harm.At the moment, research on sunscreens effects on coral is limited, said Heather Walker, chairwoman of the Cancer Council Australias National Skin Cancer Committee. By contrast, the evidence that sunscreen prevents skin cancer is conclusive. In this context, a ban is hasty.Currently, Ms. Walker said, there is no accepted standard for what constitutes environmentally friendly sunscreen. We would be concerned if Australians stopped using sunscreen more generally, she said.Kim Do, a senior industry analyst at IBIS World, a market research company, said the new bans would cause sunscreen manufacturers to review the ingredients used in their products, though not immediately. She said the industry was expected to continue undertaking product research and development to meet changing consumer demands. | World |
Disney Star Adam Hicks In Court for Robbery Case Judge Tacks $200k onto Bail 1/26/2018 Disney star Adam Hicks made his first court appearance for his armed robbery case, and it's going to be a lot harder for him to bail out of jail. We broke the story ... Hicks -- star of Disney productions like "Zeke and Luther" and "Lemonade Mouth" -- was arrested for committing or attempting to commit 5 armed robberies. The 25-year-old and his girlfriend, who was also busted, allegedly went on a spree Wednesday morning ... brandishing a handgun while demanding money and property from victims. TMZ posted video, allegedly of Hicks pulling one of the robberies. The judge raised Hicks' bail from $350k to $550k. His gf, Danni Tamburo, posted $300k bail and was released. While in court, Hicks' attorney argued the alleged victims had not ID'd him as the suspect ... so he didn't want Hicks' face shown on camera. The judge agreed. Hicks is still in custody. | Entertainment |
Dec. 16, 2015Valeant Pharmaceuticals said on Wednesday that it had sharply lowered its sales and earnings forecasts for this year as it deals with controversies over its pricing and distribution strategies.The company issued its revised guidance shortly before beginning a four-hour meeting for investors and analysts at which executives confidently predicted they would get beyond short-term disruptions. Im very committed, J. Michael Pearson, the embattled chief executive and architect of the companys business model, said in response to a question. He declined to answer whether the board still supported him, as it has until now, implying that was a question for the board.If the board wants to fire me, they are welcome to fire me, but until they do, were going to get through this thing, he said.Despite the lower earnings forecasts, shares of Valeant rose 8.9 percent to close at $118.47 on Wednesday.The company said that its revenue was expected to be $10.4 billion to $10.5 billion in 2015, down from a previous forecast, made in mid-October, of $11 billion to $11.2 billion. Adjusted earnings per share were expected to be $10.23 to $10.33, down from a previous forecast of $11.67 to $11.87.The biggest cause, responsible for $250 million of the expected $600 million shortfall in fourth-quarter sales, was the severing of its ties to a secretive mail-order pharmacy that helped win reimbursement for its costly dermatology drugs.Valeant announced in October that it was ending the relationship, after news reports found that the pharmacy, Philidor Rx Services, might have used inappropriate tactics with insurers and after some investors criticized Valeant for hiding its financial relationship with the pharmacy.Another reason for the lowered forecasts, executives said, was that the company canceled nearly all the price increases it had planned for the fourth quarter. Also, sales of certain drugs to hospitals declined substantially after Valeant sharply raised the prices. Valeants pricing and distribution strategies are the subject of inquiries from Congress and the Justice Department.ImageCredit...Christinne Muschi/ReutersOn Tuesday, Valeant announced a new distribution deal with Walgreens meant to replace the one it had with Philidor.Deb Jorn, who runs Valeants dermatology business, said that prescriptions for its dermatology drugs fell about 19 percent in the four weeks after the termination of the Philidor relationship, compared with the four weeks immediately before. But overall dermatology sales had been growing strongly before that, helping the company to weather the storm.For 2016, Valeant said that it expected earnings before interest, taxes and some other factors to be $6.9 billion to $7.1 billion, compared with at least $7.5 billion forecast in October. The company also said revenue was expected to be $12.5 billion to $12.7 billion next year, a roughly 20 percent increase from its revised forecast for 2015. Earnings per share, after adjustments, are expected to be $13.25 to $13.75, also up substantially from the revised expectations for this year.The company said it expected to reduce its debt by $2.25 billion in 2016. Valeant has more than $30 billion in debt that it accumulated through its strategy of growth through numerous acquisitions.Using most of its free cash to pay down debt is expected to severely crimp the companys ability to make new acquisitions in 2016, and to some extent in 2017, executives said.Weve not sworn off deals forever, Mr. Pearson said, but we have a very strong commitment to paying down our debt.Much of the meeting was spent outlining what it said were attractive prospects for various businesses, like contact lenses and Xifaxan, a drug for gastrointestinal diseases it acquired by buying Salix Pharmaceuticals last year. Xifaxan is expected to become the first Valeant drug to exceed $1 billion in annual sales.Executives also spent time discussing products the company was developing, trying to rebut the perception that Valeant shuns research and development. The company does spend far less on it as a percentage of sales than most other pharmaceutical companies, and Mr. Pearson has in the past said it was more efficient to buy drugs than to undertake much risky research.Executives also expressed optimism about Addyi, the drug to improve low female sexual desire that was approved by the F.D.A. in August after a controversial lobbying campaign by some womens groups. Valeant obtained the drug, also known as flibanserin, by acquiring its developer, Sprout Pharmaceuticals, for $1 billion.So far there have been few prescriptions, seemingly belying claims by the drugs supporters that there is a huge unmet need for such a drug.But Tracy Valorie, who recently took charge of marketing the drug, said the prescription figures were deceiving. She said doctors tried to write 7,000 prescriptions since the drug went on sale in October, but only about 1,000 of them went through. That is because both doctors and pharmacists must be certified to prescribe and dispense the drug, given its side effects, which include low blood pressure, fainting, nausea, dizziness and sleepiness.Ms. Valorie said Valeant anticipated Addyi sales of $100 million to $150 million in 2016. That is still well below the sales of male sexual performance pills like Viagra, though those work in completely different ways. Ms. Valorie said that about half of people with insurance have policies that will pay for Addyi under at least some circumstances. | Business |
tech fixWe are beholden to a few Big Tech overlords for much of our digital lives. We can be more conscientious about it.Credit...Glenn HarveyJuly 29, 2020In the morning, you check email. At noon, you browse social media and message friends. In the evening, you listen to music while shopping online. Around bedtime, you curl up with an e-book.For all of those activities, you probably used a product made or sold by Google, Amazon, Apple or Facebook. Theres no simple way to avoid those Big Four. Even if you subscribed to Spotify, you would probably still be using a Google Android phone, an Amazon speaker or an Apple iPhone to stream the music. Even if you deleted Facebook, you might still be using the Facebook-owned Instagram or WhatsApp.Being beholden to a small set of companies that touch every corner of our digital lives is precisely why lawmakers have summoned the chief executives of Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple to testify in an antitrust hearing on Wednesday. Expect the tech titans to be grilled over whether their companies have become so powerful and far-reaching that they harm rivals and all of us, too.So what can we do if we want to break out of the stranglehold of Big Tech?At first glance, there may not seem like much we can do to escape. Its not like you can start shopping at local bookstores and put Amazon out of business, said Jason Fried, the founder of Basecamp, a Chicago-based company that offers productivity apps.But the more I thought about this, the more I realized that there were some steps that we could take to better support techs little guys, too. We would do ourselves and smaller businesses a favor by staying informed on alternatives, for one. We could change our consumption patterns so that we were not just buying new products from the tech giants. And we could show our support for indie developers who make the apps we love.As Mr. Fried put it, We can do things to change our own conscience. Heres how.When possible, find alternativesStep One to becoming a more conscientious consumer is doing some research.While Google Chrome may be the most popular web browser, there are alternatives that collect less data about us. And while all of our friends are on Facebook, there are also smaller apps or methods we can use to stay connected with them. The key is to read news sites and tech blogs to learn about options.You have to read and be informed, said Don Heider, chief executive of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. Otherwise, youre not going to have a clue of where to go and what to pick and what the impact is.Mr. Heider pointed to a few examples: Instead of Google Chrome, people can download great browsers, including DuckDuckGo, Brave and Opera, which focus on stronger privacy and security protections. Instead of Facebook, we can tell our friends to hang out with us on social media apps like Vero and Mastodon, which are both ad-free, he said.The same goes for Amazon. Instead of ordering paper towels and hand sanitizer on Amazon, consider picking up those items at a local store. Instead of ordering a new dog collar on Amazon, consider buying a custom-made one from an independent merchant on Etsy.Mr. Fried says he rarely shops on Amazon, takes cabs instead of Ubers and finds books via IndieBound, a resource for buying titles from local bookstores. When the default is just Amazon, Amazon, Amazon, youre just feeding the flame, he said.Why buy new? Buy usedSpeaking of alternatives, theres a different way to buy tech hardware altogether: Purchase gadgets used or refurbished.When you buy a new phone or computer, your dollars go directly to the tech giants who created the products. But when you buy used, you are supporting a broader community of small businesses that repair and resell equipment.Many of us generally shy away from used electronics because we fear the products may be in shoddy condition. The reality is that resellers work with technicians who restore products to their former glory before putting them up on sale and the gadgets are often backed by a warranty. Reputable vendors of used goods include GameStop and Gazelle.Buying used also contributes to a broader mission: the so-called right to repair movement.Unlike car mechanics, small electronics repair shops have limited access to the parts and instructions that they need to service our smartphones, tablets and computers. Public advocacy groups and the repair community have pushed to pass legislation that would require electronics manufacturers to share all of the components and information needed to fix our gadgets.If more people opt to buy used or refurbished goods, that will show that there is demand for repaired products. That, in turn, puts pressure on manufacturers to make repair more accessible to independent technicians and consumers, said Carole Mars, the director of technical development and innovation at the Sustainability Consortium, which studies the sustainability of consumer goods.It comes down to accepting refurbished and demanding refurbished, Dr. Mars said. That will lead you to ask, Why cant I get this product used or fixed? Its because the company locked it down.So try to make this a habit: Whenever you are shopping for an electronic online, check if there is a used or refurbished option. If there is one in good condition, go for it and save some bucks.Support indie developersA lot of what we do with our devices is made possible by smaller companies that produce our apps and games. One way to show our support to David rather than Goliath is to have some patience and empathy for the indie developers.People often get frustrated when an app or game they love gets a big software update and charges another $3 to $10 for the new version, for example. Try not to get irritated these are small outfits trying to survive, not big corporations trying to milk you and be willing to pay. Its the same amount of money as a cup of coffee or a sandwich, and youre polishing a piece of software that you love.If you can pay for software that you like, said Brianna Wu, a game developer, you probably have an ethical responsibility to do so in the same way that youd have the ethical responsibility to tip a waitress. The reality is that most of the time when you play an indie video game, that group of people have bet their entire companys future on you paying for it.Keep in mind also that small app developers lack the huge marketing budgets of our tech overlords. They rely largely on all of us to do grass-roots marketing in the form of written reviews or word of mouth, said David Barnard, founder of the app studio Contrast. So when you love an app, tell your friends about it.Ill close with an example: My favorite piece of indie software for the Mac is Fantastical, a calendar app, which does a better, more reliable job organizing my online calendars than Apples calendar app.It was an expensive calendar app $50 but its kept me punctual, which makes it worth every penny. | Tech |
Credit...Chris CollingridgeHumans arent the only species that navigate by starlight. Animals from birds to dung beetles may do it, too and might become disoriented as our city lights drown out the heavens.James Foster and Marie Dacke performing orientation experiments at a dark-sky site in rural Limpopo, South Africa, with a dung beetle.Credit...Chris CollingridgePublished July 29, 2021Updated Sept. 28, 2021One moonless night a little more than a decade ago, Marie Dacke and Eric Warrant, animal vision experts from Lund University in Sweden, made a surprise discovery in South Africa.The researchers had been watching nocturnal dung beetles, miniature Sisyphuses of the savanna, as they tumbled giant balls of dung. The beetles seemed to be able to roll remarkably straight, even though they had no clear landmarks to reference.We thought maybe they were using our cameras, maybe someone had lit a fire somewhere, Dr. Dacke said. We were really confused. Then they realized the beetles were guided by the 100,000 light-years-long streak of the Milky Way.We humans are famous for this sort of thing. The stars beckoned our species to cross seas and kindled the sciences that later let us putter up toward them in rockets. From culture to culture, the Milky Way served as backdrop and inspiration for stories about rivers, trees, gods, serpents and, of course, exploration.But we werent the only ones looking.Researchers like Dr. Dacke suspect that a wide swath of the animal world might sometimes navigate by starlight and might be lost as our city lights drown out ever more of it. Her teams newest study, published Thursday, found that dung beetles became confused under light-swamped skies. The result adds to a small and scattered body of research, conducted over decades, on what the night sky might mean to the other earthlings who can sense it.These experiments raise the same few, difficult questions: Can animals see the stars? Can animals use them? And what happens when they lose them?Aquatic astronomersImageCredit...Arterra/Universal Images Group via Getty ImagesIn the 1780s, the astronomers William and Caroline Herschel scoured the skies for nebulae, finding some that resembled spiral seashells. In the 1920s, Edwin Hubble, at the helm of an enormous telescope, discovered that the Milky Way, Andromeda and Herschel spirals were galactic islands in a vast cosmic sea.And in the mid-2000s, Nick, a researcher of sorts in Cologne, Germany, swam to his own telescope and plopped into an underwater chair. Then he stuck his head in a tube and, if he saw a star, pressed a paddle. He was rewarded with fish.Nick, a harbor seal, entered the annals of astronomical history when Guido Dehnhardt, a marine biologist now at the University of Rostock, was studying how marine mammals orient themselves. If seals could discern stars, Dr. Dehnhardt and his colleague Bjrn Mauck hypothesized, that might help explain how the animals are able to complete long swims across otherwise featureless seas.To test a seals astronomical skills, Dr. Mauck devised what must be two of scientific historys most wide-eyed, wonder-infused experiments.First the team constructed their seal-o-scope a tube with no lens, through which Nick was given a tour of the night sky. He consistently pressed his paddle when bright points like Venus, Sirius and Polaris came into view; he could not see as many faint stars as humans can, the researchers determined, but plenty of possible celestial landmarks were still available to him.Next Dr. Mauck built something even bigger. This time two seals were invited to participate, Nick and his even cleverer brother, Malte.When ushered back into the pool at a Cologne zoo, the seals entered a dome measuring 15 feet across, its rim resting on a floating ring. The insides of this bespoke aqua-planetarium were lit up with 6,000 simulated stars. They were immediately swimming across the planetarium and looking at stars like, Oh, whats that? Dr. Dehnhardt said. You got the impression that they really recognized what this is.First the researchers used a laser pointer to direct the seals to where the rim of the dome met the water nearest to Sirius, the Dog Star. If a seal swam over and touched that precise part of the dome with its snout, it received some fish. Then the pointer was aimed directly at Sirius. Again the seals task was to swim toward the star and touch the point on the rim directly beneath it.Then the researchers dispensed with the laser pointer. No matter which way the star-projector was oriented, both seals could eventually swim in the direction of Sirius. That showed, the researchers argued in a 2008 paper, that seals traversing the open sea had the capacity to use lodestars to guide their travels.It had taken Nick, the more seasoned astronomer, 11 sessions to reliably touch the wall right under Sirius. But Malte did it the very first time they left him alone in the planetarium. Malte was an absolutely brilliant seal, Dr. Dehnhardt said.Coming of age under PolarisImageCredit...Joel Sartore/National Geographic Photo ArkWhile seals might steer by the stars, some birds definitely do, as more than a half-century of experiments inspired by Stephen T. Emlen have demonstrated.In the early 1960s, Dr. Emlen, then a graduate student at the University of Michigan and now an emeritus professor at Cornell, began carrying indigo buntings into a planetarium in the evenings. I was nocturnal myself, he said recently.Indigo buntings migrate at night, flying as far as 2,000 miles. Before they start out, they hop in the direction they plan to go, making their intent apparent to a navigation researcher. Dr. Emlen showed that if indigo buntings were exposed to the stars, the birds hopped in a manner indicating that they knew which way was north.Human observers know that at night the stars trace circles in the sky as Earth spins on its axis. Those circles shrink for more northern stars and the northernmost, Polaris, doesnt seem to circle at all. Once youve learned that, you need only to remember a constellation in the vicinity of north the Big Dipper works well to get oriented.Dr. Emlen wondered whether buntings employed a similar trick. If he covered up Polaris in the planetarium, could they still find north? Indeed they could, he discovered. What if he blotted out just the Big Dipper, or just Cassiopeia? Now the birds performance varied. And if he erased all the northernmost constellations together? The birds were lost.Later Dr. Emlen enlisted young indigo buntings that had just left their nests. Over the summer he tweaked the planetarium projector so that the sky rotated around Betelgeuse, the red giant star at Orions shoulder, rather than Polaris.Sure enough, come autumn, the buntings indicated with their hops that they thought Betelgeuse guided the way north. This suggested that the birds stargazing skills were learned, not derived from some star map encoded in their genes, Dr. Emlen and his colleagues argued. In the glittering dark, each young bunting had apparently spent some time looking up, studying, as the stars traced circles in the night sky.Lost on a starless nightImageCredit...Chris CollingridgeAround the time Nick and Malte learned to spot Sirius, Dr. Dacke and Dr. Warrant had their eureka moment in South Africa with dung beetles.After a dung beetle arrives on a dung pile, it painstakingly cobbles together a snowball of dung larger than itself. Then it climbs up onto the ball and spins around, scanning, as if deciphering the celestial scene.Through a dung beetles compound eyes, stars appear as blobs, not as points of light. But those same eyes are more sensitive than ours to dim objects like the dappled patterns of the Milky Way.After its spinning scan, a beetle rolls its ball in a straight line away from the dung pile for a few minutes, on a random heading. (This seems to minimize the likelihood that two beetles will meet, which often results in a fight.) Dr. Dacke found that the beetles seem to keep themselves rolling straight by confirming that the intragalactic scene they were heading toward still matched the earlier reference image.But a funny thing happened as Dr. Dackes team kept studying this behavior: They had an increasingly difficult time locating the Milky Way in the sky. I ended up spending one night cycling off into the forest, said James Foster, who joined the project as a graduate student and is now a postdoc in zoology at the University of Wrzburg in Germany.Thats a common experience; roughly four in five Americans, two in three Europeans, and one in three people in the world reside somewhere too bright at night for the Milky Way to be visible, a 2016 study showed, and the fraction of our planet that is illuminated at night grows larger every year.Dr. Dacke and Dr. Foster resolved to test whether washed-out skies might also matter to their study subjects. In their latest experiments, published Thursday in Current Biology, they shined spotlights on the beetles, and brought them to the roof of the Wits University biology building in central Johannesburg.They found two effects, neither of them good. When a beetles sky was dominated by a single glaring light, it could still go straight but instead of rolling off in a random direction, it made a beeline for the beacon. More confusing were the featureless, light-swamped skies you might expect in suburbs: The beetles just went in circles.Other species may be similarly affected. The stars have always been more or less constant while landmarks erode and the planets magnetic field shifts. But now, rather abruptly, they are fading out. What weve seen on a much smaller scale with the dung beetles could have huge impacts on birds and seals and migratory moths, Dr. Foster said.With their studies concluded, sciences pioneering animal astronomers have gone on to different fates. A few of the South African dung beetles now live in the lab in Lund, where the researchers sometimes study them under a fully simulated sky.Dr. Emlen kept the Betelgeuse-beguiled indigo buntings in his lab through the winter and released them in the spring. Hopefully, he said, they recalibrated to the true north before beginning their first migration.And Nick the seal is still an active contributor to fields like acoustics, hydrodynamics and optics, although Malte died a few years ago. Nick now lives in a sprawling harbor lab that opens to the Baltic Sea; at night, he and the other seals in the enclosure can see fantastic skies overhead, Dr. Dehnhardt said.But whether they use it, he said, I dont know.Reporting for this article was supported by the Alicia Patterson Foundation. | science |
Credit...Travis Heying/The Wichita Eagle, via Associated PressFeb. 3, 2014WICHITA, Kan. There are not many statement games on Wichita States schedule this season, but two are coming up in a matter of days.The unbeaten and fourth-ranked Shockers travel to Indiana State on Wednesday and Northern Iowa on Saturday. Those two teams are the closest contenders behind the Shockers in the Missouri Valley Conference race.More important, they are the two teams with the best chance of beating Wichita State (23-0, 10-0) before the start of the conference tournament March 6.Its the week that everyones been talking about and pointing at, arguably two of the best teams in our league, back to back, on the road, Shockers Coach Gregg Marshall said. I know theyll be great atmospheres coming up, and well have to play really good basketball.The Shockers might want to avoid spotting their opponents a big early lead, the way they did last weekend.Wichita State allowed Evansville to race out to a 15-point first-half advantage Saturday before rallying for an 81-67 victory. When then-No. 1 Arizona lost to California later that night, it left only the Shockers and the new No. 1, Syracuse, as the nations undefeated teams.To put that into perspective, the only other team from the Missouri Valley Conference to win its first 23 games was Larry Birds Indiana State team, which went 33-0 before losing to Magic Johnson and Michigan State in the 1979 N.C.A.A. championship game.The last team to enter the N.C.A.A. tournament undefeated was Nevada-Las Vegas in 1991.Nobody in this program feels like were at our best or reached our peak, guard Fred VanVleet said. Besides, we dont worry about what the outside world is talking about. We know every game in the Valley is a challenge.Poll voters have been largely unimpressed by the Shockers relatively weak schedule, which is why they remained No. 4 this week behind Arizona, which dropped to second, and Florida, which has lost twice this season.Wichita State has only one victory against a current top-25 team, beating No. 13 St. Louis before the Billikens were ranked. Otherwise, the Shockers have been pounding away on a schedule that offers few chances to pick up marquee victories.That is not entirely the Shockers fault. Marshall has found it increasingly tough to schedule games against high-profile opponents after his teams run to last years Final Four. Many of those teams do not want to risk losing to a midmajor program.Then there is the fact that the Missouri Valley Conference is considerably weaker this season.Creighton proved to be the Shockers toughest rival, but it moved to the Big East and left few contenders for conference superiority. Indiana State (17-5, 8-2) may be the closest thing, but even it was routed by Wichita State, 68-48, when they met Jan. 18.The Shockers beat Northern Iowa, 67-53, in their first meeting this season.Its something a lot of people have talked about, and I think were excited about it, forward Ron Baker said of the two-game trip. Well be prepared just like we always are. No games are a given on the road. Its going to be hostile, and were looking forward to it.Even with a weak schedule, Wichita State is still in the top 10 of the R.P.I., a key factor when the N.C.A.A. selection committee seeds teams. But its schedule also means that any slip would probably dash its chance of earning a No. 1 seed.It would help if the Shockers continued to dominate their opponents.They are the only team in the nation to lead its conference in scoring offense and defense. They also lead the league in scoring margin, offensive and defensive rebounding, turnover margin, rebounding margin, blocked shots and, well, just about every other statistic.Were trying to win a conference championship and get into the N.C.A.A. tournament with the best seed we can get, and just remain relevant nationally, Marshall said. Were pleased to go to 23-0 and looking forward to this week. I know itll be a big challenge. | Sports |
Business|Top Prescription Plan to Offer $1 Alternative to $750 Pillhttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/01/business/top-prescription-plan-to-offer-dollar1-alternative-to-dollar750-pill.htmlDec. 1, 2015Turing Pharmaceuticals effort to charge $750 a pill for a 62-year-old drug is facing a new headwind: The nations largest prescription drug manager plans to back an alternative that costs only $1 per pill. The prescription drug manager, Express Scripts, was expected to announce on Tuesday that it will promote use of a compounded medicine that contains the same active ingredient as the Turing drug, Daraprim. This could become a solution for the vast majority of patients, Dr. Steve Miller, chief medical officer of Express Scripts, said in an interview.The compounded medicine is already being made and sold by Imprimis Pharmaceuticals in San Diego. But the move by Express Scripts, which manages prescriptions for tens of millions of Americans, could increase sales considerably.From our perspective, its a tremendous endorsement of the business model of offering alternatives to high-priced drugs, said Mark L. Baum, chief executive of Imprimis. Mr. Baum said Imprimis was also developing compounded alternatives to older drugs whose prices have been raised sharply by other companies, including Valeant Pharmaceuticals International.Turing, which is run by the former hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli, set off a furor in September after it acquired the rights to Daraprim and raised its price overnight to $750 a pill from $13.50. Daraprim, known generically as pyrimethamine, is the treatment of choice for toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection that can be serious for babies and people with AIDS. While there is no patent protection on such an old compound, there are no generic versions approved for sale in the United States, in part because the market is small. Compounded drugs are customized formulations made by pharmacies for particular, named patients. That requirement restricts how directly Imprimis can compete with Turing. For instance, hospitals cannot stock the compounded version to use for patients coming to the emergency room. Imprimis, which is publicly traded, is not allowed to make a direct copy of Daraprim. So its capsule contains both pyrimethamine and leucovorin, a drug that is often prescribed with Daraprim to ease certain side effects.If a doctor writes a prescription for Daraprim, Express Scripts or pharmacies cannot substitute the compounded drug produced by Imprimis. So physicians will have to write a prescription specifically for the compounded drug and fax it to Imprimis. Express Scripts said it would work with the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association to inform doctors about the process. While Daraprim has become a symbol of pharmaceutical industry pricing practices, use of the drug is low, estimated at 2,000 patients a year in the United States. Dr. Miller said Express Scripts had only 350 patients who used Daraprim last year. Last week, Turing said that it would offer discounts of up to 50 percent to hospitals. It also said that it was offering financial assistance to patients so that no one needing the drug would go without it. Medicaid and certain hospitals already pay as little as a penny a pill for Daraprim because of federal pricing rules. But Turing declined to lower the $750-per-tablet list price. Turing said on Monday that compounded drugs were not demonstrated to be safe and effective, while drugs like Daraprim had been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.At least one of the compounding pharmacies owned by Imprimis received a warning letter from the F.D.A. last year for deficiencies in manufacturing and other practices. | Business |
Credit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesMarch 8, 2017BEIJING The story dripped with intrigue.A frantic President Trump, holding court in a bathrobe, ordered his aides to wrap the White House telephones in tinfoil, several Chinese publications reported this week, citing The New Yorker.There was only one problem: The New Yorker article, by the comedian Andy Borowitz, was satire.That did not stop the story, purporting to describe the depths of Mr. Trumps worry that his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, was eavesdropping on him, from ricocheting across the Chinese internet.Trump turns White House upside down looking for signs of Obama: I know hes still here! read headlines in respected publications like Caijing, a business magazine, and Sina, a news portal.Internet readers were puzzled. The state-run news media and Chinas army of censors are not known for making jokes. Was this for real?This is illness, one user wrote about Mr. Trump on Weibo, a microblogging site.Others were more discerning. This was made up and meant to be funny, another user said. Surprising it was treated as news. Editor, could you be more professional?It was not the first time that American humorists have unintentionally duped the Chinese news media.In 2012, Peoples Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party, reported that Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, had been named Sexiest Man Alive for 2012. The newspaper based its report on a satirical article in The Onion.And in 2013, Xinhua, the official news agency, mistook as fact a satirical report in The New Yorker about the purchase of The Washington Post by Jeff Bezos, the Amazon chief executive. (The New Yorker article said that Mr. Bezos had bought the newspaper by clicking on it by mistake. That piece was also written by Mr. Borowitz as part of his regular column, The Borowitz Report.)The satirical article about Mr. Trump was published on Saturday, and first picked up in China online and in print on Tuesday by Reference News, a newspaper that translates foreign news and is published by Xinhua. The newspaper removed the story from its website on Wednesday after the Chinese news media reported that it was false.Fake news articles, conspiracy theories and rumors are rampant on the Chinese internet, and media analysts say it is not surprising that Chinese outlets fall victim to jokes.Fake news is undoubtedly a serious problem in China, as it is elsewhere in the world, David Bandurski, editor of the China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong, wrote in an email. | World |
Credit...Mike Blake/ReutersJune 20, 2018WASHINGTON President Trump on Wednesday sought to quell the uproar over his administrations systematic separation of immigrant children from their families at the border, signing an executive order he portrayed as ending the problem.What caused the problem?Previously, many families caught sneaking across the border especially those seeking asylum were released into the United States while their immigration cases were processed. But in April, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that federal prosecutors would now pursue a zero-tolerance policy of criminally prosecuting every adult who illegally crossed the border or tried to do so.Sending adults to jail for prosecution prompted a set of court-imposed rules stemming from a class-action lawsuit over how the government handled unaccompanied minors in immigration detention. In the Trump administrations view, the government cannot hold children in immigration detention for over 20 days.That meant that if adults were sent to jail or long-term indefinite detention while their asylum requests or removal orders were processed, the children could not stay with them. As a result, the Trump policy of prosecuting adults has also led to a practice of separating families and holding children separately while trying to place them with relatives or in a licensed facility.Did Trumps order restore the old approach?No. His order explicitly states that the executive branch will continue to criminally prosecute people who cross the border illegally, signaling that the zero-tolerance policy remains in place.What does the order change?The order states that it is now the policy of the Trump administration to keep families together. It appears to envision a system in which families will be housed together in ad hoc detention centers, including on military bases, that the administration hopes a court will approve. It calls for many agencies including the Pentagon to make available existing facilities, or to construct them, for the Department of Homeland Security to use for the housing and care of alien families.Will this happen right away?The answer is unclear. At a briefing organized by the White House on Wednesday afternoon, Gene Hamilton, a counselor to Mr. Sessions, sidestepped a question about whether a family that shows up now would be separated. He said that an implementation phase would happen but that he was not sure precisely what the Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services would do.Since the administration has concluded that it can detain families together for up to 20 days under the existing rules, the start of the revised policy may turn on how much family-style detention space is available and how many new families are apprehended.Separately, a Justice Department official said that family separation was prompted in the past when adults were taken into the custody of United States marshals, while children were held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for three days and then transferred to the Health and Human Services Department. Under the new plan, the official said, the entire family will stay in ICEs hands. While the adults will still be prosecuted, that will prevent the need to immediately separate family members. The administration appears to be hoping that the courts or Congress will change the rules within 20 days, allowing families to be detained together indefinitely.What does the Flores case have to do with this?The long-running class-action litigation over the treatment of children in immigration custody ended with a 1997 consent decree known as the Flores settlement. Under it, the government has been obligated to release children from immigration detention to relatives or, if none can be found, to a licensed program within about three to five days. If that is impossible, they must be held in the least restrictive setting appropriate to their age and needs.In the second term of the Obama administration, amid a surge of migrants, the administration adopted a policy of detaining families headed by women together while their cases were processed. After those conditions were challenged in court, Judge Dolly M. Gee of Federal District Court for the Central District of California ruled that the Flores settlement terms also applied to accompanied minors, so holding children with their mothers in indefinite immigration detention was unlawful.How much can Trump do without court permission?The most important part of Mr. Trumps order set in motion a request to get a court to approve holding families together for longer than 20 days. The order directs Mr. Sessions to promptly ask a federal court to modify the consent agreement in a manner that would permit the Department of Homeland Security to hold families together throughout immigration court proceedings. At his press briefing, Mr. Hamilton said that unless Congress acted sooner to change the law, it would be up to Judge Gee to decide whether the administration could keep families together.What happens to the children already separated?The administration initially said it would not try to reunite children and parents who were separated at the border under the zero-tolerance policy, according to Kenneth Wolfe, a spokesman for the Health and Human Services Department.But the agency retreated later Wednesday evening, saying that it is still very early, and we are awaiting further guidance on the matter.Reunification is always the goal, said Brian Marriott, the senior director of communications for the agency, noting that the department was working toward that for children affected by the presidents policy.That statement left open the possibility, though, that the children could be reunited with relatives or appropriate sponsors in the United States, not necessarily the parent they were separated from at the border.More than 2,300 children were separated from their parents at the border and placed in government-licensed shelters or in temporary foster care with families across the country.How do these parents differ from others whose children were removed by the government?The migrant parents did not lose custody of the children because of poor parenting. Nobody judged these parents were incapable of taking care of their kids, said Kay Bellor, a vice president at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.Lutheran is one of several nonprofits that have found temporary foster families to care for children separated from their parents at the border. Ms. Bellor said that none of them have been reunited with their parents since the separation.Was an order even necessary?No. Mr. Trump likes the flourish of signing executive orders in front of cameras, but most of his have amounted to asking his administration to conduct reviews and come up with proposed solutions to problems, or they have consisted of directives that he could have instead made with a phone call. This is one of those orders. | Politics |
Americas|In a Rare Survey, Cubans Express a Hunger for Economic Growthhttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/world/americas/cuba-survey-economic-growth-and-opportunity.htmlCredit...Tomas Munita for The New York TimesMarch 21, 2017MEXICO CITY A hunger for economic opportunity. An embrace of tourism. Hope in a new era of normalized relations with the United States.These are some of the predominant sentiments expressed in a rare survey of 840 Cubans conducted in the country late last year by an independent research group, asking for opinions on topics from free speech to diplomatic ties to crime.What emerges most clearly from those interviewed is a desire to enjoy a more certain, and robust, economic future.In this, the Cuban people seem to be in agreement with their government. For the Cuban state, led by Ral Castro, allowing entrepreneurs to open small businesses, normalizing relations with the United States and expanding tourism have been central to the countrys hunt for economic growth.These three policies were among the most highly supported by the Cubans interviewed in the survey, done by the independent research group NORC at the University of Chicago. Eight of 10 Cubans interviewed felt tourism to the country should be increased, and 95 percent said having a high level of economic growth was an extremely or very important goal.And yet Cubans seemed to have little faith in their governments capacity to deliver on those goals. Only three in 10 felt the economy would improve in the next three years. And just 13 percent said the current economy was good or excellent. Three-quarters of Cubans believed they must be careful in saying what they think, at least sometimes.Over half of those Cubans interviewed said they would like to leave the country if given a chance, and 70 percent of those individuals said they would move to the United States if they could.The interviews were conducted in person in October and November, before the inauguration of President Trump, who has threatened to rescind President Obamas 2014 decision to restore diplomatic ties between the nations.While Mr. Trump has remained relatively quiet about Cuba since taking office, his administration announced it is conducting a full review of the policy and could decide to cut off ties again.But that would not be what Cubans themselves appear to want.Of those interviewed, 55 percent felt that better relations with the United States would be a good thing, while only 3 percent felt it would be mostly bad. | World |
Credit...Nina Zotina/Sputnik, via Associated PressMarch 2, 2017MOSCOW Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia has built a lavish empire of mansions, country estates, luxury yachts, an Italian vineyard and an 18th-century palace in St. Petersburg, the Kremlins most vocal critic and anticorruption crusader, Aleksei A. Navalny, said in a report published on Thursday.In the report, Mr. Navalny used official registry records to expose what he calls a convoluted network of trustees, charity funds and offshore companies that are nominally owned and managed by associates of Mr. Medvedev, some of them classmates from law school.The associates controlled charity funds that amassed vast sums of money donated by some of the wealthiest Russian businessmen or borrowed from state-owned banks that were used to buy the properties, the report said. The donations, Mr. Navalny said, were bribes and the network an elaborate scheme to disguise Mr. Medvedevs ownership.The main element that unites it all into a system is Mr. Medvedev, Mr. Navalny said in a short film presenting his findings. The film includes short videos of properties mentioned in the report. The videos were shot using drones that flew above the tall fences that surround the mansions.The claims made by Mr. Navalny and his team could not be independently verified, though Mr. Navalny has established his credibility with past corruption investigations that have stood up to scrutiny.Mr. Medvedevs spokeswoman, Natalya Timakova, dismissed the report as propaganda.It is meaningless to comment on propaganda rants made by an opposition character who was convicted and who says he is already conducting some election campaign and is fighting against the government, Ms. Timakova told Interfax, a Russian news agency.Over the years, the government has harassed Mr. Navalny with a series of corruption charges, none of them justified, independent legal analysts have said. He was convicted of fraud in 2014 and sentenced to house arrest.Mr. Navalnys team provided photographs and descriptions of the various properties, including a 45,000-square-foot chalet in Sochi, Russia, the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics.They said Mr. Medvedev also controlled through his associates a 30,000-square-foot mansion in the most prestigious gated community in the Moscow region, a property with an indoor swimming pool, an artificial pond, a huge garage and a detached house for security guards.In a tiny village in the Kursk region in central Russia, where some of Mr. Medvedevs ancestors lived, Mr. Medvedev has built a rural estate with formal gardens, an artificial pond and a helipad, all surrounding another enormous mansion, the report said. A small chapel was erected on the site of Mr. Medvedevs ancestral house.In Italy, Mr. Medvedevs close associates, working through an offshore company registered in Cyprus, are the registered owners of a picturesque vineyard in Tuscany surrounding a 17th-century villa.Apartments, dachas, mansions, entertainments, everything is there, but something is missing, Mr. Navalny says close to the end of the video. Of course, yachts.Two yachts are listed as belonging to the same Cyprus company and are both named Fotiniya, the Orthodox name for Svetlana, the name of Mr. Medvedevs wife.Mr. Navalny says one of the yachts was photographed while moored in front of one of Mr. Medvedevs dachas. The system has turned so rotten that it doesnt have any healthy parts at all, Mr. Navalny concluded in the video.In December, Mr. Navalny declared his intention to challenge President Vladimir V. Putin in the next presidential election, in March 2018. In February, however, a district court in the small city of Kirov pronounced him guilty of defrauding a state company. The conviction, widely dismissed as politically motivated, rendered him ineligible to run.Mr. Navalny is the only Russian opposition politician who enjoys a broad and enthusiastic following among the public. In a 2013 run for Moscow mayor, he received 27.2 percent of the vote just short of the threshold needed to force the Kremlin-backed candidate into a runoff.Despite the criminal conviction, Mr. Navalny still plans to run for president. Analysts said Thursday that the release of the report underlined the depth of his presidential ambitions.If Mr. Navalny is playing it serious and is not joking, then the first he has to remove from the field is Mr. Medvedev, Gleb Pavlovsky, a political analyst and former media adviser to the Kremlin, said in his Facebook account. | World |
Credit...Kim Kyung-Hoon/ReutersMarch 12, 2017SEOUL, South Korea For months, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have gathered almost weekly near the presidential Blue House in Seoul, calling for the departure of Park Geun-hye as South Koreas leader.On Sunday, two days after the Constitutional Court removed her from office on charges of corruption and abuse of power, they got their wish, as Ms. Park left quietly in a motorcade that whisked her to her two-story red brick house in the southern part of the capital.Ms. Park became the first South Korean leader to be forced out of office in response to popular pressure since the countrys founding president, Syngman Rhee, fled into exile in Hawaii in 1960 after protests against his corrupt, authoritarian rule.I am sorry that I could not finish the presidential duty that was entrusted to me, Ms. Park said in a brief statement read by one of her former aides to reporters outside her home. I will bear with me all the consequences.Ms. Park, who has been pressured by the opposition to publicly accept the courts ruling and whose own party said it humbly respected the decision, hinted that she disagreed with it. It will take time, she said, but I am sure that the truth will be known.As the motorcade carrying Ms. Park arrived at the house where she lived from 1990 to 2013, it pulled past hundreds of supporters lining the alley and waving national flags.Ms. Park, who has now lost the privilege of immunity that came with the presidency, stepped out of the car, smiled and shook hands with former aides and party lawmakers who waited for her in front of her house.Supporters said they could not accept the Constitutional Court ruling, and held up a variety of signs to express that sentiment: You are our president forever! We love you, and Park Geun-hye, the president of the people, welcome back!After the court announced its decision on Friday, the flag showing two phoenixes, the presidential symbol of South Korea, was lowered from a Blue House flagpole, but despite the huge significance of her removal from office, Ms. Park could not immediately move out for a prosaic reason.Ms. Parks private home in southern Seoul, which has been unoccupied for the past four years, needed repair. In the past couple of days, workers have been busy fixing its broken boiler, installing new furniture and redecorating rooms.After the ruling was announced on Friday, thousands of Park supporters, mostly older conservatives, tried to march on the courthouse and called for its destruction, with some clashing with police officers who blocked them with a barricade of buses.Three men, in their 60s and 70s, died during the clashes. One of the men died after a steel police speaker fell on his head, and a protester has been arrested on charges of stealing a police bus and ramming it into another, causing the speaker to fall.On Saturday, Park supporters rallied in central Seoul, vowing to start a political party to fight pro-North Korea leftists who they said conspired to bring down Ms. Park and calling the Constitutional Court ruling sedition. No violence was reported.Later, as dusk fell on Saturday, hundreds of thousands of South Koreans gathered in central Seoul to celebrate Ms. Parks ouster, dancing to the Queen song We Are the Champions and releasing firecrackers. They regard her removal as a key step toward ending what they see as corrupt ties between government and business that have hindered the country for decades.Ms. Parks opponents organized huge candlelight rallies week after week, for months, forcing prosecutors to investigate allegations that Ms. Park conspired with her secretive confidante, Choi Soon-sil, to extort millions of dollars from big businesses. Many protesters held signs on Saturday that said, Now, the next step is to arrest Park Geun-hye!A reinvigorated news media also helped precipitate Ms. Parks downfall by exposing incriminating details, like a tablet computer belonging to Ms. Choi that proved her influence in state affairs.As Ms. Parks approval ratings plummeted, the usually sympathetic conservative news media also turned against her, leaving her with few allies beyond right-wing bloggers and some old conservatives who believed that Ms. Park had been framed and that her downfall would bring about a pro-North Korean leftist government.The National Assembly voted to impeach Ms. Park on Dec. 9, asking the Constitutional Court to formally unseat her. Because she was ousted through impeachment, she lost the privileges the government provides to a former president including a $10,500 monthly pension payment, an office, a small staff of aides and free medical service but she will receive police protection.Now an ordinary citizen, Ms. Park is likely to be the subject of a criminal investigation into whether she engaged in corruption. Prosecutors have said she conspired with Ms. Choi to collect tens of millions of dollars from big businesses, like Samsung, and that some of the money represented bribes for political favors.When prosecutors indicted Ms. Choi and Lee Jae-yong, the de facto head of Samsung, on bribery and other charges, the prosecutors formally identified Ms. Park as a criminal accomplice. But they could not bring charges against her because she was protected from indictment while in office.Moon Jae-in, an opposition leader who leads the race to replace Ms. Park, criticized her on Sunday for failing to announce in public that she accepts the court ruling.Speaking at a news conference, he also said prosecutors should open their corruption investigation into Ms. Park immediately, and warned that she should not remove any potential evidence while moving out of the Blue House.Ms. Park has blocked prosecutors from searching her office. When the Constitutional Court ruled against her, it criticized Ms. Park for failing to cooperate with investigators, for trying to hide her wrongdoings, and for impeding the National Assemblys and the medias right to know.When Ms. Park was elected as president in late 2012, it marked a triumphant return to the Blue House, where she lived from 1961, when her father, Maj. Gen. Park Chung-hee, seized power in a military coup, until 1979, when he was assassinated.Now, Ms. Park has left it again almost certainly for the final time disgraced, deeply unpopular and as a criminal suspect. | World |
Credit...NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research InstituteNov. 16, 2016The heart of Pluto is forever facing away from its largest moon, Charon.To explain why is not a story of spurned love, although it does involve a heavy heart.Two studies published on Wednesday by the journal Nature show how the surface of Pluto might have been scarred long ago when a smaller body slammed into it. The resulting crater then partially filled with denser nitrogen ice and possibly a bulge of liquid water from an underground ocean, and the additional mass caused Pluto to roll over, perhaps as much as 60 degrees, to its present configuration, the scientists conclude.These are interesting and plausible papers, said David J. Stevenson, a professor of planetary science at the California Institute of Technology who was not involved with either paper.The matter is simply gravity.If you take Pluto and you put an extra weight on the surface of Pluto, then Pluto will roll over so that weight moves toward the equator and toward either the point directly underneath Charon or the point opposite that, said Francis Nimmo, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and lead author of one of the Nature papers.Dr. Nimmo argues that the rolling over of Pluto is additional evidence for an ocean of liquid water beneath the icy crust.The other researchers, led by James T. Keane, a graduate student at the University of Arizona, mapped networks of cracks on the surface that they say are the places where Pluto ruptured as a result of tectonic forces as it rolled over.Imagine you have an egg, and you want to move that bulge to another part of the egg, Mr. Keane said. You have to squish it, and thats going to cause it to break.As Pluto reoriented, its spin axis largely remained pointing in the same direction. From the perspective of someone on the surface, it would have seemed that the location of the north pole was changing, in what astronomers call true polar wander.The starting point of the research for both teams was the revelation of a bright splotch on the surface of Pluto just north of the equator in the shape of a Valentine heart, in images captured during the flyby of NASAs New Horizons spacecraft last year. Mission scientists named the splotch Tombaugh Regio after Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto. (Regio is the Latin word for region.)Pluto and Charon today are in what astronomers call a mutually tidally locked orbit of 6.4 days, the same side of Charon always facing Pluto, and the same side of Pluto facing Charon.Astronomers including Dr. Nimmo and Mr. Keane noticed that the left side of the bright heart, named Sputnik Planitia, is almost exactly on the side opposite from Charon, and it did not seem likely that it ended up there by chance.Sputnik Planitia is located very close to that special point, Dr. Nimmo said, and so that makes you suspect Sputnik Planitia represents an extra weight.The left lobe is elliptical, a 600-mile-wide depression that looks like a crater that was carved by an ancient impact. At first glance, that would seem to undercut the argument. Sputnik Planitia is a hole in the ground, Dr. Nimmo said, so it shouldnt be excess mass. It should have less mass.For this idea to work, the scientists had to explain how to make a hole in the ground be heavier, not lighter. If Sputnik Planitia had less mass, it should have rotated toward one of the poles instead.Dr. Nimmo and his colleagues argue that water from an underground ocean welled upward, adding mass, because liquid water is denser than frozen water. (With Plutos frigid temperatures, the water would have to be loaded with antifreeze most likely ammonia for it not to freeze.)New Horizons detected a glacier of nitrogen ice, which is also denser than water ice, covering Sputnik Planitia.Mr. Keane does not argue against an ocean, but he said a thick layer of nitrogen ice might be sufficient explanation.Douglas P. Hamilton, an astronomy professor at the University of Maryland, agrees that Sputnik Planitia is a heavy spot that caused Pluto to roll over, but he disagrees with the premise that it started as an impact crater.Dr. Hamilton said he has a paper scheduled to run in the same print issue of Nature as the other two that explains how the basin could have formed simply from the weight of nitrogen ices pushing down on the crust. Because the paper has not yet been published online, he said he was prohibited by Natures embargo policy from discussing details of his research.A spokeswoman for Nature said the journals policy is to not talk about papers with anyone other than the authors until one week before publication.Dr. Nimmo said Plutos reorientation occurred quickly, within a few thousand years. Mr. Keanes model suggests that the change occurred more slowly, between one and 10 million years, to give the nitrogen ice enough time to accumulate in the basin.Checking the idea could prove impossible until planetary scientists are able to precisely measure Plutos gravity. To really test that, you need to put something in orbit around Pluto, Dr. Nimmo said, and thats not going to happen for a while. | science |
Out ThereFresh from the outer solar system, the cosmos offers us a show thats trailing a 10 million-mile tail.Credit...Damian Peach, ChilescopePublished May 12, 2020Updated May 13, 2020Even as humans on Earth remain locked down, the heavens abide. There is always reason to look up, perhaps now more than ever.The latest evidence of this is the newly discovered Comet SWAN now streaking through the constellation Pisces. If you are fortunate to live in the Southern hemisphere and can find Pisces, you can see this comet, a chunk of dirty, very old ice shedding gas and dust as it nears the sun, as a pinpoint of light, about as bright as the dimmest stars visible to the naked eye.In photographs taken by many delighted amateur and professional astronomers, however, the comet has a fuzzy greenish-yellowish head, with a thin squiggly blue tail some 10 million miles long.When can I see Comet SWAN?Astronomers have their fingers crossed that the comet will keep brightening in the coming weeks as it heads north, passing 52 million miles from Earth on May 12 at its closest approach to our planet, and then rounding the sun on May 27.Tony Philips, an astronomer and writer who runs the website spaceweather.com, said he was cautiously optimistic of a big show in the weeks ahead.As for the cool-factor, I would give it a big resounding MAYBE :) he wrote in an email. It just depends on how the comet reacts to solar heating as it approaches the sun in the next few weeks.The comet could become a victim of the solar systems ravages before more of us get to see it.Two brightness surges followed by drop in activity, said Michael Mattiazzo, an amateur astronomer who lives in Swan Hill, Victoria, Australia, and first spotted the comet. My guess is that it will outburst again before finally disintegrating.As recently as Friday, the comet was about as bright as the faintest stars that can be seen with the naked eye 5th magnitude in astronomical parlance. Astronomers best guesses suggest that the comet will get 3 or 4 times brighter up to astronomical magnitude 3.5 as it moves northward out of Pisces and through the Triangulum and Perseus constellations.But it will still be hard to see if you live in the mid-latitudes of the north. At its best, the comet will be hanging low in the northeastern sky just before dawn.Rick Fienberg, spokesman for the American Astronomical Society said, By low they mean really low unless youre far south like Hawaii or southern Florida. The comet gets higher as dawn breaks, which means itll never appear in a dark sky for mid-northern observers. Boo hoo!Later in May and into June, northerners will get another crack at seeing the comet just at evening twilight. By then it will be crossing from Perseus into Auriga, passing not far from the bright star Capella. But again it will be only a few degrees above the north-northwest horizon according to Sky and Telescope magazines viewing guide.Bring binoculars if you want to see the whole show.How Comet SWAN was foundComet SWANs discovery could be partly credited to the pandemic. Mr. Mattiazzo first spotted it in early April as the coronavirus lockdowns fully set in around the planet. I work in the pathology industry, which, to the surprise of many, had a significant downturn in local inpatient and outpatient workload during the Covid crisis, he wrote on his personal website.The downtime gave him more time to hunt comets, an enthusiasm he had embraced ever since Halleys comet came calling in 1986. To perform his own armchair comet seeking, he scanned images from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, a NASA and the European Space Agency spacecraft that orbits the sun about a million miles from Earth.The spacecraft has a camera called SWAN, for Solar Wind ANisotropies, sensitive to ultraviolet light and used to look for hydrogen gas in the solar neighborhood. As Mr. Mattiazzo described it, SWAN is great at detecting comets as they shine brightly in UV due to the sublimation of water ice when near the sun.Over the years he had discovered seven comets this way.In early April, he found a little blob of light nobody else had noticed, on a photo taken on March 25.Subsequent observations confirmed that it is a comet, officially tagged as C/2020 F8 (SWAN), after the solar wind camera.What are comets?Comets originate as frozen chunks of gas and dust planetary leftovers that have been sitting in a pair of outer-solar-system deep freezes known as the Oort cloud and the Kuiper belt, ever since the beginning of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. Every once in a while, the gravitational nudge from a passing star dislodges one of these leftover snowballs and it falls sunward.From what they know of its orbit so far, astronomers suspect that SWAN is one of these fresh comets, newly arrived from the outer realms of the solar system. Sunlight is probably touching its fragile, volatile surface for the first time, causing it to crack and boil off gas and shed dust.The result of such a virgin experience can be spectacular, and to the ancients terrifying. Dust gets pushed by the pressure of the suns light into a bushy tail that gets left behind along the comets path and in decades to come is a source of meteor showers. At the same time, gases get ionized by the suns ultraviolet radiation and they line up with the suns magnetic field, often pointing in a different direction than the dust tail. The long tail presently sported by SWAN in astronomical photographs is such an ion trail.Some models of Comet SWANs behavior have it peaking in brightness early in June, but comets are notoriously fickle.Late in April another promising comet, ATLAS, fell apart and faded without ever becoming visible to the naked eye.And that could happen to SWAN, too, but while you look for it, youll still get the best show the cosmos has to offer us. And you wont need Wi-Fi either. | science |
With a colleague, he created a miniaturized defibrillator that could be implanted inside patients suffering from potentially fatal arrhythmia.Credit...Jewish National Fund-USA, via Associated PressPublished May 7, 2022Updated May 10, 2022Morton Mower, an entrepreneurial cardiologist who helped invent an implantable defibrillator that has saved many lives by returning potentially fatal irregular heart rhythms to normal with an electrical jolt, died on April 25 in Denver. He was 89.His son, Mark, said the cause was cancer.Dr. Mower and Dr. Michel Mirowski, a colleague at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, began work in 1969 on a device that would be small enough that it could be implanted under the skin of the abdomen and quickly correct a hearts rhythms when they go dangerously awry.Dr. Mirowski had the idea to miniaturize a defibrillator; Dr. Mower, who had taught himself electrical engineering in his basement workshop, believed it could be done.We were the crazy guys who wanted to put a time bomb in peoples chests, Dr. Mower said in 2015 in an interview with the medical journal The Lancet, which noted at the time that two million people around the world had received the implantable device.The doctors quickly developed a prototype and formed a partnership in 1972 with Medrad, a medical equipment maker. But the development of an implantable defibrillator had its critics.Writing in Circulation, an American Heart Association journal, Dr. Bernard Lown, who invented the first effective external defibrillator, and Dr. Paul Axelrod said that patients with ventricular fibrillation were better served by surgery or an anti-arrhythmia program.In fact, they said, the implanted defibrillator system represents an imperfect solution in search of a plausible and practical application.The work continued. After being tested on animals, the battery-operated device, approximately the size of a deck of cards, was first implanted in humans at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1980. Five years later, it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration.At the time, the F.D.A. said the implantable defibrillator could save 10,000 to 20,000 lives a year by letting people have their arrhythmia corrected quickly rather than waiting to reach hospital emergency rooms, where external defibrillators, with their paddles, are used.Dr. Donald M. Lloyd-Jones, president of the American Heart Association, said in a phone interview that 300,000 devices, now as small as a silver dollar, are implanted annually.Letting people walk around with a defibrillator, rather than being in a hospital under constant care, was really revolutionary in saving the lives of people at risk of fatal heart attacks, Dr. Lloyd-Jones said.He added that another advantage of the device formally known as the automatic implantable cardioverter defibrillator was that its electric shock is delivered directly to the heart. The external defibrillators jolt must travel from its paddles through skin and tissue before reaching the heart.Dr. Mower and Dr. Mirowski were inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002, along with Alois Langer, a project engineer at Medrad, and M. Stephen Heilman, the companys founder.ImageCredit...Jewish National Fund-USA, via Associated PressMorton Maimon Mower was born on Jan. 31, 1933, in Baltimore and grew up in Frederick, about 50 miles west. His father, Robert, was a cobbler, and his mother, Pauline (Maimon) Mower, was a homemaker.As a youth Morton worked during the summers for his Uncle Sam, who owned bathhouses and a toy store in Atlantic City. When his uncle got sick, Morton was impressed by how the family treated the doctor during his house calls.They made him sit down; they made him have a cup of tea, Dr. Mower told the alumni magazine of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, from which he graduated in 1959, in an interview. I thought, Gee, thats not bad. Thats what I would like to do.After earning a bachelors degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1955, where he was in the pre-med program, and graduating from medical school, Dr. Mower completed an internship at the University of Maryland Medical Center.He became chief resident at Sinai Hospital in 1962 and then served in the Army Medical Corps, from 1963 to 1965, in Bremerhaven, Germany, where he was chief of medicine.In 1966, he started a six-year stint as an investigator in Sinais coronary drug project. He eventually became an attending physician and chief of cardiology at the hospital. A building was named for him on its campus in 2005.Dr. Mower became wealthy from licensing the defibrillator technology and used his money to build a large art collection that included works by Rembrandt, Picasso and Impressionist masters.After leaving Sinai in 1989, he worked for two defibrillator makers: Cardiac Pacemakers, a subsidiary of Eli Lilly, as a vice president, and Guidant, as a consultant. He later taught medicine at Johns Hopkins and, most recently, the University of Colorado school of medicine in Aurora.Dr. Mower recently created a company, Rocky Mountain Biphasic, to find commercial uses for his many patents in areas including cardiology, wound healing, diabetes and Covid-19.In addition to his son, he is survived by his wife, Toby (Kurland) Mower, a registered nurse; a daughter, Robin Mower; three grandsons; a brother, Bernard; and a sister, Susan Burke. He lived in Denver.Dr. Mowers work in resetting the hearts rhythms didnt end with the implantable defibrillator.I realized this was an incomplete therapy, he told The Lancet, referring to the defibrillator. It prevented right ventricular afibrillation, but it did nothing to support left ventricular function. People were still dying of congestive heart failure.He and Dr. Mirowski went on to invent cardiac resynchronization therapy, or C.R.T., which uses an implantable device much like a pacemaker to send electrical impulses to the right and left ventricles of the heart in order to force them to contract in a more efficient, organized pattern.C.R.T. was every bit as big an advance as implantable defibrillators, Dr. Mower said, adding that when he started testing the treatment on patients in the Netherlands, it was almost unbelievable how the patients would come out of heart failure. | science |
Credit...Fred R. Conrad/The New York TimesDec. 15, 2015It has been a bruising year for hedge funds. Not even billionaire managers with sterling records were able to escape heavy losses, and several among them have made the industrys list of worst performers. Some lost so much of their investors money this year that they have written apology letters.Yet even in this most humbling of years, some of these same hedge funds are soliciting investors for more money and marketing new funds that promise bigger and better opportunities.Take John A. Paulson, who made billions of dollars betting against the housing bubble in 2008 but is nursing losses in three funds this year. He is now raising money for two new funds: a private equity fund and a one focused on health care stocks.This fall, Larry Robbins, the founder of Glenview Capital Management, apologized to his investors in a letter after losing 20 percent through October. In the same letter, he offered them the opportunity to invest in a new fund. To sweeten the offer, Mr. Robbins promised that the new limited-time portfolio would not charge any fees.To go to battered investors with a new moneymaking spiel takes a certain self-confidence that seems second nature to billionaires. Some might even call it chutzpah. Mr. Robbins appeared to acknowledge as much in his letter to investors. Unfortunately, opportunity often feels like a punch in the face, he wrote.The recent fund-raising, however, underscores a bigger trend in the industry: Pension funds still want to invest in hedge funds, even as they complain about high fees and years of disappointing performance.And that has been the case even as some prominent funds shut down and talk grows about the diminishing luster of hedge funds as an asset class. Investors are, and will continue to be, eager for higher returns in a world of near-zero interest rates even as the Federal Reserve prepares to raise rates for the first time in nearly a decade.ImageCredit...Eduardo Munoz/ReutersThe number of new hedge fund start-ups is outpacing fund closures this year, despite mounting fear in recent days about the viability of firms that are heavily invested in junk bonds.To date, 656 hedge funds have opened for business, while 599 have shuttered their operations, according to Preqin, a firm that tracks hedge fund and private equity trends. The number of hedge fund closures this year is running well below last years 731.Thats not to say that the industry hasnt been hard hit. Based on Preqin estimates, around $24 billion of hedge fund assets have been liquidated this year. The total that hedge fund managers have available to invest in stocks, bonds, currencies and commodities has also shrunk by the most since the depths of the financial crisis in 2008 as investors asked to pull their money out of some hedge funds and firms returned money, according to data from HFR.The average hedge fund has gained just 0.3 percent this year, according to HFRs weighted composite index. That is enough to outpace the 0.75 percent decline this year in the Standard & Poors 500-stock index.On that score, however, 2015 has been the exception. The broad hedge fund index has underperformed the stock market in America the previous six yearsThose years of mediocre returns persuaded some investors, including big pension funds and smaller institutional investors, to pull money from underperforming firms.Most notably, the California Public Employees Retirement System, the biggest state pension fund in the country, announced last year that it would liquidate its $4 billion in hedge fund investments.ImageCredit...Rick Wilking/ReutersYet only a few other public pensions have followed Calperss lead. Instead, investors have tended to punish underperforming funds by pulling dollars from those portfolios and redeploying them elsewhere sometimes even to other portfolios managed by the same manager.This summer, two of the worlds biggest banks, Bank of America and UBS, recommended that their private wealth units clients pull money out of Mr. Paulsons Advantage fund. Money raised from the clients of Wall Street banks was a big source of the growth in the assets of the Advantage fund, which had been Mr. Paulsons largest portfolio for outside investors.Today, that fund is down 11 percent for the year and manages under $2 billion in assets. Advantage has been supplanted by another fund that makes bets on mergers and acquisitions; it now manages more than $9 billion in assets and has taken in some of the investor money once directed to the Advantage portfolio.Mr. Paulsons merger and acquisition fund, however, is also underperforming. The merger arbitrage fund was down about 4.4 percent as of the end of November, said people briefed on the performance numbers.The Calpers decision is a bit of an anomaly in the space, said Todd E. Petzel, chief investment officer at the private wealth management firm Offit Capital, who added that most consulting firms employed by large institutional investors continue to recommend allocating money to hedge funds.In light of that perspective, he said: The question then becomes, What do you do with a hedge fund that disappoints over a long period of time? You substitute out.James G. Dinan of York Capital, in raising new money, chose to focus on a fund that mainly invests in distressed securities in Europe, a region that has been a bright spot for York Capital. While the firms flagship fund is down 12 percent so far this year, its York Capital Europe fund has gained 4.5 percent.ImageCredit...Brendan McDermid/ReutersBoaz Weinstein, a hedge fund manager who began his career at Deutsche Bank making billions trading complex securities before the financial crisis only to lose a bundle in 2008, has been marketing a new fund that will invest in a portfolio of closed-end junk bond funds at a time when many high-yield funds are liquidating or being flooded with investor redemptions.An October marketing document for the fund notes that some investors are concerned about exposure to the high-yield asset class, given it is late in the credit cycle.In many ways, Mr. Weinstein has been having a good year after three consecutive years of losses. His firm, Saba Capital, has made 6 percent for investors as of the end of November, according to a person briefed on the firms performance.Nonetheless, he is being sued by the Public Sector Pension Investment Board of Canada, once his biggest investor. He was accused of deceptive accounting when the pension fund asked for its money back. Mr. Weinstein has denied the allegations and said he was shocked by the lawsuit.In writing to Glenview investors, Mr. Robbins said, Ive failed to protect your capital.Since then, Mr. Robbins has recovered some losses but is still down 15.8 percent this year, dragged down by a bigger rout across health care stocks.Still, he has offered investors a chance to put fresh money into a side vehicle that will focus on health care stocks on the condition that money does not come from his poorly performing fund. He has raised $1.5 billion in so-called committed capital for that fund, according to a public filing.Mark W. Yusko, chief investment officer of Morgan Creek Capital, said the decision to give new money to a manager who has subpar performance in a given year ultimately comes down to a matter of faith.What you have to decide as an investor is, Do you believe that the skill level of the managers has changed? Mr. Yusko said. If you dont, then the portfolio theory of investing says thats when you should be adding capital. | Business |
Science|Mars Mission Blasts Off From Kazakhstanhttps://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/15/science/mars-mission-blasts-off-from-kazakhstan.htmlCredit...Kirill Kudryavtsev/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesMarch 14, 2016The ExoMars 2016 mission, a collaboration between the European and Russian space agencies, blasted off from Kazakhstan on Monday.The spacecraft, which consists of an orbiter that will measure methane and other gases in the Martian atmosphere and a lander that will study dust storms, lifted off at 3:31 p.m. local time on top of a Russian Proton rocket. The European Space Agency broadcast the launch online.A series of burns by an upper-stage engine sent ExoMars out of Earths orbit and toward a path to Mars. The spacecraft is expected to arrive in October.Three days before arriving, the lander, named Schiaparelli, after the 19th-century Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, will separate from the orbiter. It will enter the atmosphere at 13,000 miles per hour and will quickly decelerate on its way to settling down on the surface.The main objective of Schiaparelli is to demonstrate its landing system. (The European Space Agencys last attempt to land on Mars the Beagle 2 spacecraft, which accompanied the Mars Express orbiter in 2003 failed.)Schiaparelli carries instruments to measure Marss atmosphere during the height of the dust storm season. Its batteries are expected to last only two to four days.The Trace Gas Orbiter is expected to operate much longer, until at least 2022, circling Mars at an altitude of 250 miles. Its instruments will measure gases, like methane, water vapor and nitrogen, that exist in minute quantities but that could hold important clues about the possibility of life on Mars.Methane is the most intriguing trace gas. Sunlight and chemical reactions break up methane molecules in the atmosphere. Any methane there must have been created recently, and the two possibilities for creating methane are microbes and a geological process requiring heat and liquid water.Mars Express made tenuous detections of methane, but its instruments were not sensitive enough for definitive conclusions. NASAs Curiosity rover also detected a transient whiff of methane in 2014.The ExoMars spacecraft was originally scheduled to be launched by NASA, but tight budgets led the agency to back out in 2012, and the Russians stepped in. The second half of the European-Russian ExoMars collaboration a rover is scheduled to launch in 2018, but that mission is expected to slip to 2020. | science |
Americas|State Dept. Official Praises Mexican Efforts in War on Drugshttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/world/americas/drug-narcotics-mexico-state-department.htmlCredit...Bryan Denton for The New York TimesMarch 2, 2017WASHINGTON One of the few senior Obama administration appointees still at the State Department delivered a ringing endorsement on Thursday of Mexicos efforts to stop illegal drugs from entering the United States, just as the Trump administration is examining whether to slash money supporting those efforts.William R. Brownfield, assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, said in a conference call with reporters that the United Nations and decades of patient diplomacy had put the United States in a much better position to police the international flow of narcotics than at any point in the last three decades.Weve still got major challenges ahead to address the opioid crisis here in the United States of America, Mr. Brownfield said. Referring to an annual report on international narcotics released on Thursday, he added, but in my humble opinion, this report suggests that were in a far better place to address those challenges now than we would have been 20, 30 or 40 years ago.ImageCredit...Guillermo Arias/Associated PressPresident Trump has criticized Mexico as a source of dangerous illegal immigrants and drugs, and his pledge to build a wall along the southern border of the United States has infuriated Mexican officials. Mr. Trump also referred to the United Nations on Twitter as just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time.The United States is in the midst of an opioid epidemic that is now killing more people than traffic accidents, and at least 90 percent of the heroin consumed in this country comes from Mexico.Mr. Brownfield said the opioid crisis had been caused by, among other factors, doctors prescribing habits and soaring patient demand in the United States and by Mexican drug traffickers increased efforts to meet that demand.The United States and Mexico have shared responsibility for this problem, and that requires shared solutions, he said, adding that cooperation between the two governments to attack the problem was at historically high levels.Mr. Brownfield said that Mexico and the United Nations were vital allies in the fight against international drug trafficking. The Merida Initiative, a bilateral partnership with Mexico begun in 2007 that is focused on fighting organized criminal groups, makes us more able to interdict drug trafficking than ever before, he said.In a sense, he added, we have developed a law enforcement cooperative wall.The Trump administration is compiling a list of continuing American aid to Mexico, possibly in hopes of identifying money that could be diverted to help pay for a border wall. The Merida Initiative is the reviews biggest target.Asked if he planned to resign, as many Obama appointees have, Mr. Brownfield said, I am in the job for which I was confirmed by the United States Senate in the year 2011 and will remain here until I am no longer in this job.The Trump administration continues to rely on Obama appointees like Mr. Brownfield because of a slow appointments process. | World |
Robert Swan, who has held the job for two years, is leaving the Silicon Valley chip giant after an activist investor pressed for change.Credit...Vmware/Via ReutersJan. 13, 2021SAN FRANCISCO Intel, a semiconductor pioneer, on Wednesday ousted its chief executive, Robert Swan, as the company faces pressure from an activist investor and grapples with the loss of leadership in producing ultrafast chips.The Silicon Valley giant said Mr. Swan, a finance specialist who has been chief executive since January 2019, will be replaced in mid-February by Patrick Gelsinger, a former chip designer and 30-year Intel veteran who has led software maker VMware since 2012. Intels board moved to end Mr. Swans tenure as the company grapples with the fallout from manufacturing problems that have ceded its longtime technology lead to production services offered by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Samsung Electronics. Factory innovations that pack more tiny transistors on each square of silicon allow computer chips to do more at a lower cost.Intel has since lost a series of technical leaders, and its stock price has stagnated. Those issues prompted the activist hedge fund Third Point to recently acquire a stake in Intel and press for big changes in its business. Third Point argued that Intels problems could force the United States to rely more heavily on a geopolitically unstable East Asia to power vital technology ranging from personal computers to data center hardware.Intel was built on the vision of engineering genius, and without the best talent, the current trajectory will not be reversed, wrote Daniel Loeb, Third Points chief executive, in a letter to Intels board last month.The leadership change is designed to address that issue, returning an engineer to the top post. Mr. Gelsinger, who is 59 and joined Intel when he was 18, got his college education with the companys help and swiftly rose in its technical ranks. He was the lead architect of the widely used 80486 microprocessor and managed development of 14 chip projects.Mr. Gelsinger became Intels first chief technology officer and for years hosted the companys annual conference for hardware and software developers. He learned management skills from Andrew Grove, Intels acclaimed former chief executive.Mr. Gelsinger has said he had turned down previous overtures about being chief executive. At one point, he went so far as to get a VMware tattoo. But he relented this time.To come back home to Intel in the role of C.E.O. during what is such a critical time for innovation, as we see the digitization of everything accelerating, will be the greatest honor of my career, Mr. Gelsinger wrote in a letter to Intel employees.Intel declined to make Mr. Swan and Mr. Gelsinger available for interviews.Many of Intels key leadership departures in recent years occurred under Brian Krzanich, the chief executive who was forced out in 2018 after a consensual affair with a subordinate. But Intel suffered a blow last year when Jim Keller, a celebrated engineer who was helping to overhaul development processes, left the company.Venkata Renduchintala, a former Qualcomm manager who had been trying to help Intel recover from its manufacturing problems, also departed in 2020 after Intel disclosed that its next production process would be delayed.Mr. Swan, 60, is credited with helping to ease internal squabbling at the company, and spearheaded changes aimed at taking Intel into other markets, such as gear for cellular base stations. He also shed ailing businesses, selling a unit that designed wireless chips to Apple and another making a variety of memory chips to SK Hynix.But analysts said he lacked the background to make tough technical decisions.Chip problems take years to address, and while Swan accomplished a lot, it wasnt enough, said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy. He added that he expected Mr. Gelsinger to focus on the companys engineering culture.Mr. Gelsinger faces daunting issues. One is how to respond to Intels manufacturing problems. Besides making engineering improvements, Mr. Swan signaled that Intel might take the radical step of turning beyond its own factories for some of its flagship chips. The company already uses TSMC to make some products, but outsourcing some of its most important processors would be a blow to Intels image. The issue is expected to be addressed along with Intels fourth quarter financial results on Jan. 21.Third Point has also raised the issue of whether Intel should continue to keep both design and manufacturing operations and whether it should spin off some unsuccessful acquisitions.At the same time, Intel must counter invigorated competition from the chip designers Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia. Both exploit the advanced manufacturing services in Asia, and their share prices have surged while Intels has languished.Yet another issue is the rapid rise of chips that use technology licensed by Arm, a British chip designer that SoftBank last year agreed to sell to Nvidia in a deal still pending. Arm technology, which powers most smartphones, is being used by companies like Apple and Amazon to design their own chips rather than use Intels. Some industry executives and analysts have said Intel should begin offering new Arm-based chips in addition to its own designs.The silver lining is strong demand for laptop and desktop PCs using Intel chips, as the pandemic has compelled more people to work from home. The company said on Wednesday that it expected to surpass its previous guidance for fourth-quarter 2020 revenue and earnings per share.But analysts said Intels market share losses were bound to accelerate, particularly for chips used in servers in cloud data centers.There is not much Pat is going to be able to do to change that, wrote Stacy Rasgon, an analyst with Bernstein Research.Still, the management shift was widely viewed as positive, driving Intels shares up about 8 percent. On Twitter on Wednesday, Mr. Loeb of Third Point called Mr. Swan a class act who did the right thing for all stakeholders stepping aside for Mr. Gelsinger.Don Clark reported from San Francisco, and Steve Lohr from New York. | Tech |
Elizabeth Warren Men Can't Work Without Women ... Relax, Soderbergh 1/23/2018 TMZ.com Sen. Elizabeth Warren says director Steven Soderbergh's got nothing to worry about when it comes to a potential #MeToo backlash against women in the workplace. We got Senator Warren Tuesday on Capitol Hill where she addressed Soderbergh's concern that men might just stop hiring women, instead of changing their own behavior. She's super confident women will persist -- much like herself -- and lays out exactly what they have to offer. As the Senator put it to us ... "women been gettin' it done for a long time." | Entertainment |
In British Columbia, researchers have undertaken a unique challenge: tracking orphan grizzly cubs, reared in a shelter, to see whether they can thrive back in the wild.A tranquilized and blindfolded grizzly bear named Arthur is prepared on a pallet for a helicopter flight to the wilderness near Bella Coola, British Columbia.Credit...Alanna MitchellPhotographs by Alana PatersonPublished July 23, 2021Updated Oct. 7, 2021One morning in mid-July, Lana M. Ciarniello, a bear biologist in British Columbia, caught a flight from Vancouver Island, where she lives, to a wildlife sanctuary in the northwestern part of the province to meet two baby grizzlies, the newest subjects in an unusual study she is conducting.The two cubs brothers, born this spring were orphaned when their mother was shot. Traditionally, grizzly mothers in North America tend their offspring for at least two years, teaching them to find food and keep out of trouble before nudging them to live on their own. These cubs were far too young to survive without her.Most grizzly cubs orphaned in North America say, in the lower 48 U.S. states where they are endangered, or in Alaska and Canada where they are more plentiful are shot on the spot, left to die in the wild or placed in a zoo.These two, however, ended up at Northern Lights Wildlife Shelter, near the town of Smithers, the only place in the Western Hemisphere that raises orphan grizzly bears until they are big enough to be released back to the wild. If all goes well, the cubs will live there until next spring, fattening up and learning life skills from their human caregiver.At that point, Dr. Ciarniello will meet them once again to fit them with battery-operated radio collars. Then, she will release them into the wilderness near where they were orphaned. Her goal is to track them for several years to see how they do, hoping that they can avoid the conflicts with humans that led to their mothers death.We want to give these bears the best chance for survival, Dr. Ciarniello said. We want to set them up for success.The plan is to release bears that steer clear of humans, unlike the grizzly that attacked and then terrorized a sleep-deprived man for several nights in a row at a mining camp near Nome, Alaska, earlier this week. The man was rescued by chance when a Coast Guard helicopter happened to fly past.Dr. Ciarniellos project, financed by the Vancouver-based Grizzly Bear Foundation, is the worlds first long-term scientific study to determine whether raising orphan grizzlies for return to the wild makes sense. Ideally, a rewilded cub thrives and eventually has offspring of its own. But a less rosy scenario is that it spends a year in captivity only to die in the wild before it can add to the gene pool.Are we doing it just because it makes us feel good? Dr. Ciarniello asked. She is co-chair of the human-bear conflicts expert team of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Or is it actually contributing to the population?Survival school for orphansImageCredit...Alana Paterson for The New York TimesEven as Dr. Ciarniello is receiving two more orphans into her study, she is assessing the destinies of the seven cubs she has already sent back into the bush: two last year and five in June.Raven, Isa and Arthur arrived at the Northern Lights sanctuary last October after their mother was killed in a collision with a truck near Bella Coola, a coastal village in the Great Bear Rainforest. Cedar and Muwin followed the next month after their mother was found eating human food near the same community and was shot. Even though the orphan cubs were from two different families, they soon became inseparable, even sharing a den. Dr. Ciarniello started calling them the Fab Five.A lot was riding on this batch of orphans. Not only were they the second years subjects of a closely watched scientific study, but four were female. Angelika Langen, who founded the shelter in 1990 with her husband, Peter Langen, cherished hopes that within a few years all four would be demonstrably producing cubs, proving the shelters success. The Langens trained as animal keepers in their native Germany before immigrating to Canada in 1982.Four of them, thats a huge boost for the program if we can keep collars on them and they survive, Mrs. Langen said.The five cubs spent much of their time at the shelter playing. Grizzlies are water hounds, Mrs. Langen said. They love to drink it, play in it and make mud with it to slather over their bodies to keep insects at bay.When I stand there and I watch them, how they get so excited over playing in the water pond or having this fresh branch that they can balance on their paw or shoving an ice cube around like theyre playing hockey, there is such an abundance of joy for life that I think we would all like to have, Mrs. Langen said.The shelter, set on 220 acres of aspen-quivering wilderness, began accepting orphan grizzlies in 2007 as a pilot project approved by the provincial government. It is one of just four grizzly rewilding programs in the world; the others are in Greece, Romania and Russia.Since the Canadian grizzly program began, it has reared 31 cubs, plus the two newcomers. It has had to turn away many more. Last year, three cubs from Montana and three from Alberta ended up at zoos because governments balked at transporting them across jurisdictions to the sanctuary. The shelter, which currently has two full-time employees in addition to Mrs. Langen, one part-timer and some volunteers, is also home to orphan black bears, moose and deer. Its yearly operational budget of $200,000 comes exclusively from donations.The shelters strategy is to teach the grizzlies how to survive in the wild. It is based on pioneering work conducted with black bears in the 1970s by John J. Beecham, an Idaho-based biologist. Dr. Beecham, who helped the Langens set up their program, is the other leader of the human-bear conflicts team at the International Union for Conservation of Nature. But the shelter has only spotty information about the fate of most of its orphan grizzlies, so the Grizzly Bear Foundation turned to Dr. Ciarniello, an independent scientist.If her study, which began two years ago, shows that rewilding grizzlies can be successful, it might spur American researchers to set one up, Dr. Beecham said. One possible site could be the Pacific Northwest.A key to that success is making sure the cubs do not come to see humans as friendly, so that they avoid humans and their settlements once they are back in the wild. To that end, each batch of orphans has a single caregiver rather than a nurturing team. Cubs receive only natural materials to play with; tires, balls and swings are forbidden. Protein from domesticated animals is off the menu.The cubs also need to be as big as possible when they return to the forest. So the shelters protocol is to keep the orphan grizzlies out of hibernation through the winter by feeding them. The Fab Five feasted on plants gathered in season from the wild skunk cabbage, saskatoon berries and dandelions plus fish, moose and deer. Grapes were a special treat.ImageCredit...Alana Paterson for The New York TimesBy June, as the moment approached when Dr. Ciarniello would release the five cubs, they were roughly twice the size of ones reared in the wild. The male, Arthur, was the biggest at 288 pounds. Each already had an identifying microchip inserted in its nose, a tattoo on the inner lip, tags in both ears and a radio collar fitted around the neck to track its movements by G.P.S.Dr. Ciarniello had been through the same process the year before as she prepared the first two subjects of her study for release, the brothers Max and Moritz. But she noticed a difference this year. Because of modifications she had recommended, the five were behaving much more like cubs in the wild. They had dragged boughs into their sleeping area; they dug in their pen.Its really exactly what I wanted to see, she said. I think these five have a pretty good chance.Whats the advantage of that?At last count, the United States had 1,913 grizzly bears outside of Alaska, in just four states: northern Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and a sliver of northeast Washington. That is a gain from the 700 to 800 in 1975, when the species was designated threatened under the Endangered Species Act. But it is a frail remnant of the 50,000 or so that prowled the western states in 1850, before Europeans took the land for farms, ranches and towns.Ursus arctos horribilis was a fierce foe to settlers. With its humped shoulders, vast girth and constitutional reluctance to back away from a fight, the species was seen as a threat to both humans and to livestock. Government bounties and outright dislike eliminated them from any landscape humans wanted, pushing the survivors into a handful of mountaintops and nature reserves.Grizzlies were eradicated from the Canadian prairies, too, and a separate subspecies in Mexico was killed off. The bears fared a little better in Europe, where three of 10 isolated European populations are now critically endangered.Globally, though, grizzlies, also known as brown bears, are not considered threatened. The I.U.C.N.s Red List of Threatened Species puts the total population at about 200,000, of which about half are in Russia. Alaska and parts of northwest Canada together have about 55,000, mainly in wilderness areas. In Canada, they are a species of special concern. British Columbia designates them as vulnerable and Alberta as threatened.Despite the grizzlys endangered status in the United States, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has never had a rearing program for orphan cubs and has not considered developing one, Hilary S. Cooley, the agencys grizzly bear recovery coordinator, said in an email. Instead, the service prefers to focus on programs to prevent orphanings. She said the number of orphans south of the Canadian border varies each year from zero to several.Placing orphan grizzlies in zoos is becoming more difficult, said Laurine A. Wolf, education bureau chief of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. Grizzlies can live in captivity for decades and need a lot of care.I know that it is getting more challenging to me to find a permanent placement for grizzly bears, she said.Alaska does not have a rehab program either. About a dozen grizzlies are orphaned there each year, said J. Ryan Scott, a wildlife biologist in the states department of fish and game. He can occasionally find a zoo placement. Most perish, as do half the grizzly cubs born and raised in the wild, he noted.Its not intended to be cold, Mr. Scott said, but we think about the natural systems that happen in Alaska and you have to ask yourself: One cub, that may or may not ultimately survive if it goes through a rehab process, whats the advantage of that?The practice of rewilding grizzlies is controversial among biologists. Dr. Beecham said that orphans reared at shelters could eventually be used to re-establish vanished populations in Idahos Bitterroot mountains and possibly other areas. But Gordon B. Stenhouse, a research scientist who leads the grizzly bear program with fRI Research in Alberta, said his studies show that translocated bears often make poor decisions.It would be like taking me to New York City with a $5 Canadian bill and saying, Good luck. I hope it works out for you, he says.Back into the wildTuesday, June 1, 2021, the day the Fab Five were to be released, began perfectly. Dr. Ciarniello and her team had made the 16-hour drive with the cubs from Smithers back to Bella Coola the day before. All five grizzlies were in excellent health.It was utopic, Dr. Ciarniello said.Up in two helicopters went the triplets, Raven, Isa and Arthur, sedated and suspended in slings, like the offerings of storks. They were to be set down together on a far-off estuary in the forest. Next up, the twins, Cedar and Muwin, also sedated. The helicopter rose straight up, then flew to a second site near the first.But when the helicopter returned, it was still carrying a bear, Dr. Ciarniello recalled: I said, What the hell is going on? I didnt even know which bear it was until I got there and I plugged in their radio frequencies.Muwins frequency was missing. The helicopter load had shifted catastrophically while the twins were in transit. Cedar, the heavier of the two, lurched on top of her sister, killing her.It really puts a damper on the whole release when something like that happens, Dr. Ciarniello said.This type of field work carries no guarantee of success. Last year, just days after the release of Max and Moritz, the inaugural cubs of the study, Maxs transmitter failed. Dr. Ciarniello sent out a helicopter search party and later scoured the valleys herself but found no sign of him. She still checks for pings, but nothing so far.She learned Moritzs fate on Oct. 24, at 16 minutes to midnight, when her phone rang with an alert from his collar. She had programmed it to text her if he failed to move for 12 hours, a setting called mortality mode. She sent a team of colleagues to the spot to investigate.The first thing they found was Moritzs collar. Then a lower jaw, shards of leg bone and entrails. They were in a food cache, most likely made by a big male grizzly, near a site Moritz was preparing as a winter den. The salmon runs had failed, the consequence of climate disturbance or overfishing. Big grizzlies were hungry, and Moritz did not know enough to stay away.Adapting to the unknownIn Europe, so many of the fiercest grizzlies have been killed over the centuries that the species has become shy rather than confrontational, Dr. Beecham said. He calls them gun-chosen bears. He told an apocryphal story from Norway where, it is said, grizzlies have trained themselves to drop to their bellies and crawl across forest openings to avoid being seen.In North America, grizzlies are constricting their roaming range if they live near humans and shifting activity to nighttime, a study published last year discovered. Its either a survival technique to dodge humans or a sign that they are edging toward extirpation.But humans are changing too, said Peter S. Alagona, an environmental historian at University of California, Santa Barbara, and founder of the California Grizzly Research Network in 2016. The network explores the potential of returning grizzlies to the state where they were eradicated nearly a century ago and where the creature still graces the state flag and seal.These days, opinion polls consistently show deep disapproval of grizzly hunting, Dr. Alagona said.I think there is a lot to this idea that although we talk about these things in scientific and managerial terms, often whats just underneath is these emotions about what is right and what is wrong, what belongs and what doesnt, he said And a sense of justice that goes along with trying to right wrongs or fix losses.At the shelter, the two new cubs are adapting to their temporary home. The summer is still young; other orphaned grizzlies may end up there before the year is out.The four surviving cubs released last month seem to be making good choices, Dr. Ciarniello said. Data from their collars show that the triplets remain together in the lowlands of an estuary, close to their release area. Cedar is alone. She has found good grizzly habitat in the subalpine and alpine areas of the forest. She roams widely. It is possible, said Dr. Ciarniello, that she is looking for her lost sister. | science |
Credit...Josh Haner/The New York TimesFeb. 15, 2014KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia The ski racing rivalry between Austria and the United States has been less than subtle at times in the last eight years.At the 2006 Winter Olympics, after Hermann Maier won a ninth medal for the Austrians the Americans had one medal at the time he crowed at the postrace news conference: Whos the best in the world? Anyone can say hes the best.The comment was a stinging jab at the United States ski teams motto, Best in the world.Four years later, at the Vancouver Olympics, the Americans proudly celebrated their slogan with eight medals, double the number won by the usually powerful Austrians.But Saturday, when Anna Fenninger of Austria won the womens super-G and her teammate Nicole Hosp won the bronze medal to give Austria four Olympic medals at the halfway point of the 2014 Olympic Alpine competition, the pendulum appeared to be swinging sharply toward the Austrians again.The United States ski team, which a week ago appeared to have gold medal contenders if not favorites in three of the first five events, has instead been a prominent bust so far.The only medal performance has been Julia Mancusos surprise bronze in the womens super combined six days ago. The Americans have not seriously threatened for a medal since then, with the best finish a sixth in the mens super combined.Saturday, Mancuso was eighth.But the United States motto is not top 10 in the world.In 2010, at the halfway point of the Alpine competition at the Vancouver Games, the Americans had won seven medals: two gold, three silver and two bronze.I think theres definitely some disappointment, Mancuso said Saturday. Referring to her teammate Bode Miller, she added: For sure, in the downhill I wanted to have a better race and Bode, for sure, wanted to do better. But its hard theres only three spots that you can get a medal and theres tons of skiers out here who can step it up and have their best races.My last two races, I had conservative runs and wasnt anywhere near having a medal. But it takes everything coming together. It has to be that magical day.ImageCredit...Josh Haner/The New York TimesThe United States Alpine director Patrick Riml said: We probably expected a little more, to be honest. But the Games arent over yet and were halfway there. We still have some strong performers coming next week.The United States team is partly feeling the effects of the absence of the injured Lindsey Vonn, who won gold and bronze medals four years ago. But skiers who were meant to replace Vonn, like Ted Ligety and Miller, have unexpectedly faltered. Ligety squandered a chance in the super combined by skiing tentatively the opposite of his usual approach and Miller, who was spectacular in training before the Olympics, has made a major blunder in every race.While Ligety and Miller have a chance to win medals in the mens super-G on Sunday, hopes could quickly and desperately turn to the youngest Alpine racer, 18-year-old Mikaela Shiffrin, whose first event is the giant slalom on Tuesday.Shiffrins best event, the slalom, is Friday. Ligety will be the favorite in the mens giant slalom on Wednesday.The pressure will be on to keep the United States team within sight of the soaring Austrians, who lead the Sochi Olympics Alpine medal table.I dont know why we as a country are doing so well, said Fenninger, who finally had the breakout victory expected of her since she became a three-time junior world champion. It is our national sport. It is important we show that we are good at it. The country is much happier when we do.Fenningers winning time of 1 minute 25.52 seconds was achieved by mastering a deceptively tactical, twisting course that included a devilish final jump. The less accomplished skiers were tossing their skis sideways to make many gates, and 18 racers did not finish.Fenninger, 24, the 2011 super combined world champion, was crisp through the choppy snow of the top section, smooth through the flat, cruising middle section, and navigated the final jump with her skis pointing in the proper direction so she could be early on the pivotal left-footed turn over the knoll that vexed so many of her competitors.Among those who did not handle the final jump well was the silver medalist, Maria Hfl-Riesch of Germany. Hfl-Riesch could have won the race but she soared too far off the jump, leaving her out of position.I am fortunate to have finished, Hfl-Riesch said. But I am happy even for a silver.It is Hfl-Rieschs fourth Olympic medal. She had won three golds. The record for Alpine Olympic medals by a woman is six by Janica Kostelic.ImageCredit...Josh Haner/The New York TimesHosp, a versatile all-around skier who missed the Vancouver Olympics because of a knee injury, now has two medals at the Sochi Games and three Olympic medals over all.Mancuso was hoping to tie Miller for most Olympic medals won by an American, but she was unnerved by the number of skiers falling or not completing the course as she watched alongside the start gate. It led to a cautious run and a time that was 1.52 seconds behind Fenninger.Super-G takes confidence, and seeing so many people go down and have bad runs, it took me back a notch in my confidence, Mancuso said. I left the gate wanting to ski well and not necessarily wanting to win. In my mind I wanted to win but after I got down to the bottom of the run, it was definitely conservative.Still, Mancuso insisted that the United States teams morale was still high.Everyone on our team is really good at looking at the big picture, she said. Everyone is good at putting things in perspective.Looking ahead at the remaining five Alpine events of the 2014 Olympics, Mancuso said, I think theres a chance in every event left to have a medal. | Sports |
Credit...Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York TimesMarch 10, 2017Dutch voters go to the polls next week after a loud and divisive campaign that focused on immigration, the first of a series of European elections this year that could propel populist forces into power. Geert Wilders, the virulently anti-immigrant leader of the Netherlands Party of Freedom, or P.V.V., has led the charge on the immigration debate, drawing in parties on the mainstream right.Ahead of the vote, we asked Dutch readers to tell us how immigration has affected their lives and shaped their political beliefs. Over 2,300 people from across the Netherlands responded, reflecting a wide spectrum of backgrounds and political views. There were colorful examples of a welcoming society, expressions of frustration and fear, and passionate pleas for and against migration. Many others said they were frazzled and disillusioned by the political debate.A Broader View of the WorldKhalid Nabil, 28, is a translator who lives in the northern town of Heerhugowaard. He is a third-generation descendant of immigrants in the 1960s.My hope is that one day immigrants are as welcome as they were in the 60s, 70s when they were needed. And that the problems, which I am not ignoring, are not looked upon with an eye of fear and segregation, but with sincere interest in the cause of the issues. My concerns are that the once so tolerant Netherlands will turn into a frightened right-wing country that is beyond recognition._____Goda Choi, 37, is an internist and hematologist in Haarlem, originally from Seoul, South Korea. As a Korean immigrant, I grew up in the Netherlands in the 1980s. I went to a multiethnic elementary school with children from all backgrounds, including Suriname, the Antilles, Turkey and Morocco. We all spoke Dutch, cheered for the national football team winning the European Championship in 1988, and at school we were allowed to share anything that made our culture special. We celebrated Easter and Christmas, but always with delicious treats from all over the world. One threat did make me anxious as a child: I was kept in a slight fear that all immigrants would be deported if the far-right political party Centrum Democraten would gain control of government._____Wietske de Jong, 35, is a professor of theology who lives in Rijswijk. She said she had experienced hostility online when speaking positively about hosting refugees and welcoming immigrants.Im a white Dutch woman and I married a Dutch man of Turkish descent. When I tell people about him, they often act surprised and ask me how his family responded. The assumption is that Dutch people are tolerant, but that Turkish or Muslim people are not. I have never experienced suspicion from my family-in-law. Ironically, the suspicion and the prejudice I do encounter are expressed by white Dutch people._____Inge van Leipsig, 41, is a social worker in Rotterdam. She said that immigration had given her a broader view of the world.I cant picture my life without Lebanese cuisine, ras-el-hanout, tzatziki, pho or banh mi. It is a great thing to be able to walk out the door and find Turkish, Moroccan and Indian shops around the corner. Immigration has given me the opportunity to learn more about other cultures and religions, and I have enjoyed that a lot.Seeing Virtue on the RightStefan Schenk, 25, is a student who lives in Andijk. Its not immigration, its an invasion. If its not stopped, violence will take over peaceful democratic solutions. I swung from left to right. Geert Wilders will be the only viable candidate._____Henk Biesheuvel, 47, from Vierpolders, works in maritime shipping. He said he feared an Islamic wave taking over the country.Weve welcomed immigrants since the 1950s or so. They did the jobs that we refused to do. That was the first generation, and I think we are now at the fourth generation. They gave hardly any problems. What does pose a big problem is the forced immigration, laid upon us by the E.U., of refugees. It causes turmoil and uncertainty and we cant seem to find a 100 percent proven method to filter out the bad guys and to make sure that only the worst cases (those who need our support the most) are allowed to stay with us._____Aldo de Beunje, 45, works in information technology in Tilburg. He wants to welcome refugees but believes that some groups are more criminal than others, and that those taking advantage of the system should be sent back.Some Muslim people have no respect for our values (towards women, gay people, abortion, etc.). This is something we have fought for over the years. If you come to the Netherlands, you accept this. Or leave. We like to hang on to our values. Also, crime needs to be addressed. I would never have thought that I would seriously consider voting for Wilders. But I am.Thijs de Boer, 22, is a student in The Hague. He said that living in a majority-immigrant neighborhood had made him more tolerant toward immigration.I shamefully have to admit that when I lived in a village I liked P.V.V.s thoughts and ideals, while I never came in contact with immigrants. Some of my friends back there like the P.V.V., and its hard to relate to them. All I can say is just talk to people before you create a negative opinion about them. It helped me a lot!We Can Handle All ThisLian Priemus, 51, is a television director in Amsterdam. She spent most of last year running a small refugee shelter. Some of the refugees, she said, had become real friends. But she remained worried about their integration.In my opinion, we as a free, democratic society can handle all this, but it takes much more time and effort than we and our governments realize. And maybe more than some of us want to admit. But I believe denying the problems and doubts is the wrong solution. If we do so, we push people with concerns away from us and push them to the far right._____Rene Blanken-Verstraten, 66, is a retired bank employee in Rotterdam. My concerns are that terrorists travel along with people who are victims of the war. These victims are of course most welcome here. If the immigrants are willing to assimilate, our society might become more interesting. One can always learn from other peoples customs, culture, kitchen and religion.I Feel MisrepresentedKoen Verschoor, 33, is a market researcher who lives in Amsterdam. He said that the tone of the debate about immigration had the most impact on his community, not immigration itself.I feel misrepresented by the political system that has turned into a popularity contest when discussing sensitive and highly complex issues such as immigration. Immigration itself has not changed my sense of Dutch identity, but the public debate and direction in which we are headed certainly has made me feel less proud of my country.The New Scapegoat of PoliticsJasper Stel, 29, lives in Groningen and works as a financial adviser. He said that the economy and climate issues played a larger part in his political choices than immigration. The response below is translated from the Dutch.Everything thats not going well in our (very prosperous) society is blamed on immigration, and indirectly on the E.U. as well. When I look around me, I dont see any changes compared to a few years back. And that while immigration increased and emigration decreased, year after year. This may not be the sensational story you are looking for. But believe me when I say that the majority of Dutch people are not troubled by immigrants. The only thing that changed is that theyve become the new scapegoat of politics._____Eva Bezem, 30, spent her childhood in Flanders, which she described as right-wing and conservative. Today she is an immigration lawyer in Amsterdam. I help women who are victims of domestic violence, often of Moroccan nationality, and who are dependent on their husband for their Dutch residence rights. They have been kept in their Dutch houses for years without learning anything of the culture or language. Many of them are my age, and they cannot wait to start studying Dutch, and have their own life. They will integrate successfully after deciding to start on their own.When I go back to the south of the Netherlands or Flanders, I do not have the impression that people consider my work a positive influence on society moreover, they will more likely bring up the whole discussion on fear for terrorists and/or criminals. However, when I explain an individual case of a family of migrants and what they have been through, people will understand and sympathize. It seems more the fear of the unknown. | World |
Credit...Julie Jacobson/Associated PressJeff Z. Klein and Stu HackelFeb. 11, 2014The mens hockey tournament in Sochi, Russia, which begins Wednesday, will feature more than 140 N.H.L. players. But Olympic hockey, governed by the International Ice Hockey Federation, is not quite the same as N.H.L. hockey. Here are some of the differences:WIDTH OF ICE The Vancouver Olympic hockey tournament, won by Canada, was played on N.H.L.-size ice. But in Sochi, the rink returns to international standards. While N.H.L. and Olympic rinks are both about 200 feet long, Olympic ice is roughly 100 feet wide, about 15 feet wider than in the N.H.L.Those 15 additional feet present challenges for defensemen inexperienced on the larger sheet. It gives attacking forwards more time and space to maneuver on the outside, so defenders cannot always check attackers by forcing them to the boards as they might in North America. Goalies also will rarely have to worry about a shot from the distant sideboards.The bigger ice had much to do with roster selection for the United States and Canada. For Team USA, forward Bobby Ryans skating -- not as strong as Blake Wheelers -- factored into his exclusion.Canada Coach Mike Babcock emphasized the need to have right- and left-handed shooting defensemen play their natural side on the big ice, resulting in Brent Seabrook being left behind.SIZE OF THE OFFENSIVE ZONE Although the rink length is identical, the zones are proportioned differently under I.I.H.F. rules. The distance from blue line to goal is six feet shorter than in the N.H.L., so shots from the point will reach the net faster.BEHIND THE NET There is an additional two feet from end boards to goal line, giving players more space in this area. There is also no N.H.L.-style trapezoid painted behind the net, meaning goalies may play the puck anywhere on the ice.LINEUPS Olympic teams can dress 20 skaters, two more than in the N.H.L., allowing coaches more flexibility during games. Teams usually go with 13 forwards and 7 defensemen,, with the extras perhaps a power-play specialist or shutdown defender; or with 12 and 8, creating four discrete five-man units.FIGHTINGUnder Olympic rules, any player who fights receives an automatic ejection as well as a five-minute major penalty. Olympic fights are rare only eight in more than 500 games since 1960. The last one took place in 1998, between Slovakias Peter Bondra and Germanys Erich Goldmann.CREASE VIOLATIONS Unlike the N.H.L., Olympic rules prohibit players from standing in the crease. Play is stopped and a face-off is taken in the neutral zone.CHECKS TO THE HEAD The N.H.L. penalizes when the head is the main point of contact, and when such contact was avoidable. Olympic rules are a shade stricter; they penalize a player who directs a check to an opponents head and neck area or forces an opponents head into the glass or boards.HIGH-STICKING In the Olympics, unlike the N.H.L., a player who accidentally strikes another with his stick when winding up or following through on a shot or pass will be penalized.ICING The N.H.L. uses hybrid icing, which permits a few high-speed chases to continue to the end boards. Olympic hockey uses no-touch icing; play stops the moment the puck crosses the goal line.PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT In the N.H.L., if a players helmet comes off, he can play without it until the next stoppage. In the Olympics, he must immediately go to the bench. Failure to do so results in a minor penalty.OVERTIME During the preliminary round, tied games go to a four-on-four five-minute sudden-death overtime, as in the N.H.L. In the medal round until the gold medal game, overtime is played five on five for 10 minutes. In the gold medal game, the overtime is five on five for 20 minutes. In each case, if overtime does not break the tie, the game goes to a shootout.SHOOTOUTS Like the N.H.L., the shootout procedure designates three players to alternate shots. If the game remains tied, however, individual players can shoot more than once.STANDINGS The N.H.L. gives 2 points to the winner in regulation, overtime or shootouts and 1 point to the overtime or shootout loser, making some games worth 2 points and some worth 3. At the Olympics, all games are worth 3 points. The winner in regulation gets 3, and the loser 0. in a game decided in overtime or a shootout, the winner gets 2 points and the loser 1.All 12 teams advance to the knockout phase, but their seedings are determined by the points they accumulate. The top four teams advance directly to the quarterfinals. The teams ranked 5th to 12th will enter a playoff round for the four remaining quarterfinal spots. | Sports |
Health officials are exploring the possibility that a common adenovirus might be responsible for the unexplained cases, which remain rare.Credit...Biophoto Associates/Science SourcePublished May 3, 2022Updated May 20, 2022The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has opened a multipronged investigation into reports of puzzling hepatitis cases in otherwise healthy children. In the United States, 180 cases and six deaths have now been reported, the agency said at a news briefing on Friday.The cases remain extremely rare, with 614 children affected worldwide, according to a May 20 report from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.But even these small clusters have raised alarm. In Britain, where many of the cases have been reported, two pediatric liver units already have had at least as many admissions for acute, unexplained hepatitis in 2022 as they typically would have in an entire year, according to a briefing from the U.K. Health Security Agency.Most children should recover fully, experts said, but some of the cases have been severe. In nearly 10 percent of reported cases, children have required liver transplants, according to the World Health Organization. At least 15 deaths have been reported worldwide.Experts are still searching for a cause. This is an evolving situation and an ongoing investigation, Dr. Jay Butler, deputy director for infectious diseases at the C.D.C., said at the briefing.One leading theory is that an adenovirus may be responsible. Adenoviruses are common, but they are not usually associated with hepatitis in healthy children. And with many nations only now beginning to look for cases in earnest, the scope of the problem remains unknown.Its still early days, said Dr. Richard Malley, an infectious disease specialist at Boston Childrens Hospital. Its hard to predict whether this will become more common or if, in fact, it will just be a blip in our 2022 infectious-disease story.Heres what scientists know so far.What is hepatitis?Hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver and can have a wide range of causes. Viral infections can cause the condition; the viruses known as hepatitis A, B, C, D and E are all known triggers.Heavy drinking, as well as certain medications and toxic substances, can also cause hepatitis. In autoimmune hepatitis, the bodys own immune system attacks the liver.Sudden and severe hepatitis in previously healthy children is uncommon, which is why the new clusters of cases have prompted concern.Where have the new cases been reported?In early April, Britain became the first country to notify the W.H.O. of a cluster of unexplained hepatitis cases in children. The cases were unusual because they occurred over a short period of time in otherwise healthy children, and because clinicians quickly ruled out any of the common hepatitis viruses as the cause. They did not identify any patterns in travel, diet, chemical exposures or other risk factors that might explain the outbreak, according to the U.K. Health Security Agencys briefing.Since then, cases have been reported in more than two dozen countries.In the United States, Alabama recorded nine cases between October and February. Three of the children developed liver failure, and two required liver transplants, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted in a recent report. All of the children either recovered or are recovering, the agency noted.The two that received the transplant are actually doing quite well, said Dr. Henry Shiau, a pediatric transplant hepatologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the Childrens of Alabama hospital.The cases prompted the C.D.C. to issue a nationwide alert, asking health care providers to keep an eye out for similar cases.Cases have now been reported in 36 states and territories, the C.D.C. announced this week. The median age of affected children is about 2, Dr. Butler said on Friday. Many of the cases, which date back to October, were identified after a retrospective review of medical records, he noted.What are the symptoms?In many of the cases, children developed gastrointestinal symptoms, including vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain, followed by a yellowing of the skin or eyes, known as jaundice. They also had abnormally high levels of liver enzymes, a sign of liver inflammation or damage.Gastrointestinal symptoms are common in children and should not, in isolation, be cause for alarm, Dr. Shiau said. But a yellowing of the skin or eyes are more telltale signs of liver problems, he said.The likelihood of your child developing hepatitis is extremely low, Dr. Meera Chand, the director of clinical and emerging infections at the U.K. Health Security Agency, said in a statement. However, we continue to remind parents to be alert to the signs of hepatitis particularly jaundice, which is easiest to spot as a yellow tinge in the whites of the eyes and contact your doctor if you are concerned.Whats causing it?Thats the million-dollar question, Dr. Shiau said. I want to be up front about this: We dont know.But one leading hypothesis is that an adenovirus one of a group of common viruses that often cause cold-like symptoms is responsible. Of the 169 cases included in an April W.H.O. report, at least 74 had an adenovirus infection, the organization said. Eighteen of those children were infected with what is known as adenovirus type 41, which typically causes gastrointestinal and respiratory symptoms.The evidence is accumulating that theres a role for adenovirus, particularly adenovirus 41, Dr. Butler said.But the explanation is not a perfect fit. Not all of the children have tested positive for an adenovirus, and while the viruses can cause liver inflammation, that symptom is most common in people who are immunocompromised. It is not a common cause of liver failure in kids, said Dr. Aaron Milstone, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at Johns Hopkins Childrens Center.It is possible that a new adenovirus strain has emerged or that adenovirus infections are occurring in conjunction with some other risk factor such as a toxic exposure or an infection with another pathogen causing these unusually severe outcomes, the U.K. Health Security Agency said.Or the adenovirus infections could be a red herring. Because the viruses are so common among children, it is difficult to determine whether they are the cause of these hepatitis cases or whether many of the children have been infected incidentally. For proof of causality you really need a lot of data, which we just dont have, Dr. Malley said.How are officials responding?The C.D.C. is pursuing multiple lines of investigation, Dr. Butler said. First, the agency is trying to determine whether these cases truly represent a new spike in unexplained hepatitis in children or are part of an existing phenomenon that is now being recognized in the light of increased awareness.A preliminary analysis suggests that in the United States, 1,500 children to 2,000 children under age 10 are admitted to hospitals annually for hepatitis cases that are not linked to a known viral cause, Dr. Umesh Parashar, chief of the C.D.C.s viral gastroenteritis branch, said at the briefing on Friday. So far, the agency has not documented an overall increase in cases, though a small increase might be difficult to detect, he noted.The agency is also working with doctors across the country to gather more data. This effort includes reviewing the medical records of children who have had hepatitis previously and searching for any exposures or patterns that might tie the new cases together. This is the type of shoe-leather epidemiology that our disease detectives are trained to do, Dr. Butler said.The C.D.C. is also investigating whether adenovirus infections are more common among children with liver disease than in children without liver disease and conducting laboratory studies of adenovirus samples from affected children. Early evidence suggests that multiple versions of adenovirus 41 may be involved, Dr. Butler said.Is this connected to Covid-19?Its not clear. Of the 169 cases in the W.H.O. report, 20 tested positive for the coronavirus. And there was evidence of coronavirus infection in fewer than 20 percent of the U.S. cases, Dr. Butler said. These figures are not surprising, given how widely the virus has been spreading in recent months, scientists said.There is no evidence that hepatitis is linked to the Covid-19 vaccines. The vast majority of these children are unvaccinated, and most are too young to have received a vaccine anyway, Dr. Butler said.Still, a coronavirus connection cannot be entirely ruled out, experts cautioned. It is possible that a prior coronavirus infection could be a contributing factor, and the hepatitis cases may be linked to the pandemic in less direct ways. For example, the public health measures implemented over the past two years may have left fewer children exposed to common adenoviruses. That, in turn, might have made them more susceptible now, according to one of the U.K. Health Security Agencys working hypotheses.But that, too, is speculative.At this point, Dr. Shiau said, we still dont know whats going on. | Health |
Business BriefingDec. 15, 2015Mexicos oil regulator awarded the first 14 onshore contracts that were up for bid at an auction on Tuesday. The number of contracts awarded so far has already exceeded the governments modest expectations for the auction. The countrys oil regulator has estimated that the auction of all 25 contracts on offer could ultimately attract about $1 billion in total investment. The price of Mexicos mostly heavy crude export mix has plunged to below $28 per barrel, down more than 70 percent since last year. | Business |
Feb. 4, 2014A sampling of Winter Olympics odds, as of Monday, from the British online gambling company Ladbrokes.Mens Giant SlalomTed Ligety, United States.8-11Marcel Hirscher, Austria 9-4Felix Neureuther, Germany8-1Alexis Pinturault, France8-1Thomas Fanara, France20-1Fritz Dopfer, Germany33-1Bode Miller, United States 40-1Manfred Molgg, Italy40-1Mens CurlingCanada 4-6Sweden 4-1Britain 11-2Norway 15-2Switzerland10-1Denmark 25-1China 50-1Germany 66-1United States 66-1Russia100-1Womens Figure SkatingKim Yu-na, South Korea4-5Julia Lipnitskaia, Russia8-1Kanako Murakami, Japan16-1Mao Asada, Japan11-4Caroline Kostner, Italy9-1Ashley Wagner, United States 20-1Mens Figure SkatingPatrick Chan, Canada4-9Yuzuru Hanyu, Japan9-4Daisuke Takahashi, Japan12-1Denis Ten, Kazakhstan16-1Javier Fernndez, Spain20-1Evgeni Plushenko, Russia20-1Mens HockeyRussia7-4Canada9-4Sweden10-3United States 13-2Finland9-1Czech Republic16-1 Womens HockeyUnited States 3-4Canada 1-1Finland 14-1Russia 20-1Mens Snowboard SlopestyleMark McMorris, Canada 4-1Maxence Parrot, Canada 5-1Stale Sandbech, Norway 7-1Roope Tonteri, Finland7-1Charles Guldemond, United States 7-1Aleksander Ostreng, Norway10-1Shaun White, United States 10-1Billy Morgan, Britain12-1Sebastien Toutant, Canada12-1Sven Thorgren, Sweden12-1Sage Kotsenburg, United States 12-1Yuki Kadono, Japan16-1Peetu Piiroinen, Finland16-1Gjermund Braten, Norway20-1Seamus OConnor, Ireland100-1Most Gold MedalsNorway1-1United States 7-2Germany 11-2Russia 7-1Canada12-1 | Sports |
Lorde Grammys Won't Let Me Go Solo ... So I'm Not Performing!!! 1/28/2018 Lorde is now the second nominee out of 5 for Album of the Year who won't be performing at the 'Grammys' Sunday, and it's all because the offer she got from producers was a slap in the face ... TMZ has learned. Sources close to Lorde tell us ... the singer decided not to play after a heated back and forth with the Grammys about her involvement in the show. We're told Lorde wanted to perform one of her songs from her nominated album, but she was only offered the option to sing as part of a Tom Petty tribute ... during the late rocker's tune, "American Girl." The 2 sides couldn't come to an agreement ... so Lorde pulled the plug on performing altogether and we're told she won't be on the Red Carpet either. It's interesting -- our sources say the other 4 nominees, all men, got offers to perform their own tracks solo, and while Jay-Z declined ... the other 3 nominees -- Bruno Mars, Childish Gambino and Kendrick Lamar -- are all slated to perform. The "60th Annual Grammy Awards" air Sunday night. | Entertainment |
Jesse Williams I Don't Have a Girlfriend!!! 1/26/2018 Jesse Williams is firing back at his estranged wife, saying she's poisoning their children toward him ... and he insists she's all wet when she claims he has a girlfriend. Aryn Drake-Lee has claimed Jesse is romantically involved with a woman the kids call Mama C. She claims it's in violation of their custody arrangement which requires them not to introduce a significant other until the relationship has lasted 6 months. He says she's a longtime mutual friend of theirs and that's it. Jesse just filed legal docs saying Aryn has been interrogating their 2 children, trying to find fault with things he does. She claimed in earlier docs his inconsistent schedule was disrupting their lives, hurting their development, but he calls BS, saying the kids eat their meals and get plenty of sleep while they're with him. Jesse says it's rich for Aryn to complain about his work schedule, saying, "This is how I always supported our family and Aryn has no problem enjoying the financial benefits, including the $50,695 per month I pay her in temporary spousal support." As for Aryn's claim Jesse violated school rules by bringing cupcakes for Sadie's birthday, he says the treats were the teacher's idea and he only brought them with permission from her. | Entertainment |
Science|Randall Munroe, XKCD Creator, Goes Back to High Schoolhttps://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/science/randall-munroe-xkcd-science-textbook.htmlMarch 21, 2016This fall, some high school students will flip the page of their science textbooks and seeImageCredit...Randall Munroestick figures and simplistic diagrams annotated with curiously nontechnical prose.A schematic of the human body, for instance, looks more like a subway map with various organs labeled as air bag, blood pusher, thinking bag and so on.For thinking bag, the explanation is: When you read words (like these), this part of your body turns them into ideas. By choosing the right words, you can take an idea thats happening in your head and try to make an idea like it happen in someone elses. Thats whats happening right now.Some may recognize them as the drawings and droll descriptions of Randall Munroe, the creator of the Internet comic xkcd as well as two books, What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions and Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words, both published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is also a textbook publishing giant, and editors in that division happened to see page proofs of Thing Explainer, which attempts to explain concepts like tectonic plates, cells and nuclear bombs using just the thousand most common words in English.We just all had an a-ha moment, said Peggy Smith-Herbst, the senior vice president who oversees content development for science and mathematics. We always knew we wanted to work with him.Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced on Tuesday that it was collaborating with Mr. Munroe to incorporate parts of Thing Explainer into the next editions of its high school chemistry, biology and physics textbooks, to be published this summer. Its a way of deepening the engagement level for students, Ms. Smith-Herbst said.Mr. Munroe, 31, said the project appealed to him. He recalled as a child a foldout diagram showing different animals at the starting line of a race and then sprinting/flying/crawling to show the different speeds of different species. For some reason, I fixated on that illustration, he said. It stuck with me my entire life.Mr. Munroe said he hoped his drawings would break up the monotony and pace of a typical textbook. Im hoping it will be, Oh, heres a kind of fun and unexpected component, he said.He is adding a few new drawings, including one that explains how life returns to a landscape destroyed by forest fire or other ecological disaster. Thats a really neat topic, he said. | science |
David Beckham Haircut and Chill 1/24/2018 David Beckham doesn't play by the rules when it comes to getting trimmed ... or he's got an incredible hair dresser. Beckham said goodbye to his long coif with the help of a big glass of wine and his feet up on the counter, which had to make getting that perfect line around the ear difficult for the guy blading away. Becks shared pics of what looks like the most laid-back cut Tuesday on his Instagram story, including one of what came off and it certainly looked like a lot. Gotta say, Becks' photography game is getting pretty artsy and we think we know who is to blame. | Entertainment |
Science|Plants Remember You if You Mess With Them Enoughhttps://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/science/29obs-plants.htmlTrilobitesCredit...Zohar LazarMarch 28, 2016Plants are reviving after a long winter, helped along by warming temperatures and increased light.But do plants also remember what to do? Maybe so. In 2014, Dr. Monica Gagliano and colleagues at the University of Florence in Italy decided to see if they could train a plant to change behavior.The researchers chose Mimosa pudica, more commonly known as the touch-me-not, which curls up its leaves in response to physical stimulation. Test plants in their pots were dropped onto foam from a height of about six inches to elicit the flinching response.After repeated exposure with no major harm, the plants no longer recoiled. Even after a month left alone, the plants remembered the falls werent harmful and ignored them. Dr. Gagliano, now at the University of Western Australia, concluded from the experiment that plants could learn long-lasting behaviors, sort of like memories.Touch-me-not plant (Mimosa pudica) in actionCredit...CreditVideo by Akshay MaratheBut a review published last month in Science Advances suggests that one can look at it another way as well: the mimosa pudica could be learning to forget. Peter Crisp, a molecular plant biologist at Australian National University and author on the review, suggested that plants forget to flinch when it turns out that the threat does no harm. Forgetting has a purpose, Dr. Crisp and his colleagues say: It allows plants to save energy. | science |
Credit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesJune 21, 2018WASHINGTON President Trump, spurred on by conservatives who want him to slash safety net programs, unveiled on Thursday a plan to overhaul the federal government that could have a profound effect on millions of poor and working-class Americans.Produced over the last year by Mr. Trumps budget director, Mick Mulvaney, it would reshuffle social welfare programs in a way that would make them easier to cut, scale back or restructure, according to several administration officials involved in the planning.Among the most consequential ideas is a proposal to shift the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a subsistence benefit that provides aid to 42 million poor and working Americans, from the Agriculture Department to a new mega-agency that would have welfare in its title a term Mr. Trump uses as a pejorative catchall for most government benefit programs.That proposal, which includes an equally ambitious plan to merge the Education and Labor Departments to consolidate work force programs, is not likely to gain the congressional approval needed to make the changes, Mr. Mulvaneys aides conceded in a phone call with reporters on Thursday.But the rollout has a bigger long-term purpose, said Margaret Weichert, one of Mr. Mulvaneys deputies who drafted the proposal. She cast the proposal as a rallying cry for small government and said the audacity of the plan proved why many Americans voted for this president.Mr. Trump, for his part, joked on Thursday that the plan was extraordinarily boring before TV cameras in the Cabinet Room.But being boring in an all-too-exciting White House has provided cover for a small army of conservatives and think tank veterans who have been quietly churning out dozens of initiatives like the proposal to reshuffle the cabinet, with the ultimate goal of dismantling the American social welfare system from the inside out.Our guys have been in there since the start, grinding it out, and basically no one is noticing it except the smart liberals like Rachel Maddow, said Stephen K. Bannon, the presidents former adviser, who believes the attack on social programs will be one of Mr. Trumps most enduring policy achievements.It is one of the reasons Trump is at like 97 percent with the base. This is what the base wants, he said. Referring to the right-wing conspiracy theorist who hosts a popular radio show and the progressive consumer activists allied with Ralph Nader, who became a force in Democratic politics in the 1970s, he added: Trust me, its not Alex Jones thats driving things. Its these guys they are our version of Naders Raiders.Philip G. Alston, a New York University professor and the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, agreed with Mr. Bannons assessment. My sense is they are making very considerable progress, even though no one is paying much attention, he said.But Mr. Alston, author of a recent study on endemic poverty in American cities and the rural South, has a different view of what Mr. Trumps aides are trying to do. There is a contempt for the poor that seems to permeate the presidents inner circle that seems very worrying, he said. Its done under the banner of providing opportunity and seeking long-term solutions but it all seems designed to increase misery.The president himself is deeply uninterested in the details of policy and can identify only a handful of domestic policy aides, including Mr. Mulvaney, by name, according to current and former staff members. His policy operation during the 2016 campaign was skeletal.Aides would often watch Mr. Trumps stump speech on TV for cues on what he wanted to do, search Google for policy proposals that seemed to be the closest fit then draft white papers or debate talking points from the results.As president, Mr. Trump would become so bored with the details of domestic policy that aides long ago stopped sharing all but the most top-line specifics of their plans including the reorganization, according to several people who have worked closely with Mr. Trump.If Mr. Trump is fuzzy on policy, he is acutely attuned to the perils of offending his base, especially older voters.A few weeks after Mr. Trump took office, Mr. Mulvaney and a handful of other aides, including Reince Priebus, then the chief of staff, approached the president in the Oval Office to suggest a slate of entitlement changes to reduce costs in the Medicare and Social Security programs.They were a few minutes into their pitch, according to someone familiar with the meeting, when Mr. Trump waved a dismissive hand and shouted, No way! What else you got?Mr. Trump has, however, given wide latitude to conservatives like the education secretary, Betsy DeVos; the housing secretary, Ben Carson; Attorney General Jeff Sessions; the director of the Domestic Policy Council, Andrew Bremberg; and Mr. Mulvaney, who has emerged as the most provocative and hyperactive of the presidents senior policy advisers.Mrs. Devos has been especially aggressive, pushing to loosen restrictions on for-profit colleges and enforcement of civil rights laws. She is close to Mr. Mulvaney and supported the proposal to merge her department with the Labor Department, calling it a bold reform in a statement.Artificial barriers between education and work force programs have existed for far too long, she added.Democratic critics saw the new proposal as a threat to both departments, but the proposal also divided conservatives.Representative Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, the Republican chairwoman of the House education committee who has aggressively pushed a higher education bill that would achieve the same goals, said it was a recognition of the clear relationship between education policy at every level and the needs of the growing American work force.But it was one of the rare proposals that fell flat with conservative supporters who champion Mr. Trumps agenda to shrink the government, in part because it did not include an accounting of staff members or funding for the reorganization.Lindsey Burke, the education policy director at the Heritage Foundation, which has steered a slew of Trump policies, said that the proposal risked increasing the federal governments role in education and the work force, creating more bloat, control and federal tentacles in local schools and markets.For the most part, however, operatives aligned with Heritage, the Federalist Society and the sprawling Koch brothers network have been on the inside making policy.Benjamin Hobbs, a former employee of Heritage and the Charles Koch Foundation, who received a top policy job at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, was a driving force behind a proposal to raise rents on some of the poorest residents of subsidized housing by as much as 44 percent, according to two administration officials.In a recent meeting, Mr. Hobbs raised eyebrows by claiming the increases were intended, in part, to persuade unmarried couples to move in with each other to pool rent payments, according to two people in attendance.Mr. Carson, his boss, broadly supports the idea of reducing dependence, aides said, but was lukewarm on the idea. The backlash to the proposal was so severe that Mr. Carson, speaking this month in Detroit, wavered when asked whether he planned to back legislation needed to achieve the hikes.Rick Dearborn, another former employee at Heritage, who served as deputy chief of staff for Mr. Trump during his first year in office, steered a total of about 70 Heritage-linked experts into policy roles in the White House and various cabinet departments.At the same time, Mr. Bannon, who was Mr. Trumps most influential aide at the dawn of the presidency, enlisted one of Heritages founders, Edwin J. Feulner Jr., to help create a list of action items on scaling back social welfare programs days after Mr. Trumps inauguration.Heritage had just received a multimillion-dollar commitment from Mr. Bannons former benefactor, Rebekah Mercer, according to two people familiar with the gift. Much of the cash was informally earmarked, they said, to help Mr. Trump expand his near nascent policy operation, according to two people familiar with the details of the donation.By early 2017, Heritage produced a government reorganization plan that served as the initial template for Thursdays announcement. They also drafted a list of 334 policy recommendations, about half of them aimed at domestic programs for poor people or Obama-era regulations protecting low-income consumers.Once the transition started, we seized on the opportunity to help out and define the policy agenda of the next administration, said Paul Winfree, a social policy expert at Heritage, who once worked for the Domestic Policy Council coordinating administration policy of social welfare programs and entitlements.Even when many thought Trump had no chance, Heritage researchers and alumni were working hard over on implementation plans, said Mr. Winfree. We went to work while much attention was paid to the palace intrigue or on personalities. Having one big personality isnt enough to change a government. Having many good people, who know and trust each other, in the right places is the key.The core of Mr. Trumps safety net policy is an expansion of work requirements to foster self-sufficiency among recipients of food assistance, Medicaid and housing subsidies to reduce dependence on the government. Our goal is to get people on the path to self-sufficiency, Mr. Bremberg said.Its real purpose, advocates for poor people claim, is to kick hundreds of thousands of the needy off the federal rolls, to cut taxes for the rich.That effort dovetailed with a separate but related rollback in the enforcement of fair housing, educational equity, payday lending and civil rights cases pursued aggressively under the Obama administration intended to protect vulnerable populations from discrimination and abusive business practices.Its a war on the poor, pure and simple, said Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which has challenged several Trump administration policies in federal court.The pace of administration activity in all of these areas has picked up sharply this year, in part because many of the conservatives inside the administration believe Mr. Trumps political and legal troubles will limit their window for action after the midterm elections.Over the last two weeks alone, Mr. Trumps team unsuccessfully tried to ram through a $15 billion bill clawing back domestic spending, Mr. Mulvaney fired the 25-member advisory board at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where he serves as the acting director, and administration lawyers challenged an Obama-era anti-discrimination rule that resulted in greater funding for projects in minority neighborhoods.What remains unclear is whether the flurry of activity will have a long-term effect on the trajectory of federal spending and the management of safety net programs.This year, the Heritage Foundation reported that Mr. Trump had checked off 64 percent of their policy checklist. But dozens of those victories were partial or pyrrhic.Some proposals, including Medicaid waivers that allow states to impose work requirements and the reorientation of enforcement across an array of federal agencies, are moving ahead despite court challenges. But many others, especially those in Mr. Mulvaneys dead-on-arrival budget proposals, have been blocked by Democrats with the help of Senate Republicans.As Mr. Mulvaney was pitching his reorganization plan to the cabinet and news media on Thursday, the House was passing a farm bill that included stiffer work requirements for SNAP recipients. Senate Republicans have already vowed to kill that provision.A handful of Mr. Mulvaneys recommendations, including changes to federal personnel management and State Department overseas aid programs, can be accomplished through executive action alone.But many other parts of Mr. Mulvaneys reorganization plan are likely to face similar resistance as work requirements, including efforts to consolidate fisheries and wildlife programs, aggregate food safety and inspection programs in the Agriculture Department, shift rural housing programs to HUD and move the Army Corps of Engineers to civilian agencies, among others.This is an art-of-the-possible exercise, Ms. Weichert said. | Politics |
State of the ArtFeb. 12, 2014Dont mock the beleaguered Nook owner. That could have been you.Five years ago, when the nations largest chain of bookstores released an e-reader that it promised would best Amazons Kindle, could you blame the poor souls who bought in to Barnes & Nobles vision of the future? In 2011, Consumer Reports proclaimed the Nook the best e-reader in the land, saying it surpassed the Kindle in just about every way. Well, that sounds pretty definitive, doesnt it? No wonder your aunt bought you one for Christmas.Things havent played out well since. After failing to douse Amazons Kindle, Barnes & Noble has spent the last year refashioning its Nook strategy, and with its recent reductions in e-reader staff, the Nooks end looks nigh. If you own a Nook, the fate of your books may now be up in the air. Sorry, you bet on the wrong horse.The Nooks fate isnt unusual these days. Technologies have always gone belly up, but tech extinctions may become even more common over the next few years. Were living through an exhilarating and mystifying time in the tech business, when every established brand and business model from the Windows PC to the whole idea of selling software and hardware for a profit is suddenly under assault.ImageCredit...Stuart GoldenbergToday, five behemoths Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft plus a dizzying array of start-ups are competing to win every dollar and minute you spend in tech. While each of these companies offers differing sets of technologies sold under widely varying business models, they all share a common feature trying to hook you deeply into an ecosystem of interconnected technologies.The trouble arises when you are sold on a tech ecosystem that doesnt prosper. Its likely that at least one, if not several, of todays tech behemoths wont be around a decade from now. Thus the pervasive worry of choosing tech in these uncertain days: How do you avoid betting on the wrong horse?There is hope. By following a simple strategy, you can get the most out of the digital world while reducing the chance youll be burned by a single wrong move. The point is to minimize the danger of getting locked in to any one companys ecosystem. The strategy also ensures that you can easily move from device to device without much hassle.The key is promiscuity. When you decide what to use, youve got to play every tech giant against the other, to make every tech decision as if you were a cad sample every firms best features and never overcommit to any one.This sounds difficult. It isnt. Heres the game plan:ImageCredit...Quinn Rooney/Getty ImagesBUY APPLES HARDWARE Apples phones, tablets and PCs are the best-designed and best-made computers on the market. They are also the easiest to learn to use and the most durable. And if youre kind to them, theyll carry a far higher resale value than rival devices.I say this after having tried just about every competitor to Apples machines. Some non-Apple phones and tablets are nearly as nice as the iPhone and iPad (Googles Nexus line is quite good), but I havent found any that beat it, and none that are as pleasurable to use.But the best thing about Apples hardware is that it maximizes your ability to be promiscuous with software. Apples App Store is home to more programs than any other app marketplace. Whats more, the most innovative start-up firms often create apps for Apples platform before they bother with Android. Since software is the soul of a machine, the source of all our devices advancing powers, youre best off getting the gadgets that can run the widest range of software. (A note for the sticklers: Yes, Apple restricts the ways you can tinker with the deeper parts of your mobile devices. But if youre a tinkerer, you dont need to read a column to decide what to buy.)ImageCredit...Colin Hackley/Visit Florida, via Associated PressUSE GOOGLES SERVICES My phone and tablet carry Apples logo, but almost everything I do with them is routed through the search companys servers. Theres Googles Gmail app for email, Googles Calendar to manage your day, Google Maps to tell you where to go, Chrome to browse the Web and even the otherwise useless Google Plus social network to back up your photos.Throwing your data at Google is a good idea for two reasons: First, the company is incredibly good at managing it; it lets you have access to stuff on pretty much any device, anywhere in the world, all the time. Its services almost never go down, its data is extremely accurate (see Maps), and, barring intrusion by the N.S.A., Google offers solid security (like two-factor authentication).I also love the handy tricks Google adds as it learns more and more about me (yes, Im aware I sound like a P.O.W. praising my jailers but count my blinks, its true). For instance, its Google Now feature, available as part of the Google Search app on the iPhone, can automatically predict what you are doing next and show you relevant information like traffic directions and boarding passes just when you need them. It even enhances your photos, making your pretty face even prettier.Wait a second, though arent you committing to Google by giving it all your stuff? Nope, because heres the best thing: Unlike many of its rivals, Google allows you to download your personal data from most of its services so you can easily move to some other pusher.BUY MEDIA FROM AMAZON This one is a no-brainer. If youre looking to buy a movie on your Windows laptop today, shouldnt you get one that will also work on an Android tablet you buy tomorrow? If you buy a book to read on your iPad, shouldnt you also make sure it works on the Kindle youre planning to get for Christmas?Different media providers offer different levels of such interoperability, but books, music and movies from Amazon are the most widely viewable. You can watch and read Amazons media on Apple devices, Google devices, Amazons own Kindle line and lots of other places, like cheap streaming devices for your TV. In contrast, a book from Apples iBookstore is probably never going to work on an Android phone, because Apple really doesnt want you to buy an Android phone. So why bother with iBooks?BET ON CONNECTORS In our multidevice world, Amazons media store functions as what I like to call a connector it bridges the chasm between otherwise foreign technologies.This gets to the most important principle for dealing with an uncertain future: Invest your time and money in connectors. For instance, store all your important documents on the cloud-storage service Dropbox, because its business model depends on it working everywhere. And it does: The documents you create on any single machine are replicated on all your other machines, instantly. Similarly, when someone hands you a business card, you can snap a photo of it on the note-taking app Evernote, which also functions as a connector, letting you get at your scribbles regardless of which machine you move to next. And in a cloudy future, who knows what that could be? | Tech |
Credit...Erin Schaff for The New York TimesJune 28, 2018WASHINGTON Early Thursday morning, less than 24 hours after Justice Anthony M. Kennedy announced his retirement, scores of conservative leaders and grass-roots strategists dialed into a conference call to gear up for their most significant Supreme Court nomination battle in decades.For years, conservatives had been losing the culture wars at the court, often to Justice Kennedys vote. Now, President Trump had a chance to remake a generation of law and to unite the disparate coalitions of the Republican Party evangelicals, social and small government conservatives, Second Amendment enthusiasts and pro-business Republicans ahead of a critical midterm election.Conservatives were heading into the kind of political battle they know best, on their terms and their turf.It is a fight for which they have not only considerable financial resources but a deep reservoir of resolve.The history of heartache and being burned during Supreme Court battles is much more salient to conservatives, said Gary Marx, a strategist with the Judicial Crisis Network, who organized the conference call and who has been working for the past 18 months on a campaign anticipating the Kennedy vacancy.Some of that history has made this a much bigger and more powerful issue in the minds of conservatives and center-right voters than it has to progressives, Mr. Marx added, referring to Supreme Court confirmations going back to the 1980s.A vote in the Republican-led Senate on Mr. Trumps replacement for Justice Kennedy, most likely coming just weeks before Election Day, is set to provide the jolt of energy that will help the party in its pitched battle with Democrats over control of the Senate, and in its efforts to retain control of the House, conservative leaders, activists and lawmakers said in interviews.Already two major conservative organizations that spent heavily to defend the nomination of Neil M. Gorsuch, who was confirmed to the court last April, have said they plan to match or exceed their previous seven-figure efforts: the political network controlled by Charles Koch and Mr. Marxs Judicial Crisis Network.ImageCredit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesOn Wednesday, Mr. Marxs group announced a campaign called #AnotherGreatJustice, which it described as a major national cable and digital ad buy. Other well-funded groups like the United States Chamber of Commerce plan to weigh in soon.This is a 10 out of 10 motivator, said Leonard A. Leo, an informal adviser to the president on judicial nominations and a leading conservative judicial strategist, explaining how critical the courts have been for Republican voters, especially since the 2016 death of Antonin Scalia, a conservative icon. Succession on the court, the possibility of multiple vacancies and appointments is something thats been very much on the minds of the conservative movement.Mr. Trump has already appointed young and highly conservative appellate judges, making appointments at a faster rate than his predecessors. During his presidency, judicial confirmation fights have also become more partisan and polarized. The presidents judicial nominees have faced an average of 23 no votes each which, according to the Pew Research Center, is by far the highest for any president since the Senate expanded to its current size of 100 members in 1959.As mobilized as the right may be, Democrats have never faced a confirmation quite like this, with Roe v. Wade seemingly as imperiled as it has ever been. Though they may not have the Senate votes to block the presidents nominee, the energy that Democrats can create around the threat of abortion becoming illegal will most likely help level the playing field with the right, both in terms of intensity and money raised.Within hours of Justice Kennedys retirement announcement, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had started a fund-raising campaign on social media and sent an email declaring, This is an all hands on deck moment, team. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, sent out a fund-raising blast that told supporters that womens rights, equal rights, and health care are on the line. Representative Beto ORourke, a Texas Democrat who is running for Senate against Ted Cruz, also emailed, This couldnt be more urgent.But few issues are as rooted in the political culture of Republicans as the Supreme Court. They wear the scars of past confirmation fights so openly that the central characters names have become verbs. See: Bork, derived from Ronald Reagans defeated nominee, Robert Bork, which Webster defines as to attack or defeat (a nominee or candidate for public office) unfairly through an organized campaign of harsh public criticism or vilification. See also: Soutered, coined for the former justice David Souter, a George H.W. Bush nominee who conservatives felt concealed his liberal leanings to win a spot on the court.Each provided a bitter lesson that drove home to Republicans how critical the court was.The coming nomination, and the expected fight with Democrats over it, is an opportunity for Mr. Trump to further solidify his support among the many Republicans who are turned off by him personally. Replacing Justice Kennedy with a more reliable conservative will most likely go further than anything he has done yet to endear him to the party.Hes checking the boxes, said Scott Reed, senior political strategist at the Chamber of Commerce.This is a game changer, he added, and all the Never Trumpers are going to look back and see he had two, maybe more, Supreme Court nominees in addition to the 36 district and appellate court confirmations so far. And there are 100 more to go.The court was perhaps the largest motivator for religious conservatives who supported Mr. Trump in 2016. He promised to appoint a pro-life justice to the bench, a pledge that prompted many wary evangelicals and Catholics to vote for him, despite misgivings.ImageCredit...John Duricka/Associated PressThe strategy of stressing the court to the electorate paid off: 56 percent of Trump voters said the Supreme Court appointments were the most important factor in their choice, compared with only 41 percent of Hillary Clinton voters, according to 2016 exit polls.Social conservatives have understood the importance of the Supreme Court largely because of massive threats toward socially conservative institutions in recent years, said Russell Moore, president of the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. There are so many cases in which social progressives, through the judiciary, have given the message that more conservative people should just get on the right side of history or get out.In recent years, and especially with Mr. Trumps election, social conservatives have worked to turn those decades of resentment into action. Within an hour of the news of Justice Kennedys retirement, Penny Nance, president of the Concerned Women for America, pulled her whole staff together to start planning local events, town halls and opportunities for their members across the country to meet with their senators.We expect this will be the biggest battle for a confirmation in CWAs history, she said in an interview. The Gorsuch nomination battle was just a dry run.The Susan B. Anthony List, whose support for an anti-abortion Democrat, Dan Lipinski in Illinois, pushed him to a primary victory in March, has already been targeting vulnerable Democrats ahead of the midterms for not being tough enough on abortion, including Senators Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. When Mr. Gorsuch was nominated last year, the group mobilized tens of thousands of people online to email senators to support his nomination, and held rallies and news conferences to push moderate Democrats to back him.This moment is everything that we have been planning for, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group, said in an interview.The Family Research Council, a conservative anti-abortion group, started a three-year, $22 million plan several months ago to engage pastors and voters though the 2020 election, and has eight mobilization events planned with pastors in midterm battleground states this summer.Like many of its peer groups on the Christian right, it had anticipated a vigorous fight over the future of the court. The group just didnt anticipate it would be fighting so enthusiastically on behalf of a President Trump.This is probably the single-most I told you so moment if you need to go back and smack your Never Trump friends, said Frank Cannon, a veteran social conservative strategist. | Politics |
Credit...Jean-Christophe Bott/European Pressphoto AgencyDec. 8, 2015RIO DE JANEIRO Shares of the Brazilian investment bank BTG Pactual slumped again on Tuesday a day after formal charges were filed against its former leader, Andr Esteves.BTG Pactual stock fell nearly 15 percent in late trading on the So Paulo bourse. The shares have now fallen by half since the arrest of Mr. Esteves on Nov. 25.On Monday, Brazils attorney general, Rodrigo Janot, charged Mr. Esteves and Delcidio do Amaral, a Brazilian senator, with obstruction of justice.The two men were arrested on accusations of interfering with a broad investigation into corruption involving the state-owned oil giant Petrobras, including trying to pressure a key witness, Nestor Cervero, a former Petrobras executive, from signing a plea agreement.Mr. Esteves subsequently resigned as the banks chief executive and chairman and then gave up financial control in a share swap with seven other current partners. He maintains his innocence.Others charged on Monday by Mr. Janot are Edson Ribeiro Filho, formerly Mr. Cerveros lawyer, and Diogo Ferreira Rodrigues, Senator Amarals chief of staff.For now, Mr. Esteves appears to be the focus of the investigation, rather than BTG Pactual. Yet the bank is facing greater scrutiny over several direct investments it made in the oil and gas sector, including in companies that have been hit hard by the corruption investigation. It also has assets in Petrobras Africa it acquired in a deal that raised concern.Additionally, since the arrests, federal prosecutors were said to have found evidence suggesting that the bank paid 45 million reais to an influential politician, Eduardo Cunha, the speaker of the lower house, with the hope of watering down financial legislation. BTG Pactual has denied those accusations.The firm is under pressure to maintain liquidity. On Friday, it said it obtained a line of credit of six billion reais, or about $1.6 billion, from the Fundo Garantidor de Credito, which is funded by Brazilian banks.It is also looking to sell assets. In a filing last week with the CVM, Brazils securities regulator, it acknowledged it was in discussions and considering selling its equity stakes in several Brazilian companies, including BR Properties, Leader and the fitness chain BodyTech. It said that was seeking to increase further its liquidity and strengthen its cash flow.The bank also said it is open to selling its stake in BSI, the Swiss bank it recently acquired, and Recovery, BTG Pactuals distressed assets arm.Few expect BTG Pactual to survive in its current form.In a report on Monday, Goldman Sachs said it expected that BTG Pactuals cumulative funding gap as measured by funding maturing versus securities and loans to reach 1.6 billion reais by the end of the fourth quarter. It estimates that number will widen to 11 billion reais by the end of the third quarter in 2016.Assets under management since the arrest of Mr. Esteves are down about 15 percent, the same report noted. | Business |
Nov. 22, 2016Credit...Chris Hayward/Center for Computational Astrophysics/Flatiron Institute; and Phil Hopkins/California Institute of Technology/FIRE CollaborationA new private research institute financed by the billionaire James H. Simons in New York will develop software tools and apply cutting edge computing techniques to science often not possible in academia and industry.Researchers this week will start moving into the Flatiron Institute, across the street from the downtown offices of the Simons Foundation, a nonprofit that finances basic science research.Mr. Simons, a mathematician turned wealthy hedge fund manager and now philanthropist, and his wife, Marilyn, the foundation president, hope the new institute will fill an overlooked niche.Computers have been a fixture for decades in astrophysics and many other fields of science. But typically, the computer programs are written by graduate students, often abandoned after they finish their programs. Those people arent great coders, for the most part, Mr. Simons said.At the Flatiron Institute, a good fraction of the staff will be professional computer programmers, producing software not only for the in-house scientists but also available for anyone else who needs it.ImageCredit...Fred R. Conrad/The New York TimesThe computational motif that runs through the organization, there really isnt anything quite like that, Mr. Simons said. A university department cannot hire programmers.Ms. Simons said the impetus for the institute evolved from a brainstorming workshop about what we might do to help move the needle in science. A Belgian physicist and mathematician, Ingrid Daubechies, suggested an effort to develop better computational tools.She said there is a real need for analyzing big data, Ms. Simons said. She felt these kinds of technologies and approaches would be really helpful in addressing some of the scientific problems we had now.The first area of focus was computational biology.The foundation reached out to Leslie F. Greengard, a mathematician at New York University who also has a medical degree. He gave a talk at Simons outlining some possibilities for what a computational biology endeavor might look like.Jim said, Lets have lunch tomorrow, Dr. Greengard said. Then, Why dont you come and start this? That was three years ago, and Dr. Greengard accepted. Most of the work of the Simons Foundation goes to grants to scientists around the country; this was its first foray into hiring its own scientists and embarking on its own research.One project is developing software for collecting and analyzing the electrical pulses recorded from electrodes implanted in animal brains. Originally, it was just a few electrodes. Now it is hundreds and soon it will be thousands, Dr. Greengard said.ImageCredit...Chris Hayward/Center for Computational Astrophysics/Flatiron Institute; and Phil Hopkins/California Institute of TechnologyFrom the voltages, scientists need to identify which neurons are firing when, and that is complex computational challenge. Currently, different research groups use their own custom-written computer programs, making it difficult for scientists to compare their results with others, or to reproduce them.The Flatiron software will be available for all scientists.We can build teams where methodology development is not sort of secondary to asking the science question, Dr. Greengard said. Its critical to asking the science question.Dr. Greengards efforts, until now housed in the foundation offices, proved successful, so his group and three other centers will be working at the institute.That led to the invitation to David N. Spergel, a Princeton astrophysics professor, to start a similar effort for astrophysics, and a third group focusing on materials science is in the works. Eventually, the institute will add a fourth center topic not yet decided and grow to about 200 full-time employees with an $80-million annual budget.The foundation also hopes to remove institute scientists from the typical academic pressures of churning out journal articles in the chase of tenure and scrambling for the next grant to finance their work.Because of the competition for grants, scientists often propose projects that they know will work rather than on ideas that are more adventurous with potentially greater payoffs.These are really interesting questions, and we can think longer than the three-year grant cycle, Marilyn Simons said. They can tackle tough questions and put the time in thats necessary. | science |
Europe|Brussels Police Officer Is Stabbed, Officials Sayhttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/world/europe/brussels-police-officer-stabbed.htmlCredit...Yves Herman/ReutersNov. 20, 2018A man attacked a police officer with a knife outside a police station in Brussels on Tuesday morning, and another officer shot the assailant, officials said.Both the injured officer and the attacker, whose name was not released, were hospitalized with injuries that were not life-threatening, said Ilse van de Keere, a spokeswoman for the Brussels police.The suspect is not known by our national terrorist watchdog agency and its databases, Belgiums interior minister, Jan Jambon, said in an interview on national radio. According to our information he was detained in a psychiatric institution and recently released.According to local news reports, the man yelled Allahu akbar, Arabic for God is great, raising concerns about another Islamist terrorist attack in a city that has endured several of them.Ms. van de Keere said she was aware of those reports but did not know if they were correct.Now we are investigating what the motives of the suspect are, so its too soon to tell, she said.Mr. Jambon said the attack was not being treated as a terrorist incident.The attack took place at 5:30 a.m. outside the central police station, near the Grand Place in the historic heart of the city.In 2016, three suicide bombings struck Brussels on the same morning, two at the airport and one at a busy metro station, killing 32 people and injuring more than 300. The attackers were part of the same cell that had carried out the 2015 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people.Last year, a bomb detonated in a Brussels train station, but no one was seriously hurt. | World |
Joe McKnight Shooter Guilty of Manslaughter ... Faces 40 Years 1/26/2018 The man who shot and killed ex-NFL RB Joe McKnight has been found guilty of manslaughter and now faces up to 40 years in prison. Ronald Gasser, 56, learned his fate today in a Louisiana courtroom ... not far from where he gunned down McKnight during a road-rage incident on December 1, 2016. Gasser's attorneys filed motions that McKnight was the aggressor, and their client was acting in self defense when he fired off 3 shots. The jury took just over 7 hours to deliberate the verdict. McKnight was only 28. Joe was working on an NFL comeback before he was killed. He was a 4th round pick in the 2010 NFL Draft and and spent a few seasons with the Jets. He later played in the CFL. | Entertainment |
Sports of The TimesCredit...Natacha Pisarenko/Associated PressFeb. 8, 2014KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia To discover how the 40-year-old Italian luger Armin Zggeler has remained at the top of his sport for more than 20 years, I persuaded him to tell me his secrets. Apples, he told me. And I have lots of noodles for lunch, and steak for dinner every night.Apples, noodles and steak? Thats it? Thats how Zggeler could become the first person to win a medal in six consecutive Winter Games with a victory in singles luge here on Sunday night?Yes, I grew up on a farm, and I had good, natural South Tyrolean food, he said after training on Wednesday. I gave him a skeptical look. And my parents, maybe they are very strong, too?Zggeler is one of the nearly superhuman athletes at these Olympics who are defying their age.At 40, the Norwegian biathlete Ole Einar Bjorndalen won gold in Saturdays 10-kilometer sprint, giving him his seventh Olympic title and making him the oldest Olympic gold medalist in an individual event.In ski jumping, Noriaki Kasai, 41, of Japan will compete in Sundays normal hill event. Last year, he became the oldest World Cup winner in that sport. And Russias Albert Demchenko, 42, is among Zggelers top competitors here in luge. Zggeler, the great consumer of apples, noodles and steak, has won two Olympic gold medals, one silver and two bronzes. He earned his first medal at the 1994 Lillehammer Games and has since won six world championships, with his first world title and his most recent one 16 years apart.After the first two luge runs on Saturday, he was in third place, 0.744 of a second behind the leader, Felix Loch, 24, of Germany. Demchenko was second.Zggeler does not look like the old man, as almost everyone on the luge circuit refers to him. He looks the same as he did years ago: solid, like a boulder made of flesh and bone. He is 5 feet 11 inches and 190 pounds of muscle, with the thick neck of a linebacker. But his longevity is most intriguing. Zggeler has competed on an elite level in the sport longer than some of his competition has been on this earth.Tucker West, 18, of the United States team called Zggeler the Michael Jordan of luge. But Zggeler has one up on Jordan. He never retired and came back a lesser athlete. He stuck around, perfecting his technique, making the younger competitors jealous.Erin Hamlin, another American Olympian, said: You want to see what luge is supposed to look like, then watch that guy. Hes like perfection on a sled.Hamlins teammate Chris Mazdzer has seen Zggeler lift weights. Last fall, he took a peek at the weight Zggeler was lifting as Zggeler performed rows while lying on a bench.Mazdzers mouth dropped open.Oh, my God, that old man can lift 140 kilograms! Mazdzer said of the weight that was nearly 309 pounds. Mazdzer said he told him, Armin, youre still really strong.Zggeler just smiled.People unfamiliar with luge might think it would be a great fit for a 40-year-old because the athletes lie down as they slide feet-first down the course. Hey, you can lie on a sled even with a bulging gut and love handles, right? In reality, the sport is much harder and much harder on the body than it looks. Luge athletes can speed about 90 miles an hour down an icy, often treacherous track and might endure the stress of five times the force of gravity. In comparison, astronauts must handle three Gs upon takeoff.Particularly while zooming through the curves of the track, luge athletes must be strong enough to keep their heads up while gravity is pulling their heads down. To strengthen their neck muscles, they often put a light weight on their foreheads and bend their necks forward and backward.Athletes in luge are plagued with shoulder problems and back problems, which crop up sooner or later because they start their runs seated and propel themselves forward with their arms. The start position places great pressure on their shoulders and spines.You basically peak when youre 25, and then you just go until your back blows out, Mazdzer said.To keep his back from blowing out, Zggeler said, he does simple exercises and workouts, and even has fitness tips on his website. Among them are hiking with skiing poles, stretching hands over head and crunches.Hiking, stretching and crunches? Thats it? Thats the secret to being an Olympian at 40?Well, not really, said Mark Grimmette, the two-time Olympic medalist and five-time Olympian who now coaches the United States team.Grimmette, who retired from competition at 39, said that as an athlete ages, fitness becomes all about strengthening the core. He said he even copied Zggelers exercises calling one of them Armins because he knew how well Zggeler took care of his body.We did mostly really boring exercises, with light weights, he said. Like arm raises with two and a half pounds, or external/internal shoulder rotations with a rubber band. You have to work your smaller muscles when things start breaking down.Grimmette and Kurt Brugger, Zggelers coach, each said Zggelers focus not just his physical ability set him apart.Brugger, an Olympic gold medalist in doubles luge, said Zggeler had a tremendous ability to block out all distractions.Ive never seen anything like it, he said. And Armin eats very well, too, South Tyrolean food. Its true. Its helped him that he only eats food from our region in Italy.That is not entirely true.Zggelers nickname is the Cannibal, because he also devours his opponents. | Sports |
Credit...Haley Ahlers/University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignNov. 17, 2016URBANA, Ill. A decade ago, agricultural scientists at the University of Illinois suggested a bold approach to improve the food supply: tinker with photosynthesis, the chemical reaction powering nearly all life on Earth.The idea was greeted skeptically in scientific circles and ignored by funding agencies. But one outfit with deep pockets, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, eventually paid attention, hoping the research might help alleviate global poverty.Now, after several years of work funded by the foundation, the scientists are reporting a remarkable result.Using genetic engineering techniques to alter photosynthesis, they increased the productivity of a test plant tobacco by as much as 20 percent, they said Thursday in a study published by the journal Science. That is a huge number, given that plant breeders struggle to eke out gains of 1 or 2 percent with more conventional approaches.ImageCredit...L. Brian Stauffer/University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignThe scientists have no interest in increasing the production of tobacco; their plan is to try the same alterations in food crops, and one of the leaders of the work believes production gains of 50 percent or more may ultimately be achievable. If that prediction is borne out in further research it could take a decade, if not longer, to know for sure the result might be nothing less than a transformation of global agriculture.The findings could also intensify the political struggle over genetic engineering of the food supply. Some groups oppose it, arguing that researchers are playing God by moving genes from one species to another. That argument has gained some traction with the public, in part because the benefits of gene-altered crops have so far been modest at best.But gains of 40 or 50 percent in food production would be an entirely different matter, potentially offering enormous benefits for the worlds poorest people, many of them farmers working small plots of land in the developing world.Were here because we want to alleviate poverty, said Katherine Kahn, the officer at the Gates Foundation overseeing the grant for the Illinois research. What is it the farmers need, and how can we help them get there?One of the leaders of the research, Stephen P. Long, a crop scientist who holds appointments at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and at Lancaster University in England, emphasized in an interview that a long road lay ahead before any results from the work might reach farmers fields.ImageCredit...David Drag/University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignBut Dr. Long is also convinced that genetic engineering could ultimately lead to what he called a second Green Revolution that would produce huge gains in food production, like the original Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, which transferred advanced agricultural techniques to some developing countries and led to reductions in world hunger.The research involves photosynthesis, in which plants use carbon dioxide from the air and energy from sunlight to form new, energy-rich carbohydrates. These compounds are, in turn, the basic energy supply for almost all animal cells, including those of humans. The mathematical description of photosynthesis is sometimes billed as the equation that powers the world.For a decade, Dr. Long had argued that photosynthesis was not actually very efficient. In the course of evolution, several experts said, Mother Nature had focused on the survival and reproduction of plants, not on putting out the maximum amount of seeds or fruits for humans to come along and pick.Dr. Long thought crop yields might be improved by certain genetic changes. Other scientists doubted it would work, but with the Science paper, Dr. Long and his collaborator Krishna K. Niyogi, who holds appointments at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have gone a long way toward proving their point.Much of the work at the University of Illinois was carried out by two young researchers from abroad who hold positions in Dr. Longs laboratory, Johannes Kromdijk of the Netherlands and Katarzyna Glowacka of Poland.No one plans to eat tobacco, of course, nor does the Gates Foundation have any interest in increasing the production of that health-damaging crop. But the researchers used it because tobacco is a particularly fast and easy plant in which to try new genetic alterations to see how well they work.In a recent interview here, Dr. Kromdijk and Dr. Glowacka showed off tiny tobacco plants incorporating the genetic changes and described their aspirations.We hope it translates into food crops in the way weve shown in tobacco, Dr. Kromdijk said. Of course, you only know when you actually try it.In the initial work, the researchers transferred genes from a common laboratory plant, known as thale cress or mouse-ear cress, into strains of tobacco. The effect was not to introduce alien substances, but rather to increase the level of certain proteins that already existed in tobacco.When plants receive direct sunlight, they are often getting more energy than they can use, and they activate a mechanism that helps them shed it as heat while slowing carbohydrate production. The genetic changes the researchers introduced help the plant turn that mechanism off faster once the excessive sunlight ends, so that the machinery of photosynthesis can get back more quickly to maximal production of carbohydrates.It is a bit like a factory worker taking a shorter coffee break before getting back to the assembly line. But the effect on the overall growth of the tobacco plants was surprisingly large.When the scientists grew the newly created plants in fields at the University of Illinois, they achieved yield increases of 13.5 percent in one strain, 19 percent in a second and 20 percent in a third, over normal tobacco plants grown for comparison.Because the machinery of photosynthesis in many of the worlds food crops is identical to that of tobacco, theory suggests that a comparable manipulation of those crops should increase production. Work is planned to test that in crops that are especially important as dietary staples in Africa, like cowpeas, rice and cassava.Two outside experts not involved in the research both used the word exciting to describe it. But they emphasized that the researchers had not yet proved that the food supply could be increased.How does it look in rice or corn or wheat or sugar beets? said L. Val Giddings, a senior fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in Washington and a longtime advocate of gene-altered crops. Youve got to get it into a handful of the important crops before you can show this is real and its going to have a huge impact. We are not there yet.Barry D. Bruce of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, who studies photosynthesis, pointed out that the genetic alteration might behave differently in crops where only parts of the plant, such as seeds or fruits, are harvested. In tobacco, by contrast, the entire aboveground plant is harvested Dr. Bruce called it a leafy green plant used for cigars!Dr. Bruce also noted that, now that the principle has been established, it might be possible to find plant varieties with the desired traits and introduce the changes into crops by conventional breeding, rather than by genetic engineering. Dr. Long and his group agreed this might be possible.The genetic engineering approach, if it works, may well be used in commercial seeds produced by Western agricultural companies. One of them, Syngenta, has already signed a deal to get a first look at the results. But the Gates Foundation is determined to see the technology, assuming its early promise is borne out, make its way to African farmers at low cost.The work is, in part, an effort to secure the food supply against the possible effects of future climate change. If rising global temperatures cut the production of food, human society could be destabilized, but more efficient crop plants could potentially make the food system more resilient, Dr. Long said.Were in a year when commodity prices are very low, and people are saying the world doesnt need more food, Dr. Long said. But if we dont do this now, we may not have it when we really need it. | science |
Asia Pacific|Bombing Foiled After Lull in Bangladesh Attacks Endshttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/world/asia/bangladesh-bombing-islamic-state.htmlCredit...Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesMarch 17, 2017DHAKA, Bangladesh The police in Bangladesh said they foiled an apparent bombing attempt at a checkpoint of Bangladeshs elite police force on Saturday, less than a day after an attempted suicide attack outside another police facility.A young man, suspected to be involved in a militant group, was shot while crossing a Rapid Action Batallion checkpoint, and the police found two bombs in his bag, said Lieutenant Colonel Tuhin Mohammad Masud, a R.A.B. officer in eastern Dhaka.The Islamic State extremist group said it was responsible for the botched suicide attack on Friday, which brought an apparent end to an extended lull in militant activities.On Thursday, police made a bloody raid on a hide-out in Chittagong that they said was used by militants affiliated with a branch of Jamaat-ul-Mujahedeen. The branch is widely understood to be affiliated with the Islamic State.Four suspected militants, including one woman, and a 6-month-old were killed in the raid, said Noor E Alam Mina, the superintendent of police for Chittagong district.Officials said that security had been increased at international and domestic airports and that prisons in the country had been placed on alert.An unknown assailant carrying a bomb entered the battalions compound, where a few troops were staying and some construction was going on, said Commander Mufti Mahmud Khan, a spokesman for the unit.Two officials confronted the assailant and the bomb exploded, wounding both officials and killing the assailant, Mr. Khan said. The police suspect that the assailant was a member of a militant organization but are not certain which one, he said.A bomb squad came to the spot to collect evidence, but the body of the assailant had been scattered over a large area, according to The Daily Star, an English-language daily newspaper.After an attack on a restaurant last year, Bangladeshs elite police forces conducted waves of arrests and killings of suspected militants, and there was an end to the small-scale attacks that had become commonplace in recent years.But reports of attacks on members of religious minority groups have resumed in recent weeks, among them the killings of a Sufi spiritual leader and his daughter and a Bangladeshi Christian. Neither crime has been officially linked to extremists. | World |
Credit...Stephen Lovekin/Getty ImagesDec. 15, 2015One week after striking a deal with MSNBC, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin have signed a deal for a weekly show for Showtime, the premium cable channel announced on Tuesday.Mr. Heilemann and Mr. Halperin, perhaps best known as the authors of Game Change, will be featured on a weekly 30-minute show that will offer a behind the scenes look at the 2016 presidential election, Showtimes president, David Nevins, said in an interview. It will not be a talk show.Mr. Nevins likened the show, which will be called The Circus: Inside the Greatest Political Show on Earth, to Showtimes A Season With Notre Dame and HBOs Hard Knocks. The Circus will feature a rotating set of characters, he said, from the presidential candidates, to campaign handlers and possibly members of the news media. Mr. Heilemann and Mr. Halperin will be correspondents on the show, along with the Republican strategist Mark McKinnon. It will premiere in January.Cable news is mostly pundits and talking heads, Mr. Nevins said. Theres a limit to the depth of story you can get in the nightly news. It felt like we could do a political documentary in real time. Every election turns out one or two documentaries, but why do you have to wait a year for this?Mr. Heilemann and Mr. Halperin have a daily 5 p.m. political talk show on Bloomberg Television, With All Due Respect, and last week, they agreed to a deal with MSNBC to rebroadcast the show at 6 p.m.Mr. Nevins said that Mr. Halperin, a friend since high school, approached him about three months ago to discuss doing a show together.It represents something of a departure for Showtime. Though HBO has long been in the topical or talk show business, Showtime has generally restricted those efforts to sports, including the Notre Dame show that aired this fall, Inside the NFL and 60 Minutes Sports.In recent years, HBO has ramped up its news programming and talk shows in an attempt to offer a variety of shows that could fuel sales for its stand-alone app, HBO Now. Bill Simmons will host a new talk show next year, a daily newscast with Vice will premiere next year, and Jon Stewart will begin offering digital shorts to the network.Showtime, which has its own stand-alone app, is now venturing into new terrain.We looked to complement our very strong lineup of series, and were looking for things with currency and immediacy, Mr. Nevins said. I think well be breaking news.Mr. Nevins said that the show would be done in cooperation with Bloomberg, though Showtime will be financing this show. If something newsworthy develops while the show is being filmed, that footage could be shared with the Bloomberg show and, as a result, MSNBC. (MSNBCs parent company is Comcast; Showtime is part of the CBS Corporation.)The Bloomberg talk show has had a rocky first year. In addition to small viewership which will inevitably receive a bump when it airs on MSNBC next year the show has been criticized for being too frivolous.Mr. Nevins is not bothered by any of that.They get access and they get people talking and they have a sense of humor, which will be important to the show, he said. I dont want it to feel dry like the Sunday morning talk shows. Theyre uniquely suited to do a show at this time, and itll make noise. | Business |